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When he answered the call, which had previously been transferred twice, Sean Mukaddam, a violent crime investigator in Decatur, Alabama, had no idea what the person on the other end of the line would tell him. “I want to confess to a homicide that I committed many years ago,” heard the police officer specializing in archived cases who would later discover that he was contacted by Johnny Dwight Whited, a man who admitted to having fired a single shot in 1995, in which a young man died . in a wooded area of Decatur.
“I didn’t know the date or the year,” Detective Mukaddam told The New York Times. “We struggled to know what he was talking about.” However, despite the difficulties inherent in the temporary detachment, the police studied the homicides committed in the area since the 1980s, as well as the location provided by Whited and understood that the man was referred to the death of Christopher Alvin Dailey , which occurred on April 26, 1995. Thus, last Wednesday and according to the aforementioned information agency, the alleged offender, now 53 years old, went to the scene of the crime and reconstructed the murder.
“I’ve never lived in a situation where I just pick up the phone and get a call like this,” said Detective Mukaddam, who nonetheless admitted that, working in the police for 15 years, he is aware that members of the police they know how to distinguish between “legitimate leads” and people who just want publicity, “and Whited was asked” specific questions “to understand whether he was telling the truth or simply seeking” some visibility. “
Mukkadam further explained that he never found “anything of the kind, in which the suspect” calls him “out of nowhere and wants to confess,” he added, showing that the man is “in the final stage of a disease”, having shown “repentance and ashamed of certain things ”and felt the need to“ get them off his chest. ”However, Whited’s defense attorney, Griff Belser, clarified that he wants to meet with the client before discussing the case.
Authorities said the victim, Dailey, was 26 at the time of the crime and his car, a Toyota Tercel, was found in the Tennessee River and said the young man did not know the attacker, having refused to comment on the alleged motive. . led the murderer to commit murder. The truth is that, despite the fact that the police never gave up on insisting that they carried out an “intensive investigation”, no suspect was identified in 1/4 of a century.
“I turned the last page and closed the book they wrote,” said Detective Mukkadam, who closed the case and said his predecessors worked “long hours” on it. Whited is charged with murder and is being held in the Morgan County Prison, also in Alabama, with a bail of $ 15,000 (approximately 12,650 euros).
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