IA IA - Elizabeth Collins, 8, & Lyric Cook, 10, Evansdale, 13 July 2012 - #27

[otto]

This is Tammy's version of what happened:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1207/19/ng.01.html

BROUSSEAU: OK. So then we watched the investigators put the crime scene tape up. They were down there for a very long time. I would say approximately three hours, maybe more, you know, doing their investigation.

And we went back around to the southeast side of the lake, where you can actually -- there is an old, like, sewer building. There`s an old garage that sits on this chunk of land that you can actually very easily go down a few blocks and access the back of the lake area from -- from that point you can.

SBM

But what I`m saying is, so I -- after the tape came down, I went back in that area and I started doing my own investigation, and looking around and seeing what I could see. And I could so feel that somebody had come down here, had been watching the girls for quite some time -- whether it even started as they left Heather and Mom`s place -- they`d been following them and watching them, seen them come down here.

Anyway -- and it was a very hot, lazy Friday. There wasn`t many people out. I kind of looked around to see because after where the bikes were dropped on the bike trail, there`s about 400 yards of forest, and then that grassy area where I`m telling you that somebody could easily access the bike trail from, park their car along that grassy forest and got out and had a knife or whatever it was, and said to the girls, you know, Get in this vehicle right now or it`s over with for you.


Unless one is to assume Tammy is lying, this is her words as to what happened the night they found the bikes.

She's all over the place in what she's saying.

We know from media reports that crime scene tape was put up in the area where the bikes were found and that more tape was put up on Tuesday.

 

[threecrazykids]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Here is an article from The Gazette (updated 14 July 2012 @ 7:38 am) that has Kent Smock saying the girls were last seen at about 12:30 pm. Wylma said she last saw the girls about 12:15 pm. The surveillance video didn't come out until July 25th.



http://thegazette.com/2012/07/14/evansdale-police-search-for-two-missing-girls/


"Missing Iowa Cousins: Surveillance Video of Elizabeth Collins and Lyric Cook Discovered"
http://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-io...deo-elizabeth-collins-lyric/story?id=16850676

Yet on this transcript on July 17th Grandma STILL says the girls left at 11:30 and "never came back".

And so it was at 11:30, they asked me if they could go for a short bike ride, and I said yes.And they`ve done this millions of times. And they`ve never, never went that far. I could go outside and yell their names, and they would eventually hear me.

And this day, they just didn`t come back. SBM

She never mentions in this interview (or any time for that matter that I've seen) that SHE herself states SHE saw them after 11:30.

I believe the VIDEO is what captured them still in the vicinity of the house at around 12:15ish (whatever time you choose to believe the video timestamp to be).

If someone could provide me a link where Grandma herself states something along the lines of "I saw them outside still riding at 12:15" I would love to bookmark it as I don't have it.

 

[Squeeze]

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?st...79586258819775.56489.279285502183184&__user=0

Speaking of the trailer court near 7 Bridges...

Sorry the link didn't work. Cedar Valley Mugshots. M. E. Stoeckmann. Updated info, not sure if he recently moved there or what.

 

[threecrazykids]

I think one huge misunderstanding/disagreement here is that some of us believe that Maiden Lane and the wooded area comes into play. Others don't.

I think the only way that area couldn't have come into play would be that these girls walked willingly or were taken to a vehicle in the parking lot OR that the girls themselves were NEVER at the lake.

 

[Bootsctr]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Here is an article from The Gazette (updated 14 July 2012 @ 7:38 am) that has Kent Smock saying the girls were last seen at about 12:30 pm. Wylma said she last saw the girls about 12:15 pm. The surveillance video didn't come out until July 25th.



http://thegazette.com/2012/07/14/evansdale-police-search-for-two-missing-girls/


"Missing Iowa Cousins: Surveillance Video of Elizabeth Collins and Lyric Cook Discovered"
http://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-io...deo-elizabeth-collins-lyric/story?id=16850676

Can't find any links now, but it seems the headline at the time was the surveillance video confirmed what time the grandmother said she last saw the girls. The way I read it at the time was that the grandmother was not able to give LE a definite time she last saw the girls.... It seems it was reported as early as 11:30 at one point that she had last seen the girls. Guess I need to search the JVM scripts.

 

[Bootsctr]

Yet on this transcript on July 17th Grandma STILL says the girls left at 11:30 and "never came back".

And so it was at 11:30, they asked me if they could go for a short bike ride, and I said yes.And they`ve done this millions of times. And they`ve never, never went that far. I could go outside and yell their names, and they would eventually hear me.

And this day, they just didn`t come back. SBM

She never mentions in this interview (or any time for that matter that I've seen) that SHE herself states SHE saw them after 11:30.

I believe the VIDEO is what captured them still in the vicinity of the house at around 12:15ish (whatever time you choose to believe the video timestamp to be).

If someone could provide me a link where Grandma herself states something along the lines of "I saw them outside still riding at 12:15" I would love to bookmark it as I don't have it.

Thank you! I knew I read and heard Grandma was never really positive when she last saw the girls. It was only when the surveillance video surfaced that LE announced the last confirmed sighting of the girls.

 

[otto]

So what you're saying is you are choosing to believe media reports over family accounts of what happened. Why wouldn't you believe the family? They aren't suspects and have been cleared by LE, correct?

Tammy claims that the treed area next to Meyers Lake is 400 acres, so yes, I'll go with what the media has published.

 

[nursebeeme]

folks: do NOT discuss other members. That is a :nono:

Also: all this talk about family members scent being by the lake and then going on to discuss it further gets dangerously close to speculation on family members. You all need to please review the rules on family members discussion that has been bumped up here ad nauseum.

This is the last time I am going to post a warning about family members. The next time I see this going on it could result in a loss of posting privileges.

 

[Bootsctr]

Sorry the link didn't work. Cedar Gslley Mugshots. M. E. Stoeckmann. Updated info, not sure if he recently moved there or what.

Interesting! He's a big guy! 6'3", 220 pounds. His info was updated 01/18/13. First conviction in Minnesota and second in Wisconsin. Now he's in Iowa. Curious as to why they don't give the victim's age and sex on the second offense.

 

[Bootsctr]

Sorry the link didn't work. Cedar Gslley Mugshots. M. E. Stoeckmann. Updated info, not sure if he recently moved there or what.

Holy smokes~! There are 4 more of them at the same address. . . That really hits home!!!

 

[Squeeze]

Three hours does not seem like a long time to cordone off an area where a possible abduction happened. Seems like LE would have least wanted everyone kept away for 24 hours. Even longer than 24 hours. I just watched a show on Investigation Discovery called Disappeared. The episode was "The House is Gone" and it is about 2 girls that went missing, Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible from Welch, Oklahoma in 1999. The girls had a sleepover. The mother of Lauria received a phone call the next morning at work telling her the Freeman house had burned. Her parents went to the scene. They were told by LE that only one body had been recovered, Kathy Freeman.. 24 hours later LE released the scene and the Bibles returned to search through what was left of the burned trailer and see if they could find any evidence of what happened to their daughter and they found a second body that LE had missed. It was Ashley's father, Danny Freeman.

Anyway, back to Lyric and Elizabeth, :banghead: It seems as if we are stone-walled...

That is crazy!!!

 

[Squeeze]

I have read that crime scene tape was added on Friday evening and that it was added Saturday morning ... but never that it was put up for only 3 hours. On Tuesday, more of Meyers Lake was taped off.

"Authorities taped off a larger section around the shoreline of Meyers Lake this morning, stepping up search efforts in the area around the lake for any sign of the two girls who disappeared Friday afternoon in Evansdale.

Earlier authorities had only marked off sections of the biking and hiking trail around the lake, where bicycles belonging to Elizabeth Collins, 8, and Lyric Cook-Morrissey, 10, and a purse were discovered Friday. The two girls haven’t been spotted since then, leading to massive search efforts through the weekend and into this week."

http://wcfcourier.com/news/evansdal...cle_18411a90-cd32-11e1-a656-0019bb2963f4.html

Like ive mentioned before, I rode on the trail Saturday, around noon or so and then later that evening with my daughter . It was not taped off.

 

[Considering]

Thank you! I knew I read and heard Grandma was never really positive when she last saw the girls. It was only when the surveillance video surfaced that LE announced the last confirmed sighting of the girls.

According to this media account last updated on July 16 2012, grandma last the girls at 12:15 pm.

Posted: July 13, 2012 8:20 PM EDT
Updated: July 16, 2012 7:54 PM EDT
"8-year-old Elizabeth Collins and 10-year-old Lyric Cook were last seen Friday afternoon by their grandmother around 12:15."

http://www.kwwl.com/story/19023342/evansdale-police-searching-for-two-missing-girls


July 25,2012:
"Missing Iowa Cousins: Surveillance Video of Elizabeth Collins and Lyric Cook Discovered"

http://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-io...deo-elizabeth-collins-lyric/story?id=16850676

 

[cluciano63]

FBI has joined in other cases early, before LE knows what they actually have. I know they were on Kyron's case right away, even while they were searching the woods near the school in case he had wandered. They just have more resources and manpower to add. Where I live, in NM, they join in on all sorts of things that might not be "normal" FBI activities.

 

[GrainneDhu]

So...using your expertise, is it a fair assumption that anyone who LE walked by the dogs to "eliminate" their scent from the girls scent trail at the lake would be "elimintated" as a "suspect" (only word I can think of) as well?:waitasec:

I hope I'm asking that right. :blushing:

Nope, just because family members were used to eliminate possible contamination scents from the scent articles doesn't mean they are cleared. Those dogs were asked to track one specific human being each; one dog was assigned to Elizabeth, the other to Lyric.

All LE wanted to know was "were these two girls at this location and did they move away from this location?" So far as the dogs are concerned, it doesn't matter whether anyone was compelling the girls to move, all that mattered was whether each girl had been there and moved.

The basis of scent dog training is figuring out how to ask the dog a yes/no question in the given situation. Add in too many clauses and the dogs get confused and cannot give a clear answer.

Actually, that works pretty much the same with humans! Watching parts of trials, I've seen lawyers ask questions that have so many parts and sub-parts to the parts that if I were the witness, I'd just sit there with my mouth hanging open.

Wouldn't it make sense (as we know family is typically first to be investigated in missing child cases) to take each one of the family members scents and have the dogs track for their scent as well around the water/Maiden Lane area?

None of the family members should have had scents that went towards the water or to Maiden Lane area PRIOR to the bikes being found.

I could be wrong on my dates, but I don't believe the dogs were brought in until well after we heard Tammy and crew say they had "done their own investigation" and had traipsed all over those woods. Also, Dan reportedly had brought his quad in with Dillon and was searching back there as well.

Wouldn't LE have KNOWN not to let family go back there until AFTER the dogs had been sent to check for scents of the family in the area after the bikes were found there?

I hope I'm making sense in what I'm asking.

At first, LE clearly thought this was a case of straying children. That makes sense because when children disappear, they are thousands of times more likely to have strayed of their own accord than they are to have been abducted.

In cases of straying children, it is imperative to find them ASAP because they may be injured or trapped in some way. They could have gotten trapped in an old refrigerator or freezer, they could have gotten trapped in the trunk of a car, they could have gone into the lake, they could have been climbing a tree which dumped them both and caused head trauma... there's thousands of purely accidental things that have happened to children that require immediate rescue for the children to survive.

For instance, I will never forget the case from several years ago where three young boys disappeared. LE was called, there was an all out search but they weren't found for over 24 hours. In the trunk of the family car. No one in the family knew that one or more of the children knew how to open the trunk, so they didn't think of the trunk as a place to look. Sadly, it was high summer and those little boys were dead.

Sure, with the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to see that LE "should have" cordoned off the entire lake area immediately and processed the whole area as an abduction scene. But all LE can do in such a situation is play the odds. The statistics say that it was thousands of times more likely for the girls to have strayed than for them to have been abducted. So LE made the smart decision with the information they had at the time and treated the situation as strayed and possibly endangered children. That meant putting as many adult feet on the ground in the area as possible.

 

[GrainneDhu]

It's important to remember that Iowa is not LA or even Cleveland. I have no numbers to back this up, but I would guess that all the sworn LE officers in Black Hawk County, at the city and county levels, would not be enough to adequately staff a good sized LAPD division. Firefighters, professional or volunteer, reserve sheriff's deputies, volunteers from the community, everyone is going to need to take a hand if the land that needs to be searched is going to get searched.

In fact, that is how Iowa works. There's only 3 million Iowans spread out over a lot more ground than, say, NYC. If Iowans weren't willing to volunteer and help out, well, Iowa would not succeed as a state.

For instance, before I became disabled to the point of being homebound, I attended events and volunteered at the local elementary school. There were plenty of adults who did not have children there that volunteered; we know that children and the elementary school are important and in order to give our future the best chance, people need to step up and volunteer.

If a farmer is injured, all the neighbours pitch in to do chores, feed the family and give whatever support they need. If it's planting or harvest time (both of which are high risk times for catastrophic injuries), the neighbours get the planting or harvesting done.

That's just the way Iowa is.

It never occurred to this lifelong Iowan that firefighters wouldn't take part in SAR efforts because in Iowa, that is one of the things they do. Not just in small towns like Evansdale but also in cities like Iowa City (population 70K, which makes it the fifth largest city in Iowa). Someone goes missing and the fire department (all paid in Iowa City) are out there with everyone else, helping to look.

 

[Considering]

Yet on this transcript on July 17th Grandma STILL says the girls left at 11:30 and "never came back".

And so it was at 11:30, they asked me if they could go for a short bike ride, and I said yes.And they`ve done this millions of times. And they`ve never, never went that far. I could go outside and yell their names, and they would eventually hear me.

And this day, they just didn`t come back. SBM

She never mentions in this interview (or any time for that matter that I've seen) that SHE herself states SHE saw them after 11:30.

I believe the VIDEO is what captured them still in the vicinity of the house at around 12:15ish (whatever time you choose to believe the video timestamp to be).

If someone could provide me a link where Grandma herself states something along the lines of "I saw them outside still riding at 12:15" I would love to bookmark it as I don't have it.

Here's a quote from Rick Abben the day after the girls disappeared. It isn't a video of Wylma herself saying it, but I'll take Abben's word for it that she did.

"Rick Abben, chief deputy sheriff for Black Hawk County, said the girls were last seen by their grandmother when the two left her Evansdale home at about 12:15 p.m. Friday to ride their bicycles."

http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/...-missing-eastern-iowa-girls-continues/article

 

[GrainneDhu]

I'm behaving I just want Gran's expertise on how the scene was handled immediately following the discovery of the bikes.

There is a video I've linked where Dan and Misty were interviewed immediately following the dogs being brought in - describing what was done and you also see footage of the FBI walking the family by the dogs.

Search Continues for Two Missing Girls - YouTube

I just want her expertise to tell us what it appears they are doing and tell us what her opinion is:

If the dogs were told "ignore this scent" when they were instructed to search the water and also the wooded area, we would know that the family was eliminated as what they were searching for.
In the same sense...if they later HAD found reason to check the area for a family's scent couldn't it have been compromised by the family being allowed in the wooded area to do their own searching?

We know they aren't suspects. Naturally family is looked at first in these types of cases, so I'm just wondering if the family being allowed to search and be in the area could have interfered with their scent IF the FBI decided to later bring the dogs in to check for any family members scent.

I hope that is ok to ask.lease:

At the time, LE was making a smart decision in relationship to the statistics. The statistics say that children are thousands of times more likely to stray than they are to be abducted. Since strayed children are usually endangered, it makes sense to deploy full force to try to find those kids.

The TV clip was interesting. The light conditions weren't great but the one good shot of the Bloodhound looks to me like a Bloodhound on a scent: head down, tail held straight out and slightly raised at the tip, moving in a steady manner that suggests to me that the dog found a good scent. I'm not completely sure they were transmitting sound at the same time but if they were, the dog was silent which in a Bloodhound indicates he's on a good track. If he had been casting for scent, he would have been moving slower and not in a straight line like that. He probably would have been whining or even baying with frustration as he looked for the scent (Bloodhounds are like that). That shot was definitely not a Bloodhound going to the (former) lake shore and stopping; that dog was moving along parallel to the lake shore.

During really hot, humid weather in Iowa, there's a kind of magic window for scent that starts near sunset and stays open for maybe two hours. Whatever wind there is tends to lessen or stop, the air cools and scent that was diffusing up into the air drops back to the ground. A track that was difficult to follow during the afternoon suddenly becomes easy to follow. It looks to me like they were working the dogs during that magic window of time.

Please keep in mind that I don't know that particular dog and individual dogs can have quirks and mannerisms that would make the above false. Only that particular dog's handler would know for sure.

I hadn't seen that clip before, thank you. It really makes me think that the dogs did find a track that moved away from where the bicycles were found.

 

[GrainneDhu]

Another way to say it, removing the family and just asking in generalities:

Let's say that Al Bundy abducts a girl on a jogging trail on May 13. Al Bundy then joins in the search for the girl, and walks that same trail that he abducted them from before search dogs are brought in. Al Bundy is one of LE's top suspects. They'd like to know if he was at the scene of the crime. But the scene was not sealed off immediately. Al dropped his hair and skin during his "search." Search dogs were not brought in until May 15 -- 2 whole days later. Since Al had already returned there, between the abduction and when the scent dogs were brought in -- doesn't that ruin LE's ability to pin the crime on him? (At least via scent dogs and trace DNA)

This is a question about scent dogs and crime scene contamination -- NOT any particular suspect.

Yes.

However, in that case, I think LE made the only ethical decision possible: find the girl. I assume that Al wasn't stupid enough to do it in front of witnesses or to leave a note saying "I abducted her and you'll never catch me, ha ha ha." What probably happened was that someone who knew the jogger and was expecting her to be somewhere by a certain time became concerned when she did not show up. With a missing jogger, the first question has to be if the jogger fell and is lying unconscious somewhere in urgent need of medical attention. Because that is actually more common than an abduction.

While it would be nice to solve every single crime, the first concern has to be for the wellbeing of the victim of whatever bad thing happened to make that victim disappear. It is more important to find the victim than to solve a possible crime.

If we, as a society, thought it was more important to solve crimes than to find victims, we wouldn't bother with SAR dogs at all. We'd just beef up LE and close off every possible crime scene without regard to the well being of the victim. We'd think it was okay if a jogger who fell and hit her head was found dead 30 feet off trail after a week of painstaking crime scene processing, when the evidence shows that if she had been found in the first 3 days she would probably have survived.

But we, as a society, don't think that way. Any LE agency that delayed finding an injured victim because they wanted to cordon off a potential crime scene would get such strong disapproval that everyone in the administrative hierarchy above sergeant would probably have to resign in shame.

 

[GrainneDhu]

:waitasec:

Hmmm...that doesn't make sense to me. Then why would they need to "eliminate" the family's scent per the video I posted?

A scent trail I would think could be used to identify someone in the area or not. If Uncle Fred says he's never been to the trail nor had he ever even been to the lake I would think scent dogs could prove otherwise.

It may not be enough to convict on it's own, but it could certainly show he was there.

Hopefully our expert can explain how it works.

The dogs were being used to try to follow Elizabeth and Lyric's movements only. Not anyone else in the world, only Elizabeth and Lyric. So anyone who may have touched the scent articles provided by each family for the dog had to be ruled out for the dogs because the dog's mission was to follow Elizabeth and Lyric.

If there were no other evidence placing Uncle Fred at the lake, I doubt the scent dog evidence would be allowed into trial. Scent dogs can provide probable cause but are not allowed to be used to convict on their own.

So, say Lucrezia Borgia says she doesn't know where on earth her boyfriend is, she hasn't seen him in a year. LE walks a trained HRD dog around her extensive gardens and the dog indicates strongly on one bed of flowers. That gives LE probable cause to dig Lucrezia's flower bed up and discover the corpse of her boyfriend.

Uh oh, Lucrezia is in big trouble. She's charged and at trial, one anticipated issue is that her lawyers will say that those mean ol' policemen just didn't like Lucrezia because she has been abandoned by so many boyfriends who died. Her defence attorneys are anticipated to argue that the police had no reason to dig up Lucrezia's flower bed.

That is where the scent dog evidence is brought into trial: to prove that the flower bed wasn't dug up simply because the police don't like poor little Lucrezia but because they had good reason to think they would find a body in there.