Thanks, M. Kay! I agree. Many years ago I was the victim of a crime that killed a young friend of mine and left me severely injured. Although there were many witnesses to the incident, no one could provide more than a rough description of the perpetrator, and the car he was driving had been reported stolen and was never recovered after the incidentlikely taken to a black market chop shop immediately to be dismantled and sold for parts.
Despite many witnesses and many public pleas for information, the case almost immediately went cold for six months or so, until a police informant working on a drug case was informed by a crackhead/prostitute that she knew who the perpetrator was.
After the informant notified detectives, it took them quite a while to even locate this woman to interview her. (I think of this often when posters say, If LE really thought DN was BG, they wouldve nabbed him immediately! They wouldve just gone and picked him up! He never wouldve made it as far as Colorado! Well, sorry guys, unfortunately thats not always how criminal investigations work in the real world.)
Once they did, she was able to provide detectives with unpublished details of the crime that led them to believe she was really present when it occurred and really did know who the perpetrator was. Then, once again, it took quite a while to locate him. You see, as the lead detective explained to me, these people dont live the same kind of lives that the rest of us do. They dont have coworkers and permanent addresses, leases and voter registrations. They dont file tax returns, they dont drive registered cars, theyre not guaranteed to show up at their moms on her birthday with a present. Often they have burner phones. They truly do live beneath the surface of civilized society. They are notoriously difficult to trace.
Anyway, in the end the prostitute recanted her testimony, implicated another person with a rap sheet a mile long who was involved with both herself and the perpetrator she originally named, and eventually disappeared off into the underworld. Charges had to be dropped against the alleged perpetrator and because very little evidence against him could be recovered. Really, there was just the car, which was never recovered, some cell phone records, and the unreliable testimony of a cracked-out hooker who had no real desire to cooperate with the justice system.
So whoever did it, got away with it. The case went cold again. The statute of limitations ran out. The investigators, prosecutors, my family and the family of the other victim were all convinced that the three people implicated and interviewed by investigators were the ones somehow involved. Believe me, these people were just as mean and conscienceless as DN, and probably not a whole lot smarter. I know weve all been captivated by the cases and movies and podcasts about criminal masterminds who leave investigators stumped by their brilliance, but the truth is, it doesnt necessarily take that to get away with a crime in the real world. As other posters have said, and they are absolutely right, these drifter type people who live in the underworld, like DN, are awfully slippery. Its not due to their own forethought or criminal smarts, its just the way these kind of things off and shake out.
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