By the following night, detectives were interviewing Delante in jail. He continued leaning heavily on his identity as a confidential informant and on his relationship with Detective Smith. He said he had been working with police for roughly a week and a half and described efforts to provide information about guns, drugs, and people involved in street-level trafficking. In his telling, that work explained why he believed his life was in danger.
Delante spoke as though the interview were partly a debriefing of his informant work rather than an interrogation about Cheryl. He listed people and contraband he claimed he was helping detectives pursue and repeatedly reminded them that he believed he could produce valuable cases. Detectives kept steering him back to the same issue: regardless of what information he had been providing police, they needed a complete account of what had happened to the woman found at his house.
Delante referred to Cheryl as "CeCe" and described her as someone who used drugs and spent time around his house. He said many people struggling with addiction came there and claimed he helped take care of them. He then traced the conflict back to April 27, five days before officers first came looking for a woman in the basement.
According to Delante, vice officers had stopped a vehicle he was driving. He said Cheryl was among the people in the car. He described being confronted by police and believing he could be arrested. Faced with the possibility of going back to prison, he said he agreed to cooperate and that one of the detectives put a number into his phone and told him he would now be working with police.
He described the traffic stop as sudden and frightening, saying officers surrounded the car and ordered everyone out. Delante believed evidence in the vehicle could send him back to prison and said he asked what he could do to avoid that outcome. He claimed a detective entered contact information into his phone and made clear that Delante would now be expected to provide information. That experience, he said, was fresh in his mind when he later saw Cheryl again.
What disturbed Delante, according to his own statement, was that the officers let Cheryl leave. He interpreted that as evidence that she had somehow helped set up the traffic stop. He believed she would now know he had become an informant. Whether that belief was accurate or not, it became central to the justification he gave detectives for what followed.
Delante told investigators he fixated on the fact that Cheryl appeared to be released with little scrutiny. In his mind, that could only mean she had cooperated with the police before the stop. He feared she would return to people in the neighborhood and tell them that he had been pressured into becoming an informant. The police record cited by the source did not confirm that theory, but Delante said he acted as though it were certain.
The next time Cheryl came to his house, Delante said he decided he could not let her return to the street. He claimed he feared that if she told other people he was cooperating with police, he would be killed. He admitted keeping her there for days and admitted repeatedly assaulting her. He also said he fed her, gave her water, helped her wash, and covered her with a blanket, statements he seemed to offer as proof that he had not intended the worst possible outcome.
Detectives asked him to walk through what happened during the days Cheryl was unable to leave. Delante described a repeated pattern of hitting her and moving her from one room to another. When asked whether he gave her drugs, he denied doing so and reacted angrily to the suggestion. He said Cheryl kept asking why he was doing this and pleaded with him, promising she would never tell anyone.
At the same time Delante was talking, Cheryl was in the intensive care unit in critical condition. The source describes extensive injuries requiring a ventilator and dialysis, including serious trauma to her head, ribs, lung, and spine. Rather than dwell on the graphic details, the essential point was clear: she had suffered devastating, life-altering harm.
Delante nevertheless tried to distinguish what he had done from an intent to kill. He told detectives that if he had truly wanted Cheryl dead, she would have been dead. He also acknowledged forcing her to repeatedly write statements labeling herself a "snitch" and a "rat."
Investigators compared Delante's story about the April traffic stop with police records. The report did identify two passengers in the vehicle, but the source notes that neither passenger was named Cheryl. That did not by itself resolve what had happened, but it created another inconsistency in the explanation Delante was using to justify his fear of her.
The detectives were particularly interested in how Cheryl had escaped detection during the first visit. Delante said that after police arrived, he contacted one of the detectives he knew. He was told, according to his account, that officers investigating a report like this were unlikely to simply disappear and might return with a warrant if he refused access. He therefore decided to give them access—but only after changing where Cheryl was located.
That admission reframed the afternoon body-camera footage. Delante had sounded outraged that officers would believe a rumor about his basement, but in the jail interview he acknowledged that Cheryl was in the house at the time. His argument with police had bought him time, and once he decided they would not leave without some kind of check, he used that time to make the basement appear consistent with his denials.