I'm going to try & frame this reply from a perspective of people who do not know this area, so u can help with the efforts to solve this case. We are in the Coachella valley & we have access to only 1 freeway which is the I-10. Anyone who has lived here for a time has a good working knowledge of all the freeway exits & Jon has lived here many years after moving here from Queens, New York as a boy (thus the pics of him wearing the New York ball caps that u have probably seen).
The Banning/Beaumont area is roughly 30 miles west heading toward the Los Angeles area. The place where the car was located is just past the main exits for the city of Beaumont (if u were heading west out of the valley here). Everyone knows those Beaumont exits & would know that if they wanted to get off of the freeway & go where all the fast food restaurants and so on are... they would exit previous to where the car was found, or they would continue on past that spot because there is another exit ahead where there are known fast food & gasoline etc. type of businesses. I say this because a resident of the Coachella valley would not stop purposely at the place where her car was found. Plus this is a somewhat remote area leading into Yucaipa with empty fields. (I'm going to interject my opinion here of what I think happened, but it has been well thought out as u can imagine, plus I'm drawing from known info on the case).
First of all, no one pulls over on the freeway unless they are having a mechanical issue or a road rage situation, or perhaps forced at gunpoint to do so. Yet her car was fueled & still operational. Plus... the Highway Patrol will tow a car fairly quickly if it's left parked on the freeway. So I have my doubts that the car was left there Wednesday night until it was discovered by Onstar on Friday morning. So, it is my opinion that the car was dumped there by the assailant/assailants perhaps on Thursday night leading into Friday morning.
I've driven that stretch of highway on my way to Palm Springs and you are correct. There are two exits in between where the car was found that have restaurants and gas stations in case someone needed to pull over to make a call, put gas, check the car or go to the restroom. There wouldn't be any reason why someone would pull over in that area, on the side of the highway, as it is pretty remote and dark if I remember correctly.
If someone would have impersonated a highway patrol, I would think that the bloodhound would have traced the scent going behind the SUV as opposed to the front or into the embankment. (I read a story were last week a person impersonating a police officer pulled over a woman in Tucson Arizona. The police impersonator still hasn't been found.(
if the scent went into the field, its bad news. Either they were running away from someone or hiding from someone. I hope someone is able to remember something about a car pulling over the side of the road. I know in California, when people pull to the side of the road, people slow down and look in case they need assistance. They may not stop but they call CHP.