It seems odd after the passage of time since Joseph's disappearance that the police have still not released the name that was signed on the bottom of the telegram (or a description of the person who dictated it).
Is this case well-known in the area? Are people still talking about it? If not, I wonder how likely it is that they forgot to release that info due to no longer thinking it would be relevant.
It's been a while since I read the details on this case. Reading your reply made me wonder if they could have been protecting someone important. It seems very likely instead that they were expecting to keep that information to themselves until they had more solid evidence on the perps, if divulging it could have led them to escape. I wonder why they're still holding on to it when it's likely that the people involved are now dead or very old. Releasing it could prompt someone to come forward, say a child or grandchild of the perps who may have overheard a conversation or seen something unusual. Sometimes a little bit of info is all it takes for a lighbulb to go off on someone's head and make them connect the dots.
I don't know if the name on the telegram was real. From what I remember reading, Joseph's aunt could not think of who had sent it to her. IF it was signed (I don't remember reading about it being signed, as I said, it's been a while), then it could have been a fake name so she didn't recognize it. The only other option is it was real but it wasn't someone she knew, just someone who knew her... it makes me wonder if it was some sort of stalker who had a loose grip on reality, and felt 'close' to the Rodriguez family without having met them.
The description of the sender, I don't know if they ever got one. I find it strange that they didn't (if they never did), as I think I said before in this thread, I think it would have been more or less easy to talk to people and see if anyone remembered having that telegram dictated to them, to find where it had been sent from, and then see if anyone remembered who had chosen the words and paid for it. If they remembered seeing anyone and if so who, was it more than one person, did they give out a name.
I would also guess from Dora Olivio's place of death (previously posted), that she wasn't responsible for Joseph's disappearance...JMO. She would have to have left USA and gone to PR with her son, sent or arranged the sending of the telegram, stayed in PR for an undetermined amount of time, then decided to head back to USA to live out her days in NY. If she did take Joseph, why would she go back to the same city that she took him from, years later? Surely she would have kept a low profile and stayed in PR? Of course its possible she returned once the media attention around the case died down, but what would have happened to Joseph? If she loved her son so much she couldn't bear to be apart from him and felt as though she had to 'abduct' him, surely she would never return to live somewhere he couldn't ever return to (without people becoming suspicious). This lady also lived until relatively recently - 1999 - if she was responsible for Joseph's disappearance, surely at some point throughout her life or in her old age she may have been inclined to admit responsibility even to just one close friend or member of her own family, to put their mind's to rest if nothing else?
Most of this post is just me thinking out loud but to be honest it is my opinion that Joseph wandered off from the other children playing on the street that day and was then abducted either by a stranger or by someone familiar to him/his family or was involved in some sort of accident without anyone witnessing it. The culprit could then have panicked and fled with Joseph and there we have the telegram 6 days later.
This case has remained with me for years and I truly hope one day very soon, all the details that were not released by LE at the time, are made public and hopefully the case can take a step closer to being solved.
You know, I agree with you on Dora Olivo in some respects.
I can understand why she wouldn't have spoken if she did it. Maybe she knew she would get in trouble and may have worried. I don't know how her family would have reacted even in her old age. If she had other children and spoke while they were young they could have been taken away from her. Just a thought. I also wonder if it's possible that she mentioned it or hinted it to someone. Depending on what her family was like, maybe they decided to keep a secret or dismissed it as her being unwell and imagining things. Who knows?
As to her returning, if he'd died in PR, maybe she then decided to return to NYC if she felt there was no evidence that could be used against her. I also wonder, maybe he was alive in PR and she went back to NY for work.
I don't think it would have been her, though. In a scenario like this she would have abducted him because she loved him so much she didn't want to be away from him. In this case I believe that someone, somewhere would have known the truth at some point and many decades later, I believe she would have finally spoken more freely about it. Especially so if he died, losing a child is a very devastating experience, I don't think someone could just keep quiet and never hint at that for so many decades.
I also find it very hard to believe she took Joseph if she took him back to PR. Remember the world was a smaller place in those days, it was easier to be familiar with the people around you. Unless she went to an area of PR where she knew nobody and nobody knew her, I think it would have been a matter of time until someone noticed she was there with Joseph and mentioned it to someone who mentioned it to someone else... and it would have reached the ears of the rest of her family or at least have made them suspect something. I even think that if they so much as believed she had taken him, they would have gotten in touch with people they still knew in PR, ask them if they'd seen her or him, etc.
For her to have abducted him and made him disappear forever while showing no remorse or grief, never talking to anyone, that would require her to be VERY mentally unwell. While that's not an impossible thing to happen to people it's just not the simplest explanation.
All :twocents:.