Ashley Flowers

But even if that is what happened, it's not what sent them off in this direction.

There's nothing in the case file to suggest why Dave was their only suspect.

And when our reporter Regine Wright asked former Sheriff Whitlatch if he remembers why they looked so hard at him, she wasn't able to get a definitive answer.

It wasn't just the murder weapon or the motive that they couldn't tie to Dave.

Fingerprints and palm prints from the crime scene didn't match him or Amy either.

They even tested the finger and palm prints of the friend of Dave's, that friend that had loaned him a gun, but no go.

Dawn's footprints were also eliminated.

Looking back, it's hard not to wonder if their focus on Dawn and Dave kept them from pursuing other early leads, suspects they were never able to identify.

For example, Dawn said that a stranger came by their house shortly before the murder asking for directions to Wellman, Iowa.

Tom was on the phone with his dad at this time, and his dad confirmed that he overheard this exchange.

Now, according to Dawn, that man didn't look like her assailant.

He had dark hair.

But if they're going to call Dawn's story into question, why not be suspicious of this guy?

Despite trying to do a call-out for him to come forward, he never did.

More suspicious are the tips investigators got about an argument that reportedly happened between Tom and that unidentified man the night before he died.

The few reports in the file are all third-hand at best.

I mean, since it was a local bar in a small town, it stands to reason that someone there would have been able to identify this guy, especially if it was Dave, right?

Or at least know if this guy was a local.

But that never happened.

I can't even find anything in the case file to suggest that they asked Dawn about this after they heard the story, which to me seems pretty critical because according to the tips, Dawn was present for this fight.