i don't know if this has been discussed on this thread yet, i haven't seen this brought up at all, so please bare with me and help me figure this out. if any of you need more information on snapchat or are unfamiliar with it, please let me know if i need to explain things more thoroughly!
i use snapchat quite frequently, like most college students. i use it far more than i use normal text messaging. for those who are unaware, when you send a snapchat to somebody, the other person can choose whether or not to open the snapchat at that specific time. her boyfriend was probably busy and HE said he 'opened it at 10' (or around then).
when you send a snapchat, the conversation log has timestamps. so, it says the time when each person SENT the snapchat, NOT when the other person received and/or opened the snapchat.
you may be asking, well maybe Dalton didn't have phone service or wifi when Mollie actually took the snapchat and sent it to him. i have really bad phone service sometimes and so do a lot of my friends, so sometimes i don't receive snapchats until i get more bars or better wifi. but, when i DO finally see the snapchat notification in the snapchat app, it will still say what time the person sent it.
i'm not sure how long the snapchat's timestamps stay visible in the chat log after opening, i think it's a day. but i've encountered that sometimes these snapchats timestamps stay visible in the log for a few days before they disappear. and other times they may disappear after a few hours or so, i think it may be a glitch on snapchat's end. i have snapchats from this morning that i opened hours ago and they still have the time stamps. snapchats that i opened last night, the day before, or even a week ago will still say "_hr" or "_w" (indicating how many hours or weeks it has been since the snapchat was sent to you).
my question is, couldn't Dalton just look and see what time the snapchat was sent BY Mollie to him? the next day when he woke up and realized she was missing, he could've easily shown LE what time she sent it. if the specific timestamp (example: 9:43 pm) disappeared because of the amount of time that had passed since he opened it, it would STILL say "_hr" under her name in the app. of course, the "_hr" feature isn't completely helpful because there's no specific minute interval, but it can at least show what time she was in a house and still able to access her phone.
******this post is NOT insinuating that Dalton is a suspect. i do NOT think Dalton is a suspect! i am heartbroken for him and his family as well as Mollie's. maybe he was so shocked over her disappearance that he completely overlooked the time, or maybe the LE didn't think this feature was available or didn't check hard enough.
.... or maybe they DO know what time it was sent because of the feature and do not care to release that information to the public at this time.