False confession

Subject in True Crime

False confession has come up in 3 episodes across 2 podcasts in TMT, including 20/20, 48 Hours. 4 people have made recorded remarks about it.

What people said

Zellner argued prosecutors should have tested the confession because confessions must be corroborated.
“The state's attorney should have checked all of that out, because a confession has to be corroborated”
20/20: True Crime Vault: The Accused (Sep 22, 2026) · Listen from 43:12

Kevin Fox said he went along with the detectives' story to escape the interrogation.
“I pretty much went along with their story to get out of there”
20/20: True Crime Vault: The Accused (Sep 22, 2026) · Listen from 50:13

Himmelstein said she would never prosecute a case resting solely on a confession without corroborating evidence.
“I would never in a million years prosecute a case with only one piece of evidence, and that one piece of evidence being a confession”
20/20: True Crime Vault: The Accused (Sep 22, 2026) · Listen from 50:38

Psychologist Stuart Bassman testified that Richardson has a mental disorder predisposing her to comply with authority figures.
“It is my opinion that Skylar Richardson suffers from a mental disorder that predisposes her to comply to people in authority”
48 Hours: The Case Against Brooke Skylar Richardson (Apr 2, 2026) · Listen from 31:55

Apr 2026Sep 2026

Episodes discussing it, by month of release.

True Crime Vault: The Accused
20/20 · Sep 22, 2026 · 1 h 24 min
David Muir revisits the 2004 murder of three-year-old Riley Fox, her father's coerced false confession, his DNA exoneration, and the FBI's identification of killer Scott Eby.
True Crime Vault: A Killing on the Cape
20/20 · Jun 30, 2026 · 1 h 24 min
20/20 revisits the 2002 murder of fashion writer Christa Worthington in Truro, Massachusetts, and questions whether trash collector Christopher McCowan was rightly convicted.
The Case Against Brooke Skylar Richardson
48 Hours · Apr 2, 2026 · 41 min
Erin Moriarty reports on Brooke Skylar Richardson's Ohio trial for the death of her newborn, featuring her parents, attorneys and investigators.