I took my husband to work this morning, and driving back to I.B., I tried to think like someone not familiar with the area who wanted to get rid of a body. There's a big shopping center just off the highway, with a Walmart, Home Depot, etc., lots of room in back and dumpsters. On the way up Palm toward I.B. there are tons of little strip malls, businesses, and apartment buildings, all with accessible but obscured dumpsters. I was even more sure that someone unfamiliar with I.B. would not travel down from L.A., go up Palm, pass up all these better sites, and pick the location where Eliza's body was found.
I think there's only one way someone would put a body in that dumpster without being familiar with Imperial Beach.
If someone exited the highway farther north at the Coronado Bay Bridge. Maybe the perp thought he could toss the body off the bridge, but that would be impossible on that bridge, too well lighted, no walkway, cameras -- not a bridge you could stop on without attracting a lot of attention. So, the perp would have to drive onto Coronado Island (really the tip of a peninsula). So then, go straight and he'd head right into the Main Gate of a large Naval base. No way. Turn into a residential street -- also no way -- a stranger driving down those exclusive streets at night would be noticed. So -- turn south down the main street, Orange. The businesses along Orange do not have easily accessible dumpsters and they are very well patrolled. So -- keep going and he's on Silver Strand with no turn off except a couple of military-base entrances, a gated community, and a state park. No businesses are on Silver Strand. Then arrive at Imperial Beach and the shopping center where Eliza was found is THE FIRST turn off at a business.
The receptionist at my dentist drove by there at 2:00 pm on Sunday, and said that police cars were not only at the dumpster/Palm Ave entrance to the strip mall, but also at the Silver Strand/hwy75 entrance on the other side.
