Hi,
I've been following this thread as time permits and thinking/praying for the family and loved ones often. I have been thinking about why the search was called off as well and remember some folks pondering early on that perhaps something the family said contributed to that decision being made. Has it ever been clarified by LE why it was?
Anyway, here is one way I can see this happening. If my child and a friend were out hiking and didn't meet me at the pickup time, of course the first place I would be looking is where they were last seen. My first thought might be that maybe they met up with some friends and went to hang out at someone's house and forgot about the time and didn't want to answer their phones to avoid dealing with the conflict until they were ready to come home, etc. But I would also be concerned that one of them might have fallen and twisted an ankle or something and the other one didn't want to leave her and the power on their phones were out so they couldn't call. (Would they have had cell service in a remote area like that, btw?)
But after a couple of hours or so of looking for them in the places I know they usually hung out at the park, (checking underneath the bridge in case of an accident would be a priority), I would no longer be focusing as much on the park. There would be a point where I would be thinking, "Okay, we've been yelling their names for a couple of hours now - if they were here they would have answered, etc. If one of them is hurt, the other one would have heard us,etc. We might be wasting time here when they could be hitchhiking on the highway to go see so and so, or they might have met up with a friend who drives and are out with some boys somewhere, etc. Where else could they have gone?"
At some point, after a long time of seeing no evidence of them anywhere at the park, I would want to leave to focus on other possibilities and would be concerned about searchers possibly needlessly getting hurt searching the woods when it seemed highly unlikely they were even there. (I don't think the first thing that would come to mind in a small rural town is that they had been murdered in the afternoon at a public park.)
I would also be thinking it would be highly unlikely for both of them to have fallen and not be able to hear us yelling for them. I still would have liked for some helpers to stay at the park while I investigated other possibilities, but after an initial search of the park, my mind would be going to the next place they might be. The last thing I would suspect it that some monster killed both of them in broad daylight. Now if my child had been alone at the park, my initial thoughts would have been frantic ones with immediate worse case scenarios. But two smart, athletic friends out together in a place they are very familiar with? I'd be thinking they went elsewhere, and if they were in trouble, it happened wherever they had gone to instead of at the park.
Does that make sense?
