When I took her phone, I realized the videos online had been altered.
Unlike the version I saw at the police station, the trending clip was blurry, cut at an angle that hid him tying his shoelaces, slowed down for effect, and overlaid with captions framing him as staging a scam before a hit-and-run.
If I hadn’t seen the real surveillance, I might have believed it too.
No wonder the comments were full of venom against him. People wrote that it wasn’t just age that made him bitter—that he’d lived as a con artist and died as one.
They claimed his actions proved he was a repeat offender.
Others sneered that he must have blackmailed his children before his death—that it was the perfect ending for a “crooked old man.”
I should have been heartbroken.
But knowing Daniel twisted the truth only because the victim wasn’t his own father left me numb instead.
His aunt slapped her thigh in fury and shouted at me.
“Emily, call Daniel and make him send a lawyer’s letter. Sue those bastards right now!”
I didn’t tell her that the “bastards” she cursed were likely her nephew himself.
Before I could put the phone down, the police called.