Here's
the sort of crime that grabs my attention in possible connection with this guy. It's will-o-the-wisp, I'll admit, but it fits the time-frame for the kidnapping and alleged murder of Kim Sue Leggett. Texas Rangers reopened the case, and finally released a couple of sketches of unidentified suspects.
Just how they developed those sketches, I don't think we know. Presumably, they were seen lurking around the parking lot of the Cotton Gin, the bar the young woman went missing from. As far as we know, there was no female suspect involved, but there might have been. Or one of the guys may have had a relation in the area to whom he fled after the ransom didn't work out and they decided to dispose of their hostage. Or maybe I've watched too many Cohen bros. movies.
At any rate, it's a shame they destroyed that skull. It might be a good test use of 3-D printing technology to try to reconstruct it from X-rays, which I'm going to assume they still do have, in order to get a better idea of what this guy looked like. It's the kind of thing the boffins at UW-Madison might get a grant for, for proof of concept.
Anyway, it's the
kind of crime that someone might expect someone in a different region might have heard about, or eventually might hear about. And it's the
kind of crime that might compel someone not to seek help in extremis, and it's the kind of crime that might make a driver shut up about the fact that she's got a missing companion if encountered by police.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that there are two kidnappers who resemble to some degree the sketches that Rangers and FBI worked up. One of them is someone with whom Kim is acquainted. The other isn't, and that's why he's chosen to make the ransom calls. The first call is received by the mother, who thinks it's a prank. She reports that the man had no accent. Does that mean that he speaks as a local Texan would, or that he has a 'neutral' accent, the kind we associate with the Midwest? If it's the latter, then our second perp might not be from Texas. He might either have been there for a job, or brought expressly by a relation or friend for this disastrous caper. The first perp knows the victim, so releasing her really is out of the question. Neither has a passport, and they don't have much money, so though Mexico's close it's not a viable destination. After they kill the hostage, the second perp wants to put as much distance between him and the location of the crime as possible. Nobody reports him missing, because he's told his friends he's going to be out of town for awhile, and they assume that he's just stayed wherever he said he was going.
So, lots of supposes, Jack, but this is why I'm more interested in taking this from the angle of someone who's involved in some relatively notorious crime, who might not be in any MP databases. If we could get a better image of what his face might have looked like, someone might be able to illustrate what he would have looked like in life, wearing the gear he was wearing, and then we might jog someone's memory.
