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This case is four years old. Many who now have an interest in learning about these horrific murders and the distress those acts have caused the families, their entire community, and the LE officials who serve it have not been following the case those entire four years and they are unaware of the current state (proven, unproven, disregarded, maintained as a possibility) of every twist and turn in information put out by LE, the press, and various family members.
Statements by individual LE officials have sometimes contradicted statements of others, and sometime differ from what that same individual officer may have said when asked a question at an earlier point in the investigation (when less was known). Family members who've handled themselves admirably in every way through the course of this tragedy have nevertheless sometimes spoken inexactly and those inexactly spoken words have sometimes not been pursued by interviewers to more precision, yet others have used them in fleshing out their own theories as though they were precise.
Over two years into the case, LE made a very substantial change by introducing a new sketch and revealing that they now believed this portrayal represented the perpetrator (in contradiction to what they had been saying for nearly all of the previous two years, on billboards, flyers, and social media posts - that another sketch portrayed the perpetrator). By revealing no information about what had changed except comments which seemed directed at the perpetrator (or a profile of the perpetrator) and seemed to imply that LE had been led astray ("new direction in investigative strategy" which "you did not expect"), we are left without knowing whether this was because of choices made by LE early in the investigation that were now believed to have been wrong, false or planted evidence, a witness or multiple who misdirected intentionally or not, or because there were multiple perpetrators and the more recently released sketch was the real baddie while the earlier released sketch was a secondary actor. We aren't owed any of that information - and no one wants to give this perpetrator's defense attorney any ammunition to serve him once he is eventually brought into court-, but in the absence of a coherent narrative that fits the known facts, people attempt to fill in the blanks until it makes some sense to them.
For motivations that may have been as simple as comforting a community in distress or as complex as attempting to motivate the perpetrator in some way, one LE officer has inserted a very specific cultural reference that seems personal and relevant to him (and may also have been relevant to many in the audience) but that many have mistaken as a clue related to the crime. That a murder victim in a nearby county had recently been found in a hunting shack and her murderer and his cohorts arrested didn't seem entirely coincidental, until that LE official publicly revealed that there was no shack involved in the Delphi case. At one time LE asked about information relating to a vehicle that was supposedly at the old CPS building in a given time frame, but they did not identify anything about the make or model or general type of vehicle, or its color or age or condition. And then, they stopped talking about it.
Of course, we the public are not entitled to know what LE knows through the course of their investigation. But, in the absence of clarity about quite a few aspects of the very limited information that has been released, people attempt to gain clarity by making suppositions and by latching onto what someone in authority in this case has at one time said or theorized.
I think there is a lot of room for forgiveness of mistakes and for consideration of the various theories people come up with as they attempt to make sense of this and to offer their ideas, suggestions, and theories based on their own knowledge, judgment, and experience. I am personally grateful to those here (Yemelyan, I'm talking to you in particular) who approach others (long term and knowledgeable or new and showing it) with a generous spirit and who helpfully provide information that broadens awareness of what has been more recently said and by whom but who leave it to the posters they are addressing to decide what to do with that.
