Who Killed Riley Fox?

The Interrogation

There was another dynamic at play. As the State's Attorney Jeff Tomczak was dealing with pressure to solve the case, he was also fighting for his political life, with Election Day was approaching.

When three-year-old Riley Fox was abducted and murdered in 2004, her father Kevin was arrested in the case. Riley went missing from the Fox family's home in Illinois in the middle of the night.

(Courtesy of the Fox Family)

A week before the election, Will County detectives called the Foxes and asked them to come to the station. After arriving, they were immediately separated.

Kevin was taken into a very small room and interrogated for the next 14 hours. According to Kevin's account, detectives told him they had reason to believe that he had killed Riley.

"They broke me down mentally, physically, emotionally… but I stayed strong. I knew… I, I denied everything, everything that they would say to me," he said.

Kevin said the investigators told him to take a polygraph test, and he agreed, confident he'd pass. But afterwards, detectives told him he had failed. Finally, Kevin broke, offering a statement admitting he killed Riley.

According to the investigators, Kevin said he woke up in the middle of the night went to the bathroom, where he accidentally hit Riley with the door, causing her to stumble and hit her head on the bathtub. Thinking he'd accidentally killed her, he panicked and supposedly did something to make it look like she was sexually assaulted. Investigators said he put duct tape over Riley's mouth, drove her in his car to the river and walked down the side of a small bridge and dumped her into the river.

Hours after making that statement, Kevin Fox was charged with first degree murder.

Seeking the Death Penalty

The next day, Tomczak announced he would be seeking the death penalty. "The young child in this case died a terrible death," Tomczak announced at the time, "And for that reason, the penalty deserves to be death."

Hal Dardick, who covered the Fox case for the Chicago Tribune, noted that the decision to seek the death penalty is usually reached over weeks or months, not days. But Tomczak has consistently denied that his decision was motivated by the impending election, which he ultimately lost to Jim Glasgow.

Kevin insisted to his family that his confession was false and that after 14 hours, he believed it was his only way out of that room.

"Say you were trapped in a, a burning room, and there was only one door, and the fire was just flaming around you," he said. "It was my only way out."

Related

WATCH: What Happened to Riley: Part 5

WATCH: What Happened to Riley: Part 6

WATCH: The Day They Found Riley

Click here to watch a reenactment of the interrogation.

Attorney Kathleen Zellner, who built a reputation for freeing the wrongly accused with DNA evidence, believed him. After a single meeting with Kevin at the Will County jail, Zellner agreed to take his case.

"I decided a long time ago, I did not want to defend people that I thought were guilty," she said.

"Just looking at him and listening to him, I decided I was going to take a chance with him."

False Confession?

Zellner says she was persuaded because Kevin had no history of child abuse, and she believed his confession was coerced.

"It fit perfectly. It was a classic case of false confession," said Zellner.

Zellner said the trauma of Riley's daughter made Kevin vulnerable to what she calls psychological manipulation by interrogators. Kevin said the detectives showed him pictures of Riley's dead body and refused to let him speak to his father or a lawyer and made graphic threats. Kevin said that the investigators would "have me raped every day I was in there if I didn't say anything."

Police said Kevin's account of the interrogation was exaggerated and inaccurate, and pointed out that he had failed the polygraph test. But Fred Hunter, who has years of experience working for both Zellner and Will County authorities, offered another explanation.

"It is pretty much polygraph 101 that you would not to test a subject who had been interrogated for hours. The validity of any test results after that are going to be tainted," Hunter said.

Zellner said she found the confession itself suspicious. She said that on many fronts, the details he gave were, "an absolutely impossible story." If Kevin had really accidentally hurt his daughter inside the home, then why didn't he take her to a hospital or simply call an ambulance? And if he drove off with the little girl, then why was no forensic evidence found inside the car?

And lastly, Zellner had serious questions about the steep embankment Kevin allegedly walked to the water's edge.

"I mean, the chances he could have come down that side are pretty remote," Zellner said., adding that the current at that point in the river was too weak to carry Riley's body.

She conducted her own test at the creek and said it proved a body dropped at that site couldn't have drifted to the location where Riley's body was discovered.

Zellner also cast a critical eye on the fuzzy surveillance video of the car seen passing the gas station on the night of Riley's murder. She carefully analyzed the video and said, "The wheel base is shorter. The angle of the windshield is different. You would have to have the license plate or a very clear picture of his face to ever have that hold up in court."