One of my problems with the FM's story is that I have to do so much mental gymnastics to make it fit. In every situation I can think of involving someone in a criminal case, where they have been innocent of wrongdoing, I can reasonably easily understand why they would have behaved the way they did. Sometimes it is exactly what I would do and other times it is different but still relatable. Occasionally I will have to do mental gymnastics on one or two things out of half a dozen or a dozen. I certainly don't expect someone to behave exactly as I would because we are different people. But in this instance I have trouble with almost everything. While each individual item can be explained, it paints a different picture when every single thing requires a laborious justification. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak.
1. The certainty that William was only gone for 5 minutes. I don't see how anyone could be certain of that under the circumstances, and I'd be saying "I'm not sure; it could have been longer." I don't understand why someone would stick to that timeframe with such adamance when it might make all the difference in an investigation.
2. Not checking the house or dispatching FGM to check the house and not mentioning that the house had not been checked. Yes he disappeared outside, but it would be a normal reaction for me to check the house itself in case he had somehow gone back inside and injured himself, particularly given the belief that he was not a wanderer.
3. Not contacting her husband. If a child went missing on me I would be contacting my husband immediately, not waiting for him to return. Certainly under the circumstances when he texted "Home in 5 minutes", I'd be texting him back, "Is William with you?" if that's where my head had bizarrely gone at that moment.
4. Going for a drive to a specific place that was a hard ask distance-wise for a child in the time he went missing (and which, given his age he would not have directionally understood how to walk to). I am not sure I understand even going for a drive at that early stage, but even if I stretch it to that, I can see a general drive looking for him, not heading to one particular place like that.
5. Hearing a scream and not running to it, imagined or not, or frantically sending someone to check. That one I can't get over. There was no urgency consistent with panic.
6. Believing someone has taken him almost immediately, given the environment in which they were. At the point at which she claims she thought that, even factoring in him not being a wanderer, the likelihood was far greater that he had strolled somewhere and injured himself. Kids do crazy and unpredictable things and easily have their attention diverted by items of interest.
7. Not checking on his sister and ensuring she was with an adult. If I've had a child go missing, I am obsessive about where the other one is. Her whereabouts is practically never mentioned. We have all these adults running around searching so who was keeping an eye on her and where was the concern for her welfare?
8. Nobody else on that street saw the cars she claimed she did, despite people noticing things out of place on a street like that and it being a time of morning when many people would have been moving around going to work, taking kids to school etc. These cars were supposedly there for a considerable period of time. She didn't mention it to anyone in the morning, despite claiming she knew it was odd at the time, and it didn't prompt her to be more protective of the children.
Yes, I can explain each of these individually, but it is a stretch to do even that, let alone when I realise that I'm having to work hard to explain so many. There are also inconsistencies in the explanations: some are explainable by panic, but others are explained by a lack of panic.
And then I assess the abduction theories and I struggle with the primary one. There are two possible abduction theories: one that involved some level of pre-meditation and one that was entirely opportunistic. The primary one is that it was a pre-meditated abduction and yet this seems fanciful to me.
One individual from an extremely small group of people who knew William was at his FGMs place either takes that information themselves and formulates a plan to abduct him or shares that information with someone who then formulates a plan to abduct him. This person or persons is/are willing to park on a country suburban street where people notice unusual things, in broad daylight at a time when people are moving around going to work and school, on the off-chance that they may have an opportunity to abduct a child. They face a high likelihood of being seen, may have to wait for hours, and may never have an opportunity.
When said opportunity presents itself, despite it being impossible for them to know that they couldn't be seen from one of the houses or even that William wasn't in view of his carers from a window, they are brazen enough to take the child. They manage to spot the opportunity, take account of the circumstances and grab or lure him in the space of a few minutes. Because this is pre-meditated, they have confidence they will get away with this.
It's all very well to say in hindsight that they did get away with it, but the crucial thing is that they have to have believed they would at the time. It doesn't make sense to me that a person who was apparently calculating would see this as a viable opportunity that was low enough risk to attempt. Even if I adjust some of the moving parts to account for various slight differences, it still comes back to the fact that a person planning to do this or calculating the risks would not have seen it as viable. In my view it has to be someone who did not even think about anything because the moment they thought about it the moment it loses its viability.
The other theory is that this was an entirely opportunistic abduction. A person with the pre-disposition to take a child happened upon the street at the exact time that William was on his own. They didn't intend to take a child but suddenly there he was and they acted on impulse without thought of difficulty or consequences. This one is more realistic to me, because it does away with the need for any sort of assessment on their part, which is the most problematic component to me of the other abduction theory.
The challenge I face with this one is is that a lack of any thought also means this person had no idea what they were going to do with William, either. I can suspend this to a point, however, because if they weren't thinking then, applying the same logic as before, they didn't care what they were going to do with him and it could be just "lucky" (I hate that word in this circumstance) that they ultimately got away with it. As the situation intensified what they decided to do could have evolved because they were reactive and impulsive rather calculating.
So two theories: FM involved or random abduction. And when I look at the likelihood, the former stands out to a far greater degree.
