CA CA - Bob Harrod, 81, Orange County, 27 July 2009 - #12

[zwiebel]

I'm working on another timeline actually - for a 1930s cold case. Disappearance from home, only one other person in the house at the time, mysterious car that was never traced.....you know how it pans out. The person is still missing, and the last search LE carried out for her was in about 2005 or something. They don't give up, do they?

 

[GrainneDhu]

Many times, to me, it seems as if any discussion regarding AH brings out some intensity and a need to derail.

Hmmmmmmm...

You know, AH has been swimming around in my speculations for months because he's such a dark horse. No information about what he was doing and where until sometime that evening when he spoke to Fontelle and told her to call for a welfare check.

He lived very close to Bob. And so far, he's been the big, big winner in the affair.

 

[GrainneDhu]

JeM has an alibi of sorts-his wife, the CL and tape from Home Depot. Unfortunately for him, his wife puts him in the house when it seems likely Bob disappeared. I am sure that has been cleaned up for LE since then.

We know where AH was for part of the story because of the MP and Incident reports. Does or did he work from home I wonder? He has a company listed as his, although I believe his depo might indicate he is employed now outside of the home. Or at least at the time of the deposition.

Sheesh-think he retired too? Wait, no, that was his beef with his aunts.

BBM

Ha! People often resent most in others what they themselves are guilty of.

 

[Oriah]

I'm working on another timeline actually - for a 1930s cold case. Disappearance from home, only one other person in the house at the time, mysterious car that was never traced.....you know how it pans out. The person is still missing, and the last search LE carried out for her was in about 2005 or something. They don't give up, do they?

Nope.
What is it like in the UK? Do they give up more than here in the US? Germany I know is pretty much- well, nie aufgeben.

 

[Oriah]

Hmmmmmmm...

You know, AH has been swimming around in my speculations for months because he's such a dark horse. No information about what he was doing and where until sometime that evening when he spoke to Fontelle and told her to call for a welfare check.

He lived very close to Bob. And so far, he's been the big, big winner in the affair.

I think this is a very, very important aspect of this case.

 

[believe09]

I think this is a very, very important aspect of this case.

I bet it is to LE too.

 

[Oriah]

Hmmmmmmm...

You know, AH has been swimming around in my speculations for months because he's such a dark horse. No information about what he was doing and where until sometime that evening when he spoke to Fontelle and told her to call for a welfare check.

He lived very close to Bob. And so far, he's been the big, big winner in the affair.

This brought something else to mind for me. The 'welfare check.'

Does anyone know how that was actually called in to LE? As in, was 'welfare check' actually used in verbage? Or did a dispatcher use that terminology? Or did the caller use that terminology? :waitasec:

 

[zwiebel]

So, on the day the patriarch went missing, the only males in the immediate family either lived, and/or were working in the immediate vicinity.

And yet one took hours to check if Bob had come home, and one doesn't ever seem to have gone back to check at all.

 

[zwiebel]

Nope.
What is it like in the UK? Do they give up more than here in the US? Germany I know is pretty much- well, nie aufgeben.

Well our nickname for a policeman is pc (police constable) plod, because they plod on. And on. And on. And on. I don't think they give up easily. Also, because they're supposed to have very big feet.

I can say this because grandpops who saw out a century was one, and he did have very big feet. He used to train all the newbies, so hopefully his good work carried on down the line.

 

[zwiebel]

This brought something else to mind for me. The 'welfare check.'

Does anyone know how that was actually called in to LE? As in, was 'welfare check' actually used in verbage? Or did a dispatcher use that terminology? Or did the caller use that terminology? :waitasec:

I'm not sure it was AH who called Fontelle. I always thought it was a daughter - JuM? Maybe someone else knows for certain.

 

[GrainneDhu]

This brought something else to mind for me. The 'welfare check.'

Does anyone know how that was actually called in to LE? As in, was 'welfare check' actually used in verbage? Or did a dispatcher use that terminology? Or did the caller use that terminology? :waitasec:

I don't know. The only reason I used the term 'welfare check' is because that's the term used in my area for when someone calls the PD and expresses concern about the wellbeing of someone else.

 

[zwiebel]

That term has definitely been used in our case, by Bob's family. I just don't know who it originated with. I think family myself, because they had called in a welfare check previous to his disappearance, so knew the terminology.

I can't recall the exact details of the first check at the moment, but I remember a daughter's comment about the second one being 'a day late and a dollar short'.

 

[zwiebel]

Correct me if I'm wrong anyone, I've been back to our timeline and media thread for info about the 'welfare check'. Events still look as odd to me as the first time I saw them, but as far as we know, this is what played out the evening of Bob's disappearance, after JeM had left Bob's home;

JeM returned home and (presumably, as only he and the CL knew Bob was missing at this point) told his wife, JuM (Bob's youngest daughter) that Bob was missing.

JuM called her sisters, PB and RB.

RB called in an LE 'welfare check' for Bob.

At some point, someone must have called AH because he was waiting for LE to arrive for the check and went into Bob's house with them. I'm saying someone must have called him because how would he have known Bob was missing, otherwise?

Eventually, JuM also thought to call Bob's wife, FH, at home in MO, and it was she who then reported Bob missing.

So, to confirm; it was RB who called in the welfare check and has used that terminology afterwards. We don't know exactly what she said to dispatch though.

It's worth noting that from the first person to know Bob was missing (his son-in-law, JeM) the information went through five family members before he was reported missing.

The last one that information reached, Bob's wife, way across the country, reported him missing.

Something else I hadn't noticed before; Mrs Harrod had also been calling Bob every 20 mins because he hadn't answered her usual call. That's before she knew he was missing. Now that's the sign of a worried relative, imo.

 

[believe09]

RB called in an LE 'welfare check' for Bob.

This claim was made, IIRC, but was this confirmed by an outside source? I sort of filed this away with PB's affirmative response call and PB's 24 or 48 hour reporting claim kwim?

 

[Oriah]

The reason for my interest in the 'welfare check' report is due to the usage of terminology specifically.

If I were calling a local PD to check on, say, my elderly and ill neighbor because I noticed they had not gone out to get their mail in two days, I might call our PD and say, hey I hate to bother you, but could you check on Ms. D at 123 Smith St?

But if I was woken up in the middle of the night by a noise next door that made me uncomfortable, I'd call the PD and say welfare check at 123 Smith St asap. Ya'll kwim?

 

[believe09]

The reason for my interest in the 'welfare check' report is due to the usage of terminology specifically.

If I were calling a local PD to check on, say, my elderly and ill neighbor because I noticed they had not gone out to get their mail in two days, I might call our PD and say, hey I hate to bother you, but could you check on Ms. D at 123 Smith St?

But if I was woken up in the middle of the night by a noise next door that made me uncomfortable, I'd call the PD and say welfare check at 123 Smith St asap. Ya'll kwim?

Yes, I agree. Or, if I knew that my nephew lived one street over and my BIL was at the house or had been, I would say could someone take the keys and go over to check on Dad? Or, if I lived within 50 miles, I might even go myself. Especially knowing that there had been a heated confrontation the night before-I would be wondering, did he have a stroke, was he still upset???

Well, maybe some of that happened.

 

[Oriah]

I'd do it myself too, actually. But then again I'm buds with our PD.

Going off of my scenario- if I were knocking on my locked neighbors' door and not getting an answer, I'd be calling the PD. Not another relative, to call another relative, to call another relative, to have that relative call the local PD.

So where exactly did that breakdown occur? Obviously not with FH, since she is the one who eventually called.
Why the need for so much communication between family members?

I wonder about cell communication between JeM and AH during that time frame (since we're working on timelines.)

And that might explain the key situation.

 

[zwiebel]

It might also explain how AH got to know Bob was missing. Did JuM call him around the same time she called her sisters? If so, I would really have thought she would also have asked that he go around to Bob's house to check on him straight away.

You were correct about the welfare check by the way, believe09. We don't seem to have any msm sources for that. In fact, few of the hard and fast details of events that day/night seem to feature in msm. There are some time details of course, but the problem is, none of them are the same.

The line (zig zag?) of communication from JeM to, finally, LE and Bob's missing report - it sounds less like communication and more like five degrees of separation to me.

 

[believe09]

I'd do it myself too, actually. But then again I'm buds with our PD.

Going off of my scenario- if I were knocking on my locked neighbors' door and not getting an answer, I'd be calling the PD. Not another relative, to call another relative, to call another relative, to have that relative call the local PD.

So where exactly did that breakdown occur? Obviously not with FH, since she is the one who eventually called.
Why the need for so much communication between family members?

I wonder about cell communication between JeM and AH during that time frame (since we're working on timelines.)

And that might explain the key situation.

:floorlaugh:

 

[believe09]

The chain of communication-a benign answer might be that Bob was still showing signs of anger towards his family while JeM was...well doing whatever JeM did. Maybe Bob was angry with AH too. So the "and they tell two" friends approach was because they were scared to approach Bob directly after winding him up the night before.

Or not.