It is curious why they would have been executing a warrant on him when there doesn't appear to be any reason for them to know who he was.
The only way to get any ID on him would be to get the CC information from Tempo, and that prompts the question of why they were there in the first place, since there was no clear indication that she had been there. And if the people at Tempo didn't know him, why would they connect him with the CC transaction?
The video of HG on the street is not clear.....we can guess that one of the people is her.....but is it? on one of the videos there are two women that pass who could be her - one appears to have male in white holding her shoulders, and the second has a male in white walking next to the woman....so which one really is HG?. The resolution on both of those cameras is so bad that it is impossible to say if JM is actually the person on the video....perhaps he wasn't.
I agree with you that the videos alone are not good enough to be solid evidence. But once people who will attest to being in the videos are identified, and can tell what happened about when, the videos can provide good verification. There has been confusion with the tapes as well.
When Hannah's description was first aired and the "Missing" alarm was raised, there was no reason to look at the video footage at the mall. All LE knew was that it was Sunday afternoon and Hannah was last seen by UVA students at a party who out and out said she had been drinking and left them at a location at "the Corner" where UVA grads tend to cluster. She had been with contact with some of the partiers that morning of 9/13 and the texts that she sent to them were pretty quickly collected as well as the accounts of those students in that area who had seen her last.
The next break seemed to be from those who saw her walking at the mall. She is a tall girl, dressed to party, alone and apparently her demeanor and stride did attract some attention. People at the mall let police know she had been there and the timing was
after what fellow students reported from the Corner, near where she lived, near where the students tend to hang out. So video footage from stores and the mall area were obtained and studied. It takes a lot to go through the grainy, vague footage in real time and glean the pertinant shots from it. Again, without, people who stepped up and gave time/place marker on seeing her there, it would have been tough getting a fix on her so quickly, IMO.
But it also confused things, as WG who did come to LE described someone different from who was on the camera, and who LE had pretty much already gotten a fix on--JM with his dreads. JM was well known there at the mall. He hung out there and he was seen with Hannah definitively at Tempo. Really that has turned out to be the most salient info from all of that since that was the last sighting of Hannah. She left with him, was the word.
JM had been at Tempo earlier that evening--sales receipts and several witnesses have placed him there He left at about the time the encouter with Hannah is seen on tape, and I agree that without WG saying what happened, the time stamps of bills paid at Tempo, that he did return to Temp with Hannah, bought something there, paid for it with credit card and Hannah was also seen in the vicinity (unclear whether she actually went into Temp, and isn't relevant to what happened afterwards). So it's a combo of what is on tape, witness accounts, including more than one person, and JM actually leaving credit card info at given times that show pretty definitively what happened at the mall.
I can't make out a danged thing form the footage alone, either. I can verify sort of from a narrative, but I wouldn't bet anyone's life on the images alone It's like a lot of evidence, which alone won't stand up but with other pieces of info tell a most probable story.
Seriously, Hannah could have been planning to go off with someone night, met up with him, and JM was the conduit to take her to that person and she's off in the islands sipping a Pina Colada But I don't think that's likely. Unfortunately, the most probable scenario, given what LE has told us, she is probably dead and lying in a creek, lake, underbrush, ditch, thrown off a crevice. From what I've seen around Charlottesville and what those who know it well have said, there are many, many places within minutes of the city where a body can be hidden and unlikely found. We can only hope that JM was as careless with pitching Hannah as he is with most everything else he does in his life and that he did something quick and easy that LE can track and she can be found. So far, that 's not been the case.
