There are a number of reasons why people visit people, a large number of them are not bad. I would rather not say the exact reasons why I visited Escath but I tend to visit him round 1 in every game that I've played in the past and none of those times have been to kill him.
Not killing Escath in the past has little/no bearing on what you might have done this time around, it's a completely different game with different roles.
to be fair if we let every lead away based on ipse-dixitism then we'd lose every game. Certainly feel Chewie needs to expand more to give us a reason beyond faith to accept his point. Wary of putting the burden of proof on the guilty person to prove their innocence but it's probably the best option now as I can't think of a possible play where Howe benefits from outing a false report.