Good points. Makes me wonder if neighbors ever heard anything suspicious that day or even if JDR had any guests over. His close friends say he didn't have any other friends, but maybe he met someone in the apt complex who set him up with some kind of odd job or introduced him to someone who could help him make some extra $$.
I think you could be absolutely right about this place being cheap and cutting costs on security. I'm curious about the guarded entrance too. If I'm driving in that area this week I'll check and see.
It's impossible to know for sure the conditions of that complex--most yelpers tend to be born complainers, so it's hard to know how true their claims really are--but I do think that a violent encounter in the early evening, in that complex, stands a good chance of being heard.
I'm not convinced that these two knew the person/s who abducted them, but if this person or persons was an acquaintance of some sort it seems more logical, under the circumstances as we know them, if it's someone JDR had recently met, rather than someone AM had just met---and I say this only, because AM's movements on the 10th all seem accounted for and to be in the norm, up until the moment she goes missing. Where as, there's this odd gap in JDR's actions that day. If that makes sense.
There is this unexplained trip somewhere south of Coachella for JDR, before 8 or earlier--a time, that frankly doesn't make a whole lot of sense, even if you discard the Brawley thing. And no one seems to know why or with whom he went to wherever with...but he had to have gone somewhere that AM later expected to pick him up. And if her mother is right, she DID pick him up.
The more I look at the map of where these two were most often-in terms of family, school, friends and work, going south at that time of night, without anyone who knew them, knowing why, and yet having the SUV ending up northwest of where they both lived--almost an hour away in Beaumont, is just odd--even it they hadn't gone missing. If AM had school the next day (maybe school and work) hooking up in Palm Desert or Indio, makes so much more sense.
And then following this very convoluted logic, if JDR did make a new acquaintance who maybe did offer him some work, (for example, can you help me move such and such a thing, I can pay you $150.00 to help), the only place that it seems he would easily meet someone knew, is at that complex.
Basically, in a very round about way, I am agreeing with you BritY802, and then adding on from there.
I'd canvass the heck out of that apartment complex, and rule out someone having seen JDR get into a vehicle there--but I am going to hazard a guess that LE has already done this.
Some of those reviews are pretty entertaining, but terrible!
