Chapter 4, The Pecan Tree Summary and Analysis

Ward and Fontenot were not formally charged for several weeks after their arrest because the police wanted to investigate his confession a little more and they were hoping to find Denice Haraway's body. However, when police went to the abandoned house where Fontenot claimed they had burned Denice's body, the owner told them he had burned down the house ten months before the disappearance. Also complicating the investigation, Detective Baskin recalled that Odell Titsworth's arm was broken two days before the Haraway disappearance. It was physically impossible for Titsworth to have been involved in the crime. Not only that, but police asked Fontenot to pick Titsworth out of a photo lineup and he could not. At the same time, the police learned that Jeff Miller's story was not true when they interviewed the girls who...