OPINION
TEAGUE, Judge.
Appellant was convicted of capital murder, it being alleged that he committed the murder of Elizabeth Jones1 during the course of kidnapping her. See V.T.C.A., Penal Code § 19.03(a)(2). After the jury answered the submitted special issues in the affirmative, the trial judge assessed appellant’s punishment at death. Art. 37.-071(e), Y.A.C.C.P. Appeal to this Court is automatic. See Art. 37.071(h), V.A.C.C.P.; Rule 40(b)(1), Tex.R.App.Pro.
In the interest of justice, we will address and decide the issue whether the evidence is sufficient to establish the allegation that went to the underlying felony offense of kidnapping, i.e., it is alleged in the indictment in this cause that appellant committed the murder of Jones during the course of kidnapping her, which caused the offense of murder to be elevated to the offense of capital murder. See V.T.C.A., Penal Code Sec. 19.03(a)(2). We will hold that the evidence is sufficient to sustain that allegation of the indictment.
Because we interpret appellant’s fifth, twelfth, and thirteenth points of error as [67]*67challenging the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his capital murder conviction, we will also address, but will overrule, these points of error.2 Furthermore, we will address and sustain appellant’s points of error numbered fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen.3 We will not address appellant’s other points of error.4
I.
On September 8, 1987, Elizabeth Jones disappeared. When she missed work the next day, her friends began to search for her. They hired a private investigator, notified local law enforcement authorities, and called area hospitals, all to no avail. Several weeks later, appellant confessed to killing her and showed the police where he had concealed her body.5
[68]*68According to a composite of various statements appellant gave to the police and private investigators over a period of time, appellant admitted that he had been working as a roofer on a crew remodeling the deceased’s home, and that on the date of her disappearance he was the last workman at the site and, before leaving, was permitted to use the bathroom in the residence. Later, after eating dinner with his wife and step-children, appellant left home to return several rented videotapes, but found the store to which he went closed. On the way back he drove past the house of Jones, the deceased, and stopped. He could see that Jones had retired for the night, but knocked on the front door anyway. When Jones answered the door, she was dressed only in a robe. Appellant told her that he had lost his wallet, which he hadn’t, and wondered if he might have left it in her bathroom. She consented to him entering her house on this pretext. Appellant claimed that thereafter they drank wine, talked, and had consensual sex. Appellant also claimed that the deceased expressed a desire to visit Paris, France, and that he took her to the Houston Intercontinental Airport the next morning in exchange for the promise of substantial payment. The latter statements were proved by the police to be false. Appellant also admitted that once inside of Jones’ residence he grabbed Jones’ wrist after which she resisted but he claimed that she willingly participated in sexual relations with him for several hours. Afterwards, they talked for a while and watched televison. Eventually, appellant fell asleep on her bed.
Sometime later, still before dawn, appellant woke up. The deceased had made coffee, and urged appellant to leave so that she could dress for work. He asked her not to tell anyone about his being there but, in spite of his pleas, she told him that she was going to notify the police about how he had sexually abused her. Panicked by her refusal to relent, appellant ordered her into his truck. He made her lie down with her head in his lap so that she wouldn’t know where they were going. After driving aimlessly for an hour, he finally stopped at a secluded place in the county, approximately ten miles from Jones’ residence. Appellant’s intention at that time was apparently to tie Jones up so that he would have time to see his family and leave town before she could report him to the police, but when his intentions became clear to her, she began to scream for help. In an effort to silence her, appellant looped the sash from her robe around her neck and pulled it tight. To his surprise, she was dead within a few minutes. He then dragged her body beneath a tree and covered it with brush. When appellant returned to his truck he discovered the deceased’s purse and, after filling it with rocks, threw it into a nearby lake.
Based on the above, police investigators discovered the remains of Elizabeth Jones’ body and her purse in exactly the locations appellant described. Jones’ body and her purse were found almost a month after she had been reported missing.
II.
In his fifth point of error, appellant maintains that the confession offered against him at trial was illegally obtained and that, absent its introduction, the evidence was insufficient to connect him with the offenses alleged in this case. In making this argumént, appellant overlooks the principle of law that the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain appellant’s conviction is determined by evaluating the probative weight of all the evidence that the trial judge permitted the jury to consider, including erroneously admitted evidence. Beltran v. State, 728 S.W.2d 382, 389 (Tex.Cr.App.1987); Porier v. State, 662 S.W.2d 602, 606 (Tex.Cr.App.1984). Because appellant does not contend that all the evidence admitted at his trial was insufficient to [69]*69sustain his conviction for capital murder, his fifth point of error is overruled. Faulder v. State, 745 S.W.2d 327, 330 (Tex.Cr.App.1987); Collins v. State, 602 S.W.2d 537 (Tex.Cr.App.1980).
III.
Appellant claims in his thirteenth point of error that his confession contained exculpatory material which the State failed to disprove, rendering the evidence insufficient to support his conviction.
Prior to adoption of the Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence, effective September 1, 1986, our case law provided that “[w]here the state puts in evidence the statements of the accused party which exculpates the accused, and does not directly or indirectly disprove them, the accused is entitled to an acquittal.” Palafox v. State, 608 S.W.2d 177 (Tex.Cr.App.1980), quoting from Banks v. State, 56 Tex.Cr.R. 262, 265, 119 S.W. 847, 848 (1909). Although application of this rule was subject to considerable disagreement, we have since held “that for cases tried after the effective date of Tex. R.Crim.Evid. Rule 607, the State will not be bound by exculpatory statements which previously fell under the voucher rule pursuant to Palafox, 608 S.W.2d 177.” Russeau v. State, 785 S.W.2d 387, 390 (Tex.Cr.App.1990).
In this cause, the State had the burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant killed his victim intentionally during the course of kidnapping her or attempting to kidnap her in order to establish the offense of capital murder. Because appellant’s confession reports only an accidental or negligent killing of the deceased, it is alone insufficient for this purpose. But it does not follow that the State’s burden is somehow made greater by introduction of appellant’s confession into evidence. Requiring the State to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant killed the deceased unintentionally is neither qualitatively nor quantitatively different than requiring it to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he killed her intentionally. Accordingly, the fact that the State offered appellant’s confession, which admitted to an unintentional killing of the victim, does not in the least affect the State’s burden of proof as regards appellant’s culpable mental state when the offense was committed.6
Because appellant does not claim that the evidence, taken as a whole, was insufficient to prove that he killed the deceased intentionally, we overrule his thirteenth point of error.
IV.
In point of error number twelve, appellant asserts that “The District Court erred in denying the Defendant’s Motion for Instructed Verdict, and in entering its judgment of conviction of capital murder, because the evidence was legally insufficient to prove the elements of the offense of kidnapping by corroborating the statements of the Defendant admitted into evidence.” (Our emphasis.)7
[70]*70We pause to point out that the record reflects that appellant did not present any evidence after the State rested its case and after appellant’s motion for an instructed verdict of not guilty was overruled by the trial judge. Cf. Kuykendall v. State, 609 S.W.2d 791 (Tex.Cr.App.1981).
This Court has long subscribed to a variant of the common law rule that an extrajudicial confession of the accused is insufficient to support conviction unless corroborated.8 In Texas, as in most other American jurisdictions, the rule has been construed to require independent evidence of the corpus delicti, not merely support for credibility of the confession.9 Although often inconsistent in our understanding of the term,10 we have usually held corpus delicti to mean harm brought about by the criminal conduct of some person. Bridges v. State, 172 Tex.Cr.R. 655, 362 S.W.2d 336, 337 (1962). Thus, the extrajudicial confession of a criminal defendant must be corroborated by other evidence tending to show that a crime was committed. Brown v. State, 576 S.W.2d 36, 42-43 (Tex.Cr.App.1979) (opinion on rehearing); Watson v. State, 154 Tex.Cr.R. 438, 227 S.W.2d 559, 562 (1950). It need not be corroborated as to the person who committed it,11 since identity of the perpetrator is not a part of the corpus delicti and may be established by an extrajudicial confession alone.12 [71]*71Dunn v. State, 721 S.W.2d 325, 333-334 (Tex.Cr.App.1986); Harris v. State, 516 S.W.2d 931, 932 (Tex.Cr.App.1974); Estes v. State, 160 Tex.Cr.R. 632, 274 S.W.2d 411, 412 (1955).
Although we recently confronted the problem in a related context, we have not yet expressly decided whether an extrajudicial confession of a defendant must be corroborated as to multiple elements of the underlying felony offense.13 Appellant’s twelfth point of error clearly presents the question here. The offense of capital murder under our law, as charged in the instant cause, requires not only the commission of murder as defined elsewhere in the Penal Code, but also that the murder be committed during the course of kidnapping. Kidnapping is a separate crime under the Penal Code and one which, as with all crimes, has its own corpus delicti. See V.T.C.A., Penal Code § 20.03(a). Appellant maintains that, while the corpus delicti of murder was shown by evidence apart from his extrajudicial confession, the corpus de-licti of kidnapping was not. We disagree.
Because the essential purpose of the corroboration requirement is to assure that no person be convicted without some independent evidence showing that the very crime to which he confessed was actually committed, we agree that the corpus delicti of capital murder includes more than merely homicide by a criminal agency.14 In the present context, we hold that evidence independent of appellant’s confession was required to show that his victim had been kidnapped.
Such evidence need not, however, be sufficient by itself to prove the offense of kidnapping. Honea v. State, 585 S.W.2d 681, 684 (Tex.Cr.App.1979); Valore v. State, 545 S.W.2d 477, 479 (Tex.Cr.App.1977). Because the rule peremptorily reduces the weight of admissible evidence for policy reasons originated by this Court without express legislative sanction, we have held that the quantum of independent evidence necessary to corroborate the corpus delicti in a criminal prosecution rely[72]*72ing upon the extrajudicial confession of an accused need not be great.15 Self v. State, 513 S.W.2d at 835-837. So long as there is some evidence which renders the corpus delicti more probable than it would be without the evidence, we believe that the essential purposes of the rule have been served. Woolridge v. State, 653 S.W.2d 811, 816 (Tex.Cr.App.1983); White v. State, 591 S.W.2d at 864.
While there is little, apart from appellant’s confession, to suggest that Elizabeth Jones, the deceased, was moved from her residence without her consent and while still alive to the place where her body was ultimately discovered, we are not persuaded that the record is utterly devoid of evidence to this effect. The distinctions between the offenses of attempted kidnapping and kidnapping are unimportant here because the problem relating to the sufficiency of the evidence as to the one is equally applicable to the other, i.e., from the facts, if the evidence is sufficient as to the one, it is surely sufficient as to the other. Certainly the circumstances militate in favor of a conclusion that the deceased would not willingly have travelled, either alone or in the company of another, to an uninhabited area of the county, carrying a purse and wearing nothing but a bathrobe. The discovery of her body under such conditions does, in our view, render it more likely that she was taken to the scene without consent. Whether she was alive at the time is, of course, a separate question.16
Neither the medical examiner nor other investigating officials could determine where Elizabeth Jones was murdered. However, her body was found some four weeks after she was reported missing in a remote field in Galveston County approximately ten miles from her residence. It is, of course, possible that she was strangled at home and then, moved by appellant to the country. However, at least three circumstances seem to render this hypothesis less likely. In the first place, there is no apparent motive for moving the body under circumstances such as are presented here. If the deceased were really killed at home, we believe that a rational trier of fact might well expect appellant to have left her body there. Certainly, it is not apparent that doing so would somehow have cast greater suspicion on him, whereas the very act of transporting a dead body in a pickup truck, even in the early -morning hours, would doubtlessly have increased the risk of his being seen by others.
Moreover, if Elizabeth Jones were murdered at home, we believe that a rational trier of fact would expect the investigating officers to find some evidence of a struggle. Instead, they discovered nothing to indicate any disturbance at her residence— no sign of injury to any person, and nothing broken, damaged or overturned. Neighbors reported hearing no screams or other loud noises on the night in question.
Finally, the fact that the deceased’s purse was also taken would, we believe, imply to a rational trier of fact that she [73]*73was alive in appellant’s truck when she left her residence. At a minimum, we believe it would seem improbable to any rational trier of fact that appellant would have bothered to take the purse had he murdered her at home. We also believe that, if inclined to steal her money or other valuables, it is more likely that any rational trier of fact would have concluded that appellant would have emptied the purse beforehand. What seems to us to be a far better explanation here is that Elizabeth Jones, the deceased, brought the purse along herself, hoping for some opportunity to get free of her abductor.
Although these circumstances are ambiguous in some respects and far from adequate to support the conclusions they imply, the evidence required for corroboration of an extrajudicial confession need only render the corpus delicti more probable than it would be without the evidence. Therefore, we find that any rational trier of fact could have found that there was some evidence that the corpus delicti of kidnapping was sufficiently corroborated as to the elements about which appellant complains. Also see the above instruction to the jury that the trial court gave in this cause. His twelfth point of error is, therefore, overruled.
V.
Although we believe that we have sufficiently answered, and correctly overruled, appellant’s twelfth point of error, namely, that “[t]he District Court erred in denying the Defendant’s Motion for Instructed Verdict, and in entering its judgment of conviction of capital murder, because the evidence was legally insufficient to prove the elements of the offense of kidnapping by corroborating the stratements of the Defendant admitted into evidence,” (our emphasis), we also find that we must, in the interest of justice, decide whether the State proved beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant murdered Jones during the course of kidnapping Jones.17 We find that the evidence is sufficient.
This Court has repeatedly held that a capital murder indictment need not allege the constituent elements of the aggravating feature which elevates the offense of murder to capital murder. Beathard v. State, 767 S.W.2d 423, 431 (Tex.Cr.App.1989). However, this is not to say that in order to establish the offense of capital murder the State need not prove that the murder occurred during the course of some underlying offense, such as the offense of kidnapping which was alleged in this cause as the underlying offense.
We observe that the San Antonio Court of Appeals, in Guerra v. State, 690 S.W.2d 901 (Tex.App.-4th Dist.1985), no pet., henceforth Guerra, was confronted with resolving the issue whether the evidence was sufficient to establish that the murder that occurred in that cause was committed during the course of committing the offense of kidnapping or attempted kidnapping. The court of appeals concluded that under the facts that were presented the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to sustain the allegations that went to the underlying offense. We agree with the court of appeals’ conclusion.
The court of appeals pointed out that its case was a circumstantial evidence case and that the standard for reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence is the same for either direct or circumstantial evidence cases; namely, an appellate court must examine the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational trier of fact could find the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 324, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2791-2, 61 L.Ed.2d 560, 576-7 (1979). Also see Purtell v. State, 761 S.W.2d 360 (Tex.Cr.App.1988); Marras v. State, 741 S.W.2d 395, 400 (Tex.Cr.App.1987); Carlsen v. State, 654 S.W.2d 444, 447 (Tex.Cr.App.1983); Freeman v. State, 654 S.W.2d 450, 454 (Tex.Cr.App.1983); and Vanderbilt v. [74]*74State, 629 S.W.2d 709, 715-16 (Tex.Cr.App.1981).
We find that the court of appeals in Guerra correctly observed that a part of our law of circumstantial evidence is that a conviction based on circumstantial evidence cannot be sustained unless the circumstances exclude every reasonable hypothesis except guilt of the defendant. Proof amounting to no more than a strong suspicion or mere probability of guilt is not sufficient to convict. E.g., Schershel v. State, 575 S.W.2d 548, 550 (Tex.Cr.App.1979); Bryant v. State, 574 S.W.2d 109, 111 (Tex.Cr.App.1978). It is not necessary, however, that every fact point directly and independently to the defendant’s guilt; it is enough if the conclusion is warranted by the combined and cumulative force of all the incriminating circumstances. Sullivan v. State, 564 S.W.2d 698, 705 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); Flores v. State, 551 S.W.2d 364, 367 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); Herndon v. State, 543 S.W.2d 109, 121 (Tex.Cr.App.1976). However, the State is not required to exclude to a moral certainty every hypothesis that the offense may have been committed by another person; it must only exclude every reasonable hypothesis that might exist from the facts, which hypothesis must be consistent with the facts proved and the circumstances, and the premise that the offense may have been committed by another person must not be out of harmony with the evidence. See e.g., Sullivan, supra; Flores, supra; Jones v. State, 442 S.W.2d 698, 702 (Tex.Cr.App.1969); and Vanderbilt, supra, at 716.
The elements of kidnapping are that a person: (1) intentionally or knowingly (2) abducts (3) another person. V.T.C.A., Penal Code Sec. 20.03(a). “Abduct” is defined to mean “to restrain a person with intent to prevent his liberation by: (A) secreting or holding him in a place where he is not likely to be found; or (B) using or threatening to use deadly force.” V.T.C.A., Penal Code, Sec. 20.01(2). In this instance, it was incumbent upon the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant murdered Jones during the course of kidnapping her.
The State correctly points out the following in its brief (page references to the record omitted):
In the present case, Appellant confessed to panicking when the victim told him she was going to the police [to tell them] about the sexual assault [he had committed upon her]. He then had her get into his truck. She was wearing nothing but a robe. He made her lie down in the truck so she wouldn’t know where she was. He then drove around for a long time. Appellant eventually stopped the truck in a remote location some ten miles from the victim’s house. There he strangled her. He then threw her purse in some water at another remote location. After Appellant confessed, he led officers to the remote locations where the body and purse were found. (Page 30.)
The facts also reflect that Jones, the deceased, was discovered missing on September 9, 1987, and that her body was found almost one month later as a result of appellant’s oral statement to the police that led them to where appellant said he had left her body and purse. It was established that appellant was the last person to have seen Jones alive at her residence, where appellant had worked as a roofer on her house. Over a month later, appellant was arrested in Tennessee for this offense. Although appellant did not admit where he murdered Jones, he admitted that he killed Jones, hid her body in a secluded location, and disposed of her purse at a different location.
We have previously pointed out some possible reasonable hypotheses that might be applicable to this cause. We believe that we have sufficiently demonstrated how any rational trier of fact could have concluded that the State disproved them. We also find that any rational trier of fact could have determined the evidence was sufficient to show the murder of Jones occurred in the course of appellant’s committing the offense of kidnapping of Jones, and that the State disproved any outstanding reasonable hypotheses.
[75]*75VI.
The record reflects that at the penalty phase of the trial appellant requested that the judge give the jury various instructions which would have collectively authorized the jury, irrespective of its answers to the statutory punishment questions, to decide that he should not be put to death.18 He claims that the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution entitled him to such an instruction because he proferred mitigating evidence at trial which, for reasons pertinent not only to the statutory questions, might have moved some or all of the jurors to conclude that he should not be assessed the death penalty. Accordingly, he argues that failure of the trial judge to instruct the jurors as requested effectively precluded their giving mitigating effect to this evidence. We agree.
The Texas capital sentencing scheme does not invariably operate in such a way as to violate the Eighth Amendment. See Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U.S. 164, 108 S.Ct. 2320, 101 L.Ed.2d 155 (1988); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 96 S.Ct. 2950, 49 L.Ed.2d 929 (1976). But, at least whenever a capital defendant produces evidence of his own character, background, or the circumstances surrounding his offense which, according to contemporary social standards, has a tendency to reduce his moral culpability in a way not exclusively related to the deliberateness of his criminal conduct, the provocative behavior of his victim, or the probability of his future dangerousness, the United States Constitution forbids imposition of the death penalty upon him by a sentencer given no means to prescribe, based on such mitigating evidence, a less severe punishment. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989).
In the instant cause, testimony offered by appellant revealed a troubled and insecure childhood in which his mother was institutionalized for a severe mental illness and his father imprisoned for burglary. Only an infant at the time, appellant suffered greater mental and emotional hardship as a result of these traumatic events than did his older siblings. During the first several years of his life, he and the other children were shuffled among relatives, never living in one place for very long.
After his parents were released from their respective confinements, appellant lived for a time with his mother. She had since divorced his father and remarried, living with her new husband and the children in a shack without running water somewhere in the mountains of Tennessee. Within a few months, appellant’s step-father disappeared, leaving his mother pregnant and without food for the two youngest children. Unable to care for her family, appellant’s mother spent much of her time in bars, often bringing strange men home at night. During his early formative years, there was no responsible adult figure in appellant’s life.
Largely as a result of these circumstances, appellant’s own mental and emotional condition was, and remained at the time of trial, abnormal. Doctor William Winslade, a psychoanalyst, testified that after much effort on his part he persuaded appellant to disclose to him that on two occasions appellant’s mother had sexually abused appellant as a small child, requiring him to perform oral sex on her. Finally, Dr. Winslade opined that those experiences, even if they were untrue fantasies, provided a substantial explanation for the appellant’s subsequent history of violence, and how the contrast of his violent behavior with his positive personality traits were indicative of severe mental illness, depression, and psychotic illusions of the kind experienced by his mother. Dr. Winslade concluded that appellant developed a delusive fear of sexual domination, and that throughout his adult life this fear intermittently erupted into acts of violence, which appellant forced upon women that, in his fantasies, he feared they might force upon him. Invariably his victims were women with whom he was acquainted on a casual basis and, following his sexual assaults upon them, he customarily acted with in[76]*76congruous, even bizarre, familiarity, more characteristic of an intimate encounter than a brutal attack.
That he was able to keep these sexual aberrations secret from his family and friends over an extended period of time evinces a personal recognition of his abnor-malcy. Virtually all persons with whom he was acquainted, including his teachers, the customers at his natural father’s service station, where he worked, his wife and ex-wife, and his siblings, regarded him as stable, sensible, hardworking, polite, and generous. But at times his sexual fantasies became too great to resist, especially when he was under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. At such times, he suffered from a true psychosis in which episodes of violent criminal behavior were typically followed by feelings of intense remorse.
If true, all of these circumstances are widely regarded, according to some contemporary social standards, as redeeming personality traits or factors which tend to ameliorate fault. See Penry v. Lynaugh, supra. As such, the sentencer in a capital proceeding must be authorized to mitigate punishment if it finds that a defendant’s personal moral culpability was thereby reduced. This is not to say that the jury must assess a penalty less than death for all defendants who offer mitigating evidence at trial. But jurors may not be precluded from doing so by omission from the court’s charge of a means to express their will. Penry v. Lynaugh, supra.
We hold that absent some functionally equivalent instructive device, that the jury could consider and give effect to the mitigating circumstances, the jury was not afforded the opportunity to express its judgment whether appellant, even if likely to be a continuing threat to society, should receive the death sentence.
Because under current law we have no authority to remand this cause for a new punishment hearing only, the trial court’s judgment of conviction and sentence of death are reversed and the cause remanded to the trial court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.