Found Deceased IA - Mollie Tibbetts, 20, Poweshiek County, 19 Jul 2018 #12

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Boyfriend of missing Iowa college student cleared as suspect

"One avenue of thought is that if it wasn't a struggle, and we have found no signs of a struggle, then maybe it was someone she was familiar with," Mortvedt said. "But then the other avenue of thought is it could have been a stranger who simply overpowered her or tricked her. We just have very little to go on."

(Mitch Mortvedt is the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation spokesman.)
Yikes. This is troubling, moo..Chance of stranger abduction and little to go on. That’s about the worst news we can get imo.

Todd Koehlhepp or whatever is name is suddenly came to mind. As did Jeffrey Willis when he abducted RB (and of course JH)...maybe someone like BSL who followed Mickey S...or as mentioned JLM....this is bad bc some really bad people are coming to mind right now.
 
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Been lurking here and following this case for a while. I noticed some confusion about Snapchat and just wanted to clarify some things about it, as I use Snapchat frequently.


I haven't read anywhere that Mollie had been using Snap Map, but if a potential perp was friends with her on Snapchat, he/she could theoretically stalk them if she had the service activated. I would hope that LE has investigated ALL of her friends on Snapchat. Usually, to be someone's Snapchat friend means you know them personally to some degree, but recently I have noticed the application has rolled out a new "Quick Add" feature which allows you to add mutual friends or other people whose phone number is not in your contacts (Snapchat accounts are usually linked to a person's phone number). Speaking from experience, I have multiple Snapchat friends who I am not very close with at all, but we added each other through the Quick Add feature. This is Snapchat's way of broadening its social media image. Now, one important note: When someone adds you on Snapchat, you have to add them back for them to communicate with you directly and, usually, to see their stories or their location on the map, if enabled. So, you would most likely know, in some capacity, everyone on your Snapchat list, unless you are careless.

Finally, to add a note about the Snapchat message DJ received from her. Usually, Snapchat will say when a message is "received" too. So, for example, I have a message that I "received" 6 hours ago. It doesn't give the exact time, but a rough approximation of when it was sent to me. After 24 hours though, it would just say "received 2 d ago" for 2 days, for example. My point is: the rough time when Mollie sent her last Snapchat message to her boyfriend should be known, and perhaps 10 PM is indeed when it was actually sent as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed your post. Thank you for the education. I have a question -

Mollie is A. Mollie's friend is B. X is mystery third party who connects to B via Quick Add feature or any other way via snapchat.

Could X view things Mollie shared with her friend (B) via Snapchat and Mollie would have no idea X was even able to see anything of hers?

Did that make sense?
 
Correct. He has been named in several MSM articles and has not been cleared by LE.

He has also not been named a POI by LE which means according to the site rules we also should not be running his name through the mud. We have been asked to use initials, and I do wish we could do that for others whom have not been named a POI but also have not been cleared because unfortunately in this case that means we cannot talk about anyone since LE has named zero POI's. On the Rhoden family thread, this is allowed, so maybe if this case goes cold we will get more leniency to do so.
 
I recall in one of the early press conferences, the officer saying something to the effect of Mollie doing something "out of character" and "Getting to know Mollie better" or something to that effect. It made me think that maybe she'd either been romantically involved with somebody other than her BF or possibly been active on a datng site such as Tinder.

In either case I could see a jilted love interest being very upset about her leaving to the Dominican Republic in a few days on a romantic wedding getaway with her BF and contacting her while the BF and roommates were out of town to discuss. She agrees to talk, gets in a car with this person and *poof*...gone
 
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Agreed. I think if data was reporting until it died it would lead to the thought that she may be held alive. Vs. the alternative where I would assume that data would stop reporting sooner.

Data would continue transmitting from the Fitbit to the cellphone via bluetooth until the battery of one of the devices died, or the Fitbit and cellphone were separated more than 30-300 feet (depending on the device).
 
That's exactly what I've been thinking. I read something early on that left me confused, something about investigators thinking that Mollie was alive because of her Fitbit. Unfortunately I was skimming and didn't get a good understanding.

Trying to make sense of it, my guess is that the Fitbit and cell phone were together for a short time after she vanished, that Fitbit data was transmitted via cell phone wifi, and police assumed that meant that Mollie was alive for several hours afterward. My guess is that the last location for the cell phone is in the area of the farm searches.

Exactly! For them to be spending so much time in that specific area it would seem they had some tangible reason to believe they would find something there. More than just a SM tip or rumor.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed your post. Thank you for the education. I have a question -

Mollie is A. Mollie's friend is B. X is mystery third party who connects to B via Quick Add feature or any other way via snapchat.

Could X view things Mollie shared with her friend (B) via Snapchat and Mollie would have no idea X was even able to see anything of hers?

Did that make sense?
NOPE.
 
Correct but, assuming this is a large hog operation slurry pond, it would take a LOT of trucks or a lot of loads with a few trucks and by the time they got it emptied I'd imagine there wouldn't be any evidence left to recover. And they'd need to find an empty, legally permitted slurry pit to transfer it to which would likely also be almost impossible.
We're talking tanker trucks, I have no idea what kind of volume we are talking about. But if LE really thought she was in a pond, they would find a way to recover her. They would call in a haz mat team and have an action plan pretty quickly. In addition, they would likely truck the waste to a site which accepts semi-solid liquids for disposal.

Anyway ... the point is, this is not a mountain LE can't climb!
 
This case has everything that sparks a MSM frenzy - all-American young, pretty, smiling white girl vanishes without a trace in a quaint picture perfect little farm town. Think about some of the characteristics of other cases that have sparked so much interest and many have lots of things in common. Laci Peterson, Elizabeth Smart, Natalee Holloway, Chandra Levy and the list goes on. MT's case has the added intrigue that LE hasn't released anything so everyone is left to speculate and speculate they do.

I am not getting on a soapbox about what's right or wrong about that, just stating historical facts. If MT had been a 50+ divorcee from the Chicago ghetto, there is no way there would be this much press. Right or wrong, that's how it is.

The difference being this is an extremely rare situation for this town and violence in Chicago is now commonplace.
 
F
Yikes. This is troubling, moo..Chance of stranger abduction and little to go on. That’s about the worst news we can get imo.

TOdd Koehlhepp or whatever is name is suddeny came to mind. As did Jeffrey Willis when he abducted RB (and of course JH)...many someone like BSL whofollowed Mickey S...or as mentioned JLM....this is bad bc some really bad people are coming to mind.

I probably should have pointed this out though - that statement/article was from July 27 - a week ago.
 
I remember when Kyron Horman disappeared - the FBI monitored FB - maybe they are doing that? On another note, Mollies' FB is still up and so is her twitter :( Makes me so sad (both are public) reading through her posts.
 
I'm getting the feeling this is the darkish of the quaint small town life. Everyone seems distantly related and thus nobody wants to talk. This is what is happening in the Rhoden family murders, a small town where 7 or 8 members of the same family were murdered on the same night in 3 different locations and two years later there is surprisingly no trail of evidence.

In Brooklyn, we are seeing a lot of the same surnames pop up, the neighbor has the same last name as the girl who is identified as MT's cousin. The sheriff has the same last name as someone who commented on MT's instagram picture when DJ gave her the promise ring that this means they would someday be cousins. The dad's plea about not wanting to say anything because it means someone in your family might be implicated, the mom basically telling the kidnapper all would be well and they could just to take the money and run, the brother saying he is disappointed, all of this suggests to me they know there is a connection to this person and their family.
 
Most modern day Hog/Pig confinements are large barns that are built over a basement of sorts. The basement is the manure pit. Slots in the concrete flooring that the hogs stand on allows the manure to drain into the pit.

A hog manure pit would be the perfect place to dispose of a body. The smell of a decomposing body would be masked by the smell of the hog manure. A dead body weighted with sink to the bottom of the pit and likely never be found, unless the pit was pumped.

Picture of the floor being installed over the manure pit for a hog confinement.

images


JMO

Educational post. How often is a hog "basement" drained? It obviously has to, and can be, drained at some point.
 
We're talking tanker trucks, I have no idea what kind of volume we are talking about. But if LE really thought she was in a pond, they would find a way to recover her. They would call in a haz mat team and have an action plan pretty quickly. In addition, they would likely truck the waste to a site which accepts semi-solid liquids for disposal.

Anyway ... the point is, this is not a mountain LE can't climb!

Have you ever seen one of the big slurry ponds? I think it would take hundreds of tanker loads to empty it. And I'm just guessing here but I'd imagine that a body tossed into one of these cesspools would degrade to nothing faster than it could be recovered. I'm sure it could be attempted but I'm also sure there is a cost/benefit analysis that would have to bear out first before such an undertaking. It would be interesting to research and see if a body has ever been recovered from a hog slurry pit.
 
There's what appears to be a fake facebook page up. Why is it still up? There are recent posts on it too.

I find it odd that the fake FB page wasn't taken down. If it were just a troll and verified to only be a troll, wouldn't FB have removed it immediately? I've seen fake pages get taken down on Facebook in less than a day of being created. Maybe it's still up because LE believes it's the perp and they're using it as a way to communicate with the perp.
 
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