Thank you, Backwoods. I hope Lauren is looking down favorably, considering her passion for criminal defense. 
I wish there was more information on the necklace (since now we know the bracelet was not missing at all.)
I can't imagine it would still be with Lauren's remains- unless placed there specifically?
Oriah, on what I bolded in
blue: Your statement about Lauren could hold a lot of different shades of a lot of different meanings, I know, but it surely reminds me that it has occurred to me over and over what terrible irony -- Lauren being interested (so we have read from some sources, anyway) in becoming a capital defender, and then dying the way she did.
As I've stated before in these threads, I oppose the death penalty outright. (On that, I'm with Mr. Hogue, per the recent article.) Many times in my life I've had people say to me, "Well, if someone murdered your loved one, you would feel differently." I have thought about it deeply, and a lot. We can never know for sure how we would react in a hypothetical (and especially a horrible) situation, I guess, but I really don't think I would change my stance on the death penalty. (I do know that I probably could, in defense or possibly in the heat of the immediate aftermath of someone harming a loved one, kill that person myself.)
One question, though, I don't think I've ever had anyone ask me is, if I knew I myself would be murdered, whether my stance would change. (Asking the question of myself now, once again -- and more so than if a loved one were a victim -- I'm pretty sure my answer is no.) I have to wonder -- if Lauren truly did aspire to be a capital defender -- what her overall, personal stance on the death penalty was. It seems so mind-boggling and terrible even to wonder how she would have felt if she could have looked into her own future. I am glad that she couldn't.
On what I bolded in
red, about the necklace:
First -- you did see the earlier picture of Lauren wearing the necklace, right? It appeared to be a fairly simple design, a single diamond (couldn't really tell the size) on what I would guess would be a fairly delicate chain.
Thinking about the necklace makes me wander back to the early days of the case. I don't want to break any rules here -- hope I can say that at one point someone posted some info from a site we are not allowed to link to, where there was an attempt to analyze some of the things SM said in his interview.
The point I'm wanting to refer to that was made is really kind of a common-sense thing, that occurred to a lot of folks I think, so hope I don't get in trouble for revisiting it here: At one point in the interview, SM says he and some of the friends walked around to see if they saw any signs of a struggle, etc., and "
to see if she might have dropped something" (paraphrasing, but pretty close, I think). It was discussed that perhaps he
knew something was "dropped", or lost.
I don't totally buy into reading stuff into statements like that, but in this case it is a bit intriguing: If SM is the killer, maybe that delicate chain broke and he didn't realize it at first and could not later find the necklace or part of it. bessie mentioned in an earlier post (recently though) that she suspected LE might have found broken bits of the jewelry, for example, in SM's apartment. That could be, or maybe it was lost outside somewhere and hasn't been found...? If it hasn't been found, I hope someone has given the area right around the apartments a good going over, and with a metal detector.
I agree with you; I can hardly see the necklace being disposed of with other remains. Possible, of course, but somehow I just don't see it happening.
