The Confession

Content Warning: This section of the novel features scenes of torture and interrogation of a child.

Reverend Schroeder finds a website run by Flak that provides the story of Donté, including an account of the interrogation session that led to Donté’s confession.

Downplaying the importance of Donté’s Miranda rights, a detective convinced Donté to sign away his right to an attorney. Over the next 15 hours, lead Detective Kerber lied to Donté about eyewitnesses who identified him as the killer, because “[p]olice are permitted to lie at will during an interrogation” (88). A distraught Donté agreed to a polygraph test, which he passed—he was at home the night of the abduction, babysitting. However, Kerber told him the polygraph said he was lying and warned that a jury would see those results—another lie. Violating the law, Kerber negotiated Donté’s confession, promising the teen that if he admitted to killing Nicole, the death penalty would be taken off the table. Kerber ramped up the pressure, by lying that a friend would testify about Donté’s stormy relationship with Nicole. Donté, in tears, took another lie detector test and passed again. To Kerber, however, “the truth was not important” (96). 15 hours into his interrogation, Donté figured the only way to get out of the police station was to give Kerber what he wanted, a confession.