Police do not always reveal the injuries a victim received prior to murder, and the cause of death is commonly withheld. We will only find out more about what happened to the girls if and when charges are filed, as that will include details such as rape. The man in the photo is the suspect. He very likely raped and strangled the girls within a couple of hours of meeting them.
Regarding hiding in plain sight, DNA from Paul Bernardo, the Scarborough rapist, was submitted for analysis but months later it had still not been analyzed. Many people who knew him joked that he looked a lot like the suspect that police sought, but he was such an easy going clean-cut professional that no one really believed that he was a serial rapist and murderer. That may be what has happened here.
There's another case of a well known outdoor photographer and father of young girls who drove from Montana to Wyoming to abduct a young girl. There was nothing about him that would suggest that he was capable of what he did. He was only caught because the girl miraculously survived.
"A Montana man lured a 10-year-old Cody girl from outside the county library with the tale of a lost puppy, held her at gunpoint, tied her up and took her to the wilderness to sexually abuse her. Hours later, he abandoned the victim along a remote dirt road, where she was found that night by a pair of hunters.
For that, Wyoming District Judge Steven Cranfill on Tuesday sentenced Jesse Paul Speer, 41, of Manhattan, Mont., to life behind bars. Cranfill said Cody, a picturesque town of fewer than 10,000, would never be the same."
http://missoulian.com/news/state-an...cle_6476da58-51f2-11e3-8c9c-001a4bcf887a.html
