Something started itching at the back of my skull when I read this sentence today, from a local weekly’s article about a man suspected of killing and dismembering his roommate as well as his landlord:

Prosecutors still aren’t sure why Hudson allegedly killed both men.

Now, a couple of reasonable givens, here:

- Hudson did, in fact, allegedly kill both men. That he killed them is the main allegation.
- Prosecutors are not, in fact, apparently sure why he would have done so.

So that’s all fine, and when you get right down to it it’s clear from the context of the article that the quote above is just an attempt at 2 + 2 = 4. And any sane reading of the sentence, certainly in context but also even by itself, bears out only that interpretation. But here’s the parsing ambiguity that made my brain hiccup despite all that:

Are they unsure of why Hudson would do the thing they’re alleging he did…or are they unsure why he allegedly killed them instead of just plain killing them?

Nonsense, I know. Any contrived situation in which the second parsing would make sense would certainly be, well, contrived. But the parsing is there, which is sort of neat, although the flip side of it being neat is that someone, somewhere, is probably contemplating an earnest letter of complaint about it.

What would a rewrite that avoided this tiny, inconsequential landmine look like? It’d have to pull the act of allegation out of the possible (however logically implausible) scope of the prosecutors’ confusion, I guess. Something like this?

Prosecutors still aren’t sure why Hudson would have killed the two men they allege he killed.

But that’s longer than the original and says “kill” twice. Yuck.

Prosecutors still aren’t sure of Hudson’s motives in the alleged killings.

Better? I’m not a news writer, nor an editor. The recurring issue with a lot of possible phrasing here is the problem of declaring the murders to be “alleged” while not giving the same treatment to Hudson’s motivations — if his motive is taken to be something that exists but is not yet known, that kind of collapses the benefit of the doubt that labeling the murders “alleged” is supposed to imply, doesn’t it?