I don’t think so. The initial call reporting her missing came in at approximately 5:46. I’m not sure of response time, but I imagine it was not too long. Once LE arrived on scene, they would talk to the reporting party to get the facts. (Remember the first statement by the Sheriff’s Dept stated that SM “reportedly” went on a bike ride.). They probably tried to see if the bike was in the garage or on the property. I imagine they asked the neighbor if she had actually seen her go off on the bike. They probably also asked if she knew her usual bike routes. I’m sure that shortly thereafter, the first responding officer called for additional officers to help search the area. If all that took an hour, that left a little over 2 hours of searching before BM arrived home from Denver. (According to him).
IMO, if you are searching for a missing biker you will walk the route that biker took, searching the roadside. Initially, you would not go into wooded areas where there is no trail. From what BM indicated to TD, the bike was found down an incline fairly close to the house. I believe the bike was found fairly early Sunday evening before BM even arrived home.
As far as the possibility that LE mishandled evidence, that could very well be true, but not necessarily due to recklessness or negligence. LE responds to far more calls for accidents or injuries than mysterious missing persons. The number one priority is preserving life. What happens in the initial stages of an investigation depends on what you are told when you arrive at a call. That first statement will direct your follow up unless and until you find otherwise.
LE initially looked for a missing biker because that’s what they were told. They likely considered accident or illness first so if someone spotted the bike down the embankment, he or she probably called out or radioed in. At this point I’m pretty sure one or more officers made their way down the hill to see if SM was laying injured nearby. They had no reason to believe at this time that a crime had taken place. They probably spread out from the bike’s location to see if they could find her. I’m sure at some point the bike was brought up to the roadside in LE custody. We don’t know that the bike wasn’t photographed or fingerprinted before it was moved. We don’t know that LE wasn’t wearing gloves when they recovered the bike. We do know that some early investigative work took place, (probably when SM was not found near her bike), because LE ruled out accident and mountain lion very quickly.
For what it is worth, even if LE handled the bike less carefully than they should have early on, I find it ludicrous to believe that 10 officers handled it.
I also do not think that BM’s merry band of searchers recovered the bike because I think they would have given him full details. Maybe it was his FF friends who told him that the evidence was mishandled because their collective noses were out of joint when they weren’t allowed to participate in the search.
IMHO
