There is a point where ifs and maybes start to add up. I'm not inclined to do a sample probability calculation, but even if there is only a 50% chance of a person noticing potential warning signs for abuse, such as each of the following factors:
a daughter who avoids home
a daughter whose public conversation begins to include gross exaggerations
a daughter who "runs" away
a daughter so desperate for friends that she talks to random strangers
You could multiple it out and get to a pretty slim chance that someone immediately close to Chyenne wouldn't have suspected abuse....maybe not murder...but abuse that led to her running away.
That coupled with:
a spouse who was previously accused of sexual abuse
a spouse regaining rights to visit a daughter
a hillside behind the house that was never searched by the family
a neighborhood search that never actually encompasses the neighborhood
leaves this :banghead: and a slim chance that someone was oblivious...unless they weren't there....at all.
Take abuse out of the equation and there was obvious neglect.
With my own eyes I saw that child when she was still probably ten running around town in Croc-like shoes that were multiple sizes too big regularly. Most of her clothes seemed to fit similarly.
When she was older, she wore clothes that were at least two sizes too small regularly. Too short...too tight....and not "I'm trying to be cute tight."
When she was too old to do so, she walked around downtown East Dubuque in front of cars, bars, and highway traffic in a swimsuit without shoes and without an adult.
In those YouTube videos (to extent) and in person at the time, it looked like she or someone else without skill lopped off her hair in huge chunks. I wondered how she could bear to go to school like that.
And these are just the things I saw when our paths crossed which wasn't as often as a man like the chief or a person who worked in the downtown would have seen her. It was horrible. The only thing more horrible is how Chyenne's life ended.
I'm sure LE was working on this from multiple angles regularly after she didn't return home. Other people saw this. Other people knew something wasn't right in that home. The only thing that wasn't there was a literal red flag.
I can't read this whole story because I'm not a TH subscriber, but one of the TV stations may cover it shortly. Until then there is a bit of new information about the case:
http://www.thonline.com/news/tri-state/article_3aacf552-26f2-11e3-8705-0019bb30f31a.html