By Angela Brown

Associated Press Writer

WACO, Texas — Despite a day of fruitless searching for missing Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy, police expect to find his body based on information from his former teammate, who is charged with his murder.

Investigators, some on horseback, searched river banks and a gravel pit Tuesday for Dennehy’s body. Police Sgt. Ryan Holt said authorities would keep searching, but wouldn’t say where.

“There is always the hope, very sincere hope, that we find Mr. Dennehy, mostly for his family and then for the criminal case,” Holt said.

Rain delayed a resumption of the search Wednesday, police Sgt. Ryan Holt said. He said he did not know if the search would resume later in the day, and he did not give any possible locations.

Dennehy’s stepfather, Brian Brabazon, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that police have said Dotson gave investigators three locations to search for the body.

Former roommate Carlton Dotson, 21, was charged Monday night with murder after he confessed to FBI agents that he shot Dennehy in the head “because Patrick had tried to shoot him,” according to an arrest warrant released Tuesday.

“Mr. Dotson provided specific information about the murder of Mr. Dennehy that would lead us to believe he committed the murder,” Holt said, declining to release more details.

As he left the Kent County courthouse Monday, Dotson told a reporter: “I didn’t confess to anything.”

Dennehy, 21, was last seen on campus on June 12; his family reported him missing on June 19. The next day, Waco police said Delaware police told them an informant said Dotson told someone he shot Dennehy in the head after the two argued.

On Tuesday, Dotson was ordered held without bail and his attorneys signaled they would fight extradition to Texas.

Dotson was seen “during the late evening” on June 12 in Sulphur Springs, the hometown of his estranged wife, driving Dennehy’s Chevrolet Tahoe, and told someone he planned to go to Maryland, the warrant said.

Dennehy’s Tahoe was found abandoned, without license plates, in a Virginia Beach, Va., mall parking lot June 25.

On Sunday, Dotson contacted authorities near his hometown in Maryland, said he was hearing voices and later, after being taken to a hospital, asked to speak with FBI agents about Dennehy’s disappearance, authorities said.

Dotson attorney Grady Irvin said Tuesday afternoon that he hadn’t spoken to his client since his arrest.

“I don’t think he’s in a mental state right now to be speaking to anyone in any lucid fashion,” Irvin said.

“A guy goes in for a psychological evaluation and it turns into a police interrogation,” he said. “How that happens, I don’t know.”

Irvin said he would examine the arrest warrant and see if any comments that Dotson made in recent weeks were included.

“If it is, there is a significant likelihood that his competency to make those statements are in question,” he said.

Dotson was ordered held without bond in Maryland on Tuesday. An extradition hearing for Dotson was scheduled for Aug. 19 in Chestertown, Md., said Teresa Shelton, a law clerk in Kent County District Court.

Dotson and Dennehy were on the basketball team at the Baptist university last season. Dotson recently lost his scholarship and was not planning to return to Baylor in the fall.

Dotson’s estranged wife, Melissa Kethley, said she’s known that Dotson needed psychological help for a long time.

“He needs help, the boy needs help,” a tearful Kethley said in a telephone interview.

“Maybe, if he did do this, it’s a blessing in disguise, and he can get the help he needs,” she said.

Kethley said Dotson, a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in high school, seemed to become more interested in religion recently.

She said he had been calling her nearly every day during the last few weeks, and that he even called her Monday as he talked with the FBI.

“He said he had so many things to talk to me about, but it would have to be for later,” she said.

Baylor coach Dave Bliss said the team and university were shaken by the events.

“We keep hoping this isn’t true,” Bliss said in a statement Tuesday. “It seems unreal, especially that a 21-year-old who always wore that big smile and couldn’t wait for the season to begin might be gone.”