I was brought here by the
post made by Dime Detective on Reddit.
There seems to be some speculation on where the murders were actually committed. Two sites have been mentioned and/or investigated by police.
The first is at Depot Ln and Jones St in Ozark. This is just west of the Big/Little gas station/convenience store from which the girls made their final call. This is fairly easy to see using Google Maps Street View.
The second is described as within the Ozark city limits, south of town along AL-123.
The
True Crime Notebook states
"The area, next to what neighbors said is a now-vacant house, is surrounded by trees and has two World War II-era buildings on the property. The spider-web-encrusted buildings — wooden structures that appear to be a barn and a half-collapsed garage — sit about 100 feet off the roadway."
The True Crime Notebook has
this photo of the suspected murder site.
After a bit of Google Street Viewing, I believe
this is the same site today.
In examining the two images for points of comparison, we can see the two trees in the foreground on the right side, the fence post and fenced area of the yard to the left, the horizontal construction of the wood on the barn and what appears to be an old tractor appears in both shots in the right "bay" of the barn. In the new imagery, the left side of the barn appears to have mostly collapsed. If you use the Google Street View historic imagery, you can see an image shot in 2008 where the left side of the barn was yet uncollapsed.
If this site on AL-123 was truly the murder site, what strikes me is how close it is to the road itself and how close it is to neighboring properties.
Also, this site is south of US-231, which the girls were trying to reach after being given directions by Marilyn Merritt.
As a local resident to the area pointed out earlier in this thread, the way someone familiar with the area would have driven to US-231 would have been to take AL-27 west to AL-123 and then south on AL-123 to US-231 rather than taking AL-27/AL-249 all the way west to where it intersects with US-231.
The questions that this location raises for me are:
If the girls were trying to reach US-231 via AL-123, why/how did they miss the
MAJOR intersection at US-231/AL-123?
If they did miss the intersection due to confusion/darkness, etc, why did they continue for another 2 miles before turning around?
Is it possible that they missed the intersection, traveled 2 miles before realizing their error and decided to use the driveway at the suspected murder site to make a quick turn around and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and encountered the killer?
Random chance encounter results in a multiple murder with the vehicle moved all the way back to Herring Rd in Ozark? Seems unlikely to me.
Could the girls have missed the intersection and then been flagged down by someone at/near the suspected murder site?
It seems unlikely to me that someone would use this area as a pre-meditated murder site unless they were using the barn/house on the property given how exposed the yard area is to the road and how close the property itself is to other properties. This isn't exactly a secluded site by any means.
Anyway, this line of thinking leads me to more questions, but I'll just leave this post to see what others think.
Cheers!
