I believe SK was swept up into something that began in St George, as in the initial contacts were made there. I have a hard time believing that he knowingly put himself in the position of being on the outside of the law, but I do believe unintentionally he may have ended up being on the opposite side of his beliefs. I think he innocently left a trail that will lead back to the person(s) he was involved in, and that we do not have enough information to figure out who it is....clearly LE does not have enough info because they have ALL of the cards, and they have not been able to move on it.
So I ask myself given what we do know, can we make an educated guess as to where evidence might be? The phone has not been used that we know of outside of the last ping-so either it was tossed in the Whitney Ranch area....perhaps into a dumpster or out a window on the highway??? Or maybe there is a better chance that we can make a guess as to where SK might be if he were in that area.
Laytonian, your thought process is working for me....fwiw.
I agree that St George was the point of contact. Face to face or via his phone.
Until the pings were mapped out, the "random hits" throughout the valley seemed like a possibility. But the map showed a trend towards one location (even though we need swjaxon to move that Pecos ping up to the tower location we found).
My own guess is that a crime took place in a location quite near those eastern hills -- or earlier, with a transport to that location. The phone may or may not have been used by Steven. Texting could be done by anyone, BUT we understand that the texts were retrieved from AT&T's system and nothing indicative found.
Unless there's another phone, there's a clue/clues on that phone that are being missed. The phone has likely been disposed of.