Good thoughts.
IF the van (and body?) were in, say, the Plymouth Loop parking lot (about where Fred Stewart meets Center Road?), how did the perp get from there to his own vehicle or to his home or to a place where he could get a ride home? How far from there to Y? (10 or 12 miles?)
Would the body be in the van for 3 days?? What if someone decided to look in the van (or LE investigated a vehicle that had been sitting there 3 days)? If the van sat there for 3 days, in what state would the body be in? (20's at night) I'm thinking there'd be a good bit of purge fluid when body would be moved.
Then...he would have needed (on the night of 14th) to get back to the Plymouth Loop parking lot (how?) to retrieve the van (and then dump the body?) and then drive to Plank Road Manor. And from Plank Road manor, he'd have needed to get back to Plymouth Loop (assuming he left his own vehicle there) or get back to his home, or get back to somewhere where he could catch a ride home.
Unless...someone were dropping him off and picking him up at various locations.
I suggested Center Road area as a possibility for two reasons.
1. I'm not an expert on decomposition by any means, but I would imagine that biological factors would have began to occur. I would assume that one wouldn't be able to drive far, without being affected (unless perhaps the person had done something similar before, or they had worked in some capacity in forensics or funerary fields).
2. The van was covered in mud, which indicates that it may have been done so because of the possibility of one perhaps seeing it from a road.
I added the possibility of the location being the parking lot of the Plymouth Loop Trail for another reason.
If one travels south to north on Fred Stewart Road, and crosses 23, it comes out to One Eye Street.
One Eye Street is the same place where Chenango County's only known cold case took place in 1999.
Thomas "Tomcat" Lee Francisco
Snipped:
The Chenango County Sheriff's Office are continuing their investigation into the murder of Thomas Lee Francisco, age 38. On July 7th, 1999, Francisco was found dead by friends at approximately 5:00pm at his residential trailer located on One Eye Road in the Town of Pharsalia, Chenango County, NY. An autopsy revealed that Francisco was shot a number of times. Investigators are maintaining a Command Post at the Sheriff's Office in Norwich, NY.
MOO
As for distance... it's about 12 to 13 miles from the YMCA. Which... could be an indication as to why one wouldn't want to run home for it being "cold."
If GR had ran that route, and possibly cut through the woods in the park across from Plank Road Manor... and crossed Broad at Sunset and Borden... he could have arrived to the YMCA.
It would be roughly the same amount of time (and distance) he would have taken running to and from the YMCA.
If he set a certain distance to run daily, if he ran that full way, he would have run his normal approximate distance.
Jennifer's body being in the van for 2 or 3 days could explain the blood that LE may or may not have found in the van, which GR later tried to attribute to nosebleeds.
As for why nobody would have looked in the van... it's possible nobody even would have noticed it, especially if it was covered in mud. It may not necessarily have been in that parking lot.
Using the guise of going out to search, he could have driven his vehicle someplace, parked, and then had an accomplice pick him up to "tie loose ends."
After dropping off GR, the accomplice more than likely would have parked in the park across the street from Plank Road Manor, and await GR to arrive. It's possible that GR could have parked his vehicle in that park as well.
After driving to Plank Road Manor, he would return home in his own vehicle.
One thinks that it would defeat the purpose since he was the one that filed the missing person's complaint, but he would have had an obligation to do so if he didn't want to come under suspicion for her absence. If he had failed to do so, it would incriminate him.