MrBallen

Until...

Patricia Newman got involved.

Brandon seemed very frustrated as he began to explain how he didn't really know what had happened, but Patricia somehow got into Dorothy's head and convinced her that he and his wife Bonnie had somehow taken advantage of Dorothy.

And Brandon's saying like that didn't happen.

That's not how this went.

Brandon said, you know, as far as he was concerned, it actually seemed like Patricia was the one who was taking advantage of Dorothy.

And then he said there were actually all these times when apparently Patricia was staying with Dorothy.

And at some point they would get into some kind of fight and like Patricia would get mad at Dorothy.

And Dorothy would flee her own house and run to the Nodier's house, like for protection, for safe haven.

They said that was fairly common.

Like Patricia was this awful person that, you know, Dorothy had to flee from.

As Vallelongo heard this, he kind of didn't know what to think.

I mean, you know, Brandon could be lying to him, but truthfully, Brandon seemed very convincing.

And also, you know, Brandon just didn't really seem smart enough to be a master manipulator here.

In fact, if anything, Brandon seemed kind of dense and it was hard to believe he could engineer this murder without leaving behind any evidence or witnesses and then also concoct this sort of brilliant story about how Patricia really was the one behind this whole thing.

But Brandon's wife, Bonnie, was a suspect too.

And it was possible that, you know, she was the ringleader and Brandon had just sort of followed along.

They were divorced now, but if they were wrapped up in this lawsuit with Dorothy together, it was possible they could have, you know, come together and joined forces to take care of the problem, i.e.

get rid of Dorothy.

All that's to say, Vallelongo was not going to eliminate Brandon as a suspect just yet, but he needed more evidence before he could connect him to the crime.