This is not directed at anyone in particular, but a few pages back (I think), someone was commenting on the photo of the lake ("Hanging Lake") that is posted with the 9/10's blog entry.
A comment (or two, or three...) made mention about how it was strange that Morgan was at the lake alone during this time.
I thought that was weird, too, so I went back and looked at the picture and blog posting again.
It doesn't say when Morgan went there. It only said that this was a place Morgan went sometimes, to meditate or reflect. And, tbh, the photo looks like it's from a late-June/July time frame, to judge on the greenery, and may not be a current year (again, because they're in a drought, so I'd think there'd be less green available).
I suppose my post is to make sure we're reading what was said, and commenting on that, and not assuming something (like she was at the lake during the bigger stalking events starting in August).
That being said, that lake looks awfully nice and peaceful. I can imagine being there would indeed bring much needed peace and quiet to someone, and I know that if I went there, I'd have Gracie and Romi swimming in the lake. LOL.
So let's be pretty careful about what we're commenting on, so that things don't get too distorted (like "Why was Morgan allowed to go to the lake alone?" when that's not what was said...).
And I am also quite firm in believing that the stalking began far, far earlier than August. I think that it is very likely that something happened at the end of 2010, or the beginning of 2011. There is some evidence that her car was keyed, and a derogatory term scratched onto the car, while she was at school (this was February).
This, to me, is the first instance one can point to, and say that "well, something's going on..."
Here is what I suspect ****may**** have happened.
Morgan crosses someone she goes to college with, for some reason or other. She gets her car keyed, doesn't make a huge deal of it, and continues on with school. She may change her class schedule, or not. But she graduates from college with her AA in late May. Bullying/harassment may have continued throughout this time, although Morgan didn't make too much mention of it to her parents.
I think Morgan went to California to work for her sister, and then took a trip out to Hawaii, to escape being in the same area that her bully/harasser was in...maybe the parents knew a bit about this - a bad breakup with a boyfriend, or a group of girls pissed off for some reason, something where Morgan needs to "take a break" and so is sent off for the summer. Parents thought the time away would be nice for Morgan, and for the parents, too.
Then, on the way back from Hawaii, she gets her puppy. She comes home, hoping that the break away for the summer has given whatever situation was going on time to cool off; maybe she hoped that absence made things fade, made hurts heal, and that now things would be better, she'd be able to return to her normal life.
But. That's not what happened. Word spread around that Morgan was home again, and shortly thereafter, the stalking started. Instead of making things better, maybe Morgan's summer vacation (and work) made it even more important for the stalker to go after this harder...like has been mentioned in these pages, sometimes, if you manage to avoid/evade your stalker, the next time they see you, it's worse than it was before.
That, to me, is a reasonable timeline of the beginning parts of all this. I firmly believe that this has more than one person doing the stalking, and again, I'm brought to mind of Diane Zamora and David (whatshisname).
With K and B breaking up in midOctober, I would be looking for an escalation of things just before that time, and after that time.
On a different topic, I also want to say that my parents would not have known to do as much as Morgan's parents did, and neither would my brother and sister-in-law. I would...but that's because I was also a victim of the stalker, and I am very interested in true crime and, of course, this board has taught me sooooo much about criminals and their twisted thinking that I can take better steps in protecting myself.
But my parents would not even have thought about meeting my car, let alone getting motion detectors. God bless them, they would not have thought of that at all.
If we are to be critical of the situation and the steps that Toni and Steve Ingram took, at least they did something. We don't know if they had a ton of money - fencing, CCTVs, alarm systems, and on and on take money. We do know they leased the property, and that it is an HOA area, and that itself would put some things out of reach for a leasee. Even if the property owner was amenable to it, the HOA may not have been...and it would have taken time - in some instances, perhaps a few months - before the HOA would approve something.
And, if, as LE had suggested, the Ingrams took a low profile on this, they wouldn't want to go to the HOA anyway.
We are very quick to criticize, and say we'd do things differently. And we might indeed do things differently. But I'd venture to say that we've followed true crime long enough to know some of the unwritten rules, have seen things that taught us how to be better at protecting ourselves, and have learned from others mistake. I doubt strongly that the Ingrams read about and learn from true crime websites and cases like we do...and thus, they are at a disadvantage to begin with.
All of this is, as all my other posts are (and will be), my own opinion, my own observations, and my own conclusions. I just think that we need to be a bit more aware of where the Ingrams are coming from, and be gentle with them regarding what we would have done differently. I see the parents doing their best, in a very alien situation, to protect their daughter...and to read Toni's guilt in each and every post, her self-doubt, her regret, and her love for her daughter...well, I think we need to be more gentle with her...and with ourselves, too.
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