The more we learn about what happened, the more I am convinced that NUA's early call to LE may have kept this case from dragging on for months and months or longer, JMO.
If CW had hours from when he got off work on Monday to take care of the things that were bound to bite him in the rear end, JMO, this may have been a very difficult case to solve. He could have removed the interior locking mechanism from the slider door in the back of the house to make it appear SW and the girls left the house that way.
He may not have necessarily needed to do anything with SW's cell phone, purse, keys, etc. if he made it look like an abduction. With the back door open, who could prove it wasn't an abduction? There were no security cams in back, so an abductor (s) could have entered and exited the house that way.
He had big problems at the oil tank site with SW's shallow grave. If not for NUA, he would have had time to go back there and collect the items he left behind and dispose of them and do something else with SW's body. Without a clandestine grave and bed sheet at the site waving big, red flags, would LE have had a reason to look in the oil tanks? IDK.
To me, CW's insistence that he and SW had an emotional conversation where he told her he wanted to initiate a separation was very stupid, but I think it reflects his ego, and he may have been protesting too loudly that he was the one who wanted out of the marriage. Bizarre. IMO.
If he had the time to handle all of these things, he could have then called LE Monday night and told them SW and the girls were not there when he came home, and he thought SW may have walked the girls to a park, so he waited a while but was now getting worried. LE would have been suspicious of him from the get-go, of course, but would they have had enough to arrest him? IDK.
I'm grateful NUA listened to her instincts and intervened as she did, and I'm also grateful he made so many mistakes and didn't have the time or the intellect to fix.
All JMO, but we could still be discussing a very frustrating missing persons case at this point in time, rather than having the wheels set in motion for justice.