Jessica Ridgeway is the first case that comes to mind. Kudos to LE in that little girl's case. Without them releasing most everything they had, her killer might still be out and among us. The wooden cross necklace could have been kept a secret...but they put it on the line and asked the public for help in identifying it. Lo and behold, the killer's own mom called and turned him in.
This was, in my mind, a very significant detail in Jessica's case. Many of the details were kept secret up until the case went to trial, but with the cross it was significant because it had been placed inside little Jessica's body. I may be hard pressed to find the links now, but there were 2 things that spoke volumes to profilers. One was the cross and the other was the backpack and it's contents/ placement. The contents of the back pack were not revealed to the public at all but it contained her urine soaked clothes and her glasses., not her jacket. These facts indicated that Jessica was no longer alive but LE kept that information to themselves and only revealed the location of it. At the time LE had updated her information to say for the public not to focus on what she was wearing but rather the gap in her teeth. I remember thinking at the time that was significant but I didn't know why. The DNA on/in it matched the DNA of the previous assault and LE did not make that known.
The cross, however spoke of someone who was making a statement - with it, he not only defiled his victim, but he also defiled the very symbol of his phony Christianity. Both of those actions on the part of Austin Sigg were an attempt to taunt Law Enforcement because he thought he was smarter.
IMO LE is very good at determining what details will hurt and what details will harm the case. The uniqueness of that cross made it necessary to ask the public and I remember a Christian website that I frequent had posted the pictures asking all Christians if they recognized it. When I Google searched the images I discovered It was related to Jessica.
IMO the back pack discovery was made public because it was a citizen who discovered it but they released no details about it.
In Holly's case, IMO, we only heard about the skull because it was 2 citizens who discovered it. We still do not know what evidence was discovered in the searches that was so convincing to the Bobo family to finally accept that Holly was deceased and to LE that they were confident enough to bring M-1 charges without a body. Whether it was the soil with evidence of decomp, or SA knew she had been buried but did not know she was moved later, or blood evidence, but there is more that LE has not revealed and I feel that is designed to not taint the jury pool.
In Jessica's case, at trial when affidavits were released, the tower dumps and subsequent affidavits revealed the suspect's pings at the different crime scenes, the DNA was something that shocked him because he thought he took care of that. And the cross, well Austin Sigg was faced with a mountain of evidence and had no choice but a guilty plea or a no-lo.
I believe that we will see similar mountains of evidence in the cases involving Holly but there just were not any details that the public could have helped with.
ETA I can still find some links but most are no longer active.
http://extras.mnginteractive.com/li...tin_sigg_arrest_affidavit_first_two_pages.pdf
http://murderpedia.org/male.S/images/sigg-austin/austin-sigg-arrest-affidavit.pdf
http://murderpedia.org/male.S/images/sigg-austin/austin-sigg-search-warrant.pdf
:cow: