Kevin Neal, Convicted of Murder by Forensic Entomology

At various times, police asked Neal to provide written statements with details of the activities in the home from the time Sue Neal left for work at 6:30 a.m. until he phoned 911. The declarations contained glaring inconsistencies. In the first statement, Neal said India was asleep on a couch, but awoke to kiss her mother goodbye. Cody was asleep in his bedroom and did not awaken, he claimed. In another written account, Neal said Cody woke up, talked to his mother and then went back to bed. Both statements indicated that the children were given breakfast at around 10:30 a.m. The children played inside until noon, when they went outside.

As family and friends gathered for a prayer service to petition for the children's safe return, investigators began to lean on Kevin Neal. But Neal proved to be a tough nut to crack and was adamant about not being responsible for the disappearances.

Less than three weeks after his stepchildren disappeared, Kevin Neal pleaded guilty to one count of sexual battery and one count of criminal confinement in a Marion County, Indiana, courthouse. He was sentenced to a term of three to 15 years in prison and ordered to register as a sexual predator.

When he began serving his sentence at the end of July, the children still had not been found. Eventually, Kevin Neal would use his custodial status as an alibi that he claimed would prove him incapable of killing his stepchildren.