True Confessions?

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After close to 13 hours, the detectives had his confession and, in their minds, didn't need to look any further. But six months later, Williams' DNA evidence didn't match blood or semen found on the scene or the skin found under Moore-Bosko's fingernails. The detectives' conclusion was that Williams hadn't acted alone. So they brought in Joseph Dick Jr., who had been living with Williams and his wife at the time. The night of Moore-Bosko's murder, Dick told the detectives at first, he was on duty, a fact they never checked. (Navy senior chief Michael Ziegler, who was Dick's direct supervisor, confirmed to TIME that Dick had been scheduled for duty.) Still, after hours of interrogation, Dick too confessed. His father, who says Dick has been slow since getting hit in the head by a swing when he was 3, believes the police could "convince my son to sign anything." But again, his DNA didn't match, and Dick gave the police more names, one of which led to Tice. "In the light of day, you say you wouldn't confess," says Tice over the phone from prison, "but in that room with [the detectives] standing over you, you get worn down."

In March 1999, detectives finally got a DNA match after Omar Ballard, a convicted rapist and onetime acquaintance of Moore-Bosko's, confessed in a graphic letter to a friend that he had killed her. In his first audiotaped confession, given after just 20 minutes of questioning, Ballard described the rape with previously undisclosed details from the crime scene and said he had acted alone. Ballard changed his story at the behest of the detectives, the petition says, claiming he had perpetrated the crime along with four other men. In the petition, Ballard stands by his original claim that he had acted alone.

Still, even Ballard's testimony won't necessarily be able to turn back the clock. While Tice firmly protested his innocence through two separate trials, both Williams and Dick ended up pleading guilty. The reason may be understandable in retrospect--both their lawyers told them to stick to the story to avoid the death penalty--but the fact that they affirmed their confessions doesn't help their case. No wonder prosecutor D.J. Hansen, who put the men behind bars, says there is nothing new in the petition that wasn't tested in the normal judicial process. "Justice was done," he says. But as Carol Moore has learned the hard way, in the age of CSI and DNA, justice is never truly done, even if it appears as if the truth has already spoken.