Pettibon Junction
Active Member
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2014
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I live in Cleveland. As a journalist, I covered the Amanda Berry/Gine DeJesus cases. I know Ariel Castro inside and out. You talk about Michelle Knight as if it's in the same ballpark as Maura Murray. It's this kind of short-sightedness that confuses details in this case. You simply don't know what you're talking about.
Ariel Castro was an organized human predator. Like a lion on the steppe, he was familiar with his hunting grounds. He was comfortable with his surroundings. He knew the comings and goings of Cleveland police. And when he found his prey, he made sure they were slight of build and that they could be manipulated into coming with him first by charm, and then by force.
The site where Maura Murray disappeared is not a place a predator would attempt an abduction. It is in view of three homes. Maura Murray was not the sort who would easily be taken, either. She was smart. And more, she was a trained cadet, with skills in defense. She was also a cunning con artist in her own right. She would not have gone peacefully. And she would not have accepted a ride -- she'd already turned one down minutes earlier. The only way she could have been taken would be by force and that would have taken time and it would have been loud. And yet nobody saw it happen. Nobody heard it happen.
And she was alone on the side of that road for 5 minutes. On a night when the average number of vehicles driving by at that hour is 7. The odds that a serial killer would cross her path right then, and against all odds, take her without a sound, without beings spotted, are beyond statistics.
Maura Murray was not abducted. Her case is in no way similar to Michelle Knight.
James, all of this conjecture of yours hinges on Butch Atwood being the last person to see Maura Murray. He was not. She took off on foot and was last seen by Rick Forcier later that night. This broadens considerably the time frame and geographical area for something to have happened to her. The claims you make are intellectually dishonest, based on a deliberate denial of eyewitness testimony that fails to conform to the narrative you've created for your blog and book. You have been called out on this before.
But let's say you're right and Maura did disappear of her own volition. Perhaps it's because her issues with her family were every bit as bad as you say they were. But her so-called crimes, which you continually harp on, were minor, at best, symptomatic of emotional problems rather than malicious intent. (This goes double for the rumored sexual experimentation for which you can't help but *advertiser censored*-shame her on your blog.) If this is the case and you're so sure that she left to start with a clean slate somewhere else, then why keep spinning your wheels and shouting down anyone who might think otherwise? What does anyone gain by painting this mentally ill college girl and the family she clearly needed to individuate herself from as some kind of sinister, north country mafia out to fleece the public and stymie your intrepid querying?
All theories aside, there is one FACT surrounding this whole affair of which I am certain: Maura Murray is missing and neither you nor anyone else has found her. Simply saying what you THINK may have happened, no matter how repeatedly, will not, in the absence of tangible evidence, ever make it true.