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

[ptandj]

Brooklyn has street lights on most city streets. There is not one in front of 622 but is one in front of the coop and also at the intersection near her house. But by most accounts, there would still have been a lot of daylight left during the bracketed time for her jog. It takes a pair to snatch someone off the street in ample light after people are home from work and most likely, some are outside sitting, walking or chatting. That is a high level of risk assumption indeed.

I agree, and this is why I think either it wasn’t on her run OR it was somebody she initially went with voluntarily.

If Mollie's FitBit did emit a signal during the early hours of her missing (even before anyone knew she was missing) and she was knocked out or unconscience, would it record as "sleep time"? Or if she was running as usual and then physically struggled with someone, would it have recorded that altercation in a different way than a normal routine run?

I'm thinking the FitBit may not have "pinged" to help with location, but possibly info of her activity levels in the first hours of missing may have been uploaded to a server somewhere and are retrievable.

You would get heart rate data and you would also see some activity from an altercation that would look odd.

 

[jashrema]

FBI certainly knows, at the very least, a triangulated area of where her cell phone last pinged. Combine that with any FITbit info and they know where to start looking maybe.
The "pinging" of a cell phone isn't as accurate as people think either. Especially in rural communities where cell towers are not as closely placed as in urban areas.
I think that apps you can download that trace your location accurately are excellent (they actually show you moving down a road or walking into a building) but if you don't have one of those apps, the gps on the phone just pings off the nearest tower.
For instance, when Sierah's phone "pinged", it pinged off a certain cell tower BUT if the nearest tower was to busy, it would have pinged off the NEXT nearest tower. It automatically rolls over to the next tower available. This is why for a time, we thought Ce might have been taken into Michigan. She was not, the pings were just bouncing around. In actuality, her cell (tho in one place) pinged off 3 different towers which allowed LE to triangulate an area that she was in but that area was a 10 mile radius!

 

[mnnative]

Fitbits don't ping, so draw your own conclusions.

Right, yet it is constantly being repeated here as fact for some reason. I'd postulate that her phone may well have show

I don't see how you can have 3 different viable suspects if there is a complete lack of factual information. Any one of those unreleased facts could completely change your suspects, right?

I'm not saying they're necessarily viable and certainly not guilty, only that they fit well into the case as it's been presented so far. Better than WC does at this point IMO. I understand the Mods here not wanting to allow this discussion here but the reality is that it's taking place on many other sites.

 

[another-amateur]

You can manually sync your Fitbit with the Fitbit app on your phone at any time to make sure it's up-to-date in between auto syncs.

You can also share your Fitbit data. You can share it to Facebook, for example.

The Fitbit app on Mollie's cellphone may indeed have some *very* valuable information.

Try turning off wifi and put your cellphone into airplane mode, I'm pretty certain it won't allow you to sync, there was a lot of disgruntled fitbit owners who realised you need an internet connection in order to sync.

 

[Mauig’ma]

Are there any searches going on today? Is the community still searching or have they left it up to the LE?

 

[Alethea]

By "ping" LE may mean the fitbit synced with the phone she was carrying, which would sync with the fitbit app. If the last time they synced was at that location, you may be able to assume that at the least the device and iphone separated at that point (or one ran out of battery). My fitbit works by bluetooth, where if my fitbit is next to either my iphone or macbook, the information is uploaded to my fitbit app. I can check my previous days fitbit information on my computer without my fitbit or iphone nearby. LE may have a detailed timeline until her fitbit and iphone were separated (and thsu automatic syncing stopped) or until one battery went dead.

 

[human]

A very interesting study on the relationship of burglary and sexual assault.

People would know that the house was empty or that Mollie was alone

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4558/accdeeb60f1666a1ec56de4bfc637a1b1941.pdf

 

[ptandj]

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

 

[MargeGunderson]

Because it's absolutely true. I'm seeing a lot of mischaracterization here about the relationships between rural communities, and as a local to this area I'm telling you that's just not how it is. Brooklyn is four miles north then west from the I-80 exit at Hwy 21. WC lives between Guernsey and Deep River about 10 miles south of I-80 along Hwy 21. A fact of life living in these rural communities is that quite often we need to go to larger communities - Brooklyn is not one of those larger communities. And in fact, Brooklyn is primarily tied to Grinnell while rural people in WC's vicinity are dependent on Montezuma.

I seriously lived in this area for over 10 years without ever venturing into Brooklyn and that was only because a guy I work with lives there hosted our Fantasy Football draft. There's nothing there and no reason for WC to have any ties to that community.

This makes a lot of sense. I assume it works the other way as well. If the perp was looking for somewhere to dispose of a body or Mollies belongings and they were local to Brooklyn they wouldn’t have a reason to know that WC would be a good person to try to implicate.

 

[otto]

Mollie had her cell phone with her as well, in her armband. Everyone is focused on the Fitbit. The cell phone would reveal a lot of critical information.

The cool think about the Fitbit is that it would register changes in pulse rate, meaning that it is possible that the exact moment of abduction is known based on a spike in heart rate.

 

[bronk4]

WC has a lot going against him

. “I don’t remember what they asked me.”

??!!..

“I just thought it was a waste of time but oh well,” Cheney retorted.

bold mine
not ''I did not do it/had nothing to do with it/etc''
seems very uneasy in the video--some people are uneasy though--however

but said he thought “some guy” had her

very odd, very odd

local hog farmer who has a history of stalking women,

1 or 2 things by themselves -ahh--nothing--?
but these things add up to -----what?
Cops grill hog farmer with stalking charges for hours about missing Mollie Tibbetts: Report
Mollie Tibbetts: FBI agent questions hog farmer with stalking charges AGAIN about disappearance of missing college student

 

[TruthIsStranger]

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 disposed of it slowly. All of this could be done at various times and places. 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?

 

[Confusion]

I think LE has a different sexual predator in mind than WC and is putting that POI off guard by letting it appear WC is of interest. I think they are doing this while watching the POI they have in mind to see if they return to where they placed Mollie. The release of the statement Mollie is not on WC's property is to let the POI know they understand she is elsewhere and create doubt in that suspect's mind about where they are now looking...this ups the pressure that the real POI will return to the crime scene, showing LE where Mollie is.

Remember Mollie was once mistaken for a 13 year old in a pink coat? The real POI may have thought she was much younger than she is. Who in Brooklyn area might have a predilection for minors?

Just my humble opinions about what I think is really going on...

She was wearing a sports bra when she was running, I don't think someone who liked "little girls" would mistake her for one. MOO

 

[SuziQ]

This tells me they likely have some sort of Fitbit data near the farm but the part with the ping is still not a direct quote but a paraphrase. It didn’t ping because they don’t ping.

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?

 

[ptandj]

By "ping" LE may mean the fitbit synced with the phone she was carrying, which would sync with the fitbit app. If the last time they synced was at that location, you may be able to assume that at the least the device and iphone separated at that point (or one ran out of battery). My fitbit works by bluetooth, where if my fitbit is next to either my iphone or macbook, the information is uploaded to my fitbit app. I can check my previous days fitbit information on my computer without my fitbit or iphone nearby. LE may have a detailed timeline until her fitbit and iphone were separated (and thsu automatic syncing stopped) or until one battery went dead.

Huh, this is a really interesting theory and one I haven’t seen before. I like it!

 

[LvsAMystry]

I’m behind in catching up so apologize if this has already been thought/posted, but of there is a red shirt or THE red shirt found on that property after it’d already been searched, wouldn’t it be possible that the real involved person(s) potentially planted it given the national attention and suspicions on that property?

Still think there must’ve been something that led them to that property in first place, but above also plausible.

 

[PommyMommy]

FBI certainly knows, at the very least, a triangulated area of where her cell phone last pinged. Combine that with any FITbit info and they know where to start looking maybe.
The "pinging" of a cell phone isn't as accurate as people think either. Especially in rural communities where cell towers are not as closely placed as in urban areas.
I think that apps you can download that trace your location accurately are excellent (they actually show you moving down a road or walking into a building) but if you don't have one of those apps, the gps on the phone just pings off the nearest tower.
For instance, when Sierah's phone "pinged", it pinged off a certain cell tower BUT if the nearest tower was to busy, it would have pinged off the NEXT nearest tower. It automatically rolls over to the next tower available. This is why for a time, we thought Ce might have been taken into Michigan. She was not, the pings were just bouncing around. In actuality, her cell (tho in one place) pinged off 3 different towers which allowed LE to triangulate an area that she was in but that area was a 10 mile radius!

JULY 30: Late Thursday, investigators said they had completed reconstructing their timeline of Mollie's run, relying on Fitbit data, cell phone pings and eyewitnesses.

Investigators turn to Fitbit data for clues about missing Iowa college student

 

[PaulR]

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.

 

[chihuahua]

IMHO the "pings" and electronic info from MT's phone led LE to that location (the "pig" farm) along with a lot of phoned in tips. If you're just one of those on the "fringe" in a case like this, you're gonna attract attention.
With the increasing reward, I'm sure that tips keep pouring in, many of them pointing at him.
There's something big missing here. A very vital piece.
The undercurrent is enough to sweep one under.

 

[MillyM]

This case is basically impossible to discuss on this site due to the complete lack of factual information being released. I've got 3 different suspects/theories in mind but can't discuss them in any useful manner due to these restrictions.

So we are left with the same handful of speculations being repeated over and over, hundreds of times. "Hit by car", "Attacked by wild animal" ect. All of which make almost zero logical sense given even the little bit that is known.

Would be interesting if we could discuss our suspects - sure there would be both a lot of agreements and a lot of disparity! From when I first started looking at this case and all involved, I had one/two suspects in mind. Nothing I have read or heard since has dissuaded me from those persons even though tried to look objectively at all possibilities. Last night while this thread was closed, was looking elsewhere and came across a poster on another site who outlined quite succinctly their own suspects and gave very good reasoning. Although the motives they gave and mine were at variance, they otherwise echoed exactly my own thoughts. They also highlighted very relevant points I hadn't known.

 

[jashrema]

I would think that LE is trying to verify WC's whereabouts at the time Mollie disappeared. If they do, and it's solid, LE will come out and say that he has been eliminated as a suspect, just as they have for BF.
As for the poster that said there is no connection to WC and Brooklyn as it's just not "done", I beg to differ. If you are a killer, you hunt. Driving all around looking for your next victim is not just limited to your little place in the world. They're hunting.