What they should've done was make it so you can actually see the witness telling the guard about your crime.

Clearly all the guards in Skyrim are Doctor Dolittle, it explains why they're always so well informed about things.

It's weird that once I kill my wife they run into house, even though my housecarl doesn't tell anything to the guards.

And it's weird that once I killed my follower in the middle of a dungeon hired thugs tried to kill me outside

Except for 1/4 of the games population is immortal.

Animals can be witnesses though. I went on a rampage attacking animals in Riverwood, and I got the "Last Witness Killed. 40 Bounty Removed" message when I killed the cow.

Didn't they repair this bug? I thought they found it even before releasing the game

If you don't count guards, it's probably closer to 1/2.

It feels like that, anyway.

Yes this makes me mad when I decide to save and go on a quick killing spree to let off steam. Killed the entire town of Whiterun except for the imortals and managed to get a 40,000 bounty.

Pickpocket bounties don't go away even if you murder everything in a six mile radius. I'm always having to deal with the pickpocket one cause I walked too close to a guard, even though I pickpocketed the person in hte middle of nowhere while between towns, and they're currently bear food somewhere off road.

For assaults/murders, it seems mostly reliable, other then the animal stuff.

I've to agree with this!
I enjoy having Thief/Assassin type characters, which leads to a lot of law-bending. It's nice to be able to silence any loose ends without any repercussions for a change!

I've only played around with this a little so far in my 100 hours of play, but the first time I killed a shopkeeper I got away with it. Later on a reload I killed the same shopkeeper again and even though there was nobody else in the shop I still got a bounty and then the guards came in and attacked me. I've since tried it a few times and sometimes I don't get a bounty, sometimes I do. Then I kill all the guards, but an unkillable NPC charges in too and now I'm unable to kill all the witnesses.

and talking chickens or unkilliable children, dogs, goats, foxes, cows...

you guys talk like this is a beta, did Bethesda play test a criminal or did they think we never would notice it? It's a key game feature that bugs half the time, not some minor thing like snow accumulation problems. This mentality of half finished games pisses me off to no end, given my inability to get xboxlive (or psn) like approx 17% of console gamers according to a gi poll, makes patches not a option for me. Don't get me wrong, Bethesda always had bugs, but I didn't trip over them like this in oblivion, importantly the selling point features that feel so tacked on and broken in this iteration. And animal witnesses, Todd [censored] mentioned it in a interview during dev, way to drop the ball.

This is a great feature but we need two things to make this system perfect: Animals not being witnesses or contributing to the whole detection system with sneaking. But also: Being able to make Essential NPCs go unconscious and still able to get off of a bounty. If Bethesda so wishes to keep this essential system, then at least make it so that we can enjoy this feature without essentials getting in the way.

So yeah, that would make this system so much better.