Lester’s eyes flared. They had a vibrant intensity. Keller usually didn’t care for true believers. She thought they often suffered from tunnel vision, saw conspiracies that didn’t exist. Exhibit A was the Adlers back at the farmhouse. But as she eyed the woman across from her, Keller could only hope her twins would live life with such zeal.

Lester continued, “So do I think the Unknown Partygoer or Bobby Ray Hayes or the boogeyman killed Charlotte? No.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The Unknown Partygoer is based on the hazy recollection of one kid at the party. He’d been drinking, and he’s since had a car accident that left him with a brain injury, so there’s no way to test his recollection. Also, someone else would’ve noticed if some guy in his late twenties was at a high school house party. And eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. You’re in the FBI, you know.”

“I know a lot of DNA exonerations involved mistaken eyewitness testimony,” Keller said, trying to find common ground.

“Try seventy percent. Seven in ten of people freed by DNA had been convicted based on bad eyewitnesses. Most of the rest, were…”

“False confessions,” Keller said, finishing Lester’s sentence and trying to regain control of the conversation. Keller’s eyes couldn’t help but lock onto the poster behind Lester’s desk. It was a disturbing black-and-white photograph of an African American boy strapped into the electric chair, his round cheeks streaked with tears as someone tightened the chin strap of the metal helmet that was too large for his head. Under the photo it read:

GEORGE STINNEY JR.
EXECUTED IN 1944 AT THE AGE 14 FOR KILLING TWO WHITE GIRLS
EXONERATED IN 2014

Keller ripped her eyes from the image. She needed to focus. “So who do you think killed Charlotte?”

Lester coughed a laugh. “I’m not going down that rabbit hole anymore. Trust me, it will consume your life.” The case had taken its toll on Lester. Keller remembered a critical scene in the documentary, Lester at the lectern, arguing Danny’s case to a panel of appellate judges, her plea both measured and impassioned.

“Charlotte’s head was crushed like Hayes’s known victims,” Keller said.

“Yeah, precisely. But the Smasher’s MO was reported in Kansas newspapers before Charlotte was murdered,” Lester said. “And the Kansas police had put out a notice to law enforcement in Nebraska and other neighboring states hoping that they might identify more victims, which is ultimately how they caught Hayes. The prosecutor in Danny’s case should’ve turned over the notes about the anonymous tip identifying the similarities to Charlotte’s murder, but the fact that there was a killer crushing young women’s skulls was in the public domain.”

“So why didn’t Danny’s trial lawyer look into it?”