Burroughs was held on murder charges for thirteen days before being released on bail. Burroughs claimed that he dropped the gun and it misfired, then changed the account again to say that he accidentally misfired the gun while trying to sell the weapon to an acquaintance, an account which was corroborated by two witnesses who had been coached by Jurado. Burroughs testified that he had not known that the gun was loaded because he had not used it in three months, and that while he had been checking the gun, the carriage had slipped and it had misfired at Vollmer. As a result, he was charged with criminal negligence, which carried a maximum sentence of five years. For a year, Burroughs reported every Monday morning to the jail in Mexico City while Jurado worked to resolve the case. However, Jurado fled to Brazil after shooting a youth who had accidentally damaged his Cadillac. Burroughs decided to follow Jurado's example and fled back to the United States, where he was fortunate that Louisiana had not issued a warrant for his arrest on the previous narcotic charge. "In absentia", Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death. He received a two-year suspended sentence. Vollmer was buried in Mexico City and her parents took her two children back to the United States. Her daughter Julie went to live with her maternal grandparents in Loudonville and assumed the surname Vollmer, while Vollmer's son was raised by her in-laws. Friends of the couple were divided in opinion on the case. Ginsberg and Carr defended Burroughs and believed that Vollmer may have encouraged the William Tell incident, stating she had seemed suicidal when they visited her in 1951. Haldon Chase, who had also visited Burroughs and Vollmer in 1951 in Mexico City, distanced himself from Burroughs after Vollmer's death. Chase believed that Vollmer "had wanted to die," but that Burroughs story was "a sham, a put-up thing to release Bill, to let him commit the ultimate crime." In interviews with Ted Morgan from 1983-1986, Burroughs said "Allen was always making it out as a suicide on her part, and I do not accept that cop-out." By the 1980s, Burroughs had publicly returned to the William Tell story to explain the killing of Joan. In a 1954 letter to Ginsberg, Burroughs wrote about his fears that he had subconsciously wanted to kill Joan: "May yet attempt a story or some account of Joan's death.