In a letter Luna wrote from jail, he tried to prepare his mother for what she might hear at a preliminary hearing, scheduled for February. “Don’t believe ANYBODY but me and Bug,” he wrote, apparently refuting Jones’s confession. But then he seemed to suggest possible involvement. “I’m telling you right now that everything that happened was not supposed to happen.… I’m trying to do everything that I can do to get out even if that means I gotta do stuff I don’t wanna do.” Luna mentioned that he had been placed in a “suicide cell.” But he also wrote that he did not mind since it was quieter than the general population. He got an added bonus: despite their being defendants charged in the same crime and the obvious risk that they might discuss testimony together, he and Edwards had been placed in cells next to each other. “They got Bug right beside me in the other one so I can talk to him all day,” he wrote. Edwards has since been moved to a facility in Lawton.

In a letter Edwards wrote to his half-sister Rachel Padilla, the bravado of his tweets and Facebook messages had disappeared. “I don’t have a lawer I don’t have anything. I’m doing bad sis.” In another letter he naïvely suggested that he would be freed after the preliminary hearing, something that has no chance of happening. “All the evidence they have is that one boy’s lie [Jones’s] and that ain’t enough to charge me nor keep me here.” He expressed confidence that God “will bring me home.”

In November, Jones appeared for a hearing at the Stephens County Courthouse. Clad in orange jail clothes, he was led into the courtroom in handcuffs, past a little sign reading MEN, PLEASE REMOVE HATS. His mother was there, looking wan and absent. His father was present as well. His eyes were tiny knots, as if there was no point in seeing anything more than he already had.

Michael Jones’s girlfriend was also in the courtroom. She had given birth two weeks after the arrest. It wasn’t hard to find out about. She had proudly showed off pictures on Facebook.

Rumors about what happened speed down Highway 81. They play in your mind on Country Club Road as you drive by the little memorial that has been set up for Lane near where he was killed, with a picture of him in his catcher’s uniform and an Australian flag with a koala on top and flowers that still look fresh. You think about the rumors down in Elm Terrace, where the swing set outside has no swings. You hear the rumors echo in the old downtown, where no one stirs as the sun sets.

The boys did it because they were really bored. They did it as part of a gang initiation. They won’t tell who did it because they are scared of their families’ being killed. They did not do it. Someone else did it.

Rumors are exciting in a town like this. They help fill in emptiness. There is only one given:

On the afternoon of August 16, a 22-year-old from Australia named Christopher Lane, who had come to America to go to college and play baseball, went out running and, without warning or knowing why, was shot to death in Duncan.

An earlier version of this article misstated that the defendants can receive the death penalty if convicted. Due to their age, they cannot be sentenced to the death penalty.