What were the main reasons the police and some prosecutors disputed Reyes’s claim that he acted alone?

1. The record provided is about Pedro Hernandez, not “Reyes,” so no direct answer exists in these files

Every substantial item in the packet addresses the decades-long Etan Patz investigation and Pedro Hernandez’s confessions, trials and appellate rulings; none of the excerpts refer to a suspect named Reyes or describe reasons law enforcement disputed a claim by a person with that name ^{[1] [2] [4]}. Journalistic accounts here repeatedly highlight problems with Hernandez’s statements and the absence of corroborating physical evidence—issues that made prosecutors’ case contested and that led appellate courts to vacate a conviction, but those are specific to Hernandez and cannot be transposed as factual findings about any different defendant without further reporting ^{[3] [5] [4]}.

2. In the Hernandez reporting, lack of physical evidence was a central reason to question the confession—an instructive parallel

Multiple stories emphasize that Hernandez’s conviction depended largely on his own admissions and that investigators never tied him to Etan Patz through physical evidence or eyewitness identification, a gap that contributed to juror skepticism and prosecutorial scrutiny ^{[3] [6] [4]}. When a case rests primarily on a defendant’s post hoc statements and no body, forensic link, or corroborating witness exists, police and prosecutors often treat claims that someone acted alone with caution—because absence of independent corroboration weakens the ability to exclude alternative scenarios—but that dynamic is documented here only for Hernandez, not for a figure named Reyes ^{[6] [4]}.

3. Inconsistency, mental-health indicators, and confession reliability drove skepticism in the Patz files

Reporting in these sources details that Hernandez gave inconsistent accounts over decades, at times describing dreamlike or hallucinatory elements, and that defense experts said he had psychotic symptoms and long-standing antipsychotic treatment—factors cited by defense and mentioned by at least one former juror as undermining the reliability of his statements ^{[3] [4]}. Investigators and some prosecutors in that matter therefore had reason to question whether confessions reflected actual events or were the product of unreliable memory and suggestive interview tactics; again, those documented doubts are about Hernandez specifically, not about Reyes ^{[3] [4]}.

4. Procedural and legal problems with how confessions were obtained also generated official pushback

The appellate litigation recounted in these articles shows that courts scrutinized trial-level handling of jury questions and confession evidence—rulings that vacated Hernandez’s conviction were tied to judicial instructions and the manner in which his statements were presented to jurors ^{[5] [1]}. When prosecutors or police dispute claims of a solitary perpetrator, they may do so because of concerns about how statements were elicited or interpreted; the material here demonstrates that such procedural flaws can change prosecutorial posture, but these are documented legal findings about Hernandez, not evidence about anyone called Reyes ^{[5] [1]}.

5. Bottom line: cannot assert the reasons police/prosecutors disputed “Reyes acted alone” from these sources; look for reporting that actually names Reyes

The supplied reporting makes clear why officials questioned Hernandez’s lone-actor confessions—no physical corroboration, inconsistent and possibly delusional statements, and contested legal handling of confessions all played roles—but because no article or excerpt in the packet mentions a Reyes or his claim, it is impossible on this record to list the specific reasons police or prosecutors challenged Reyes’s assertion that he acted alone ^{[3] [4] [5]}. To answer the Reyes question definitively would require documents or reporting that identify that person and describe the investigative and prosecutorial reasoning in his case.