We haven't been joking about it. We mean it. It is a huge missing item.
As I said before, police always include shoes in the description of a missing person ... unless the person went missing with no family sighting, no daughter at home to check the shoe collection, no work mates to say what range of shoes she always wore, no-one to say "if she had her Coach bag she would have worn these or these shoes, as they match" (if Karen matched her shoes to her other accessories).
Shoes are an important item .. they fall off .. they get found. They may lead to the whereabouts of the missing person.
Heck, I have even seen missing reports that state that the person was wearing a pair of flipflops. Little William was wearing certain sandals. On and on ......
I fully accept that people here, yourself included, certainly weren't joking about the shoe issue, and agree with what you're saying here. There were also a couple of posts quite recently regarding shoes seemed to have a joking tone to them, but I may have misinterpreted that.
I also also feel that something as simple as Borce saying he doesn't recall what shoes she was wearing could be behind the lack of shoes on the mannequin. I do agree it could be far more significant than that.