This is simply my own understanding of things, so please take it with a grain of salt.
Early on in this case, law enforcement appeared to believe that Jennifer most likely went to a neighborhood near where she lived to buy drugs or maybe even to prostitute her body. (I'm not sure how far they took it).
I'm not kidding, though. There was even a theory going around that Jennifer went out to buy drugs in that neighborhood and got accosted as she tried to walk home--and was too drugged out to defend herself. It was so cruel, it was horrendous.
Mr. and Mrs. Kesse were outraged, and who can blame them? It was this kind of action from law enforcement 12 years ago that became the catalyst for the broken-down relationship that exists between the two sides today.
I believe law enforcement has apologized, but apologies are just words, you know? They still don't have their daughter and maybe it really is due to all the time LE spent chasing down prostitutes and rooting through drug infested neighborhoods.
The Kesses tried to tell them Jennifer would never go to those neighborhoods. She was informed and she was aware. She was straight and clean. She didn't go to those places. But their response was that sometimes people don't know their kids.
Mr. Kesse even got a sample of Jennifer's hair from her hair brush, I think, and had it analyzed on his own dime. It came back clean--just as he had said all along it would. But he was desperate to show them some evidence that they might believe since they weren't listening to him and Joyce.
Now, this will make everyone angry with me--but in law enforcement's defense, I believe they had supporting pings from Jennifer's cell phone that placed her in that area. I may go as high as a 75% chance that in most cases law enforcement would be right to go with the pings--but it was not right in Jennifer's case.
If the phone was pinging in that area, then Jennifer was already abducted and not there on her own free-will; or someone had separated Jennifer from her cell phone--which was a lifeline to her--and was deliberately and cleverly setting the stage to mislead law enforcement.
As you get more familiar with the case, you will see that the timeline from Jennifer's last landline phone call to when her cell phone must begin to ping is so tight that it is unfathomable how quickly Jennifer's abduction must have taken place.
Honestly, it doesn't even make sense to me.
I'll stop now before I write you one of my novella's.