Mysteries and Histories

Why would someone confess to a crime they never committed? Real cases reveal how hours of questioning, exhaustion, intimidation, and false claims about evidence can push innocent people to say what investigators want to hear, sometimes believing that confessing is their only way to go home.
Children and people with intellectual disabilities are particularly vulnerable, but adults can also be pressured into false admissions. Once a confession is obtained, it can overshadow contradictory evidence and turn an investigation toward the wrong person.
This episode explores the psychology of false confessions and the consequences of treating an admission as unquestionable proof. Behind each wrongful conviction is an innocent person losing years of their life and a crime whose real perpetrator may remain free.

In January 1968, 18-year-old Iowa State freshman Sheila Jean Collins was trying to get home to Evanston, Illinois, for the weekend. When her boyfriend could not drive her, she accepted a ride from someone who had found her name on the university’s ride board, without ever learning the driver’s name.
Sheila was last seen waiting with her suitcase in Ames on January 26. Two days later, her body was found in a rural ditch near Colo, Iowa. She had been strangled with a nylon cord, and investigators believed she was killed elsewhere before being left there.
Her murder remained unsolved for 55 years. No arrest has been made, and the person who offered Sheila that final ride has never been publicly identified.

In February 2009, 44-year-old Lesley Herring vanished from her Los Angeles home, leaving behind her car, phone, keys, purse, jewellery, and savings. Her husband, Lyle, claimed she had simply left but a Starbucks receipt found in her purse appeared to show she had bought coffee days after she disappeared.
It was meant to be proof she was alive. Instead, investigators checked the café’s CCTV and found Lyle buying the coffee himself. Detectives concluded he had planted the receipt to create a false timeline and divert suspicion.
Lesley’s body was never found, but cadaver dogs detected the scent of human remains in two of Lyle’s vehicles, and evidence showed him staging calls and disposing of belongings. In 2013, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years to life.

On Christmas Eve 2010, Lori Erica Ruff died by suicide outside her in-laws’ home in Texas. Afterward, her family found a box of documents revealing that “Lori” had built her life on the identity of a child who had died years earlier. Even her husband had not known her real name.
Investigators traced the paperwork back to 1988, when she obtained identification as Becky Sue Turner, then legally changed that name to Lori Erica Kennedy. She later married and had a daughter, but the documents offered no clear path to the person she had been before.
In 2016, genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick used DNA and family records to identify her as Kimberly McLean, who had left her Pennsylvania home at 18. Her mother’s DNA confirmed the match. Kimberly’s identity was finally known; why she chose to erase her past so completely remains uncertain.

In October 1976, a farmer harvesting corn near Otterbein, Indiana, found a small cardboard box about 15 yards from the road. Inside was the body of an older woman who had been shot in the back of the head. For almost 50 years, she was known only as the “Box Lady of Benton County.”
In 2026, genetic genealogy finally identified her as Jane Hart, a 69-year-old woman who had been living in Chicago around the time of her death. Her identity was restored but the person who killed her, and the reason she ended up in a rural Indiana cornfield, remain unknown.