The great irony here is the video - or, more precisely, the police handling of the video - has hurt the investigation.

But if the video really doesn't come close to depicting the killer, what would the impact be on their investigation?

So let's move on, no need to invest any more time on this guy.' How many times was that repeated during the initial investigation? The police are human, too, they have eyes, they no doubt watched that video. But he looks nothing like the guy in that video. I wonder what impact the video had on the police when they were interviewing hundreds of people in the weeks and months after the murders? 'He doesn't have an alibi, that's true. And yet we have a video, so how can that be!? We can see him right there, with our own eyes! Two years later, the police release a completely different sketch! Huh? He's not a middle aged man, he's actually quite young, thin, perhaps athletic! What? This is the new Bridge Guy, anyone know him? But when pressed, they admit that the original sketch might be accurate, too! Or perhaps it's a combination of the two! WTF? So in other words, the police have no idea what this guy looks like, his age, anything. We were fooled by our eyes, by our belief that the video we saw from that bridge accurately depicted the killer. Something like this could have impacted many people in those critical days and weeks after the murders. So you laughed at how silly you were for even thinking this friend could be involved. Your friend is much younger! Your friend doesn't walk like that! Your friend is definitely thinner than that guy. But then suppose you watched the police release that video, and later a sketch of the likely killer, taken from that video. Suppose you knew he disappeared for a couple of days after the murders. Imagine the impact! Suppose you had suspicions about a friend, a relative, a neighbor. But one that seemed to fit what we, too, saw in that video. Worse than no sketch, the police blanketed the media with a highly inaccurate sketch. The result was that in those key days and weeks after the murders, we were presented with a picture of a man that, in all likelihood, looks nothing like the actual killer. But we underestimated how poor the video really was, and how our eyes filled in the blanks to compensate. It seemed to fit what we saw on that bridge. And the police soon followed up with an actual sketch. The video fooled us into thinking we knew, at least in general, what the killer looked like. So brave of the girls to have documented - through video - the actual moments before their murders. What drew me to this case was the video of the killer.

Delphi murders video