A crazy guy appears and admitts he was the one that commited the murder(often for publicity or just because he is crazy),even though he has nothing to do with it...
THE WORLD IS YOURS
Can't offer an answer, but I will say... good question! I'd like to know as well.
shareHaving grown up in a police family, it is not a Hollywood cliche, it is a truism. Most production companies will have technical advisers, cops, who will mention that in every notorious case, there will be some crazy who confesses. That is the beginning of "holding back" some information, as that is one of the ways to weed people out. You can spin up investigators pretty good telling them things that they told you. Its how "cold readers" work, and many of those Psychics you see on TV.
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The same thing happens in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment written well before films were invented so it's not a Hollywood cliche. Like the other poster said it's probably a truism for high profile crimes.
share[deleted]
Apparently this is not just a movie cliché; it happens in real life fairly often. People confess to crimes they did not commit either because they're crazy and/or are seeking attention. This typically happens with highly publicized or high-profile cases. It's also fairly common for psychics to offer assistance as does the older woman in this movie who claims she's in her twenties and is there to help solve the case.
Supposedly people have been doing this long before this movie was made. If I'm not mistaken, I believe I heard people stepped forward claiming responsibility when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped and later killed. More recently, some guy claimed he had killed JonBonet Ramsey.
Someone must be really desperate to do something like that but it serves as a reminder that there are some real kooks out there. They walk around amongst us but until they go and do something as crazy as this, they go unnoticed.
These people may seem harmless but they pull resources, which may already be limited, away from solving the crime. They cost money and time because their claims have to be investigated to some degree. Then when someone is arrested and brought to trial, defense attorneys may use these nutcases to confuse jurors, claiming the police had, but ignored, other leads. If it creates reasonable doubt in the mind of one juror, the guilty party may walk free.