True Crime Vault: The Accused

In June 2004, three-year-old Riley Fox was taken from her home in Wilmington, Illinois, in the middle of the night. Her father, Kevin Fox, woke to his son Tyler saying Riley was gone. The front door was open. The community mobilized, searching ditches and woods. A mother and daughter found Riley face down in a creek about three miles from home. Her mouth was duct-taped, and the autopsy showed she had been sexually assaulted and was alive when she entered the water. The investigation that followed was not a straightforward search for a stranger predator. It became a tunnel-visioned pursuit of the little girl's own father.

The Interrogation and False Confession

Police quickly focused on Kevin Fox. Despite no physical evidence linking him to the crime, detectives brought him in for questioning four months after Riley's death. Kevin had been awake for over 24 hours. The interrogation lasted approximately 14 hours, and no videotape was made of the session—only an audio recording of the final confession. Kevin says detectives berated him, swore at him, and threatened that he would be raped in prison. They showed him a crime scene photo of his dead daughter. They told him he had failed a polygraph test (a common ruse). After hours of this, an officer rushed in and said a prosecutor had agreed to a deal: if Kevin said it was an accident, it would be a misdemeanor and he could get