MrBallen

But now he was starting to wonder if maybe she was trying to make herself look innocent.

It's not unusual for killers to try and insert themselves into investigations to seem cooperative or to cast suspicion on other people.

Patricia had also entered Dorothy's house multiple times before Dorothy's body was found, which certainly gave her an opportunity to interact with the scene and potentially hide evidence.

And so Vallelongo turned and ran to go find Strada.

They needed to speak to Patricia immediately.

And this time it would be as a suspect.

On May 8th, so six days after Dorothy was found in the river, Vallelongo once again met with Dorothy's close friend, Patricia Newman.

But this time, the meeting was inside of a police interrogation room.

And as Vallelongo sat at the interrogation table looking at Patricia,

He was watching her very carefully.

She did seem somewhat annoyed that she had been called in for this, but she also seemed very nervous.

In particular, she kept fidgeting with her hands.

Now, Vallelongo had really considered his approach here.

Since Patricia could have been lying to him this whole time, his plan was to start off pleasant and kind of lull her into a false sense of security that he believed everything she had said was true so far.

And then at some point, he would surprise her with a sharp left turn and see how she reacted.

So he started with some background questions about Patricia's relationship with Dorothy and nodded appreciatively as Patricia explained how she and Dorothy were good friends and Patricia also took care of her.

But then, kind of out of nowhere, Vallelongo asked her about Dorothy's estate and if it was valuable or not.

She did say that Dorothy owned the house and the land it was on outright, so no mortgages or anything.

So it had to be worth something, but she didn't know how much it was worth.

Vallelongo responded to this by saying, okay, you know, forget the financial worth of the property.