This all testifies to just how effective some of the tactics of the Martin family are.
1.) Show ancient pictures of their dead son, and with these the first pictures of him everyone saw... a lot of people would never get past this image of the little harmless boy. That has worked very, very well for them.
2.) Lie about his lifestyle, seal his records, take advantage of the fact that he was a minor and do everything you can to hide the facts of what he was up to. Utilize the fact that society is terrified of ever calling out any black person on anything, especially if they're a grieving family member of the lil' boy with Skittles you already established in item number 1.
3.) Wear a dark grey hoodie when you're out lurking around, makes it harder to see you and makes you look more like an intimidating badass. This ended up helping erode John's certainty of what he saw, GZ was very visible in red... Trayvon in dark grey, not so much.
4.) Last, but most... let the mythos about the lil' 8 year old boy with Skittles loom so large in the media that it taints and influences all the neighbors/witnesses. Any person who doubts that John's equivocation later on what he saw is a direct result of being spammed by pictures of Trayvon at age 12, or age 10 in his football uniform, isn't being honest.
It was, and still is an incredibly effective media play. If you're a witness who saw what John saw, it'll require very great courage and clarity indeed to stick with what you know you saw, in the face of the racial narrative, the black panther shit, the Sharpton ball rolling... that feeling of oh shit, I'm a white dude and the entire black community is mobilizing for this kid who I saw beating the shit out of this guy... holding him down, basically I know this whole narrative is bullshit and could single handedly tear it down, but think what might happen to me then? Will they come after me? And maybe... maybe I didn't see what I thought I saw, after all look at this kid in the pictures, he is innocent and 12 years old. Maybe I am mistaken.
It's incredibly, incredibly evil really.