I said it would be my final post but this is still weighing heavily on my heart. A lot of what I'm about to say is speculation, conjecture, just my feelings and opinions based on both gut instinct and a ton of very deep digging. I am going to offer these thoughts because I am certain many of you are far more knowledgeable than I am and maybe you can take it further somehow.
It is very clear that Amy's suicide was well planned. She helped her mother with major household chores and gifted furniture. She took that trip to the Bahamas in spite of it being a major source of discord in her marriage. There is no reason to think she didn't make a plan for Timmothy - a very solid plan. Why wouldn't she?
You know what I think wasn't planned? The timing or date of it. The car needed servicing, she left haphazardly on a Wednesday morning after going in to her office and then went to various locations, keeping moving and keeping Timmothy entertained. This is only speculation but I think she may have planned to wait until the end of the school year - whenever that may have been in Aurora, IL. I think it is possible that the arguments over the Bahamas trip, etc. may have escalated to the point she felt compelled to move up her timeline. (Total sidenote, this is probably also why she didn't finish the picture quilt for her mother which was clearly important to her.) There may have been pieces of her original plan kept intact - maybe the trip to the Dells, for one example, because she wanted that so much for Timmothy.
I realize Amy suffered from depression. Many people do. Depression contributes to many suicides yet depression is not really enough to convince me someone is capable of murder - particularly of their own beloved child. So I thought, ok, maybe there were other mental issues aside from depression. I've found nothing. Not one expression from any person from Amy's past who has anything except positively glowing things to say about her - how kind, loving, generous, thoughtful, friendly, on and on... No one who actually knew her has a bad word to say - at least not publicly. I mean not a single one...and she knew A LOT of people. Please let me know if I've missed something.
I don't think Amy would have given Timmothy to anyone she didn't know extremely well. I don't think she would have given him to anyone she didn't love to be totally frank about it. She loved him too much. Never, never would she have handed him off to strangers. I'd have an easier time believing she killed him and that is a real struggle for me. So here's the thing, maybe whoever wasn't able to pick him up from her on that Wednesday for any number of reasons. Or maybe she really did want to just enjoy those final days with him and take him to an awesome place like Kalahari to give him some good memories of her. Or maybe, just maybe...Friday afternoon or evening was just better for whoever to meet with her. So all of the phone records and computer records that indicated she had no contact with anyone unknown to the family make sense to me. Again, she did not give her son to a stranger. Just rule that out. Period. So the police interviewed tons of people and they were all cooperative. Imagine that. If I was hiding a child, I'd be pretty cooperative too. It would be a major red flag if you were anything less than cooperative - may as well just hand the child over right then. But what does "cooperative" even mean? They didn't search all these homes or polygraph a bunch of people without great cause or suspicion. That's not how things work.
So who loved Amy enough to do this for her - take on a child to raise, risking very serious legal trouble down the road? Who was loyal enough (or sympathetic and understanding enough - maybe both) to keep their promises in the wake of her suicide? That's who has Timmothy. That's the answer. I think it's clear the majority of people most likely to meet the aforementioned criteria were residing in Iowa at that time. I won't go further than that. I also can't imagine the full plan. Could a new, foolproof identity be crafted for Timmothy by people with know how and means? I truly don't know how any of that works or how hard it would be. But those would be the hurdles in the future, as Timmothy enters adulthood. I really don't see that many difficulties up to that point honestly. I think it's been greatly overestimated how challenging that would be. What I wonder more about is the predicament someone placed in that situation would find themselves in down the road. How would you come forward as an adult, even if you wanted to, if it could cause the people who love you and raised you to face a world of consequences? I guess maybe you wouldn't - at least not until those people were gone from this world. That would be such a difficult situation for anyone.
The alternative to any of this is that we are expected to believe that Amy killed Timmothy AND disposed of his body in broad daylight (not using the vehicle to transport him after death - they would surely know that) in such a way that his remains have not been recovered in over 9 years. We also have to accept that she may have done this during some sort of psychotic episode related to some condition she had not previously exhibited any signs of suffering from. That's a lot. I'm not sure I can buy into all of that in this case. I think there's so much we don't know - things law enforcement knows, things the family knows. It is strange to not have more information leaked out after 9 years. Maybe that's part of what makes this case so unusual.
I really, truly feel this is being made more complex and mysterious than it is. I've even gone down those paths in the beginning - Amish communities, cults, secret organizations. But no. Whoever has Timmothy is someone Amy trusted with what meant far, far more to her than her own life and someone who cared enough for her to make a very serious promise and take an enormous risk. Now just how many people could that possibly be?
