In an interview with the Tribune in 2013, Patrick said that during the initial police investigation he was repeatedly pressed to admit his role in the slayings but refused. After some of the teens who would become his co-defendants were brought into his interrogation room and he was told they had implicated him, he said he began to lose hope that his claims of innocence would be believed. After about 30 hours in custody, he signed a confession that he said a prosecutor wrote out for him admitting he had shot Lassiter.