There is a detail I caught in the police chief's press conference, he said he did not believe Gidding's body had been there during the initial stage of the search. That leads me to believe that someone close by the scene was keeping the body, because they would have only had a very short window of time to 1) recognize that police were at Gidding's residence 2) dump the remains hastily and at the complex.
I don't mean to sound like a sensationalist, and I could be wrong as the facts on this case are extremely sparse, but I believe that if it is indeed the case that the remains found were dumped essentially during the search in a hasty fashion, and if Giddings had been dead several days already before her remains were placed on the side of the complex, there is a chance that cannibalism and/or necrophilia are involved here.
I have read several of you suggest that the blatant dumping of her torso was an act meant to taunt police. Possibly. But in cases where bodies are dismembered for reasons of concealment/easy transport, the offender is usually trying to AVOID discovery of the body, hence the dismemberment.
On the other hand, when bodies are dismembered and not dumped remotely or otherwise well hidden, cannibalism and/or necrophilia are often the driving motive behind the crime.
Imagine this scenario for a moment: Giddings is killed sometime soon after the email was sent, within a 24 hour period. She is kept, dismembered, by someone close by to her residence. This person waits to see how long it will take before she is reported missing, but once the search begins they realize quickly they must get the body out of their possession in case their residence is searched. We know the body could not have been there since Saturday, or even much longer than a few hours without being spotted [and the police chief believes it was NOT there initially when people began looking for her].
So, it is reasonable to conclude that the body was quickly discarded once the search heated up.
Why was the body being kept until that point?
Why dismember the body just to dump it in so obvious a location?
Where are the limbs not with the body?
Why hide the limbs so well but make the torso so obvious to searchers?
It is *possible* given the balance of the evidence, that the limbs have been used, processed in some way. The killer is obviously not concerned with hiding the body or obscuring her identity, as dumping her torso right by her residence while she is missing is no way to go about concealing the identity of the body.
So again, why go through the trouble of hiding the limbs?
Perhaps they weren't hidden, perhaps they were consumed to some extent.
Either that, or this is the work of someone attempting to play some kind of sick scavenger hunt with police. That is also possible...
I believe one possible reason that police are being so tight-lipped about this case is that they too believe this to be an exceptionally disturbing crime and would not want the public to know there had been a "Dahmer-esque" or "Chase-esque" murder committed without having a solid and confirmed suspect in custody first. Imagine the mass hysteria. They haven't officially confirmed the body was dismembered, it was leaked to the media, but all subsequent details have been tightly controlled.
We don't know what state the remains were in besides having been dismembered, more than limbs and head could be missing [like internal organs, etc.]...
As for McDaniel, his arrest perplexes me. Police say the burglaries took place up to 2-3 years ago, and that he admitted to the initial burglary upon questioning after a search of his apartment. They said the stolen items were of a personal nature, not of monetary value.
What could they have found in his apartment that they would have automatically known did not belong to him and were the result of burglary?
Typically fetishists who collect, say, women's underwear, are compulsive about labeling the name of their target and the date of their theft. So far that's the only thing I can think of that would explain how they put a law student in the position of confessing to burglary from a couple years ago during a cursory search of his apartment. What do you guys think?
I don't know if he's the killer, they have turned his apartment upside down by now I'm sure along with the vacant apartment, but he may have dismembered her at some other site and brought her back to the house in a tidy fashion.
I did hear they were removing the bathtub from her apartment, likely testing it for blood beneath the surfaces.
By the way, I'm a long time lurker, this forum is full of great minds and I'm happy to finally have joined because I want to tell you what great work you all do!
