Found Deceased IN - Abigail (Abby) Williams, 13, & Liberty (Libby) German, 14, The Delphi Murders 13 Feb 2017 #136

[WildHuncher]

Being that close to a stream that can be unpredictable sometimes, not having those initial answers, we are thinking did they drown? Where specifically were they found? All those questions had not been answered at that point.

For him to have had these questions after the girls were found would imply that there were no super-obvious injuries. Discredits at least some of the rumors out there about cause of death which one might think would have been instantly noticeable.

IMHO

 

[Yemelyan]

For him to have had these questions after the girls were found would imply that there were no super-obvious injuries. Discredits at least some of the rumors out there about cause of death which one might think would have been instantly noticeable.

IMHO

Could be! I also think that because he listed "did they drown?" as a speculation he had before getting more info, we can probably infer that drowning did not ultimately end up being the actual cause of death. As is sometimes speculated here.

 

[everlearning]

I thought this was a very interesting article from Psychology Today on geographic profiling and the author mentions Abby and Libby's case.

How the Psychology of Place Informs a Profiler—Or a Killer

 

[MichMan015]

Good article!!!!!

Michman015

 

[cbeagle]

For him to have had these questions after the girls were found would imply that there were no super-obvious injuries. Discredits at least some of the rumors out there about cause of death which one might think would have been instantly noticeable.

IMHO

Not necessarily. From reading what was said it seems he had limited information. Whoever relayed the message may not have wanted to disclose too much information that could be overheard or scanned by others.

 

[JnRyan]

I thought this was a very interesting article from Psychology Today on geographic profiling and the author mentions Abby and Libby's case.

How the Psychology of Place Informs a Profiler—Or a Killer

Interesting to hear this from a forensic psychologist. Many of us on here have discussed the location with regard to familiarity with the specific area and comfort level with the outdoors. LE has said many times they believe he is currently a local or previously a local. Or at least a frequent visitor to the area in the past. I'm sure a profiler at one point looked at this for LE. However this killer came to his knowledge of the area, they obviously believed they could commit the murders with no third party interference.

I'd be interested to hear what a forensic psychologist thinks about the killer themself. A one time killer? A serial killer? I certainly don't believe this act came out of nowhere - i.e., one and done - with respect to criminal activity. I believe this killer, if they haven't killed before or since, has engaged in criminal activity such as sexual assault or a peeping tom. In fact, they may have done so but were not caught or the crime not even reported.

 

[Falling Down]

I’m a little confused as to what you’re getting at here. Are you saying the girls were not worth looking for because there wasn’t much information? I think the fact they were not where they were supposed to be for DG to pick them up was a good enough reason. If I’m misreading your response, my apologies.
That being said, my point was if it was my child missing under identical circumstances, I would not want LE coming up and telling me they were headed home for the night and citing a bunch of statistics as back up for leaving. I think they made a bad decision. Did it matter in the long run? No, unfortunately.

Much of the search in fact it might have been most of it wasn't even in the area of the bridge. People were searching far away from that area, in town, etc., etc., etc.

The limited and rather ad hoc search was for two missing girls, I've yet to come away with the impression that anyone thought they were in any danger. Which makes sense to me, considering the small area in question where they went missing, and more so the fact that people weren't thinking the worst in Delphi, IN, on Feb. 13th, 2017.

They probably figured the gorge area had been searched enough, already, by 10PM or so when people had already started heading home. Most of the gorge search focused on the area around the bridge and west of there. In and along a shallow creek.

I guess I don't understand what the big deal is about the search, people were probably within mere feet of the girls that evening but didn't see them. I'm guessing within 200 feet or maybe much closer. So effort was made but in the darkness it was difficult to see any great distance along much of that gorge area. It's happened before with searches and it will happen again.

Last but not least the safety factor of having searchers of all different ages and a range of physical abilities, searching in pitch darkness along a gorge with heavy vegetation, albeit during Winter.

JMO

 

[Falling Down]

For him to have had these questions after the girls were found would imply that there were no super-obvious injuries. Discredits at least some of the rumors out there about cause of death which one might think would have been instantly noticeable.

IMHO

Precisely.

I don't believe any of the rumors about the CS. Could very well be there was just no obvious sign of COD, in fact I've thought such since early on.

Ron Logan described the CS on his land he's had for over 50 years as "pristine". To me that means no obvious signs anything really happened there, and the investigators and CS folks did a good job of not disturbing much. Video of the area soon after the murders pretty much back this up.

 

[StarryStarryNight]

Much of the search in fact it might have been most of it wasn't even in the area of the bridge. People were searching far away from that area, in town, etc., etc., etc.

The limited and rather ad hoc search was for two missing girls, I've yet to come away with the impression that anyone thought they were in any danger. Which makes sense to me, considering the small area in question where they went missing, and more so the fact that people weren't thinking the worst in Delphi, IN, on Feb. 13th, 2017.

They probably figured the gorge area had been searched enough, already, by 10PM or so when people had already started heading home. Most of the gorge search focused on the area around the bridge and west of there. In and along a shallow creek.

I guess I don't understand what the big deal is about the search, people were probably within mere feet of the girls that evening but didn't see them. I'm guessing within 200 feet or maybe much closer. So effort was made but in the darkness it was difficult to see any great distance along much of that gorge area. It's happened before with searches and it will happen again.

Last but not least the safety factor of having searchers of all different ages and a range of physical abilities, searching in pitch darkness along a gorge with heavy vegetation, albeit during Winter.

JMO

I understand what you’re saying and appreciate the clarification.
I will add though, that if they probably figured the gorge area had been searched enough, why did they come back and begin searching it again the next morning.
I guess we just see it differently, which is OK. I agree that in the long run the search doesn’t really matter. If they had been found at 7pm, it still would have been the same tragedy.

 

[MistyWaters]

I understand what you’re saying and appreciate the clarification.
I will add though, that if they probably figured the gorge area had been searched enough, why did they come back and begin searching it again the next morning.
I guess we just see it differently, which is OK. I agree that in the long run the search doesn’t really matter. If they had been found at 7pm, it still would have been the same tragedy.

Although I don’t have a link at hand, I recall BP and Anna stating the search that evening consisted mainly of people walking the trails while calling out the girls’ names.

We know they didn’t return home that night, nor were they found lost or injured. So it seems natural the extent of the search was then intensified -

“Crews returned the next morning to search for Libby & Abby along Deer Creek and further out from the trail.”
Delphi Timeline

 

[FrostedGlass]

Bringing this bit over from Yemelyan's post; he's only saying that his little group at the fire dept. did not have any details in the initial call. That doesn't mean that those at the crime scene didn't suspect the girls foul play. The 4 at the fire dept learned the details within an hour and knew to investigate it as a crime scene.

**********************
TL: Chief SM and I and the Delphi mayor and the fire chief were in the back part of the fire department and I remember, I believe Chief Mullin got a call that they located them. And they’re no longer with us....Being that close to a stream that can be unpredictable sometimes, not having those initial answers, we are thinking did they drown? Where specifically were they found? All those questions had not been answered at that point. Being in law enforcement, we had to have that thought run through our minds, was their criminal activity afoot here? It wasn’t long after that initial call, within the hour, it put a whole different twist on the whole scenario at that stage. That first hour, it set in...for me it was disbelief. But eventually not long after that, that our instincts and training kicked in and we went into investigative mode.

 

[Yemelyan]

I understand what you’re saying and appreciate the clarification.
I will add though, that if they probably figured the gorge area had been searched enough, why did they come back and begin searching it again the next morning.
I guess we just see it differently, which is OK. I agree that in the long run the search doesn’t really matter. If they had been found at 7pm, it still would have been the same tragedy.

They might have come back in the morning to the gorge area with more resources because of the late night phone ping situation, as told in the HLN special.

It's still not clear to me if that ping was in real-time or if that's just the hour that they got the last data (which was from earlier in the day and it took time to generate the data from the provider).

For the first few years after this case I imagined "the search" as taking place just in that bridge/trail area and on Ron Logan's land. After listening to the many podcasts and family interviews, I now understand that:
1. The first night, most people believed the girls were no longer in the trails area and many people were searching the town of Delphi itself as well as any road routes they might have walked to get home, and farm fields they might have cut through.
2. The next morning, some people returned to the trails/bridge area to search but not everybody. MP went down the creek (away from the eventual crime scene) in a kayak, checking the water for signs of them. BP was with a group searching in someone's field. She wasn't near the trails at all. LE really did not yet have the idea that their resources were best concentrated in the gorge area. They were still feeling all options were open, including the idea that the girls were somewhere else in Delphi or even far from Delphi.

 

[Falling Down]

I understand what you’re saying and appreciate the clarification.
I will add though, that if they probably figured the gorge area had been searched enough, why did they come back and begin searching it again the next morning.
I guess we just see it differently, which is OK. I agree that in the long run the search doesn’t really matter. If they had been found at 7pm, it still would have been the same tragedy.

I get what you're driving at.

My hunch would be because there was no sign of the girls being anywhere else, the next morning. They had the benefit of daylight for the search.

Even in late afternoon in October when I walked the creek bed west of the bridge, the canopy of trees and the walls of the gorge made for a darker area down there. Where the creek narrows.

 

[WildHuncher]

IMHO, purely:

The lack of criminal detail in the first reports to reach offsite LE offers clues that the COD was not as gruesome and obvious as the more spectacular rumors would have it. No spears projecting from anybody, just to mention one of the sillier things I've seen posted somewhere.

There are escape hatches galore, for sure. It's not proof of anything. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Maybe they wouldn't mention something obvious in that call for privacy / security reasons. But they might have and they clearly didn't.

 

[FrostedGlass]

IMHO, purely:

The lack of criminal detail in the first reports to reach offsite LE offers clues that the COD was not as gruesome and obvious as the more spectacular rumors would have it. No spears projecting from anybody, just to mention one of the sillier things I've seen posted somewhere.

There are escape hatches galore, for sure. It's not proof of anything. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Maybe they wouldn't mention something obvious in that call for privacy / security reasons. But they might have and they clearly didn't.

IMO the lack of details tells us nothing. They don't release that type of thing to the public.
With that said, I think they were probably strangled.

 

[WildHuncher]

IMO the lack of details tells us nothing. They don't release that type of thing to the public.
With that said, I think they were probably strangled.

As is often noted, this is a small town police force where crimes of this nature just don't happen. The guy at the scene calling it in probably wasn't there the last time anybody had murdered anybody. He might have been half expected to at least hint at something in that call. Perhaps along the lines of, "I think you better get over here right away, Chief!"

You don't discard a clue because it's not a proof. It may amount to little more than a hint. There can be a lot of reasons why a dog doesn't bark. But don't forget that the dog didn't bark.

As always, MHO.

 

[FrostedGlass]

As is often noted, this is a small town police force where crimes of this nature just don't happen. The guy at the scene calling it in probably wasn't there the last time anybody had murdered anybody. He might have been half expected to at least hint at something in that call. Perhaps along the lines of, "I think you better get over here right away, Chief!"

You don't discard a clue because it's not a proof. It may amount to little more than a hint. There can be a lot of reasons why a dog doesn't bark. But don't forget that the dog didn't bark.

As always, MHO.

I agree with your first paragraph. I'm pretty sure he did tell them they needed to get over there and that may be why there was nothing more said over the phone. IIRC, even though it's a small town force, there was an FBI guy in the search party.

I don't discard clues... I just don't see lack of info in this instance as being a clue.

 

[MichMan015]

Here is another good article from Psychology Today! This attempts to define an organized serial killer versus a disorganized serial killer.
How the FBI Profiles Serial Offenders
MichMan015

 

[Yemelyan]

Here is another good article from Psychology Today! This attempts to define an organized serial killer versus a disorganized serial killer.
How the FBI Profiles Serial Offenders
MichMan015

It's very interesting to ponder but very, very little of the information that would be needed in order to take a guess at which one the Delphi killer was, has been released to the public. IMO

Traditionally, you need to look at indicators like, were the victims restrained? Was the weapon taken away with the offender? Aspects of the crime scene that are so far unknown.

IMO the FBI is moving away from a strict dichotomy of organized vs disorganized and now thinks that most serial killers have elements of both in their crimes, with very few being pure organized or pure disorganized. JMO.

 

[Nancy1954]

@Falling Down.. I don't think we are all ever going to agree on what LE chose NOT to do after midnight, but I was stating that LE could have gotten help from another district, NOT volunteers. Men and women that had the ability, training and qualifications to search that surrounding area that night, when the searchers on call got too tired. As for not being able to see anything, what about that huge searchlight in the cemetery that they used the very next evening? It could have been used the first night. It is MY OPINION that LE didn't feel that the girls were in trouble. That they were being young teenage girls. If it had been MY daughter out there missing that cold February night, they would NEVER have had me say it was okay to call off that search until morning. Everyone is different, we all react to things differently, and before I get replies that the families are not to be blamed, I am NOT in any way putting blame on ANYONE involved (except the murderer), I am only stating MY OPINION. We all agree that it would not have changed the outcome. JMO