CA CA - Barbara Thomas, 69, from Bullhead City AZ, disappeared in Mojave desert, 12 July 2019 #4

[Stripehaven]

OK I got beat up asking about the cell phone. Sure would have helped BT in this case. Eh?

I won’t beat you up. I would very much like to know if it was her choice not to have one, or if she was prevented somehow. I’m well aware that lots of people choose not to - but did she?

ETA according to our VI she doesn’t have her own phone, so this wasn’t a case of her feeling she didn’t need it on a walk with her husband and his phone.

 

[LietKynes]

the silence is suddenly really deafening on this case.
like crickets chirping ...………...

why aren't the media interested in this story?

BBM

Good question.

 

[PommyMommy]

OT I am sitting here eating a second plate of pasta,because I am trying to keep from crying. My son who is on the autism spectrum is attending a conference with my husband. It is next to a river. My husband contacts me by text telling me that he lost our son. (He is an adult.) Two hours have passed since he lost our son. I just got a little taste of what the family of the missing go through. I texted my son..no answer. Kept texting..finally I called even though he hates to talk on the phone. Located him and told my husband where to find him. The whole process only took 30 minutes,but it is awful. My son is super intelligent and would never go to the river,but I kept thinking "What if". I always wondered why I am so attracted to this website. Now I know..if one day I could help someone find a missing love one,I would jump on it! Such a hopeless feeling! We need to find Barbara!!!

Oh my Lord! I've got happy tears in my eyes for you! Whew...

Yes, let's please find Barbara! If you missed this request from dbdb11, he has asked that everyone please like and share this Facebook post. Fingers crossed that we can get a follow-up report of some kind from HLN.

please everyone reading, please like and share this article, share with all your friends on social media please. I am hopeful HLN will be interested in a follow up report if they can see peoples interest in the story.

thank you all!

Bikini-clad hiker missing in the Mojave Desert

#TEAMBARBARA

 

[LietKynes]

The phrase "prime suspect" bothers me, particularly when used during a missing person investigation when there's nothing to suggest that a crime has been committed. MOO ETA, I believe his exact words were "prime suspect".

Ita.

Great post, Kapua !
Although RT's words in msm referring to himself were just as you said... why ?

I think you're the first poster to bring that up.
What strange words... when she is still just officially "missing".

It's as if he thinks she'll be found with evidence of something happening to her-- and not just perished from exposure to the elements.

 

[gloomy]

Is there a "find Barbara" facebook page or something? Apologies if this has been asked.

 

[10ofRods]

I google every day but she also seems to have disappeared from local and national news.I can't find any updates. Even her local paper/tv has no mention of her that I can find....

This is the norm, not exceptional at all. There are tons of missing people in SoCal alone. There are people who never get mentioned on Websleuths, people who are found relatively recently (only if there was an Amber alert does a further message usually go out). Just this summer, there have been three missing persons in the town where I live - population about 100,000; if it weren't for family members tweeting when they came home/were found, I wouldn't know they were back).

To complicate that further, many newspapers are behind pay walls, so that almost no one can use them to track an ongoing case, so those articles don't get many hits. The LA Times, for example, doesn't like VPN and I use up my articles in the first 1-3 days of the month.

I'd subscribe, but I don't trust the LA Times with my CC info and they don't take paypal. That's one of my pet peeves. But I don't know anyone who subscribes to it, either.I'm doubtful that the Mojave Valley News has real reporters who could be interested in this...they seem to use mostly Reuters articles.

The only way more news coverage is going to occur is if friends and family organize some type of vigil or other event to publicize Barbara's absence. Given how long it's been, I think most people are quietly grieving.

 

[squareandrabbet]

Honestly, you can look at most Missing Persons cases where the body was later found and searchers will have missed them if they are found within a 5 mile radius from where they went missing - IMO. Of course, this would be a very interesting statistic to work on. JMO

Do searchers ever "work outwards in"?

Asking because while I understand it could be counterproductive (starting at the outside of a circle drawn 5 mi. in the desert and working towards the RV/center, does mean that by the time the searchers reached the nucleus they could be extra tired and miss things); I'm just thinking, I know that sometimes they tell you if you're working on a paper, you should read it backwards line-by-line to get a different perspective.

Now that is decidedly untrue. Just a cursory search I did showed me multiple famous cases of missing people in the desert that took either months or years to find, or were never located (just their items and vehicle). Listing them all is really going to clutter the thread.

The problem for me is, how many of those desert-disappearing people had good known reason to disappear? The example you provided, that of Charles Manson's former attorney, is a case in point - he was responsible for psychopathic Manson going to jail. Also the reason why everyone assumes that Jimmy Hoffa will never be found alive - because he was killed by the Mafia, and the Mafia is good at hiding bodies.

I can't help but think, there's a difference between the ease of finding somebody who's trying to disappear and knows they're trying to disappear; and somebody who had no intention of going missing in the desert. Like the difference between playing hide-and-seek with a toddler, who just drops where they lay/in a place not well-covered; and playing with a college student. The college student's goal is going to be disappearing, albeit temporarily; and they are probably going to know how to achieve it. Your average toddler, not so much.

I don't doubt that a large amount of people have disappeared into the desert. What I do doubt, is that every person who has disappeared into the desert never to be found, is the type of person about whom you would say "Why no, he/she had no enemies that I could tell you about." Therefore, I find it hard to believe we can draw any hard conclusions en masse after the fact about "people who have vanished in the desert", without knowing whether or not the people in question got themselves lost purposefully and with planning ("starting a new life"); had enemies who might have, shall we say, "pushed for" them to be lost a la Tony Soprano ("Did he/she have any enemies?"); etc.

 

[artsy1]

Ita.

Great post, Kapua !
Although RT's words in msm referring to himself were just as you said... why ?

I think you're the first poster to bring that up.
What strange words... when she is still just officially "missing".

It's as if he thinks she'll be found with evidence of something happening to her-- and not just perished from exposure to the elements.

I heard it too, but chalked it up to his insistence that it was an abduction - which would make it a crime scene, if true.

ETA I meant him saying LE messed up the crime scene, but also applies to him calling himself the prime subject.

 

[rosesfromangels]

Do searchers ever "work outwards in"?

Asking because while I understand it could be counterproductive (starting at the outside of a circle drawn 5 mi. in the desert and working towards the RV/center, does mean that by the time the searchers reached the nucleus they could be extra tired and miss things); I'm just thinking, I know that sometimes they tell you if you're working on a paper, you should read it backwards line-by-line to get a different perspective.



The problem for me is, how many of those desert-disappearing people had good known reason to disappear? The example you provided, that of Charles Manson's former attorney, is a case in point - he was responsible for psychopathic Manson going to jail. Also the reason why everyone assumes that Jimmy Hoffa will never be found alive - because he was killed by the Mafia, and the Mafia is good at hiding bodies.

I can't help but think, there's a difference between the ease of finding somebody who's trying to disappear and knows they're trying to disappear; and somebody who had no intention of going missing in the desert. Like the difference between playing hide-and-seek with a toddler, who just drops where they lay/in a place not well-covered; and playing with a college student. The college student's goal is going to be disappearing, albeit temporarily; and they are probably going to know how to achieve it. Your average toddler, not so much.

I don't doubt that a large amount of people have disappeared into the desert. What I do doubt, is that every person who has disappeared into the desert never to be found, is the type of person about whom you would say "Why no, he/she had no enemies that I could tell you about." Therefore, I find it hard to believe we can draw any hard conclusions en masse after the fact about "people who have vanished in the desert", without knowing whether or not the people in question got themselves lost purposefully and with planning ("starting a new life"); had enemies who might have, shall we say, "pushed for" them to be lost a la Tony Soprano ("Did he/she have any enemies?"); etc.

Great post! I have been wondering if they had any enemies as well. It's certainly worth LE exploring.

Amateur opinion and speculation

 

[CSIDreamer]

OT I am sitting here eating a second plate of pasta,because I am trying to keep from crying. My son who is on the autism spectrum is attending a conference with my husband. It is next to a river. My husband contacts me by text telling me that he lost our son. (He is an adult.) Two hours have passed since he lost our son. I just got a little taste of what the family of the missing go through. I texted my son..no answer. Kept texting..finally I called even though he hates to talk on the phone. Located him and told my husband where to find him. The whole process only took 30 minutes,but it is awful. My son is super intelligent and would never go to the river,but I kept thinking "What if". I always wondered why I am so attracted to this website. Now I know..if one day I could help someone find a missing love one,I would jump on it! Such a hopeless feeling! We need to find Barbara!!!

Soooooo glad you found him!

 

[Officer Dibble]

IMHO, she was with her husband and most likely not expecting to be far enough away from him during their trip that she would have needed her own phone.

You make a good point

 

[10ofRods]

Here's a photo from Day 8 (looks to be the area along Hidden Hill Road, east of Kelbaker). All that pretty yellow foliage is very prickly - you can see where it would be hard even to get off road to pee.

Search and Rescue, Barbara Thomas

That's from the West Valley SAR twitter feed.

 

[castilloisno1]

Soooooo glad you found him!

thanks..have since deleted post and want to get back on target of finding Barbara!!

 

[squareandrabbet]

Now they couldn't do thorough forensics, like with luminol, etc. Or look at the phones or laptops, or the GPS in the vehicle.

But they could look for a person, alive or dead, to rule out an accident or an illness.

Could they do things like look in the trash/recycling, and/or closets? Not necessarily "scrutinize or paw through", but "tip the garbage can around/shift layers with a pen or similar and note its contents"? Just trying to think of things that could potentially help solidify "one person in trailer vs. two"; quick look for something like a bottle of chloroform or insulin, etc.?

 

[LaborDayRN]

I really want to know that also. There should be 2 sets of footprints coming from their vehicle, right? Do footprints stay very long? Or does the wind blow the sand away?

It can get VERY windy in the Mojave desert. That being said, some area's have very hard pan soil (I'm not sure about this particular spot). These things combined might make it difficult to find footprints.

 

[LAhiker]

This is the norm, not exceptional at all. There are tons of missing people in SoCal alone. There are people who never get mentioned on Websleuths, people who are found relatively recently (only if there was an Amber alert does a further message usually go out). Just this summer, there have been three missing persons in the town where I live - population about 100,000; if it weren't for family members tweeting when they came home/were found, I wouldn't know they were back).

To complicate that further, many newspapers are behind pay walls, so that almost no one can use them to track an ongoing case, so those articles don't get many hits. The LA Times, for example, doesn't like VPN and I use up my articles in the first 1-3 days of the month.

I'd subscribe, but I don't trust the LA Times with my CC info and they don't take paypal. That's one of my pet peeves. But I don't know anyone who subscribes to it, either.I'm doubtful that the Mojave Valley News has real reporters who could be interested in this...they seem to use mostly Reuters articles.

The only way more news coverage is going to occur is if friends and family organize some type of vigil or other event to publicize Barbara's absence. Given how long it's been, I think most people are quietly grieving.

I do subscribe to the LA Times but think that papers closer to where BT disappeared might be more likely to do a piece on the case.

As you imply, often what spurs such coverage is some event -- a LE update or news conference, a vigil, etc. -- or someone close to the missing person who's willing to be interviewed, say how worried they are, etc.

 

[ZsaZsa]

I was thinking often of Savanna Spurlock while she was 'missing' - (I thought she was dead on the day after she left the bar), but TV
in this area didn't forget about her, I would say there was some item nightly for a couple of weeks, then every week or two after, with family appeals. It just seems so silent in comparison with Barbara.

 

[Fukiyama]

It seems to be the question of why BT did or did not have a cell phone is just a way to skirt the rules on sleuthing family. Am I wrong?

 

[LaborDayRN]

No, it has not been verified, at least not that I can remember.
The VI thinks it may not be of that day, but that was an opinion.
It's hard to tell how old the picture is because it looks blurry to me.

I wish we could have a post, maybe in the timeline thread with all of our VI's post condensed into one. It would make it so easy to reference.

 

[Cherwell]

It seems to be the question of why BT did or did not have a cell phone is just a way to skirt the rules on sleuthing family. Am I wrong?

I think it's just a good illustration of how people can be so fixed in their thinking that they can't accept that someone else might not do exactly as they do.