I had no idea about the Circle K video or that neighborhood being razed -- that's really good information. Thank you! It kinda confirms my suspicion that he made a left onto Bradley instead of a right. He may have done it sooner but for speculative reasons, I think that's not as likely.
Clarifying question: when you're talking about the neighborhood that got razed, are you talking about the area around Bristol Park? E Roper St, Bellefontaine St, Champaign St, etc?
Yes, immediately west of the tracks and immediately north of Bradley. Neighborhood bound by Roper on the north, N Chestnut on the east, Bradley on the south and N. Market on the west. Old run down neighborhood that was at that time being cleared out to make room for a new housing development. That would make the most sense to me for him to pull in there and attack her. It isn't that far away from One North, and to keep her from getting suspicious and panicking, he can say that he's pulling in to that area to turn around and go back. With no one living there at the time, he could have been far enough away from Bradley to keep anyone from seeing what he was doing. Or, he could have knocked her out in the car somehow on the way, then pulled in there to bind her and stuff her in the bag without anyone seeing. There are also some semi-obscured areas off of N Market heading south back toward downtown that he could have pulled into; areas that are used by CN to access the railroad tracks. They are gravel roadways and are somewhat obscured by brush. Only problem is that the further and further away he gets from One North, you would think the more suspicious she would become and she would panic. A problem unless, again, he knocked her out somehow while driving.
I suspect he discarded her phone there and maybe went back to try to find it. Or he just wanted to relive the crime, maybe.
Do you know what UIPD report mentioned him pinging the same location? No need to put effort into looking it up, just if you know off the top of your head.
S. Chestnut is one of those disjointed streets that you often find in downtown areas. It is broken up, and to get to that exact location where the ping was, you can't just drive directly south on that street. I don't have the map in front of me, but he would have to go south from Bradley on one of two or three streets, and make a couple of turns to get there. It is kind of a relatively dead urban area, but I don't know why he would choose there to dispose of her phone. Maybe he heard her phone chiming, he panicked a bit, and just found a spot where no one was around and chucked it out after removing the sim card -or he threw out the sim card and kept the phone; I can't remember if he mentioned her phone as one of the belongings he threw away on Monday when he disposed of her clothes and other belongings with the green duffle bag. IF he did go back on Monday, I would assume it would be to look for the phone. A phone might be easily found by people searching the area, so it would make sense for him to go back and look for it.
Another issue is the resolution of the GPS. The report from ATT regarding her phone location (in PDF #4 of the UIPD FOIA stuff) mentions a resolution of 200 meters. I took that to mean that the phone could have been anywhere within 200 meters of the location tagged as the source of the ping. IF I am reading that right, then it means that he could have been near that location, but on the other side of the tracks. Reports again from the UIPD FOIA stuff mention that Stiverson (and others I think) searched the area on south Chestnut where the ping was located, but it makes no mention of searching on the east side of the tracks opposite of South Chestnut.
I don't remember the exact location in the FOIA PDFs where all this is detailed -including the part about his phone pinging there on Monday. I think it is in documents 3 and 4, but I can't remember.