Ferreira told the detective that interrogated him that when he went down the stairs, she appeared to be unconscious and he decided to fondle her breasts. However, to the crisis counselor at the mental health hotline, he said that when he saw her knocked out, he saw “an opportunity” and “had his way with her.”

By his own account, Ferreira had raped the body of 13-year-old Carrie Ann Jopek before realizing something more disturbing than his own act: the seventh grader had been dead the whole time. The then-17-year-old had apparently not realized that Carrie Ann’s neck had been broken from her fall and that she had been dead, not unconscious when he sexually assaulted her.