Spent the afternoon and evening in the area (and it is large) of the crash site, the apartment, the alleged walk down Hardy (which I am still not certain ever occurred), the back ways, the side streets, Jaycee Park, the AM/PM and O'Reilly's and a lot of space in between. Met up with a fellow "Websleuther" (who shall remain anonymous) and we re-hashed the theories together, in person at my old favorite, Otto's....near my even more old favorite, Casey Moore's.
I will say that 20 years has changed what was my home. A lot. It is much cleaner, better lit, modernized (not sure that's a good thing... the old mom and pop businesses were very cool) and I see William Wonderful is alive and well... while Elvis the Cat has gone to the other side...
While snooping about in an area we were asked to look around by another Websleuther, we did find a phone. A very badly damaged phone. I called the Tempe Police Dept. and was told to take it from the area we were in and meet an officer in the parking lot of Tempe Beach park. So we did. We very carefully picked it up and took it to the parking lot and waited. And waited. And waited... Took photos of the front and back of the phone (it was not a Samy or an iPhone), it was a Motorola CDMA / Verizon and was missing the SD and the sim card (and the battery and back plate). After an hour and a half we decided not to wait any longer. LE has my name and my phone number.
Driving through the neighborhood at 10:30 p.m.... it was very quiet, most lights were out... it was a typical weekday night in anytown, USA.
Never felt unsafe for one minute. In fact, I was more at ease there than in my own neighborhood. The field trip left me a little nostalgic and a little melancholy. I'm not really sure what I expected but it was not what I came away with.
I'm going back tomorrow, as promised, for the police report and my husband is busy working some other angles that arose during our in-person dialog with our sooper seekrit friend.
Should be very interesting and very telling.