So, now there is reportedly video survelliance tapes of the girls near Elizabeth's house at 12:15 and 12 minutes later at 12:27 , a biker says their bikes are abandoned on the trail, all the way across town on the lake trail. That is such a short time frame , no matter what happened!
It was do-able, though. Someone posted that according to Google Maps, the distance between was estimated at 7-8 minutes.
That would take us to 12:23 pm. That leaves about 3 minutes for a perp to pop out of ambush, grab one girl by the arm (probably Lyric), threaten to hurt her if Elizabeth didn't comply, make her throw her purse over the lakeside fence and then marching them both off into the woods.
I'd love to be able to ask the 12:27 witness if he happened to look into the woods when he saw the bikes on the path. I'm sure LE already has and I'm reasonably certain the answer was no. Otherwise, LE would have released whatever description the witness could give.
I'm not sure he would have looked into the woods, though. He was on a blind curve, he'd just about run into an obstacle and he still had to look sharp in case another bicyclist popped around the curve. Nothing like avoiding one hazard only to be hit head-on because it made you forget to watch out.
Force the girls into something like a van, put zip-ties or some other restraint device on them and the perpetrator could be gone before 12:30 pm.
If the 12:27 sighting is accurate, this really reminds me of GeorgeAnn Hawkins, who was one of Ted Bundy's victims. She was walking down an alley behind a row of fraternities and sororities on a night where they were all having parties to celebrate the beginning of the fall semester. There were roughly 1000 people attending parties at the fraternities and sororities. Many of them were walking down the alley in both directions.
The alley was well lit except for one 30 foot stretch where a storage shed blocked the light. The dark stretch no doubt seemed darker in contrast to the lights on either side (the human retina takes something like 6 minutes to fully adapt to low light situations).
She disappeared from that one dark stretch.
On the day before he was executed, Ted finally confessed to her abduction. He said that he had a fake cast on his arm (a ruse he'd used before) and asked her to help him with his briefcase. He'd parked his VW bug in that area earlier in the evening and had placed a tire iron underneath the car in preparation. She stepped over to the car to help with the briefcase, he reached down, grabbed the tire iron, knocked her unconscious with one blow and placed her in the area beside the driver's seat (he'd removed the passenger side seat, one reason he liked VW Bugs).
It only took him about three minutes from the time he approached Ms Hawkins until the time he drove off with her unconscious body.
Something to consider is that lacking a fear response means that psychopaths don't waste time with hesitation once they have decided to take an action. Saves time at times when seconds count.