Inconclusive: The case against a homeless man accused of executing a woman and two teenagers

Camile Hamilton paused to study the bearded man’s photo.

South Florida detectives had traveled to her home in Jamaica that summer of 2010, hoping to solve a murder. She was the only survivor of a 2009 Miramar home invasion that took the lives of her teenage daughter, her friend, and her friend’s teenage son.

Hamilton looked at the photo and shook her head. “No,” she said.

Then the lead detective did something extraordinary: he showed Hamilton 14 more photos, all of the same man, taken over 10 years of his life.

Pratt only became a suspect after repeated tests of inconclusive DNA collected from a roll of duct tape. His arrest also hung on the hazy recollections of a traumatized witness, her memory influenced by the detective.