There was talking a witness with a dog.
Don’t see it in the PCA but maybe not a necessary detail.
The witness who saw RA on the bridge came in for a 3.2 mile RT walk.
As she drove apparently from the West to the Mears Lot she saw three girls crossing the Freedom Bridge.
She parked at Mears Lot a few minutes before KG got there and made a loop of Mears to MHB down to FB then back up to Mears.
It's so very easy to get the abundance of numbers/measurements/speeds jumbled up in a case like this, but I think we need to clarify a bit here implying down the wrong path...
Per Alltrails.com, the
entire MHB Trail is 1.6 miles one-way, thus 3.2 miles round-trip - starting from the west at the Old SR 25 overpass(where Witness #4 observed the 4, more likely 3 girls crossing above as she drove underneath) moving easterly toward the MHB and all the way across to the south end of MHB (where the abduction/video occurred). Aside from the website statement of the whole trail being 1.6 miles, we have the PCA stating that the bridge itself is .25 miles. My best approximation per a combination of multiple other websites would break down the other as follows:
A-- Old SR 25 overpass to just east of Freedom Bridge = .24 miles (agreed where RA encountered the juveniles)
B-- just east of Freedom Bridge to where the Mears lot spoke joins the trail = .63 miles
C-- the Mears lot trail intersect to the start (north end) of the actual Monon High Bridge = .48 miles
D-- the length of the MHB itself = .25 (per PCA
-- total = 1.60 miles
Additionally:
E-- the spoke which connects the Mears Parking Lot to the MHB Trail is approx .07 miles
F-- from the old CPS Building where RA is believed to have parked to just east of Freedom Bridge is approx .37 miles
Now MOO....Assuming these distances are accurate or substantially close, and also MOO assuming (again per an average of multiple websites of normal walking speeds for 45-year old adults being 1 mile per 19 minutes) we would have:
-- RA walking segments F, A, B, & C above to get to Platform 1 on the bridge, totaling 1.72 miles in about 27 minutes after parking his car - which is quite brisk, but could match the description of "purposeful" by one of the witnesses
-- Witness #4 has definitively stated walking segments E (from her parking spot to the trail) and C (in order to observe the man 50 feet away on the bridge), which would total .55 miles. It's not believed based on her being still driving past Hoosier Harvestore at 1:46 that she hardly could've begun walking until nearly 1:48 so it seems like she'd have been pushing 1:57-1:58 at the pace of a half-mile per 9-10 minutes before arriving at the bridge which is too tight for comfort because if we're to believe she passed A&L on the return, halfway back, adding another 4-5 minutes returning would take us to 2:01-2:03, when we know A&L were already fully at the bridge by that time. Witness #4 twice in the PCA describes "her walk" so there's no reason to believe she was jogging? For GH to get his animated timeline to "work" he has Witness #4 being out of the car and walking within 35 seconds of passing the store camera, AND covering the .55 mile trek in less than 6 minutes which seems near impossible??! Lastly with Witness #4, if she returns in 9-10 minutes as it's kind of expected it took her to get there, that has her return at approx 2:11 which coincides with her being observed driving away at 2:14 on same store camera. If each leg somehow only took here 5-1/2 minutes there's a lot of time unaccounted for to us, though surely LE knows the entirety of her time there. However there's been nothing stated that Witness #4 crossed any of the bridge and it certainly doesn't seem like she had time to cover the A segment, thus no possibility she walked all 3.2 miles. Btw, we don't know the age of Witness #4 - she could've been 25, 45, 65?
-- Abby & Libby would've walked segments E, C, & D totaling .80 miles. Given cameras evidence that they were dropped off at 1:49 and L's photos shortly after 2:00 and video from the far end of the bridge at 2:13 it all make sense. They were moving a bit slower than normal, but they weren't there for exercise necessarily - we know they were stopping, taking pics, being cautious over the rickety bridge.
I find it extremely intriguing, especially if RA/BG was aware the girls were on their way to MHB, and if he was aware that he was within 3 minutes of them on the trail (who knows maybe he thought he was late and they were a few minutes ahead of him?) that... even though there appears to have been no more than a dozen people on the trails that entire afternoon it would appear someone in Witness #4 unknowingly got in between the perpetrator and the victims who were only 3 minutes apart on the outbound trek. This could've been unlucky or lucky for RA/BG in that had she not been there at all, no one would've witnessed him within a mile of the crime scene... though lucky in the sense that RA/BG perhaps following Witness #4 off the trail to make sure she wasn't coming back might've kept him unseen in L's photos.