Found Deceased IN - Abigail (Abby) Williams, 13, & Liberty (Libby) German, 14, The Delphi Murders 13 Feb 2017 #128

[MistyWaters]

One thing about composite sketches....we have heard so many times people's recollection of faces are not perfect so we shouldn't think of the sketches in this case like photographs. I'd go so far as to say that "not perfect" should be replaced by a more clear phrase like "extremely fragile."

Many sketch artists in the US (including Trooper Bryant, who made the "young" sketch) work with a system where they ask witnesses to look at isolated features and choose eyebrows that match what they saw from this set of choices, and lips from this other set of choices. It's debatable whether the human brain actually stores facial information in this piecemeal way. So this is one reason that LE will tell you, this sketch is not a picture of the suspect. There may be a feature or two here that reminds you of someone whose face you know.

The other thing about composites is that the very act of working with LE to create a sketch likely alters the witness's physical memory of the actual face. Witnesses who helped LE create sketches usually have trouble later identifying the person from a photo lineup. It is an unfortunate consequence of how our brain chemistry works to create memory.

Source:
SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

By the time people began sifting through stranger’s FB photos looking for a match I’m sort of disappointed LE didn’t loudly stress the fact a sketch isn’t a photo and memories are certainly not always precise. Or that the 2nd sketch was already 2 years old so there was a high likelihood the suspect didn’t look exactly the same 2 years later, even if the sketch was roughly accurate at the time.

Carter’s later attempt to backtrack by suggesting the suspect might look something between the two sketches further muddied the waters as it still gives the notion both sketches were a precise recreation of exactly who different people saw. Maybe because he didn’t want to say the suspect is between the ages of 18 and 60, caucasian with 2 eyes, a nose and a mouth.

 

[Deleted member 102539]

okay so jumping off of the second sketch, we know that the second released sketch was actually done first or before the one they released. Why didn't they go with the first rendering? My guess and this is just my guess, is that maybe only a couple of people spotted the young version and came forward to report something they saw. But after interviewing more people, the second sketch looks more like the guy on the bridge. Following this? But they say in the above interview, that they put out the video in hopes someone would come forward. So they did, and we end up with the older, guy sketch. What if the younger guy, didn't have the hoodie up, or the hat on and you could see his face more clearly than the face in the video and that is the person they saw early on and it got pushed to the side, because everyone else is seeing what is on the video. In the video you can't see his chin, you see a dark shadow that looks like a goatee. The second release, the chin is long, distinctive, like they got a good look at him. I don't know if got my point across, it's hard to explain, but I think the younger version is BG without the hoodie up, no hat and maybe even his jacket off. What was he doing that made someone say, I saw this guy, blah, blah , blah....

Perhaps the witness had the following problem:
He looked like someone, they knew, but they didn't know, why exactly his face was no stranger to them. So the description was 100% correct, but maybe they couldn't put a name to that face/figure. Maybe, they were able to say: looked just like (put in initials here) on media images or at least similar, but surely wasn't him (doubting, that person would hang around in their little world).

That's roughly how I imagine it. I maybe wrong of course.

 

[everlearning]

Thanks to all for the great sleuthing. I visit this forum almost daily and y'all amaze me!

 

[Justice101]

deleted

 

[Skully]

Perhaps the witness had the following problem:
He looked like someone, they knew, but they didn't know, why exactly his face was no stranger to them. So the description was 100% correct, but maybe they couldn't put a name to that face/figure. Maybe, they were able to say: looked just like (put in initials here) on media images or at least similar, but surely wasn't him (doubting, that person would hang around in their little world).

That's roughly how I imagine it. I maybe wrong of course.

Ya, that could be. It just bothered me that LE turned out a sketch so different from the one they released before. I couldn't understand why they changed direction this late in the game. the only thing I could think of, was the older guy one, was tainted by the video and if you stripped the video down, was this the younger version with the hoodie up, the hat on, the shadows on his face? Did someone see him before he got on that bridge, and got a look at him; but he wasn't in stalking mod.

 

[StarryStarryNight]

Ya, that could be. It just bothered me that LE turned out a sketch so different from the one they released before. I couldn't understand why they changed direction this late in the game. the only thing I could think of, was the older guy one, was tainted by the video and if you stripped the video down, was this the younger version with the hoodie up, the hat on, the shadows on his face? Did someone see him before he got on that bridge, and got a look at him; but he wasn't in stalking mod.

One thing that annoyed me when the new sketch came out was LE for two years allowed the public to think that BG/killer was a middle aged potbellied scraggly guy. However you could tell from that two second video with him actually walking that he was much thinner, with no facial hair and was probably younger. I’m thinking, LE watched that video, the entire video, probably hundreds of time. They didn’t see that? For two years they didn’t notice that? Why would they allow the myth of the out of shape old guy to go on when they could see it was wrong.
In the interview Holeman repeatedly says that LE wanted to make sure the people who came forward and claimed to have seen the guy on the bridge actually saw him...that it wasn’t someone else they saw. I think it’s safe to say after April 2019 that they didn’t do a very good job with that.

 

[watcher9]

Just coming in to my email account and very interesting, IMO:
She didn’t know her kidnapper. But he was using Google Maps — and that cracked the case.
That got Draeger thinking. He conducts high-tech investigations for the Milwaukee Police Department, where he’d sought breaks in previous unsolved cases by using “cell tower dumps,” which compiled data from telecommunication companies to identify phones used near crime scenes. It was an expensive and arduous process and did not guarantee any usable results. But he might get results faster, and with more precision, if he went to a single source of highly precise location data: Google.

At a conference, Draeger had heard law enforcement officials discuss the possibility of asking Google for location data that could be used as a dragnet for a suspect’s phone.

I remember seeing that HLN story long ago about using the Google maps to help solve the case.

Maybe Google could supply the info on who all may have or if anyone had accessed their maps of the Delphi location during the two-three weeks before this horrible crime?

 

[minazoe]

I hope Libby and Abby get justice in 2021...wether it's sketch number one or sketch number two..it would be great to have a brilliant detective come and work on this case..someone with unflinching attention to detail like Mark F. you know it really takes a kind of religious devotion to track down some of these murderers. When you cant even tie the suspect to a vehicle or a specific area. You have to follow the clues and this case needs a fresh start.

I think this crime really starts earlier in the day as the killer was preparing his clothing and kill kit and arranging to be at the park.

so the planning happens first and then there is the actual execution of the plan . the biggest question is did he have specific victims in mind as he did this...and how did he come to come to be there at that specific moment in time.

I think the girls got catfished. I think there was another phone and that was the one the killer was concerned with taking...having no idea about the other phone.

this is my opinion only and there is no evidence of another phone. there is no evidence they got catfished. there is no evidence they were waiting to meet someone as that can easily be explained away as they may have been waiting for BG to come across...so I can be wrong wrong wrong..

but it's still my theory and Im sticking to it

mOO

 

[Skully]

One thing that annoyed me when the new sketch came out was LE for two years allowed the public to think that BG/killer was a middle aged potbellied scraggly guy. However you could tell from that two second video with him actually walking that he was much thinner, with no facial hair and was probably younger. I’m thinking, LE watched that video, the entire video, probably hundreds of time. They didn’t see that? For two years they didn’t notice that? Why would they allow the myth of the out of shape old guy to go on when they could see it was wrong.
In the interview Holeman repeatedly says that LE wanted to make sure the people who came forward and claimed to have seen the guy on the bridge actually saw him...that it wasn’t someone else they saw. I think it’s safe to say after April 2019 that they didn’t do a very good job with that.

That's the thing Starry, I don't think they saw it. I think they saw what we all saw in the video. I do remember that they said that video was taken when he was not that close to them, they said it was cleaned up to get what we see now. That is was enlarged and didn't have that many pixels to work with. So they went by eyewitness that came forward to say we saw this guy and filled in the blanks. But in the beginning there was one or two people that noticed him before he hit that bridge and he looks different. He stood out to them and the eye witness was not tainted by the video. They saw something significant enough to sit down with them and do a drawing. Do you know if there are rest rooms around the area?

 

[StarryStarryNight]

That's the thing Starry, I don't think they saw it. I think they saw what we all saw in the video. I do remember that they said that video was taken when he was not that close to them, they said it was cleaned up to get what we see now. That is was enlarged and didn't have that many pixels to work with. So they went by eyewitness that came forward to say we saw this guy and filled in the blanks. But in the beginning there was one or two people that noticed him before he hit that bridge and he looks different. He stood out to them and the eye witness was not tainted by the video. They saw something significant enough to sit down with them and do a drawing. Do you know if there are rest rooms around the area?

You make a very good point. The first sketch was made mostly from people who saw the photo from the video and then called the police and said “I saw that guy at the trails that day”. The witness that helped with the second sketch probably was not influenced by the video photo and in fact came to police because he “saw someone doing something that they thought needed reporting”.
I have never heard anyone mention restrooms at the trails. I don’t think there are any, but I don’t know for sure.

 

[Yemelyan]

That's the thing Starry, I don't think they saw it. I think they saw what we all saw in the video. I do remember that they said that video was taken when he was not that close to them, they said it was cleaned up to get what we see now. That is was enlarged and didn't have that many pixels to work with. So they went by eyewitness that came forward to say we saw this guy and filled in the blanks. But in the beginning there was one or two people that noticed him before he hit that bridge and he looks different. He stood out to them and the eye witness was not tainted by the video. They saw something significant enough to sit down with them and do a drawing. Do you know if there are rest rooms around the area?

To clarify for you, the "young" sketch, which was drawn 3 days after the bodies were found, is the memory of a single witness who saw "something that needed to be reported." We do not know if this occurred on or away from the trails but LE explicitly says this sketch more accurately represents the face of the man who was videoed on the bridge that day.

Delphi murders update 2019: New suspect sketch, video released

The "old" sketch, which was released first, was created after weeks of input from multiple sources of information including more than one eyewitness. It is not just a composite in the normal meaning of the word but a mix of information from all these sources. This is actually not typical as usual police composites are made from information supplied by a single witness.

Here's Sgt. Holeman's words from his interview at CrimeCon 2018 with reporter Ashleigh Banfield about the origins of the "old" sketch that was released in July 2017:

SGT. HOLEMAN: You can ask the tough questions, I’ll answer them. Again, it takes a lot of time. I’m not a sketch artist. The FBI actually–an agent from the FBI–did the sketch. And you know, I think when somebody sketches it takes like, 10 minutes [shakes head ‘no’]. It takes several weeks. But to get the information, to find the people that we believe saw that person that day near the time of the murders, that takes months. So we had to locate these people, interview them, find out who they really saw. Did they really see the guy on the bridge from the video, or did they see Mike out there helping search, or did they see somebody else out there helping with the search? So we had to identify those people, and once we felt like we identified the people that actually saw the guy on the bridge, then the sketch itself took, again, several weeks. They sketched it, looked at it, “No…that’s not correct”. I will say that she still–[Clarification note: he quickly corrects his use of ‘she’ to ‘they’]—they, there’s a couple people— still aren’t convinced that’s the proper hat, but that’s the hat that the sketch artist could come up with as close to what the witnesses were describing. And I know the Superintendent [Doug Carter] said “Don’t focus on the sketch”, and we got a lot of calls on that. I think what he meant to say was…you know, where there’s four or five of us up here right now and if we pick somebody out of room right now and identify them to a sketch artist, there would be five different sketches. They’d have the similar features, as we believe this sketch has of the guy on the bridge, but they’d be a little different. So I think that what he meant is the person that did this heinous crime may not exactly look like that sketch. That’s what the person’s information and then the sketch artist had to take that information in and then put it on paper. So it’s not always going to be perfect, but we think that’s a really good sketch, and we think it’s really close to the person that we’re looking for on the bridge.

Source: Delphi Murders CrimeCon Interview Transcript - CrimeLights

 

[stattlich1]

Feb 20, 2017
See somebody walking near Delphi? Call police
“If you saw a hitchhiker or somebody walking along roads in Delphi last week, the police would like to talk to you. You could help find who killed Abigail Williams and Liberty German.

Police are asking the public to try and remember if you saw somebody Monday, Feb. 13 in the late afternoon or evening.

"We're asking people that were driving down the Hoosier Heartland that might have seen a hitchhiker or someone walking. We're asking people that live in Logansport all the way to Lafayette, if they saw somebody late that afternoon, that evening of Monday the 13th, if they saw somebody walking down the roadway that just did not look like they should be there, or they're just a hitchhiker, we would like to talk to that person," said Sgt. Kim Riley, Indiana State Police...”

Cut, and bolded by me Thanks for this post. Makes me wonder if LE knows the killer walked out of there.

 

[Skully]

You make a very good point. The first sketch was made mostly from people who saw the photo from the video and then called the police and said “I saw that guy at the trails that day”. The witness that helped with the second sketch probably was not influenced by the video photo and in fact came to police because he “saw someone doing something that they thought needed reporting”.
I have never heard anyone mention restrooms at the trails. I don’t think there are any, but I don’t know for sure.

Yep, I think someone saw him doing something and reported it. I don't think they realized that the report maybe had something in it, that would line up with a profile like his until someone remembered it and and put 2 and 2 together. So then they changed up the sketch and that is why they think he was interviewed or was watching the press release. Lots of these guys, urinate or do a lewd and lascivious act in public. Maybe he didn't realize someone saw him.

 

[Dotrat]

How are LE keeping All these sketch contributor witnesses quiet? Seriously we have not heard a peep from anyone of them, after all this time we are not hearing their accounts of what they saw on that day. Why wouldn’t they LE want to have them share their possible sightings it could maybe jog others people minds. MOO

 

[MistyWaters]

Cut, and bolded by me Thanks for this post. Makes me wonder if LE knows the killer walked out of there.

That report was issued less than a week after the murders. I really doubt they could know anything for sure at that point of the investigation because nobody witnessed the murders or tracked the perpetrator. All LE would have to go on was information coming in from tips, whatever they were able to gather. As is the case with any ongoing investigation, various theories may point somewhere resulting in an arrest, other times to absolutely nowhere.

However by the mere ask for tips about a highway guy, no doubt LE received tips. So my point was if anyone was innocently walking along the highway and LE eventually figured out they had absolutely no connection to the murders, that’s an example when a “new direction” would be required. But LE would never announce to the public the reason for the different focus.

 

[stattlich1]

That report was issued less than a week after the murders. I really doubt they could know anything for sure at that point of the investigation because nobody witnessed the murders or tracked the perpetrator. All LE would have to go on was information coming in from tips, whatever they were able to gather. As is the case with any ongoing investigation, various theories may point somewhere resulting in an arrest, other times to absolutely nowhere.

However by the mere ask for tips about a highway guy, no doubt LE received tips. So my point was if anyone was innocently walking along the highway and LE eventually figured out they had absolutely no connection to the murders, that’s an example when a “new direction” would be required. But LE would never announce to the public the reason for the different focus.

I see. Well, I was thinking maybe they tracked his boot prints out of there, or canines led them toward and/or out to the highway.

They could have just as easily been exploring ANY potential scenario at that early stage of the investigation.

Thanks.

 

[St. Anthony2017]

Stattlich1, I do not remember this being alluded to by LE. Any chance you can find a source for this?
"It was said by someone of LE, something to the effect that, though certain evidence would logically have led to a certain person or persons, said evidence in fact did not lead them there?

I think it’s because the killer is very organized and knows how to get away with murder leaving the least evidence possible. He either studies crimes, reports on crime scenes or has former law enforcement training. He may have been fired from a job for mental deficiencies, weirdness or for not following the rules. He thinks he is smarter than professional LE or even the FBI. He completed his mission and has moved on after punishing all those he perceived to have not taken him seriously. He sure showed them in his mind! The longer he is free the more satisfaction he gets because he really believes he got away with murder and that he won’t be caught any time soon if ever. He thinks he’s the star of a murder investigation movie but his show might get cancelled soon because I have faith that he will be caught. My avatar name is Saint Anthony. You can pray to him when you have lost something or feel lost yourself. He is also the Saint of lost causes. He has answered prayers for several people that I know. LE is amazing but so is the power of prayer imo.

 

[Spartygirl]

Remember reading that the car at the CPS building was abandoned and that it was at that location from noon to 5. If it was abandoned, was it towed at 5?

DBM--dupliciate post

 

[St. Anthony2017]

From your link and BBM...
"A $50,000 reward also has brought in a flood of information, prompting the FBI on Thursday to take control of a tip line established Feb. 16 to collect potential leads.

"It's going as far as nationwide," Leazenby said, noting law enforcement has received many tips from outside the state.

As a result, authorities said this past week they are expanding their investigation outside the community."

FBI took control of the tip line. I'm just thinking outloud, wondering whether that meant local people manning those tip lines were left in place/absorbed or was tip line totally handed over to "out-of-towners" to man? Maybe early on that effected how locals did or didn't report things?

It didn't take authorities long to expand the search nationwide. Is that because most of the tips coming in weren't from the area? Maybe the investigation going nationwide so quickly was the mistake?

No because there are signs that a serial killer did the murders of the girls imo.

 

[MistyWaters]

I see. Well, I was thinking maybe they tracked his boot prints out of there, or canines led them toward and/or out to the highway.

They could have just as easily been exploring ANY potential scenario at that early stage of the investigation.

Thanks.

That’s what I think as well. They were flooded with a huge amount of tips almost immediately. Much like the search warrant on the Bicycle Road or RL’s property, LE relies on information contained in those tips to lead the investigation forward to an arrest but it doesn’t always pan out that way. Not to say witnesses aren’t truthful, but as nobody witnessed the murders at best they’re providing information hoping it might be helpful - exactly as LE asked for. I’m on the fence as to whether or not the same could be said for witnesses involved with each of the “suspect” sketches.

Leazenby’s comments last April/20 seems to indicate the investigation continues to seek a focus.

JMO

Lots of tips, no arrest in 2017 double homicide | Carroll County Comet
“The Sheriff said evidence is being revisited to determine if there are more leads than were first thought.”