@cazzie All that gossip would happen with anyone helping the police in your fantasy scenario.
Let me say it again slowly, seeing you were not listening much because you only want excuses to manufacture opposition, the gist of the question came from an actual string of murders in a small community somewhere. I wish I had caught the show from the start and I could tell you were, but I was working and the interest for me to even cock an ear was that they said there was a reluctant possible witness because his viewing what he saw came by way of him having a clandestine rendezvous against his wife with another married woman. It is not a fantasy scenario I made up, but it is your fantasy I did so you can simply tell everyone to pay it no mind all the while you are waist deep in it.
His Co workers don’t have to know.
< Sigh > It is not like the cops will tell everyone at the shop. Let’s go back over the facts:
• There was a serial killer killing women.
• The community was small, or certainly not a large community.
• Because of the murders everyone was on edge.
• Many people were suspicious of their neighbors and coworkers.
So now that we are back up to speed, if the cops came to the work site or job of any witness, those watching do not know if that person was considered a suspect or he/she was a witness; they have no way of knowing. Regardless, they would be talking among themselves, and the talk could go in either way. Then those they spoke with will talk to friends and family and so one, and so on, and the spouse of the person spoken to by the cops could catch wind of it. They might wonder why they heard it on the grapevine and not from their spouse. Surely even you can fathom that?
This friend is on the pedophile list and John Q starts spending loads of time with him. Does he come forward and tell the police who he’s been with ? Does he risk being charged with collusion in the abuse a minor?
The ONLY way that would be even close is if John Q knows his friend has a problem with pedophilia and while at John Q’s neighbor’s house robbing it blind, he looks out the upstairs window to see John Q and some minor naked in the hot tub with him buggering some poor lad like there is no tomorrow or boinking like bunnies with some lass. Then he has the choice, expose his friend and risk exposing himself (especially if the hot tub could only be seen from that upstairs window in the neighbor’s house), or save his own neck and say nothing because he doesn’t want to have to explain how he was looking from that window and the owner of the home did not know he was in their house.