oceanblueeyes
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Snipped by me for space
Your opinions and ideas are usually spot on! I just don't see this as a common theft that escalated into a double murder. It was too organized and planned to have started out as him thinking 'I need money for my habit so need to rob these old people tonight'.
Also, if the perp was on probation, his fingerprints would be on file.
Someone else commented upthread that perhaps Mr. D. saw some illegal transaction taking place at his dock. I doubt this also as Mr. D. would either immediately call the sheriff to report it and the sheriff would have a record of ithe call OR if he saw something and a person came back later, then once news of the murder hit the papers, there would be suspicions from the person in the other boat. Hmmm, guess that could be who called Sills? But they would need to tell on themself as to how they knew what went down.
Just my two cents as to what did not happen. Oh, by the way, pine straw is very hard to put back in place once disturbed! If my water hose scoots it up as I pull the hose along, I cannot get it put back smoothly or perfectly. So, it would be detected immediately if a body was dragged or pulled down the hill.
Ah, you make a good point about him being on probation but he still may have had a bad drug habit (there is always the caught and the uncaught) and needed to steal something in order to feed that drug habit. Especially if his own family had cut his money off recently due to them knowing he would just spend it on drugs.
In fact in my local area that did happen back in the late 80s when a 16 year old murdered both of his wealthy parents as they slept then tried to rape and murder his own sister but she survived. The reason he murdered them they had cut his money supply off. They had already had him in rehab several times. When he committed double homicide he had no criminal record before then. He is in prison for life and will die there.
It wouldn't be a common theft though not if it was being done by someone in the neighborhood that knew the Dermonds.
And I am still very convinced that the killer either lives there or has stayed there quite often and knows that area very well due to familiarity. That is one opinion that has never changed for me the entire time.
I have said time and time again (lol) that people can kill because they want their secret to remain a secret because if exposed it would drastically change their lives as they know and live it. I still think this is the case in this case and it would apply to anyone that knew the Dermonds and anyone who could be identified by them.
We really have no way of knowing if this was premeditated murder or not of Russ. If Shirley was killed next, then yes, that is very premeditated.
This very well may be a plan that was formed after the murders had happened concerning the disposal of the body evidence and that was what had planning to it.
So I am can't rule out that the murder of Russ could have occurred when he caught the suspect in a criminal act and that Shirley was murdered due to being an eye witness to the murder of her husband. At the very beginning I did think theses murders may have happened spontaneously or at least Russ'.
There have been armed robbers caught in the act before by the homeowners and they murdered the homeowners because they wanted no eye witnesses left behind so I simply cant disregard that it may have happened in this case as well. Imo, it is not a far fetched theory by any means especially if the robber knew he could be IDd by S&R.
Really? When we did use pine straw I often smoothed it down or rearranged the pine straw and it looked just like it did before something disturbed it. But on that part I do hope they did find drag marks through the pine straw.
Usually killers don't think of everything and often its something they failed to do or think about that gets them caught.
IMO