[3] Based on memories "recovered" during his investigations, he pled guilty, and his confession subsequently grew increasingly elaborate, detailed, and fantastical, while Ingram's young daughters and their friends subsequently accused a sizable number of Ingram's fellow Sheriff's department employees of ritual abuse.
[8][9] The accusations appeared at a time when there were tremendous questions being raised about the accuracy of recovered memories of childhood abuse and incest.
While at a church retreat, a woman who claimed to possess prophetic power told Ingram's daughter that she had been sexually abused by her father.
When first interviewed in 1988 by Sheriff Gary Edwards and Undersheriff Neil McClanahan about the sex abuse accusations, Ingram "basically confessed during the first five minutes" as McLanahan would later state.
[13][14] Sociologist Richard Ofshe concluded that Ingram, because of his long-standing and routine experiences in his church, was manipulated by authority figures who conducted his interrogation, and that the confessions were the result of false memories being implanted with suggestion.
[16] Ofshe was thus convinced that Ingram's confessions were solely the result of extensive interrogation sessions and questions being applied to an unusually suggestible individual.
[14] The Ingram case was also the basis for the TV-movie Forgotten Sins, in which John Shea played "Sheriff Matthew Bradshaw".