WACO, Texas -- The attorney for Carlton Dotson, the former roommate and teammate of missing Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy, said Thursday that the suspicion swirling about his client and even the idea that Dennehy was shot are based on speculation.

"I know of no shooting that took place at all," attorney Grady Irvin said. "I think there's only a rumor that perhaps Mr. Dennehy has been shot. They don't even know if that's accurate."

Dennehy, 21, was last heard from almost three weeks ago. No charges have been filed in his disappearance. Authorities, however, have described Dotson as a "person of interest" and, on Thursday, returned for the second time to a 50-acre section of land northeast of Waco in their search for Dennehy.

A Department of Public Safety helicopter, equipped with a heat-thermal imaging device, flew over the property in an attempt to locate a body.

"We just want to make sure we haven't missed anything," Waco Police spokesman Steve Anderson said.

A search warrant affidavit made public Monday said an unnamed informant told investigators Dotson told a cousin he shot Dennehy with a handgun while the two played with firearms near Waco.

"At this time we've got an unnamed person who claims to be a confidential informant who is stating that someone told them something," Irvin told ABC's Good Morning America Thursday. "I don't believe in the truth and accuracy of those statements. I don't even know who this so called confidential informant is.

"No one knows if any foul play has occurred."

Earlier Thursday, Dotson's estranged wife said that she spoke with Dotson on Tuesday and he told her he had nothing to do with Dennehy's disappearance, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Dotson had been staying with Dennehy since May, Melissa Jill Kethley said.

	Dotson

	Dennehy

"They were friends. I don't see any reason why [Dotson] would kill him," Kethley said from her parents' Sulphur Springs home.

She said Dotson told her that he and Dennehy had received threatening calls and felt "that somebody was trying to get them."

Kethley, 21, said the men didn't know who made the threats and that Dotson never got the calls when she lived with him. She did not say why they separated in April after eight months of marriage.

Dennehy's girlfriend, Jessica De La Rosa, said she didn't think the two had a falling out. She last talked to Dennehy on June 11, and a few days later she called Dotson to find out where her boyfriend was.

"They were friendly teammates and recently had become closer as friends," De La Rosa of Albuquerque, N.M., said Wednesday.

A Baylor student who had been tutoring Dotson and was planning to room with him said the player was scared in the days before he left Waco and his teammate disappeared.

"He told me his life was in real danger,'' Kamrin Siddiqui, an accounting major from Pakistan, told The Dallas Morning News in Thursday's editions, adding that Dotson had a 9 mm pistol.

Siddiqui had agreed for Dotson to move into an empty bedroom in his apartment near the campus and that Dotson did move in about June 9 or 10, but left a couple of days later, the Pakistani said.

	“	They were friends. I don't see any reason why [Dotson] would kill him. ”
		— Melissa Jill Kethley, Dotson's estranged wife

Dennehy's stepfather, Brian Brabazon, said he contacted Baylor after his stepson did not call home on Father's Day, June 15, and his girlfriend called to say she hadn't heard from him since June 11.

He said someone had recently broken into Dennehy's SUV and stolen money from him, and that Dennehy had told Baylor coaches he was scared.

On Wednesday, Coach Dave Bliss said Dennehy never reported to his coaching staff "anything about safety concerns or personal threats."

In an interview with ESPN.com's Andy Katz, Bliss said "He never did that, and again, I've heard all the things that have been written and some of the things that have been said, and very frankly they concern me because I talked to our staff.

"I'm not aware of anything along that line and a lot of these things have caught me off guard because Patrick is 6-10, 250 pounds and you know he has never ever given us any reason to think that anything bothered him,'' Bliss told Katz.

"I think that from our standpoint on looking back as you look over the thing we again talked in terms of that but never once did we get any sense that there was something that concerned him," he said.

But Dennehy's mother, Valerie Brabazon, told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap early Wednesday that Dennehy had gone to the coaches, at least two of them, and told them that he was afraid of something or someone. The family was also critical of the timeline of when the Baylor coaches called them.

"I felt our son came to them telling them that he was afraid or scared or something. That at least they should have jumped on it right then and did something," Valerie Brabazon told Schaap.

Bliss said he talked to Dotson on June 11, which is one day before Dennehy apparently was last seen. He said Dotson was in a car accident and Bliss said he talked to him about his rehabilitation. He said Dotson was in summer school and planned on going to a non-Division I school in the area.

Bliss apparently talked to Dennehy around the same time, and characterized his demeanor as 'normal.'

In the interview with Katz, Bliss said that he did not learn until June 23 or 24 that Dennehy had purchased a gun. He said that while the university allows students to have guns off campus, the team had a more stringent policy prohibiting guns.

"Given that policy, I would have approached Pat and made him aware of it, and we would have taken action. There's no need on Baylor's campus, and even off-campus, there is no need for a basketball player to have a gun," Bliss said.

"The whole thing is unbelievable,'' he said. "To think that situations occur, maybe they do occur but at Baylor University that is just, I mean it is unexplainable. And so I go through a situation where I am like everybody else. I read what they have there and I don't know what to believe. All I know is that I care about my team."

Information from ESPN.com senior writer Andy Katz and The Associated Press was used in this report.