Okay so I've read from this thread that the Geraldton idea comes from soil found on the car that was forensically examined. Critically, the soil came from the Geraldton area but it was never said the soil was unique to Geraldton. It seems over the years news reports have reported almost as fact that Deborah and her car went to Geraldton. But the forensics never nailed down that it was specifically Geraldton that the soil came from. It's possible "soil from the Geraldton area" could include a much wider area.
It got me thinking you're not gonna find soil on a car that's just driven up the Brand Highway and back. The presence of soil on the car (possibly even the tyres as was suggested) suggests to me that her car had to have been off-road at some point. To have soil from the Geraldton area survive a drive back to Perth would probably require a considerable amount of soil to be picked up. And what's the best way to have a car pick up a lot of soil that will stick to the car long after you've driven off-road? Mud. I reckon that car had been off-road on a wet unsealed road at some point.
January 2000 was a date that was nagging in the back of my mind for some reason and I couldn't think why. And then I remembered - Weatherzone. Every January I'd see the data for Perth Airport say their wettest January on record was in 2000. Amazingly, the deluge happened on
January 22, 2000, a mere 2 days before Deborah vanished. Weather systems in Perth during summer tend to move from the north towards the south, so if we had a big downpour on the 22nd, it's logical there must have been rain to the north where Deborah is said to have gone at around the same time.
I checked BOM records and put the rainfall totals for the 23rd of January (or 22nd where stated) onto a pair of maps (one Kalbarri to Dongara, the other Dongara to Jurien Bay). The figures for the 24 hours to 9am on January 23 on the north map aren't that impressive considering how much rain fell on Perth. Geraldton itself only got 2 mm. Considerable totals fell at the former Woolgorong pastoral lease (20.8 mm), Yandanooka (14 mm), and Morawa (42.2 mm). Figures for the south map are much more varied. Some places got much more rain than others. Eneabba and a nearby station recorded 44 mm and 36.6 mm respectively in the days prior to Deborah's car driving north. The coastal settlement of Leeman in the Beekeeper's Nature Reserve had 35 mm. Further inland on the Midlands Rd considerable falls were recorded from Three Springs to Watheroo, especially Watheroo itself which received 64 mm.
Why the focus on rainfall totals? If we work on the idea that the soil from the Geraldton area would likely need to be slightly moist still to adhere to the car's tyres all the way back to Perth, in the height of summer you'd need a considerable amount of water to keep the soil moist so if the car was off-road somewhere it would likely have gone off-road at a location that had received considerable rainfall in that rain event. It also helps us potentially narrow down the route the car would've taken that day.
One possibility is that Deborah and her attacker still went to Geraldton but took a number of back roads which were unsealed to avoid detection. This could possibly explain why police had little luck in finding people who thought they might've seen the car if they spent a lot of time taking less busy routes. If this is the case, we could possibly narrow down some of their off-road portions to places which had received a lot of rainfall to find a potential route the car took. Also, does driving to Geraldton and back using backroads still fit with the 14 hour timeframe we have? The other possibility this raises is that Deborah and her attacker never got as far as Geraldton. If the soil was instead related to where the drivers intended going (e.g. a national park) then those high rainfall areas could be a clue as to where they ended up before turning back for Perth.
This to me leaves 2 scenarios in my mind, both purely speculation I should add. My logical one is basically what I said in my previous post which echoes petedavo's idea from much earlier. Some ghetto rat from a nearby suburb wants to get to Geraldton to meet up with people he knows there, possibly for drugs or a similar reason. But he needs a car. He's hanging around the shopping centre and sees Deborah withdraw cash. He waits by her car, possibly brandishes a knife to keep her quiet and makes her drive him to Geraldton, taking a few back roads he and his mates have taken a few times before. Hell maybe it was even a group of men who ambushed her and went in the car with her. They do whatever they needed to do in Geraldton, drive back to the Middle Swan shopping centre and torch the car before bolting. The random theory would seem to be supported by her jewellery being removed. The one thing that seems almost impossible to determine is when exactly Deborah died. I saw news reports suggesting police believed she was alive when the car was set alight but I haven't heard their reasoning for that.
My second really wacky out there scenario is the mystery friend who has never been identified. As far as I know the friend she was meant to meet at the zoo has never come forward or been identified, which is a little suspicious to me. Could this friend possibly be a guy who was pining for her even though she was engaged? They meet up and he suggests rather than going to the zoo he takes her into the Wheatbelt/Midwest to see the bush come alive after the recent rains. She accepts and they drive north, heading into some of the national parks or state forests. Maybe along the way they stop and he buys them some lunch. At some point they're parked in an isolated corner of a national park and he tries to make a move on her. She rejects him for the obvious reason she's engaged and he flies off the handle, killing her in the process. He panics but because they're all alone and isolated he has time to think. He decides to drive to that isolated shopping centre near his mates' place and torch the car to destroy the evidence. In this scenario, the car isn't spotted much because it's deep off the main roads and possibly goes nowhere near Geraldton, instead going off-road in any number of national parks that got a lot of rain in the previous days (hence the soil in the tyres). This seems extremely unlikely but just throwing a random musing out there
IMO the vehicle described is a Ford Falcon panel van such as the XA or XB. IMO an XC model's paint wouldn't of faded enough by 1980, but possible if an early version that was parked outside a lot.
