Thanks, Richard! I hope Coffey remains locked up.
Here's a link to a map showing the walking distance between Parkland Middle School (near one of the last places Kathy was seen) and the KMart parking lot. The area behind the lot where she was found looks to have other development now, but it gives an idea. Can you indicate where Vitro Laboratories used to be located? Thanks!
خرائط Google
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The overhead view/map is a good one of the area (not certain when the photo was taken). However, when you asked the computer for a route from the school to the K Mart, it gave you the closest DRIVING route for today, which is way off because Kathy was walking on foot that evening. Some of her interim stops are known while she was still in her residential neighborhood.
For some perspective, we know that Kathy's house and the Middle School were both on West Frankfort Drive, less than a block apart. Vitro Laboratories (their original or "old" location) was where the Home Depot is today. The parking lots North and West of Home Depot are the very same ones used when Vitro was on the site, although the old Vitro buildings were all demolished when the Home Depot was built.
The large building just south of Home Depot and adjacent to its Perimeter Road was known as the "New Vitro" building. It was later owned and used by BAE, a company that bought out Vitro, and it has been vacant for a number of years more recently. (See my post #59 this thread).
Fred Coffey worked at the "Old Vitro" building and would have parked his car in the large parking lot to the north of it.
The place known as "The Rocks" was on high ground in the center of what is now a housing development. The entrance to that housing area would be where Heathfield Road crosses Georgia Ave. That housing development, as it exists today, can be seen clearly in the overhead view.
Kathy most likely walked in a southeasterly direction down Frankfort Drive until she reached Marionet Street, where she turned left, went a block and crossed Landgreen Street. At this point, she would have cut through a residential lot on a walking path and through a wooded area, arriving in the Westernmost section of the Vitro property.
Walking through the grass field a short distance past the small parking lot, she would then be on the perimeter road adjacent to the larger parking lot. Note that the houses on Southend Road are separated from the Vitro property by a tall chain link fence. Steep terrain to the south (note the large pond) on the Vitro property forms a "channel" taking a person on foot directly to the Perimeter road. It was a path taken regularly by kids from the area who wanted to walk to Kmart. And Kmart was a favorite destination of Kathy.
That Perimeter road is today the main entrance/exit for Home Depot. If one goes to the end of it and crosses Georgia Ave, you would be on a small access road that goes by the 7-Eleven (which was there in 1975 and still today). That little road went right into the Kmart parking lot's Westernmost corner. Today the road does not go all the way through to the parking lot, and thus the computer generated route going way around it.
Looking at the Subdivision North of that corner (near 7-Eleven), note that it is bounded by a stream. Kathy was found between the parking lot and that stream in a rock and trash strewn area. This would be in the approximate area of the word "Kmart" in the linked map.
You can see that this is a much more direct path than the computer selected driving path shown, and a much more likely route for a young girl walking (barefoot) to Kmart. It would also have taken her right past the parking lot where Fred Coffey parked his vehicle.
