Found Deceased MI - Venus Stewart, 32, Colon, 28 April 2010 - # 8 *D. Stewart guilty*

[BeanE]

Doug started getting very worried and concerned about his children's mother... ten days after she was abducted... because of the timeline...

"And now, that the timeline has gone so far ... I'm getting very worried and very concerned."

http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/sw_mich/Dive-crews-search-for-missing-woman

 

[thinkaboutthis]

He could have bought the boots on the way home, too, and disposed of his other shoes--maybe they had obvious evidence (blood?) on them.

I highly doubt it. While he does appear efficient at stealth logistics and being able to accomplish difficult and time consuming tasks within very limited time frames. For having about 12-hours and most likely about an 11-hour drive if he took the highways, he sure did cram a lot in already, before adding shoe-shopping to the list. Abduction, concealment, escape, disposition of VS, getting multiple abduction vehicles back accross country to VA without being seen by any LE or any traffic cameras, and somehow getting himself back to his apartment without his vehicles without detection by LE by 8pm when they are looking for him in NN is quite a feat in my book.

But if you are inclined to believe he did all that inside of the 12 hours, it's not that much more out there to think he could have stopped off and picked up the boots at his favorite shopping destination, Walmart, grabbed a bite to eat, went to the bathroom, maybe took a truck stop shower, quick power nap in the back of the cab, maybe gassed up and then still got home with time to spare? Maybe he stopped at some Marine buddie's house along the way to play some MADDEN 2010, if you really want to, you can squeeze a full game in within about a half hour or so. Meantime, his buddy's wife is warming up several Hot Pockets to go. Who knows?

At some point though, unless he loaded both vehicles onto a private cargo jet in Michigan and flew everything back to Virginia, you'll have to accept that there is only so much that a human being could possibly do in a 12 hour time period and still get back to Virginia when the police are saying we was there by 8pm. MOO

 

[BeanE]

Or... someone else could driven the vehicles back to Virginia, since they weren't located for several days, and Doug could have flown back on the 26th in plenty of time to be there if LE indeed spoke with him just after 8pm that day.

Or... LE could have spoken to the impostinator just after 8pm that day, and Doug could have taken his sweet time getting back to Virginia.

But... I do like the Hot Pockets to go, although not nearly as much as the short order cook riding shotgun.

 

[thinkaboutthis]

Doug started getting very worried and concerned about his children's mother... ten days after she was abducted... because of the timeline...

"And now, that the timeline has gone so far ... I'm getting very worried and very concerned."

http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/sw_mich/Dive-crews-search-for-missing-woman

BeanE, I don't see anything shocking or suspicious or even abnormal about a man who's estranged wife has disappeared being very worried and concerned, in fact, if he wasn't worried or concerned, he'd be called suspicious, wouldn't he? If he told the reporter, "I don't care where she is...or what has happened to her, all I know is I wasn't involved", that would be suspicious. Any man would worried and concerned if his wife was missing, and after 10 days it would be normal to be very concerned about the length of time that LE was taking to find her as well. Plus with Wetman out there unidentified and sonar searches of the lake, that's kind of unsettling I would imagine, when they are trying to find the mother of your children. Are you suspicious of the word "timeline"? If so, why? Is that a word that a "guilty" person would use?

 

[BeanE]

BeanE, I don't see anything shocking or suspicious or even abnormal about a man who's estranged wife has disappeared being very worried and concerned, in fact, if he wasn't worried or concerned, he'd be called suspicious, wouldn't he? If he told the reporter, "I don't care where she is...or what has happened to her, all I know is I wasn't involved", that would be suspicious. Any man would worried and concerned if his wife was missing, and after 10 days it would be normal to be very concerned about the length of time that LE was taking to find her as well. Plus with Wetman out there unidentified and sonar searches of the lake, that's kind of unsettling I would imagine, when they are trying to find the mother of your children. Are you suspicious of the word "timeline"? If so, why? Is that a word that a "guilty" person would use?

Think, I think you misunderstand me. Probably because I didn't say anything about what I was thinking about it.

The reason I posted it is because I find it interesting - no more and no less - that he didn't start getting to the very-worried-and-concerned stage until his children's abducted mother had been missing for ten days. And then, because of the timeline.

I would expect someone to start getting to the very-worried-and-concerned stage about the abducted mother of their children as soon as they were informed that she'd been abducted. Especially if they "care about her very much" (http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...l/sw_mich/Dive-crews-search-for-missing-woman), but even if they didn't.

ETA: And I would expect it to be the abduction itself versus the timeline that would spur that state of worry and concern.

 

[grayjay]

You get a box of shoes from Walmart. Can they read a code on the box, like a lot number, and tell which stores sold them? I would guess they can.

 

[Marinemom]

You stop bleeding when you are dead. If she had been dead in the back of the truck for 8-10 hours (presumably wrapped in the tarp since no deposited blood was found in the truck) its hard to see how blood could have ended up in the car. We don't know who's blood is in both cars either, it could be DS's blood or from a third party.

.....yes, and it COULD be Doug Stewarts blood because Venus Stewart scratched him good during a brief struggle, so when he got in to drive (on the drivers side door) it smeared on the door, and he didn't notice it. Then when he hid the truck and drove the car he got some on that too. Maybe something like that??? JMO....

 

[Marinemom]

We know very little, but we know nothing about any evidence his defense attorney has put together.

Whoever abducted her had to have left some sort of shoe impressions behind. Whether he dumped the shoes later or not, matching the size would be yet another piece of circumstantial evidence in their case.

Maybe the shoes or the hat or gloves were among the items LE took from DS parents house during their search there the day DS sat across the road watching, and they're just waiting on testing to come back to 'connect their dots'.

 

[spamelope]

Lab test of Stewart case blood pending

By Rick Cordes
Staff Writer
Published:
Saturday, June 5, 2010 8:12 AM EDT
WHITE PIGEON — A laboratory analysis of the blood-like stain found in Douglas Harrie Stewart’s Dodge pickup truck won’t be completed for at least three weeks.

“I talked with the lab director in Grand Rapids,” Lt. Mike Risko, commander of the White Pigeon State Police Post, said yesterday. “It will take three or four weeks on the DNA blood test.” A jammed schedule at the lab is the reason for the time necessary to complete the analysis.

Stewart is the MSP’s lone suspect in the disappearance of his estranged wife Venus who was last seen April 26 at her parents’ home in rural Colon. His pickup truck was located several blocks from his apartment in Newport News, Va. about a week after Venus went missing. In the truck was an April 25 receipt from an Ohio Wal-Mart for the purchase of a shovel, gloves, a tarp and a hat. Also a possible bloodstain was found.

Risko said that the truck will be relocated to Michigan sometime next week, when from two to four Michigan State Police investigators will travel to Virginia to continue investigative work and then escort a wrecking company that will bring the truck north.
SBM

http://www.threeriversnews.com/articles/2010/06/05/news/local_news/doc4c09834e98cf4940934110.txt

 

[grayjay]

Lab test of Stewart case blood pending

By Rick Cordes
Staff Writer
Published:
Saturday, June 5, 2010 8:12 AM EDT
WHITE PIGEON — A laboratory analysis of the blood-like stain found in Douglas Harrie Stewart’s Dodge pickup truck won’t be completed for at least three weeks.

“I talked with the lab director in Grand Rapids,” Lt. Mike Risko, commander of the White Pigeon State Police Post, said yesterday. “It will take three or four weeks on the DNA blood test.” A jammed schedule at the lab is the reason for the time necessary to complete the analysis.

Stewart is the MSP’s lone suspect in the disappearance of his estranged wife Venus who was last seen April 26 at her parents’ home in rural Colon. His pickup truck was located several blocks from his apartment in Newport News, Va. about a week after Venus went missing. In the truck was an April 25 receipt from an Ohio Wal-Mart for the purchase of a shovel, gloves, a tarp and a hat. Also a possible bloodstain was found.

Risko said that the truck will be relocated to Michigan sometime next week, when from two to four Michigan State Police investigators will travel to Virginia to continue investigative work and then escort a wrecking company that will bring the truck north.
SBM

http://www.threeriversnews.com/articles/2010/06/05/news/local_news/doc4c09834e98cf4940934110.txt

Ahhhh! Now I get it. (I think!) The truck couldn't just ride on a flatbed due to questions of evidence custody.

They say maybe blood, and then wait all that time for DNA testing? Methinks they can tell under a microscope if it's blood, and wouldn't spend the time waiting for analysis if they didn't pretty much know it were blood.

Since the truck has the blood on the driver's side, and then in the car it's on the passenger's side, I wonder if Doug was picked up in his car so that there wouldn't be two Doug-alikes around at the same time. Maybe switched clothes.

 

[Calliope]

Why didn't they bring it back with them when they were down there in the first place? Since traveling back and forth from VA to MI is so easy and all that.

 

[BeanE]

My money is on the issue of jurisdiction for potential charges of homicide, accessory to homicide, and accessory after the fact, for why it's taken so long to decide to bring the truck back to MI.

It's not just which state, but which county within state, in which crimes occur that determines jurisdiction. First, LE has to determine which crimes occurred, then where they occurred, then the prosecutors and their investigators in those locations have to weigh in, then if multiple charges are potentially going to be brought with differing jurisdictions, the prosecutors from those locations have to decide who's going to bring which charges and therefore needs custody of the related evidence, and if one item contains evidence related to crimes in differing jurisdictions decisions have to be made on what to do about that, and then the prosecutors may decide that one county/state will bring a number of charges even if jurisdiction would normally go to a different jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction is the only thing of sufficient complexity I can think of that would warrant the length of time it's taken. Chain of custody is secondary to that, because custody is dependent on the decisions on who's going to bring which charges.

The best thing to do until all those decisions are made is to leave the truck right in the custody of the responsible agency where the truck was found.

I think I may have broken my record for length of a run on sentence above.

 

[cluciano63]

Oh these slow CSI labs waiting on Phuong's case, Kayleah's case, Venus' case...
And of the three, maybe one suspect is in custody...not even sure about that one.

It still seems ridiculous to me that they could not have sent people to get that truck sooner or at least have gone to get the tires...have something completed by now, when they don't know where Venus is, just assuming she is dead, and suspect free to do as he likes...but that is just me, it just seems astonishing that more than a month later, the truck is still in VA. It's not like they are trying to extradite it from Ireland here...I am sure NN isn't sitting on it. Oh well...just my particular pet peeve...

 

[Kimberlyd125]

My money is on the issue of jurisdiction for potential charges of homicide, accessory to homicide, and accessory after the fact, for why it's taken so long to decide to bring the truck back to MI.

It's not just which state, but which county within state, in which crimes occur that determines jurisdiction. First, LE has to determine which crimes occurred, then where they occurred, then the prosecutors and their investigators in those locations have to weigh in, then if multiple charges are potentially going to be brought with differing jurisdictions, the prosecutors from those locations have to decide who's going to bring which charges and therefore needs custody of the related evidence, and if one item contains evidence related to crimes in differing jurisdictions decisions have to be made on what to do about that, and then the prosecutors may decide that one county/state will bring a number of charges even if jurisdiction would normally go to a different jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction is the only thing of sufficient complexity I can think of that would warrant the length of time it's taken. Chain of custody is secondary to that, because custody is dependent on the decisions on who's going to bring which charges.

The best thing to do until all those decisions are made is to leave the truck right in the custody of the responsible agency where the truck was found.

I think I may have broken my record for length of a run on sentence above.

Great post BeanE. I totally agree with all of it. Even the run on sentence.

They can't just go get the truck with out following all legal procedures involved. If they could, I'm sure it would have been in MI weeks ago.

JMO

 

[BeanE]

Is this everything we know of that happened on April 25?

TIA
BeanE

- Unknown time: Former neighbors saw Doug's silver Mercury Sable "cruising the neighborhood" around the Stewarts' former home in Schoolcraft, MI.

- 6:45pm: Doug purchases shovel, gloves, etc, at Walmart in Ohio, 2 hours from Colon, MI

- 6 - 10:30pm: Man seen in the early evening by two witnesses at Adams Lake about a mile from Venus' parents' home. Wet man was wet. He came out of the woods, up behind a witness, and asked "Do you know where I am?". He also asked for a cigarette.

- 8pm: Doug probably talked to his 3yo daughter (It's been reported that the last time he spoke to his 5yo was April 23, that he called them every day except April 26, and that when he called from April 27 on, Venus' parents wouldn't let him speak to either of the girls).

 

[spamelope]

Yes, BeanE, I think that's all we know about the 25th. Thanks for the recap. I wish they would toss us a few more tidbits of info.

 

[BeanE]

Is this everything we know happened on April 26? I'm still working on a few questions I'm looking up to find the answers - they're noted.

TIA
BeanE


- Prior to 6am/6:45am: Venus and her mother have coffee.

- Prior to 6am/6:45am: One of the little girls wakes up while Venus and her mom have coffee.

- Prior to 6am/6:45am: Venus tells her mother she's going to mail something. (Do we know that Venus told her mother this before she left for work? Or could she have told her this in a phone call?)

- 6am: Venus' mom leaves for work. May have been as late as 6:45am

- Approx 7am: A truck matching the description of Doug's seen in vacant lot across the street (kitty corner) from Venus' parents house. A man is crouching behind it. (Tire marks in the lot photographically match the tires on Doug's truck.)

- Approx 7:05: The truck matching the description of Doug's leaves.

- 7:10am to 8:30am: Venus goes outside and is abducted. There are signs of a scuffle - gravel displaced, heel or foot/shoe prints on the propane tank.

- Prior to 8:30am: The other little girl wakes up.

- 8:30am: Venus' father gets up because the little girls are making noise. Girls tell him "Mommy went outside." He discovers that Venus is gone. May have been as early as 8am.

- Unknown time: Venus' father finds a tarp wrapper in the driveway of his home.

- 9:30am: Imposter pays bill at Doug's custody attorney's office, appears at other business(es) on video, draws funds, appears at Doug's apartment (or apartment building?) on video. Has some of Doug's personal documents in his possession.

- 8pm: Doug doesn't call the girls as he's done every day.

- Approx 8pm: LE talks by phone to someone claiming to be Doug.

 

[spamelope]

BeanE, I'm not sure if this is a case of shoddy reporting or if indeed the timeline has changed, but I originally read this in another article that I can't find now.

"Venus Stewart's mother said she last saw her daughter at 6:45 a.m. that day, with Venus Stewart's father waking up at 8 a.m. to find his daughter gone but his grandchildren still in the home."

http://articles.dailypress.com/2010...s-stewart-michigan-home-michigan-state-police

Also, I believe it was one child that woke up while Venus and her mother were having coffee.

 

[thinkaboutthis]

BBM

- Prior to 6am: Venus and her mother have coffee.

- Prior to 6am: Venus tells her mother she's going to mail something. (Do we know that Venus told her mother this before she left for work? Or could she have told her this in a phone call?)

- Prior to 6am: One of the little girls wakes up. (Do we know if this was before Venus' mom left for work?) TM said the little girl was up while they were having coffee, that she was an "early riser"

- 6am: Venus' mom leaves for work

- Approx 7am: Doug's truck seen in vacant lot across the street (kitty corner) from Venus' parents house. A man is crouching behind it. (Tire marks in the lot photographically match the tires on Doug's truck.) A light colored 4 door pickup truck i believe is the description, and "appear to match, but can't be sure until the truck arrives in Michigan"

- Approx 7:05: Doug's truck speeds off. (did it speed off or just leave?) I haven't heard this before. I do recall info that five minutes later, it was gone.

- 7:10am to 8:30am: Venus goes outside and is abducted. There are signs of a struggle. (Police later found large gouges and heel marks in the family’s front yard, she said. Gouges? Yard or propane tank or both or neither?)

- Prior to 8:30am: The other little girl wakes up.

- 8:30am: Venus' father gets up because the little girls are making noise. He discovers that Venus is gone. LE says early on that LM and 2 kids were asleep at the time of abduction, LM says on NG, kids were up, he was mad, came out to scold Venus, and the kids told him that "Mommy went outside" so the children likely were not asleep, as LE indicates.

- Unknown time: Venus' father finds a tarp wrapper in the driveway of his home. I'd like to know when the tarp wrapper was presented to LE.

- Unknown time (assume 'normal' business hours for attorney): Imposter pays bill at Doug's custody attorney's office, appears at other business(es) on video, draws funds, appears at Doug's apartment (or apartment building?) on video. Has some of Doug's personal documents in his possession. I think the lawyer office visit was said to be at 9:30am...
- 8pm: Doug doesn't call the girls as he's done every day. Including the night before

- After 8pm: LE talks by phone to someone claiming to be Doug. LE places DS in Virginia by 8pm

 

[Kimberlyd125]

Think, LE places DS in VA at 8:00 pm or someone answered DSs phone at 8:00 pm?

ETA: because from what I've seen, nobody in LE saw him in VA at 8:00 pm.