Found Deceased IN - Abigail (Abby) Williams, 13, & Liberty (Libby) German, 14, The Delphi Murders 13 Feb 2017 #124

[flashy09]

For a witness to have described that known criminal to perfection in order to mislead...did they have time to look up a good fake suspect to describe? Or did they know of this person? Seems like a stretch. Maybe, and I’ve considered it, but I don’t think so.

Edited to add: then again, maybe so. Some of the other potential peeps are intelligent and maybe manipulative enough to do this. What do I know? Not much. I go back and forth between it being a career criminal, maybe already in jail, and it really being someone who will be a shock to the community.

I don't think the witness made up a specific suspect.....maybe just one very unlike themselves or an accomplice (just a thought!). I am not talking about whoever drew up that second sketch, but whoever described that first sketch that has been disregarded and looks so different from the second, that is now apparently the true suspect. But of course I have heard the first sketch is not totally disregarded and it does look just like the bridge video, so who knows!

 

[Charlot123]

I like reading along.
I recall so much analysis on this guy that it made my head spin.

Is that a hat, or a full head of hair?
What's that, a billy club going down his right thigh, inside his jeans?
Does he have a leather work pouch?
That HAS to be a gun outline, say, his right side, inner jacket pocket!
Around his neck? A scarf? A drinking straw? A plastic bag? A grey hoodie stickin' out?
Does the dude have a limp? Or is he high steppin' the gaps between those ties?

And then there's the age thingy. This particular frame, for me, gives him a boyish look of say, 22 to 27 years old!

Then again, if I stare long enough at that head of hair, I begin to see a coon skin cap, maybe a fox head hat, or some such wild animal with a pointy nose looking back at me.

See that baby face or what?

Clic the pic to expand

Something here makes no sense. A bully club or a hatchet like DN’s in his pants could account for the odd gait, and I do believe he carries something there, but he had to pull it out of the pants when crossing the creek, to keep up with the girls. You can not run fast with this thingy in pants. Or did they cross? Again, the same question...

 

[Yemelyan]

You are making such an important point Yemelyan. When a case stretches in to months, then years, we all tend to start looking for "code" and come up with some pretty wild speculations; yours truly included. Not all killers are zodiac killers taunting LE with cryptic codes. Most of them are driven by defective impulses, and likely have under developed frontal lobes. They're not that bright. When this Perp is arrested, I think we'll be underwhelmed by his profile. Just another miscreant who chose deviance and evil.

Amateur opinion and speculation

I agree with you, @rosesfromangels and I'll mention another thing that was speculated on here that the podcasts, with their many excellent interviews with family and LE, can lay to rest.

A few weeks ago there was a discussion here about the potential incompetence of how Carroll County processed the crime scene. Posters here made speculative statements like, perhaps Tobe Leazenby made the call that the crime scene should be processed without waiting for the FBI and maybe that's why things were missed/this perp still isn't caught.

In the podcast Scene of the Crime, it's made quite clear the the FBI's evidence recovery team did 100% of the crime scene work, the ISP and FBI were on the ground in Delphi before the girls were even found. At no point was it up to the small Delphi PD or even Carroll County to call the shots on evidence recovery.

Which is not to say that mistakes may or may not have been made, or that the scene, being outdoors and over a wide area, was not difficult to process.

 

[StarryStarryNight]

I agree with your statement. Often times these evil acts and motives are mundane and bland.

That said, I’m really starting to think, after 3 1/2 years, that if/when this killer is caught, it will NOT be because of a tip, nor because a friend or family member finally turns him in.

Rather, I think it will be along the lines of: In a neighboring state a state trooper pulls over a vehicle. Because the driver shows signs of being under the influence, there is probable cause to search the car. A map of the Delphi trails/ bridge is found, along with a souvenir from the murder, which links him to it. ……………I honestly can’t believe in any other scenario at this late date.

I am with you on that thought....that we are past the time of a tip solving this case. The unclaimed reward money is proof of that in my opinion. I also am starting to think that the lack of that last great tip is less due to somebody protecting or covering for the killer and more likely because the people near him honestly have no clue he’s involved.
My scenario of his arrest would be that some family member stumbles upon something in a shed or back of a closet or drawer(photos, tokens, bloodstained blue jacket, an extensive collection of media coverage, etc) connected with Delphi, and contacts police.

 

[SMK777]

I am with you on that thought....that we are past the time of a tip solving this case. The unclaimed reward money is proof of that in my opinion. I also am starting to think that the lack of that last great tip is less due to somebody protecting or covering for the killer and more likely because the people near him honestly have no clue he’s involved.
My scenario of his arrest would be that some family member stumbles upon something in a shed or back of a closet or drawer(photos, tokens, bloodstained blue jacket, an extensive collection of media coverage, etc) connected with Delphi, and contacts police.

Yes, I agree that his family and friends likely have zero suspicion of him. And the fact that they might stumble upon something which links him to the Delphi murders is also a real possibility. I just wish Fate would make it happen.

 

[Justice101]

still checking once a week (and hoping)..

 

[JnRyan]

still checking once a week (and hoping)..

I'm checking in about 2-3 times a day. But given what has been coming out on the internet or in the media, that's probably akin to weighing myself 2-3 times a day and expecting a change.

 

[SMK777]

I'm checking in about 2-3 times a day. But given what has been coming out on the internet or in the media, that's probably akin to weighing myself 2-3 times a day and expecting a change.

I just wish Providence or fate or God would intervene. Without such intervention this could become really a cold case.

 

[Andreee]

You are making such an important point Yemelyan. When a case stretches in to months, then years, we all tend to start looking for "code" and come up with some pretty wild speculations; yours truly included. Not all killers are zodiac killers taunting LE with cryptic codes. Most of them are driven by defective impulses, and likely have under developed frontal lobes. They're not that bright. When this Perp is arrested, I think we'll be underwhelmed by his profile. Just another miscreant who chose deviance and evil.

Amateur opinion and speculation

Agreed!!! Just like the 'snotnose' evil murderer of JC's parents!

 

[St. Anthony2017]

Something here makes no sense. A bully club or a hatchet like DN’s in his pants could account for the odd gait, and I do believe he carries something there, but he had to pull it out of the pants when crossing the creek, to keep up with the girls. You can not run fast with this thingy in pants. Or did they cross? Again, the same question...

I don’t think there was any running. I think BG probably tethered the girls together with zip ties or handcuffs as soon as they went down the hill. He probably also duct taped their mouths so no screams could be heard. I also think he took the zip ties with him and the duct tape to avoid leaving any DNA on them. Whatever he used to kill them could have been washed off in the creek and replaced into his kill kit. This killer thinks he is so clever and that he thought of every way to avoid being captured but there is no perfect crime. Remember, ISP Carter told him “you made mistakes!”

 

[St. Anthony2017]

What mistakes do you think BG could have made that will inevitably lead to his arrest at some point? Before there was DNA intuitive Detectives were able to solve murders. I have confidence that this case will be solved with or without DNA just like Homicide Investigators from the past brought murderers to justice.

 

[somequestions]

I didn't say it never happens. Just statistically speaking, you don't see older men represented as much. If you listened to some of the podcasts about the Delphi case, you may have heard the professional opinions of Dr. Katherine Brown about signatures? She's famous in the law enforcement world for her research about child murders specifically. In a landmark study she did on this type of murder, she found that only 10% of child murderers were age 40 or older. 12% were 18 or younger. 66% were between the ages of 18 and 30. The average age was 27. In all 780 cases studied in her report, only one man was older than 60. That's why I said "statistically speaking."

In this particular case on that particular day with these particular victims, I look at Liberty German's video and see an older man who is 50 - 60 years old.

Since we cannot see a close up of the bridge guy's face, there will remain the possibility that he is younger. And if you were going with the odds, it would be best to conclude that the killer is someone in their 20's or 30's since most of them tend to be that age.

We have our opinions just like LE has their opinions about this case. When I look at Liberty German's phone video without regards to anything else, I see a man who is 50 - 60 years old. Others may look at the same video and see something completely different.

 

[St. Anthony2017]

In this particular case on that particular day with these particular victims, I look at Liberty German's video and see an older man who is 50 - 60 years old.

Since we cannot see a close up of the bridge guy's face, there will remain the possibility that he is younger. And if you were going with the odds, it would be best to conclude that the killer is someone in their 20's or 30's since most of them tend to be that age.

We have our opinions just like LE has their opinions about this case. When I look at Liberty German's phone video without regards to anything else, I see a man who is 50 - 60 years old. Others may look at the same video and see something completely different.

I do too. An experienced methodical killer who has honed his skills and become over confident that he won’t be caught. I see a SK.

 

[rosesfromangels]

Agreed!!! Just like the 'snotnose' evil murderer of JC's parents!

Perfect example Andreee. That miscreant was just a garden variety loser, who has all already been forgotten. He'll rot in jail and no one cares.

Losers who chose evil, who harm and destroy don't deserve a second thought after they are led away in their darling little orange jumpsuits and chains. This level of evil gets nary an ounce of sympathy from me.

Amateur opinion and speculation

 

[Yemelyan]

What mistakes do you think BG could have made that will inevitably lead to his arrest at some point? Before there was DNA intuitive Detectives were able to solve murders. I have confidence that this case will be solved with or without DNA just like Homicide Investigators from the past brought murderers to justice.

Possible mistakes....

MOO some type of restraints were probably used. If anything to do with that was left behind, it could be linked to BG/where he bought it.

Then there is hair, fibers, even the possibility BG left some of his own clothing at the scene.

Is there a murder weapon? We don't know. It's not unheard of for these to be left behind. They certainly were searching the creek for something.

More broadly, what about the vehicle parked near the old CPS building on the day the girls went missing? What exactly does LE know about it? I thought they were looking for people to give info on what kind of vehicle was parked there. Later I realized they were asking specifically about the driver. Now I'm thinking they may know more about the vehicle than they let on. Sgt. Riley says in this article (while discussing the vehicle) that they know BG "got around quickly" on the day of the murders and that he appeared to know the town well. (Not the trails...the town.) How do they know this? Is the vehicle on camera footage from elsewhere in town? Is some of the "intelligence" that ushered the return to the younger BG sketch related to the movements of this vehicle?

ISP on Delphi killer: 'Somebody may have already interviewed him'

 

[MistyWaters]

One of the suspect’s biggest mistakes is he was seemingly oblivious to the fact that Libby outsmarted him by capturing him on her cellphone video, plus recorded him speaking as well.

While this hasn’t resulted in an arrest yet, it’s got to have proven very helpful in eliminating potential suspects who’s physical appearance was entirely different including height, weight, skin colour, etc.

 

[cujenn81]

Here are my notes from Scene of the Crime: Delphi, Episode 2.

3:00-3:30 pm - the time Libby and Derrick (Libby's dad) had planned to meet at the drop off spot

3:11 pm - Derrick calls LG as he approaches the trail system
The call rings several times before going to voicemail.

3:13 pm - Derrick calls LG again and also sends her a text message (2nd call)

Unable to reach Libby, Derrick exits the car and walks a few yards down the path until it separates into 3 separate trails:

1- High Bridge / 501 Trail
2- Deer Creek / 505 Trail (goes down hill)
3- Freedom Bridge / 501 Trail (goes away from High Bridge)

Derrick sees an older man in a flannel shirt coming from the High Bridge Trail and asks if he’s seen the girls that way. The man says he's only seen a man and woman down under the bridge. D decides to head down the 505 Trail but doesn't see the girls. He turns around and returns to the trailhead area.

3:24 pm - Derrick calls LG (3rd call)
3:32 pm - Derrick calls LG (4th call)

3:33 pm - Derrick calls his mother and LG's grandmother/guardian Becky and relays that he can't find the girls and Libby isn't answering her phone; he then calls his sister/LG’s Aunt Tara and leaves a message asking if she’s heard from the girls

Derrick then walks toward the Freedom Bridge Trail and runs into Flannel Shirt guy again. The man says he still hasn't seen the girls.

3:57 pm - Derrick heads back to his car and calls LG (5th call)
3:58 pm - Derrick calls Becky again
4:12 pm - Becky calls Kelsi at her boyfriend/Chase's house to see if she’s heard from LG; she hasn't and heads to the trail to help look for the girls
4:17 pm - Becky calls LG and then a few of their friends to see if they’ve heard from Libby or Abby

A short time later, Becky and Aunt Tara speak on the phone and decide to meet at the trailhead. When Tara arrives, Derrick gets into her car to wait for Becky.

4:20 pm - Becky calls her husband/LG’s grandfather Mike at work in Lafayette and lets him know they can't find the girls

Before Becky leaves the house, her son/LG’s Uncle Cody comes in from work and rides with her to the trails. They take two different routes the girls could've taken (if they’d walked home), but there's no sign of them.

The primary concern among family members at this time is that the girls have been in an accident - maybe they've fallen down a hill and Libby dropped her phone. (Abby didn't have a phone.)

Becky calls AT&T to ask about pinging LG’s phone but they can't help her. (Libby’s family had run a factory reset on LG’s phone a week earlier to fix glitches she'd been having with her service, and tracking apps like Life360 and/or Find My Phone had not been set back up.)

Kelsi and her Uncle Cody take the Monon High Bridge Trail and walk the 1/2 mile to the bridge, cross it, and proceed down the hill on the other end. At the end of the bridge, Kelsi remembers looking to the left and seeing where someone had fallen down the hill, but she didn’t think anything of it... “because everybody goes down the hill”. Doug Carter asks Kelsi if she'd seen “disrupted ground” and was that why she thought someone had fallen down the hill. She says yes.

At the bottom of the steep hill is a long dirt road (private driveway) that connects several residences. Cody and Kelsi knock on the doors of some of the remote homes but only manage to speak to one homeowner who had not seen the girls.

Cody and Kelsi climb back up the hill to the bridge and return to the parking area. Kelsi says they didn't continue to walk down the left hand side of the bridge’s end because there were no residences or structures in that immediate area - just woods and Deer Creek.

5:00 pm - Libby’s grandfather Mike arrives and parks in the Mears family driveway with Mr. Mears permission (he also joins Mike on the search)

Mike tries to call LG repeatedly but her phone is now going straight to voicemail. (The calls were ringing several times before going to voicemail at 4:17 pm but were going straight to voicemail by 5:00 pm.)

5:20 pm - Mike calls the Delphi Police Department and reports the girls missing

2 officers respond to Mike’s 9-1-1 call -- one officer with the Delphi PD and an officer with the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office both meet Mike at the trailhead and begin to search for the girls immediately.

Kelsi heads to work nearly an hour late for her 4:30 pm shift.

Becky tries calling Anna (Abby’s mom) several times to let her know the girls are missing. Unable to reach Anna, Becky heads over to the restaurant where Anna is working but she phones her back on the way there. After learning her daughter is missing, Anna leaves work and heads to meet Mike and Patty at the sheriff’s department to file a police report.

Mike calls a friend in LE to see about pinging LG’s phone. He recommends Mike talk with the sheriff’s office about tracking down her phone. Mike leaves to meet Becky and Kelsi at the sheriff’s office. (Kelsi had been contacted to meet with LE, as she was the last person to see the girls. Her friend (who is also her boyfriend’s sister) Bree goes with her to the sheriff's office.

Mike stops by the house and grabs an iPad and other electronic devices for LE. He also calls a cousin who works for a local TV station. The cousin comes down to the trails and the story airs on the local 6 o'clock news.

Mike also calls up his fire department buddies to help w/ the search. Meanwhile, the family posts about the girls missing on FB and emergency officials from multiple agencies -- including the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, Delphi PD, Delphi FD, and the Department of Natural Resources -- join the search. Emergency fire tones go off between 5:50-6:00 pm and secondary calls go out to the volunteer fire department. A few of the searchers estimate that as many as 100 people were out searching for the girls that night.

Libby was an avid social media user, and when Kelsi checks Snapchat, she sees the story LG posted that included 2 photos. One photo depicts the bridge and the other depicts Abby walking on the bridge. The Snapchat story was posted around 2:07 pm. The photo of Abby was taken by Libby, who was positioned ahead of her on the bridge about 40% of the way down—headed toward the point where it dead ends into the woods.

LE begins pinging LG’s phone that evening. It pinged around town that afternoon but stopped 4-5 hours earlier. All texts from family members go unread.

LE immediately looks into the girls social media accounts. Anna then discovers Abby has a male friend online that she doesn't know. She didn’t even know that Abby had a FB account because Abby had blocked her, as she'd been forbidden from having an account. The only electronic device Abby had was a Kindle Fire tablet. She got the tablet two months earlier on Christmas, and Anna didn’t know the password. Despite all of this, LE is fairly certain the girls hadn't planned to meet anyone on the trails that day and they didn’t find anything suspicious on SM or on any of the electronics.

After the family meets with LE at the sheriff’s office, they return to the trails to rejoin the search. Interviews with Becky, Mike, and Anna are aired on the 11 o’clock news.

Just before midnight, the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office issues a news release saying they have no reason to believe the girls are in immediate danger or that foul play is suspected. The official search is terminated around midnight due to the darkness. However, some stay throughout the night and search the woods with flashlights. These include the Delphi Fire Department, Mike Patty, Eric Erskine (Abby’s grandfather), and several others.


The next morning...

7:00 am - Kelsi, Mike, Patty, Anna, and others reconvene at the fire department
7:40 am - searchers are grouped into small search parties of 10-20 people and sent out to check separate areas within a 20-25 square mile radius

Volunteer searchers are told to stay away from the immediate area at the end of the bridge (as they suspect the girls may have gone that way) because K9 search dogs are being brought in to search the area and they don't want to contaminate it.

Only two groups of searchers cross the bridge to look for the girls on the property at the southeastern end. A lot of the searchers are looking in town and in fields. Kelsi, Derrick, Mrs. Bennett (the secretary of Delphi Middle), and Kelsi’s cousin are searching together in one group. Dive teams are deployed in the deeper parts of Deer Creek, a drone is sent up to look overhead, and the state police provide their search helicopter.

Anna remains at the fire station to wait for her father Cliff to arrive from Michigan. She also goes back to her house to grab a piece of Abby’s clothes for tracking her scent.

Kelsi’s group goes searching under the bridge, and Kelsi brings a blanket and granola bars with her. Another search group nearby is searching across the private driveway, near Deer Creek.

When Kelsi’s group starts back towards the driveway, a man yells up that he's found a shoe close to the edge of the creek. He yells up to ask Kelsi what kind of shoes the girls were wearing. The shoe was a black Nike sneaker and belongs to Libby. Other items belonging to the girls are also found by searchers, but that information has not been released publicly.

Police recordings tell us that a deputy searching the banks of Deer Creek, under the bridge, found girls clothing (specifically undergarments) in the shallow water. A photographer from a local newspaper posted photos of the search activity on FB. She commented that the clothing in the creek could even be seen from 75 yards away.

LE also finds and bags a cigarette butt they deem relatively fresh. It was found on the edge of Deer Creek or in the water — it’s unclear which.

A short time later, the same searcher who found the shoe, spots something out of the corner of his eye down the left side of the bridge — it was movement across the creek. Looking with his phone camera, he zooms in on the area and sees two deer standing in the woods. When he pans down with his phone camera, he finds the two bodies at approximately 12:15 pm. Kelsi commented that if the deer hadn’t moved, he never would have seen them.

 

[Falling Down]

Here are my notes from Scene of the Crime: Delphi, Episode 2.

3:00-3:30 pm - the time Libby and Derrick (Libby's dad) had planned to meet at the drop off spot

3:11 pm - Derrick calls LG as he approaches the trail system
The call rings several times before going to voicemail.

3:13 pm - Derrick calls LG again and also sends her a text message (2nd call)

Unable to reach Libby, Derrick exits the car and walks a few yards down the path until it separates into 3 separate trails:

1- High Bridge / 501 Trail
2- Deer Creek / 505 Trail (goes down hill)
3- Freedom Bridge / 501 Trail (goes away from High Bridge)

Derrick sees an older man in a flannel shirt coming from the High Bridge Trail and asks if he’s seen the girls that way. The man says he's only seen a man and woman down under the bridge. D decides to head down the 505 Trail but doesn't see the girls. He turns around and returns to the trailhead area.

3:24 pm - Derrick calls LG (3rd call)
3:32 pm - Derrick calls LG (4th call)

3:33 pm - Derrick calls his mother and LG's grandmother/guardian Becky and relays that he can't find the girls and Libby isn't answering her phone; he then calls his sister/LG’s Aunt Tara and leaves a message asking if she’s heard from the girls

Derrick then walks toward the Freedom Bridge Trail and runs into Flannel Shirt guy again. The man says he still hasn't seen the girls.

3:57 pm - Derrick heads back to his car and calls LG (5th call)
3:58 pm - Derrick calls Becky again
4:12 pm - Becky calls Kelsi at her boyfriend/Chase's house to see if she’s heard from LG; she hasn't and heads to the trail to help look for the girls
4:17 pm - Becky calls LG and then a few of their friends to see if they’ve heard from Libby or Abby

A short time later, Becky and Aunt Tara speak on the phone and decide to meet at the trailhead. When Tara arrives, Derrick gets into her car to wait for Becky.

4:20 pm - Becky calls her husband/LG’s grandfather Mike at work in Lafayette and lets him know they can't find the girls

Before Becky leaves the house, her son/LG’s Uncle Cody comes in from work and rides with her to the trails. They take two different routes the girls could've taken (if they’d walked home), but there's no sign of them.

The primary concern among family members at this time is that the girls have been in an accident - maybe they've fallen down a hill and Libby dropped her phone. (Abby didn't have a phone.)

Becky calls AT&T to ask about pinging LG’s phone but they can't help her. (Libby’s family had run a factory reset on LG’s phone a week earlier to fix glitches she'd been having with her service, and tracking apps like Life360 and/or Find My Phone had not been set back up.)

Kelsi and her Uncle Cody take the Monon High Bridge Trail and walk the 1/2 mile to the bridge, cross it, and proceed down the hill on the other end. At the end of the bridge, Kelsi remembers looking to the left and seeing where someone had fallen down the hill, but she didn’t think anything of it... “because everybody goes down the hill”. Doug Carter asks Kelsi if she'd seen “disrupted ground” and was that why she thought someone had fallen down the hill. She says yes.

At the bottom of the steep hill is a long dirt road (private driveway) that connects several residences. Cody and Kelsi knock on the doors of some of the remote homes but only manage to speak to one homeowner who had not seen the girls.

Cody and Kelsi climb back up the hill to the bridge and return to the parking area. Kelsi says they didn't continue to walk down the left hand side of the bridge’s end because there were no residences or structures in that immediate area - just woods and Deer Creek.

5:00 pm - Libby’s grandfather Mike arrives and parks in the Mears family driveway with Mr. Mears permission (he also joins Mike on the search)

Mike tries to call LG repeatedly but her phone is now going straight to voicemail. (The calls were ringing several times before going to voicemail at 4:17 pm but were going straight to voicemail by 5:00 pm.)

5:20 pm - Mike calls the Delphi Police Department and reports the girls missing

2 officers respond to Mike’s 9-1-1 call -- one officer with the Delphi PD and an officer with the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office both meet Mike at the trailhead and begin to search for the girls immediately.

Kelsi heads to work nearly an hour late for her 4:30 pm shift.

Becky tries calling Anna (Abby’s mom) several times to let her know the girls are missing. Unable to reach Anna, Becky heads over to the restaurant where Anna is working but she phones her back on the way there. After learning her daughter is missing, Anna leaves work and heads to meet Mike and Patty at the sheriff’s department to file a police report.

Mike calls a friend in LE to see about pinging LG’s phone. He recommends Mike talk with the sheriff’s office about tracking down her phone. Mike leaves to meet Becky and Kelsi at the sheriff’s office. (Kelsi had been contacted to meet with LE, as she was the last person to see the girls. Her friend (who is also her boyfriend’s sister) Bree goes with her to the sheriff's office.

Mike stops by the house and grabs an iPad and other electronic devices for LE. He also calls a cousin who works for a local TV station. The cousin comes down to the trails and the story airs on the local 6 o'clock news.

Mike also calls up his fire department buddies to help w/ the search. Meanwhile, the family posts about the girls missing on FB and emergency officials from multiple agencies -- including the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, Delphi PD, Delphi FD, and the Department of Natural Resources -- join the search. Emergency fire tones go off between 5:50-6:00 pm and secondary calls go out to the volunteer fire department. A few of the searchers estimate that as many as 100 people were out searching for the girls that night.

Libby was an avid social media user, and when Kelsi checks Snapchat, she sees the story LG posted that included 2 photos. One photo depicts the bridge and the other depicts Abby walking on the bridge. The Snapchat story was posted around 2:07 pm. The photo of Abby was taken by Libby, who was positioned ahead of her on the bridge about 40% of the way down—headed toward the point where it dead ends into the woods.

LE begins pinging LG’s phone that evening. It pinged around town that afternoon but stopped 4-5 hours earlier. All texts from family members go unread.

LE immediately looks into the girls social media accounts. Anna then discovers Abby has a male friend online that she doesn't know. She didn’t even know that Abby had a FB account because Abby had blocked her, as she'd been forbidden from having an account. The only electronic device Abby had was a Kindle Fire tablet. She got the tablet two months earlier on Christmas, and Anna didn’t know the password. Despite all of this, LE is fairly certain the girls hadn't planned to meet anyone on the trails that day and they didn’t find anything suspicious on SM or on any of the electronics.

After the family meets with LE at the sheriff’s office, they return to the trails to rejoin the search. Interviews with Becky, Mike, and Anna are aired on the 11 o’clock news.

Just before midnight, the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office issues a news release saying they have no reason to believe the girls are in immediate danger or that foul play is suspected. The official search is terminated around midnight due to the darkness. However, some stay throughout the night and search the woods with flashlights. These include the Delphi Fire Department, Mike Patty, Eric Erskine (Abby’s grandfather), and several others.


The next morning...

7:00 am - Kelsi, Mike, Patty, Anna, and others reconvene at the fire department
7:40 am - searchers are grouped into small search parties of 10-20 people and sent out to check separate areas within a 20-25 square mile radius

Volunteer searchers are told to stay away from the immediate area at the end of the bridge (as they suspect the girls may have gone that way) because K9 search dogs are being brought in to search the area and they don't want to contaminate it.

Only two groups of searchers cross the bridge to look for the girls on the property at the southeastern end. A lot of the searchers are looking in town and in fields. Kelsi, Derrick, Mrs. Bennett (the secretary of Delphi Middle), and Kelsi’s cousin are searching together in one group. Dive teams are deployed in the deeper parts of Deer Creek, a drone is sent up to look overhead, and the state police provide their search helicopter.

Anna remains at the fire station to wait for her father Cliff to arrive from Michigan. She also goes back to her house to grab a piece of Abby’s clothes for tracking her scent.

Kelsi’s group goes searching under the bridge, and Kelsi brings a blanket and granola bars with her. Another search group nearby is searching across the private driveway, near Deer Creek.

When Kelsi’s group starts back towards the driveway, a man yells up that he's found a shoe close to the edge of the creek. He yells up to ask Kelsi what kind of shoes the girls were wearing. The shoe was a black Nike sneaker and belongs to Libby. Other items belonging to the girls are also found by searchers, but that information has not been released publicly.

Police recordings tell us that a deputy searching the banks of Deer Creek, under the bridge, found girls clothing (specifically undergarments) in the shallow water. A photographer from a local newspaper posted photos of the search activity on FB. She commented that the clothing in the creek could even be seen from 75 yards away.

LE also finds and bags a cigarette butt they deem relatively fresh. It was found on the edge of Deer Creek or in the water — it’s unclear which.

A short time later, the same searcher who found the shoe, spots something out of the corner of his eye down the left side of the bridge — it was movement across the creek. Looking with his phone camera, he zooms in on the area and sees two deer standing in the woods. When he pans down with his phone camera, he finds the two bodies at approximately 12:15 pm. Kelsi commented that if the deer hadn’t moved, he never would have seen them.

Great post.

Some things get a little flaky in translation, I see a few things like that in the timeline, but it's a solid timeline.

I have a problem with some of what's been shared from the next day's search(es):

Police recordings tell us that a deputy searching the banks of Deer Creek, under the bridge, found girls clothing (specifically undergarments) in the shallow water. A photographer from a local newspaper posted photos of the search activity on FB. She commented that the clothing in the creek could even be seen from 75 yards away.

No time has ever been cited for when the reporter saw clothing in the water, and it's from a social media post he made. 75 yards from the bridge is a great distance from the CS, and the clothing was seen on the south side of the creek near to the bridge. So my guess would be someone saw it from the bridge, what was done with it after that is anyone's guess.

The reporter is a "he", not a "she", far as I know.

There's been no indication the clothing there had anything to do with the murders the day before. That and where they crossed the creek was around a bend in it east of the bridge, roughly 800-900 feet from the clothing in the creek.

JMO

 

[JnRyan]

What mistakes do you think BG could have made that will inevitably lead to his arrest at some point? Before there was DNA intuitive Detectives were able to solve murders. I have confidence that this case will be solved with or without DNA just like Homicide Investigators from the past brought murderers to justice.

I hate to think about this, but I believe it will be similar to solving the Morgan Harrington case. The killer will strike again, but then he will make a major mistake - witness, better video - and his DNA will tie him to this case. Hard to think about but if this guy is a serial killer he will strike again and there may be another victim or victims. My best case scenario is his DNA shows up in an untested rape kit from earlier and we have a better description from that crime.

 

[gregjrichards]

I still hope and pray every day that there will be a break in the case. Thank you to all of you for continuing to post in the thread. We will never give up hope there will be an arrest one day.

I hope it is ok to ask I have been wondering if there is any news on how Liberty’s Grandma is doing with her brave cancer battle? I can’t imagine what the girl’s families are going through every day.