BessDrew,
Which of the groups you describe would more likely be able to or want to cover for each other or a friend, among those lingering until 3:15 am, and would they ultimately do such a thing, cover for a friend, if they knew that was the person Chelsea left with, do you think?
Thanks, FindHG. I think your question, quoted above, is key to this. I appreciate the way you worded it.
I will describe the scenario for that night which seems *most likely* to me. (This is purely based on my own educated guesses given what we know about the case and the community.) It will be long, but there's a lot of ground to cover. I would love to hear other people's pushbacks or alternative ideas as well as any uncovered facts which impact this theory. We'll do our best thinking together, I'm sure.
1. I wonder if one of Chelsea Bruck's more experienced friends was her connection to the band and this music scene. (Perhaps the one she was holding hands with in the photo while watching the video at the previous PickAxePreacher concert.)
2. If Chelsea was friendly and a bit naive/awkward as many have described her, Chelsea may have waited until 11 p.m. because she wanted to arrive at the party with this friend or other co-workers who knew the scene better than she did. Arriving with a group of people is more comfortable for anyone.
3. According to their story, Chelsea declined the offer to leave with her friends at a more reasonable hour. If they are telling the truth, this leads me to believe there was someone else at the party who Chelsea wanted to spend time with badly enough that she was willing to part ways with her friends and stay up until 3:15 a.m.
4. Female music lovers often develop fan crushes on band members. As a result, they tend to prize the chance to score front row seats, signed t-shirts, or to "go backstage" with band members etc. Since we've also seen pics and video where Chelsea is posing with/talking to various band insiders, and she posted on their wall about possibly helping set up the party, my guess is Chelsea stayed late into the night because she was similarly drawn to the band and hoped to become more "inner circle" with them and their crew. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out she had a crush on one specific band member or crew member. And if that's the case, I believe one of her friends--such as the one who was holding her hand in the pic--would know about it.
Because others have suggested the bands' lyrics glorify violence, and because the parties were known to provide access to alcohol and drugs, I wonder if Chelsea might have avoided going into detail about this group of people with her family as they seem to have more traditional values and may have worried about her.
5. After that, we only know a few things about what happened to Chelsea between the time her friends left and her departure:
*The same friends who left the party early also claimed Chelsea told them, over the phone, that she ran into a pole and cut her face (bloody nose/cut to bridge of nose?). They claim she was embarrassed but okay.
*We have at least one public picture of Chelsea smiling brightly with a group of people. (The guy in the pic seems familiar with Chelsea and has his arm around her. The guy also has blood on his face, but Chelsea doesn't...which has been pointed out as odd since the pic is time stamped for around the time she's said to have walked into the pole.)
*We have Chelsea borrowing I believe at least two other people's phones and making calls trying to figure out her ride or retrieve possessions left in her friend's car. One of the people she borrowed a phone from was a friend from high school, I believe, who said she spoke to Chelsea at the bonfire, offered Chelsea a ride, and confirmed Chelsea had cut her face. I believe there are at least 3 people total who told police officers they offered Chelsea a ride and she declined.
*Someone reported Chelsea was irritated when she couldn't get her phone back, but multiple sources still said she was sober and acting normally.
All this again tells me that there was someone at that party who Chelsea wanted to stay with very badly. Because even after being injured and failing to get her clothes and phone back, she was still declining rides. Since she had previously left a Facebook post saying she might come over to help set up, it makes sense to me that she might've thought it would be fun to be one of the people to hang out with the crew and help tear down. I also wouldn't be surprised if she was staying in order to spend more time with one specific person she liked, and if maybe she even hoped the person (I assume a guy) would want to hang out with her or offer her a ride after the party. She still wanted to get her phone so she'd have the option to make other plans if needed, but she wanted to stay.
6. The next thing we know is Chelsea and Sketch Guy (lets guess he's a band insider) stop and talk to the vendor as they're walking toward the parking area. The vendor seems to believe she was acting normally and not under any stress, which again--if his testimony is truthful--leads me to believe she wanted to be in the company of this band guy. I would love to know whether the vendor sold products for only one band or all of them, because that might betray how well he knew these band guys. Did the vendor know any of the bands well enough to lie for them, for example? I am guessing the police don't think so or they wouldn't be using his testimony to shape the sketch. But I am hoping the police can narrow the field in their search for Sketch Guy by at least ruling out band members the vendor knew by name (and therefore couldn't be the Sketch Guy who the vendor claimed not to know).
7. Somewhere around the same time, the now-retracted testimony from Hero would've come into play. He had claimed he saw a bloody Chelsea with two men putting her into a vehicle. He even claimed to possibly have gotten blood on his shirt from Chelsea's injury as he tried to help her. He later said he made the story up to sound like a hero, but many have questioned whether there was some truth to his original story and he retracted it publicly because he got scared of the perpetrators.
The observation I make here is that both Hero and the friends who gave her a ride made it clear Chelsea was bleeding from the head. This is likely because she WAS bleeding (she's was described as being a bit clumsy at times), but it could also be because they wanted a way to explain any cross contamination between them and her blood should her body be discovered.
8. As the party wound down, Chelsea took a ride, either with A. the band member/inner circle guy she had been waiting for...OR B. someone else connected to the band that she normally wouldn't take a ride with but with whom she felt safe with due to him being a known member of the fan group.
9. We don't know if Chelsea knew her driver was taking her to another out of the way location, perhaps an after party hang out of sorts where there was drugs and sex. She may have gone willingly, not anticipating what it would be like, and feeling like she really belonged since she was being included in the after-festivities. My guess is her driver was from the area and part of this scene's underground--someone who might've visited the abandoned building previously to hideout away from prying neighbors and police and do drugs/hang out.
My *most likely* guess is that whether or not Chelsea wanted to go, that the problem didn't start until they arrived at the abandoned building by the trailer park/railroad tracks. While it's possible there was some deeply sinister and dark plot to kill her, it seems more likely that a careless series of mostly unintentional, irresponsible events went south fast.
I wonder, for example, if a guy who was influenced by substances, and Chelsea had been flirting late into the night and if the guy expected more from her. Somewhere in the process, my guess is something happened that would be classified as date rape. Maybe she was under the influence of substances she took (willingly or slipped to her) and wasn't able to give her informed consent. She could have changed out of her costume willingly, under the influence, or under duress...maybe even into a sweatshirt provided by a guy before anything evil happened. If so, Chelsea herself may have even been the one who left it on the scene of the abandoned building. This would explain why the suspect may not have even known it was there to go back and retrieve it.
10. As to how she got into the woods, I can see two routes. One would be she was fully conscious during some sort of sexual assault and in the process of struggling or trying to escape, she was killed and taken there. The other is that she was in a compromised state, due to substances (taken or slipped to her), and that she "came to" while driving or walking as the drugs wore off. Then when she realized what had happened and began panicking, screaming, running for help, making accusations etc., it struck fear into the person who had assaulted her and he--in an altered state, under panic--did something to silence her. Perhaps she was running and he chased her down, knocked her out, and carried/drug her further into the woods. Or perhaps he harmed her back at the abandoned building and then moved the body because he knew people frequented that building and she would be found.
Since we don't know how she died, we can't be sure, but it's possible he just was trying to stop her from screaming and didn't calculate actually murdering her.
11. There could've been a larger group, like 3 - 5 people?, who met at the abandoned building to hang out/use drugs/whatever and later on, one or two guys who'd grown up around the area split off with Chelsea. If they didn't intend to kill anyone and hadn't premeditated any plan, they would've fallen back on their instincts after she was dead. They would just want to put the body somewhere where it wouldn't likely be discovered. And since it was dark, the only thing they could do without risking getting lost or running into people's yards was follow the train tracks...since they knew the area alongside it would be wooded. They wouldn't have wanted to risk being with the body long, so they probably took it as far in as they could as fast as they could...and then followed the tracks back to their car/meeting place.
They wouldn't have had to know the tracks REALLY well (or worked for the railroad, for example). Just well enough to know that the tracks go from one road to the other and that the tracks cut through a wooded area where people would be unlikely to walk.
If they had planned on killing her, and were from around here, I think they would've abandoned her in an even more remote place. There are plenty of bodies of water and quarries, for example, but I don't think they had time for that. Since they didn't even leave the party until 3:15, it might've been nearing dawn which put them at risk of being seen.
12. I think we are looking for one or two white males, both of whom are about Chelsea's age (18-24), and at least one (but probably both) of whom had lived in the general area at some point (probably during childhood). In my opinion, they are not likely to part of her closest group of friends, but rather are once circle removed from her--i.e. they are friends who met Chelsea through someone in her closest group of friends.
As for FindHG's question about who would be willing to lie for or against Chelsea?
If there are two guys (which seems likely), my guess is they are either brothers, cousins, or guys who have been close friends since adolescence. And/or they could have forged a deep bond by participating in the same band. They could even have shared a feeling of being outcasts or even fringe members of society...or the band group...that bonds them to each other.
I do NOT believe they have known Chelsea well since childhood, but knew her more as an acquaintance. This would explain why one guy would cover for the other at the expense of Chelsea and her family. Chelsea and her family wouldn't be personal friends to him and the other perpetrator IS a close friend. He also might cover for the killer because he knows the plot was not pre-planned, and he feels guilty because he knows they were both using substances or participating in illegal activities that impaired them and led to her death.
I think there are other fans, and possibly friends of Chelsea, who know these two men and have considered them in their list of possible suspects to contemplate. I am guessing the guys' names have been mentioned by police. But because these two guys don't seem to be the types who would do something so criminal, they aren't being given serious attention or the police don't have enough to pin it on them yet.
There's a chance the girls who hang with the band's inner circle are also somehow implicated and were accessories to the crime in some weird way. Perhaps they knowingly took Chelsea into the situation where she was harmed, perhaps they were doing illegal things or encouraged Chelsea to use substances, and therefore, even though they have a good idea that Chelsea met her end while in the company of a guy or two they know, they are all scared of being implicated. Especially if no one intended for Chelsea to end up dead, the young people involved may justify staying silent because it wouldn't bring Chelsea back, but might result in one or more of them losing their futures to prison etc. The problem for them, of course, is if there's multiple people who know or have a pretty good idea who is responsible for Chelsea's death, someone will break down.
