I think that JL was a mark from day one just as KM was for CA from day one. It is no coincidence that brother and sister both started dating their respectives in approximately the same timeframe. JL is nothing like any guy that Wendi would ever give the time of day to. He had very little money, lived in a self-described really crappy basement apartment that was so abysmal that they didn’t even ever spend any time there, drove a 10 year-old Nissan, he looked just like her ex who she absolutely despised (& confessed to never having any passion for), was not Jewish, and his background did not have the pedigree of the kind of guy that Wendi generally was with. We are talking from her and her snobby family‘s perspective, not from anyone else’s perspective. That also makes perfect sense in fitting into the fact that her family gave him short shrift and were completely uninterested in him. Because they knew.
Moreover, I think other men were her real boyfriends during those months. He was always the #2 guy. I think her playing him was a win – win for her – she tells him that CA looked into hiring a hitman, hoping that he would jump on board. If Jeff did the murder because he was that crazy in love with her, that would alleviate her family from the whole plan in having to be involved. If he didn’t jump on board with whacking Dan, then she had her Plan B of setting him up as a suspect.
She was away for those weeks in South FL with her family, putting the finishing touches on planning this whole thing. She returns to Tally still stringing him along, & tells him she is locked out of her house. They have a date outside her house. No doubt she has the excuse to make sure he can’t come in the house because she is already packing. She pulls the rug out from under him just a few hours later after the yoga, which they met at. He did not pick her up so again he was kept away from the house. Then she dumps him all to have the impact she wanted plus give her the rest of the week away from him. He read her well. She also wanted it to be so that he would be jealous and upset enough after jerking him around from acting lovey dovey earlier to dumping him in a few hours so that she could point the finger at him as a suspect. She wound up the useful idiot, Jane, saying how jealous he is earlier in the week (with supposed laryngitis) & suggested calling Jane while at the police station. It’s Jane who suggests JL, just as WA intended. Again, JL was a win-win either way for her. Just like she waited for Dan to almost be in front of a crowd to speak when she called to tell him she was leaving him.
Yes, the original rental car was black in June (again another out of town trip Jeff was taking “coincidentally”) and all of that, but it is far too coincidental that they (KM & CA I believe) picked a car that, at a distance, looked like his. He would be leaving at a time similar to when the murder was to take place. In terms of explaining any inconsistencies, I think it is very simply that he might have expressed “vague “plans in his initial interview, where he had to defend himself to show he was not the suspect, but that did not mean that he did not express any more detail of plans directly to Wendi earlier that week. I believe he came directly from driving home into the police station so he had no chance to collect his thoughts. In other words, on the issue of the trip possibly being Fri or Sat, if he left on Friday, then he would leave around 11 so he had enough time to drive and get close to his destination. I don’t think one negates the other.
I also don’t make much of the fact that he had more clarity only a few days later. He had a chance to come home, speak to all of his close friends with whom he had discussed all of this, and started putting things together. We all have done that. In hindsight, all of a sudden the picture becomes much clearer than you realized earlier. I think that is exactly what happened when he went back and spoke to LE again the second time realizing all of these things and starting to put them into place. He is very intelligent & intuitive. He put all of that together quite quickly just as Tamara D did. I also think, with time, he realized that relationship was never real. That she had him pegged as a patsy from the start. She used him & I don’t think it would be unusual to not realize that immediately. After conversations with friends and family discussing what you said to them, putting it all together and thinking about it. He is telling the truth.
