What's nice in cases like this is there is digital evidence, video evidence, cell phone evidence, behavioral evidence, and statements by the defendant, so that can be used to help determine and/or corroborate events, times, places, duration.
For instance, we know:
- Movements of Heather's phone. GPS + tower pings + Google Locations help determine Heather's phone movements.
- Number of and length of phone calls between victim and defendant, between victim and her roommate/BFF, victim activity on her social media.
- The exact time certain events occurred and where those events occurred.
- What SM told police the night/morning they came to see him after Heather disappeared. This is direct evidence, not statements interpreted by someone else, and those statements can be compared to SM's actions (cell phone, pay phone, security camera, GPS). If a defendant is caught lying that's another piece of evidence to be considered.
- SM's new truck has a technical capability that will track the truck's movement unless that module is removed or unplugged, or somehow erased. It's a fact the data from Dec 18th 2013 was not found on that module. It's a fact SM purchased the truck in November. Coincidence?
- The M's had a security system to include a monitor on the wall at their house -- a view that showed several different camera views and this existed before Dec 18 2013. A witness who lived in the M's home saw that system and was able to describe it. Two or 3 days after Heather disappeared, that system was removed (or parts of it were removed), the monitor was taken off the wall and a picture replaced where the monitor hung, and a brand new system was purchased (with a new DVR/new hard drive). Coincidence?
- SM was out and about that late night/early morning -- at Walmart, at a pay phone, his truck driving to and away from PTL. That's in contradiction to his MIL's insistence in the media that SM & TM were home all evening/night. Two different security camera systems catch his black truck out and about, one system is close to his house, a system owned by his neighbor. Coincidence?
Using the above evidence it's possible to observe a series of events/people/movements that are linked by time and space. You take away feelings, you take away lay person opinions, and even if you only consider the unrefuted evidence, you can see the connection and contact between victim and perp, which ended in the victim never being seen or heard from again after her phone's last known ping.
Madeleine, I really don't think anyone is struggling with the question of who dunnit.
If common sense and basic logic are the guides, it follows that there's simply a difference between viewing circumstantial evidence as lesser evidence, and viewing the lure theory advanced by the state as not bearing up under a reasonable doubt standard.
It seems to me that the state's problem is their marriage to a theory that doesn't even include bringing Heather's greater activities that morning into the mix (I wouldn't call theorizing that she needed a drive to Longbeard's to decide whether or not to go to PTL, "inclusion").
I guess another way to look at it is this:
While compelling in tying the victim and the accused together in relationship history and activities that morning:
-The circumstantial evidence doesn't include any physical evidence of a crime at the scene or in the vehicle the victim supposedly was lured into
- The circumstantial evidence doesn't include any evidence from the perp's home
- There's no body
- The victim spent more time at Longbeard's than the crime scene, trying to make contact with her kidnapper (and killer)
- The victim had to call the kidnapper multiple times over a period of time to make that contact
Looking at all this and setting feelings aside about the judge, the jury, handshakes and an alleged conspiracy by the Court to save Sidney, it makes for common sense that while the Moorer's dunnit, no one knows anything about a lure, including, apparently, the state's star witness who talked to the victim and can only report that the SM wanted to be with Heather, and Heather said she was going to sleep on it. Based on what Heather told the witness, there was no attempt that we know of to separate Heather from her home that morning.
This may well get into a case of Heather, perhaps, not fully disclosing to BW what was actually discussed between her and SM. But we can reason that whatever was said, it was not 'PTL or Bust'.
So, many, probably all, can strongly agree that Heather is missing and deceased at the hands of the Moorers. It's the lure to the landing part that may or may not be true based on her many other activities before she called SM and they, presumably, decided to go to PTL. I say presumably because I really think Longbeard's is the elephant in the room.
Maybe the state should have stuck with what's obvious and stayed out of so much theory. Working backwards to make the crime neatly fit into a scenario that had all things occurring at PTL certainly didn't work well for the state in hanging on to their other charges.
JMO