A perusal of the almost fifty thousand words in my unfinished narrative of the Stacey Burns murder case, Murder in a Small Town: The Tragic Death of Stacey Burns shows repeated use of the word, corroboration. In many instances, it is linked to another word, hearsay.

This may be a generalization, but if someone I interviewed shared a detail of a conversation with Stacey Burns when no one else was present, there can be no corroboration, thus that information becomes hearsay. I’ve found many instances in the book that fit this description. It is impossible to get one hundred percent corroboration of an event, or the timeline of an event , or a conversation if just two people are witnesses and one of them is dead.

It is not a question of whether the person interviewed is telling the truth. It is more a question of validating that truth. Obviously much of what is contained in the book to this point is corroborated, as least as far as the recollections of human beings can be trusted. This is a major concern for me as the events begin to disappear beyond the shroud of years passing by. As alluded to in the previous post, I would guarantee that the recollections of the day before Stacey Burns was murdered have changed for many people over the last eight and a half years, simply because no one (except her killer) expected that she would be dead the next day, therefore had no reason to commit these events to memory.

Just an observation and a hope (wishful thinking?) that a resolution is forthcoming soon . . .

Duke