Suspect vehicle is a mid to full size, older model pick-up truck, medium to dark blue (faded) in color, with pipes and/or ladders in back, rectangular side mirrors, trailer hitch with wires hanging, and silver bumber in back (not chrome).
I was rereading some of the information when the bolded phrase jumped out at me.
The wires are for connecting a trailer's brake lights to the truck's eletrical system, so the brake lights go on at the same time. Some hitches have a nice plugin, but others just have wires that can be connected to similar wires on the trailer. In either case, the wires aren't usually left hanging; they get tucked away while the truck's being driven alone. Hanging wires would usually indicate a truck that normally pulls a trailer.
In Bern's videos, I noticed several glimpses into the orange groves where there were parked trailers -- one had a porta-potty, another looked like some kind of maintenance equipment, maybe? That's not counting the big trailers full of oranges.
If the orange grove had been recently picked, I wonder whether the truck might have been picking up one of those trailers. It would have made a really good place to hide a body for a while.
Great observations, Carbuff. My Dad's fancy travel trailer had a plug that contained all the wires ... and then the hitch plate had a matching receptacle to plug into. When not in use, the plug (or rather its cord) retracted into the trailer.
While reading your post, it came to me that if the suspect vehicle did usually haul a trailer, that is probably a reason that it wasn't sighted again, despite there being a pretty good description of it. When a truck is towing something, a lot of the truck is obscured when viewed at most angles. Certainly the rear plates, the hitch, the wires, and the tailgate would not be visible to anyone except those who walked up to it while it was parked. And as a matter of normal human behavior, people observing probably pay a lot more attention to the 'something being towed' than the truck doing the towing.
Thanks for pointing this out, Carbuff.
I have wondered whether the pipes or ladders were just in the bed of the truck, or whether they might have been parts of what my Dad called a rack. Dad made his own, but some people buy them for trucks custom-made. A rack is a block and tackle type of affair that is used to drag something heavy into the truck. Usually it's something like a dirt bike, and there are slant boards to lean up against the lowered tailgate. A hook attaches to the object being dragged, and a system of ropes and pulleys does the dragging while the person cranks. I think some of the fancier ones can be motorized. They are very common in my area, and a lot of businesses use them, such as those that haul 'honey buckets' and other large items that don't require a flatbed.
A lot of the homemade ones are created with pipes.
If the suspect vehicle was used to haul a lot of objects in the bed, that too would obscure a lot of the truck from witnesses, and people would likely be more interested in the load than in the truck itself.
The rack is just a speculation, but I think Carbuff is on the mark about the truck having been routinely used to tow something.
