Post #77 raises great points:
As RK said, we don't know the families' daily routine, or if Mike's actions that day were a part of the norm for him. Given his father's tennis experience with playing and coaching, Mike knew the game and new it well beyond his years.
I read some reports that said Mike left at 2:10pm and not 2:00pm, which shortens up the time-frame by a few minutes and might make the mapping distance more plausible. The STRANGEST elements of this case for me are:
1.) Mike being so over-dressed for a 100 degree day. This is a health risk and he or his parents should have had him were cooler clothes, or even not go out at all. We have a 12-year old kid playing tennis in 100 degree heat, this is bad, and lead to some of us at WS considering that Mike passed out from heat stroke or dehydration. But RK shows strong evidence against that, although this cannot be ruled out.
2.) Who plays tennis alone? I have said sure, Mike would have had to use a wall for serving and volleying, but it is unusual? If the courts had no walls for balls to hit for solo play, the mystery deepens even more.
3) Who just finding out their son is missing, drops off their remaining kids at a swimming pool and than heads off to a school board meeting as if Mike being gone was "no big deal?" Times were different in 1971 compared to the attitudes and actions today concerning missing kids. But that's just wrong. Did Mrs. Klitch get out of the car and look for Mike in the time she waited for him? It seems the ball that Mr. Klitch gave to his son,found at the gate was discovered by LE, not family. In horror, it sounds like the getting Mike's siblings to the swim meet and Mrs. Klitch's school board meeting was more important than looking for Mike! Big red flags here! Why? Or was Mike so independent for his age, that it was common in his day to day activities to be gone for extended periods of time. Do you guys see some parental priority neglect here? Why or why not?
Satch
The problem with cases like this is that we are going by what is reported in the media... Not by actual crime scene reports. So one could basically speculate "anything" and find someway to make it fit this case.
What a "profiler" does is they take behavior, and retro-classify backward from that behavior to infer a personality... the opposite of what a mental healthcare professional does. Which is why MOST LE agaicies rely upon seasoned veteran invesitgiators, as opposed to mental health professionals in criminal investigations.
that's no knock on mental health professionals, its just an approach from a different end than what they are trained to do as a healthcare provider.... the same way a profiler cant diagnose a patient.
Anyway... what im getting at is that the one constant in this case, is what happened to the victim
-we know he left home
-we know he was transported 25 miles away
-we know he was stabbed multiple times
-we know his body was hidden
-we know his body was burned to destroy evidence.
But that's all we really know . this is why a victimology profile on the victim would at least provide a glimpse into what was going on with the victim prior to his disappearance.
I don't make too much of the clothing itself, ..I've seen my kids attempt to leave the house looking like Bozo the clown because we caught them before they walked out the door (if you have girls you'll fully understand the "makeup phase"). However barring what could've been learned from a victimology assessment, there may have been a reason he was doing so .
Now this is only MY experience...but a few times I've seen kids wearing long sleeves in hot weather, was to hide bruises. Im not saying that this is the case HERE, but without any investigative information all we can do is speculate and infer from experiences we have.
Remember NOONE can confirm that Michael was EVER actually at the tennis courts, a maid saw a person "matching his description" there, and later an off brand tennis ball was found ...now why would he leave 1 tennis ball?... if he was so meticulous, he leaves notes, and in this situation to grab all his other things, but 1 ball?...that seems odd to me and ill explain why later
As Ive said before, I don't know who plays tennis by themselves.. again I don't know $hit about tennis Ill freely admit, but last I heard it was a 2 person endeavor .
Which leads me to ask 1) Was he perhaps expecting someone else? or 2) Is there more to the story about him going to practice tennis ?
When we look at the path he took, (without any legend to determine actual distance), does it look like he would've been walking for 10 minutes, and STILL not have arrived at the tennis courts? the times , which could be off its newspaper reporting , seem strange, I can only assume this was confirmed by police, but its still strange, did he meet someone before he met those kids?. Now I could be completely wrong and it could be that far but if it is, why would you let your kid walk 30-40 minutes away if youre going to be picking him up after only 30-40 minutes of "practice"?
He left his home at 2 , stopped to talk to friends by 2:30 for (unknown amount of time) then continued on to the courts, where his mom was going to pick him up by 3:30.
The choice of weapon is odd too (unless you're Michael Meyers) you don't often see people carrying around butchers knives. They are usually something that is acquired at the scene as a weapon of opportunity, as a matter of fact the ONLY time I've ever seen a butcher knife used as a weapon was in domestic disputes, and a burglary gone wrong.
AGAIN, that doesn't mean someone didn't grab one and roll out with it, particularly if it was spur of the moment thing, but just from what I have seen
Now we look at the wounds suffered by the victim, and again we could spin it a few ways, but in part we are looking widely spread wounds ... why would they be so widely distributed, and come from so many different angles ?were they fighting?, was he struggling to get away? something along the lines of what Ron Goldman suffered?, if so I feel we are dealing with a younger offender, who wasn't able to control an athlete, the way he thought he could, much less one who may have been swinging an aluminum tennis racket in self defense .
OR was there more than one offender possibly armed with more than one weapon, which would explain the various angles and sheer number of stab wounds.
Both are possible.
The removal of the victims clothing is interesting, particularly if he was wearing it when he was stabbed, that would give us yet another glimpse into what happened, that information isn't available here.
If his clothes were removed prior to being stabbed , we can make the assumption the attack "could have" been sexual in nature. I say "could have, because in some cases, stripping a victim is done as a means of degradation, and control, (it has actually been done by bank robbers in a case I remember to control those in the bank so they're pre-occupied and wont look at the offenders) .
Another possibility is interpersonal anger, that's a HELL of a lot of stab wounds to a 12yo kid, the tough part to determine is the origin of the anger. As we know resistance sometimes, ups the level of violence from the offender.
Now we look at the disposal of the body, if we apply the findings by the 2006 study, he was most likely killed where his belongings were found . However, remember that crime is dynamic, and there is no such thing as 100%. Even DNA is graded as to a percentage
SO I raise another question, why hide the body and burn it? , when you are going to leave his belongings laying out all over the place right near his body? (though according to some of the articles it sounds as if "some" attempt was made to hide some of them) it was done haphazardly
Lets just look at the 1st part of the question, why hide a victim if you are going to burn their body?.. seems like overkill, and not in a homicidal way, but in a preventative way. Someone didn't want to be linked to that child. A stranger, could've gotten away with simply leaving the body, remember DNA wasn't available back then. This seems like someone who wanted to take every precaution NOT to be linked to this kid
Perhaps because..... they knew they'd be questioned?
The whole event reeks of panic post offense.
The dump site , What is it about THAT spot, that was right for the offender?, was it a random find ?.. Possible, but it seems like a long shot given its out of the way location, I don't think it was I think someone knew of that area, someone who maybe had been there before , because it appears that its not right off the road, not something you could easily see. It also seems to have been worn by vehicles because of the tire tracks
Where did the Charcoal starter come from?, more than likely brought which would indicate at least some planning, but why, did they plan to burn a body?... I'm not so sure that it wasn't something more along the lines of something they just already had with them, possibly along with a knife, from a BBQ or something, but that's speculative.
Because we have so little in the way of info this case, is going to be VERY hard to impossible to solve.
Having read the clips here a doze or so times, I have my theories, but ill keep those to myself as I've learned from previous discussions.
The best way to approach this case, is to review what is already KNOWN, the answer most likely lies there.
It Certainly seems odd that a kid would dress like he was going to a winter social to go out in the summer heat and play tennis alone, but again we don't know how he was , we don't know what the family dynamic was, we don't know if he just dressed like that ... but we do know a few things "out of the ordinary " just happen to occur that day he went missing and was most likely murdered.
