I really don't get a bad vibe from the tweet, and think that it might be being over analysed. These guys were freshmen at University in a new town in a new state. They could quite easily have become genuinely lost. I think the "we're going to die" thing was a joke. Sort of like, if we don't find our way back soon we are doomed, that sort of thing.
Why would "Jake", a high school friend of Tommy's be stupid enough to send a public tweet saying "IT'S JAKE" if he had done something to Tommy? He would havd just tweeted as Tommy wouldn't he?
Here is one theory he would say "This is Jake" on the text that could very well be NOT true but throwing it out there:
JW wanted his roommate CM to come pick them up. CM didn't know Tom, so if JW was going to contact his roommate on an account that wasn't his he needed to identify himself as far as who he was. Actually, it's even possible that Tom wrote that text and just said "this is Jake" so that CM, who he didn't know, would know who they were and JW maybe have been standing next to him and saying something like "just twitter so-and-so and put 'this is jake' so they know who it is." Obviously if they were going to his house everyone would know they were going there together anyway.
So if JW did create that text, how could it be sinister? Well, maybe it was supposed to be an alibi? Maybe he wanted to set the stage that "getting lost" was something that could easily happen to Tom, because otherwise you'd have people saying nonstop "How could he have gotten lost and so far away getting back to his dorm 6 blocks away?" You don't have people saying that because of that text. Also, if JW was trying to do that, he got a super bonus thanks to the media (which personally I may have anticipated
) because due to the reporting and casual nature in which people read the articles you have a confused public who thinks that he was lost and wandering behind Menards while he sent that text because the media wasn't very clear about reporting that aspect.
It's certainly possible he was under the influence and just got lost looking for another party, or just plain got lost. One thing that bothers me is how did he manage to wander THAT far if he died of alcohol poisoning? It was many miles. Did he take a bottle along with him when he left? Did he have more alcohol to drink? I understand it can hit you later but you're not going to convince me it took 6 miles or whatever it was for the alcohol to hit him. It is possible that Jake was using the phone earlier because he was drunk already, in which case also: if he was that drunk how did he walk that far. I haven't known people who had lethal levels of alcohol in them who are able to walk 6 miles, at least without another kind of alcohol on them.
I saw that there is indeed a twitter page for JW it's just not under his name and just more of a nickname. It doesn't seems suspicious at all, and he has been posting things about trying to find Tom, so there's that. Will just have to wait to find out more I guess and I would hope that police are looking into personal drama that potentially could have been going on and that kind of thing.