I can't find the post any more sorry, but someone was talking about editing metadata being a complicated process. Although it might not be a general sort of knowledge everyone has, it really isn't a difficult process. You can do it from the camera itself (which is the easiest way in my personal opinion) or on a PC with software, or even by uploading it to the web and using a free web based extractor and editor. But at the end of the day, the image will always show the metadata has been edited in some way. Which is why I said it would be a pretty easy check for LE to see if the metadata of the old photo's on the family holiday when the camera was purchased was set to the same time as the proof of life photo and determine easily if there was any relevance to the claim that the camera was purchased in Bali and thus the time difference.
I learned how to check for any changes to the metadata in photos both on a DSLR camera and on a PC in my first photojournalism class. It was part of learning how to deduce when a tip/lead was genuine. A lot of photo hoaxes are sent to news rooms in the digital age so it was considered a standard part of my course to learn about it.
In fact, it's actually this metadata evidence that drew me to look into what people knew about this case. I was surprised the Bali rationale was accepted. Assuming the seller had set it to local time for them, the reversal of the minutes (7:39 original metadata, 9:37 edited metadata) always bothered me. There shouldn't be a 2-min time difference there. It should be 7:39 and 9:39 or 7:37 and 9:37 if the metadata wasn't edited manually because that just isn't how it works. If the PC just autofixed the metadata the minutes should always stay the same and only the hour should change. That's just how digital internal clocks work when they switch time zones.