Found Deceased IA - Mollie Tibbetts, 20, Poweshiek County, 19 Jul 2018 #13

[ptandj]

I edited my post to say it was quoted but not in quotes. Seriously though, I think we are getting hung up on the word ping. What the agent was saying is electronic data led to the hog farm. Now why would that happen unless the phone or fitbit was there?

Yeah as I said in this post I agree that there's a reason they're spending a lot of time there. I do think accuracy is important though and people need to stop making accusations based on a very small incomplete piece of information.

 

[SuziQ]

Couldn't the person who grabbed her have immediately removed the fitbit and phone and smashed it via car tires or tire iron? In the road, the bed of the truck, or a field? Taken the FB or phone a few miles away in the opposite direction to do this? Or turned the phone completely off to avoid cell tower detection (yes, I just Googled it). He could have done this turn off at any point in time in the first few hours at any location (ie to try to throw off police), smashed it up to smithereens, buried it, hidden it, put it in a fast food drive through courtesy trash can located at Chick fil-A's (for example), divided up the evidence and divided it up. All of this could be done at various times and plac. By "it" I mean the phone and FB. Even a ping is not an address. No kidnapper is going to allow the victim to keep this traceable stuff on them. And they may manipulate the locations and timeline as they choose. So how much info was actually gleaned? Would it take this long to know?

her devices could have been thrown out a vehicle window near the hog farm.

 

[cluciano63]

Almost any theory is possible at this point...least likely being alien abduction, sex trafficking, and hit by car then hidden...jmo.

 

[Alethea]

I was listening to Real Crime Profile (a podcast with former profilers, and a casting director for some reason), and the ex-FBI profiler told a story about anxiety impacting the polygraph results. His brother was taking a polygraph (as part of a background check for employment, I think) and they asked him if he used marijuana, this in the old days when any marijuana usage, ANY usage, was an instant disqualifier. Someone in college once offered him some marijuana and he said no, and he got to thinking about how lucky he was that he said no, otherwise he wouldn't get the job. That made him so nervous that he was flunking the polygraph! Eventually the polygrapher asked what was wrong, brother told the story, and the polygrapher said "well, don't think about that next time I ask the question."

I'm not even sure how that suggestion worked - it's like telling someone not to think about their tongue in their mouth.

Exactly! There's a recognized medical phenomenon, "White Coat Hypertension" when people will register a higher-than-normal blood pressure in clinical settings because it makes them nervous. Your blood pressure is perfectly normal in your day to day life but when you sit there to have it taken it's very high.

 

[PaulR]

Couldn't the person who grabbed her have immediately removed the fitbit and phone and smashed it via car tires or tire iron? In the road, the bed of the truck, or a field? Taken the FB or phone a few miles away in the opposite direction to do this? Or turned the phone completely off to avoid cell tower detection (yes, I just Googled it). He could have done this turn off at any point in time in the first few hours at any location (ie to try to throw off police), smashed it up to smithereens, buried it, hidden it, put it in a fast food drive through courtesy trash can located at Chick fil-A's (for example), divided up the evidence and divided it up. All of this could be done at various times and plac. By "it" I mean the phone and FB. Even a ping is not an address. No kidnapper is going to allow the victim to keep this traceable stuff on them. And they may manipulate the locations and timeline as they choose. So how much info was actually gleaned? Would it take this long to know?

They'd only need to get rid of the cell phone. Wherever that was would be - assuming the Fitbit was actively syncing at that time for some reason - where the Fitbit last appeared to be, since the Fitbit uses the phone's GPS and communication abilities to poll location and send it to the servers.

 

[feralwriter]

That's really an excellent question. Brooklyn does have a medical clinic, Deep River and Guernsey to my knowledge do not. It would make more sense for somebody in WC's rural area to get regular care in Montezuma, but for anything major I'd guess they're all likely to go to either Grinnell or Iowa City.

U Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in Iowa City is known to be the state's main medical center & is nationally recog. in several specialties... People actually move to Iowa City from out of state to establish residency to get lower cost surgery there, etc. And their psychiatry dept. is well known, too. UIowa used to have an extremely low cost program for low income, called UIcare or something, but they got rid of that, I believe, around the time I left 3 years back. Edit: point being from a local's perspective, it's known in Iowa that ppl drive/fly in from all over Iowa to get seen in Iowa City, well-known part of Iowa life.

 

[YiYa]

Hello everyone! Someone posted a while ago about whether we can talk about the call logs posted on the Sheriff’s FB page. I can’t find the post or the response to the question. Can we talk about something we saw logged on the evening of the 18th that seems somewhat interesting? I don’t want to break the rules by referencing a FB page. It is public record

 

[human]

something happens to Mollie. Does the perp turn everyhing off and then ditch the fit bit in the field or does LE follow it along until it is ditched in the field?

I would think the fitbit would be recording Mollie or what would it be doing?

 

[1&2&3]

WS is horrid today so can’t reply to the post I meant to...but i thought only her father asked “to let Mollie go” not LE...

Agree 1,000%!! I just wrote a long post on this fact in the wrong forum. It is in the forum “Where Can I Delete A Post”.

 

[SuziQ]

Yeah as I said in this post I agree that there's a reason they're spending a lot of time there. I do think accuracy is important though and people need to stop making accusations based on a very small incomplete piece of information.

I think it's pretty good info. But it does not explain how the devices got there. And while suspicious does not show WC is resonsible.

 

[otto]

There are a lot of people here who think "some guy" has MT - either "some guy" has her, she's deceased, or it's something less likely (she's wandering through the corn, voluntary disappearance, etc.) I don't find believing that theory suspicious in the least.

That some guy has her is very believable. That she is deceased is also very believable. That she wandered into a corn field and couldn't find her way out is not so believable. She had a cell phone with her and could have called for help if she was lost in a corn field.

 

[crhedBngr]

Anyone know what time the FBI was to meet with W.C.?

 

[PaulR]

I would think the fitbit would be recording Mollie or what would it be doing?

If you're asking what if the Fitbit was out of range of the cell phone - it would keep on recording heart rate and steps until the battery died or it was turned off/destroyed/etc. As far as we know, the Fitbit has not been recovered.

 

[agilbe]

I don’t mean this in a snarky way but has a reward ever drawn someone out? I’m asking seriously. Even when cases have rewards it seems like something else is the instigator for someone finally telling what they know - like they are in a relationship with the perp and he’s turned his evil on them. Or they were in a relationship with him so they were terrified and now they are rid of him, etc.

I'm not sure this is what you mean, but last summer a chef had gone missing after a night out with friends. His truck was found, but not him. Reward increased and suddenly someone told where he was. An abandoned garage in an area of town that was full of empy homes. He had been stuffed in an oil drum. So I guess I would have to say yes, sometimes it helps.
Found Deceased - MI - Douglas Calhoun, 39, Detroit, 1 June 2017 *Arrest*

 

[another-amateur]

I think the point about the ping (or not) is important because of all the misreporting and confusion and lack of details in this case. People (generally speaking, I don’t have anybody specific in mind) are taking things like that as fact and making these huge assumptions based on them.

I agree that there’s some good reason they’ve allocated a lot of time and resources in that area, though.

I guess my problem is less with the language and more with the leaps people are making that then turn into accusations while still missing huge amounts of information

Absolutely, I just realised I stated fitbits don't ping, well, I suppose technically they do, as they send out a packet of data via bluetooth to see if there are any bluetooth receivers out there, but as this is a short range (<100 metres), I suspect LE were referring to the cell phone pinging, being received by a cell phone tower.

 

[chihuahua]

About whether rewards work, they do at times.
I could find more but I don't have the time right now.
It did within hours in the Grace Cummins case.
---longish video, this is snipped from written text below in case one can't or doesn't want to bother w/the video ---
Reward money and finding missing people
[just hours after this 25 thousand dollar reward was offered for information regarding the location of grace cummins- an anonymous caller gave the exact address of where grace was. ] Grace's info without info on reward:
[FOUND: Minnesota teenager got into blue semi, was dropped off in Albert Lea]
just saying and hoping.

 

[rollin2nyte]

They'd only need to get rid of the cell phone. Wherever that was would be - assuming the Fitbit was actively syncing at that time for some reason - where the Fitbit last appeared to be, since the Fitbit uses the phone's GPS and communication abilities to poll location and send it to the servers.

Correct but there might be a small period of time where the phone was ditched and the Fitbit was still in range. In that case they might know the direction the perp was heading.

 

[crhedBngr]

U Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in Iowa City is known to be the state's main medical center & is nationally recog. in several specialties... People actually move to Iowa City from out of state to establish residency to get lower cost surgery there, etc. And their psychiatry dept. is well known, too. UIowa used to have an extremely low cost program for low income, called UIcare or something, but they got rid of that, I believe, around the time I left 3 years back. Edit: point being from a local's perspective, it's known in Iowa that ppl drive/fly in from all over Iowa to get seen in Iowa City, well-known part of Iowa life.

University of Iowa, Carver? U.S. News and World Report ranked it highly.

 

[Deleted member 227095]

While we were offline on this thread, I spent some time considering the question of the substantial federal resources being devoted to this case and the fact that the federal authorities showed up relatively quickly (and we haven't heard from them directly since they arrived). And, as soon as they showed up communication was essentially shut down, local searches and community involvement stopped and no strong statement was made about there being a 'clear and present danger in Brooklyn, Iowa and region'. Mmmm.

I know there are people on this site that have watched missing person cases for years and so maybe can chime in with how often Federal/FBI presence happened within a week of disappearance date for a single missing person, but I don't think this is at all a typical response to a MP case. Just look at all the MP threads on this website that get very little if any commentary, press coverage or follow through from even local officials. MT for whatever reason is a story that is now global. Sure the disappearance of single, white, 20 yr female jogging and vanishing into thin air is a nightmarish story that touches us all on so many levels and is a compelling story. But I don't think that the FBI shows up with 15+ agents and because of a single missing person and a compelling story?!

Federal resources are limited, sparingly dispersed across the country and they have a very specific mandate for the crimes that they work on. My sense after looking at some other cases they get involved in is that there is usually some larger case at hand (drugs network, human traffiking, mob, gang, prostitution, transportation etc. that crosses over state lines).

Perhaps the attraction of this case to them was the digital aspect as it gave them a way to 'test' their existing technology to find MT? But I think their interest in the case goes way beyond the tech aspects present even though I believe they were asked in by the locals to help with the technology part of the equation. But, it probably didn't take that long to handle the legal paperwork to get the data and to assess the data (3-5 days maybe?) given the resources they have in place. Something triggered the decision to deploy substantial resources to this case of a single missing person and keep them in place.

I DK what it is that attracted them to the case other than that MT is somehow a small (but maybe important piece) in a much larger case that somehow touches the region of Brooklyn/Iowa/Surrounding States or that the person or persons involved in the case are themselves part of law enforcement at some level (this issue falls to FBI for investigation). There are so many unanswered questions so far that might get answered in time or might not? But it seems highly unusual to me for a single missing person to generate this level of federal attention and resources. I agree with others on this thread that there is likely a local connection of some sort associated with the disappearance of MT but I can't help but believe there is a bigger issue/case at play here that we just aren't privy to at this stage. I am glad the federal authorities are here and I hope they find MT!

 

[JohnBull]

The first thing that pops into mind

LE would open themselves up to major lawsuit for disrupting someone’s life without probable cause, especially on such a high profile case. They are there and speaking to WC because they have reason to do so.

They'd be irresponsible not to, given the circumstances. It doesn't mean he's guilty of anything, but if they were led to the area by some other fact and discovered a person living there who fit some of the elements usually associated with the sort of perp they might be looking for, they've no alternative. Just as long as they're not focusing on him to the exclusion of any other possibility, I think they're doing the right thing.