There are a few things that bother me immensely about Ericka's disappearance, so I'm going to list a few of them here.
1- Larry Anthony Hopkins II, AKA Hannibal, Ericka's boyfriend at the time, claimed to LE and Ericka's family that she was having a schizophrenic episode and wandered into the woods either partially clothed or completely naked.
Now, I don't know about you, but I'm reasonably certain that if my girlfriend was walking around naked talking at people who weren't there, I'd be keeping a close eye on her.
This statement also conflicts with what he told a girl that he was speaking with later in 2018, as he told her that his last sighting of her was of her laying in bed, again having a schizophrenic episode. Was she in bed, or was she walking around naked? Make up your mind, buddy.
2- Ryan Floyd Bargay, the neighbor who occasionally allowed Ericka and Hannibal to bathe in his home, reported a firearm was missing from his home after Ericka vanished.
Was the firearm ever recovered?
3- Neither of these men has been willing to speak with me, the individual who has been advocating to find Ericka since 2019.
I know neither of them is obligated to speak with me regarding this matter, but at the same time it is quite strange. I have sent facebook friend requests to them both. Bargay's is hanging in acceptance purgatory, and Hopkins outright denied the request within five minutes of it being sent. Hopkins claimed to love Ericka, and for a brief (and I mean brief) time after she vanished he was posting to social media like a concerned partner. But then that just....stopped.
4- Hopkins was trying to convince a woman to come out to the farm in Selma mere months after Ericka vanished.
He apparently wasted very little time trying to look for female companionship, but the verbiage in one of his later text messages is incredibly off-putting. I will attach the screenshot of the weird one below. In the earlier, more coherent messages he's very insistent, guilt-trippy, pushy, and brags about having copious amounts of resources in order to entice this woman out there. Fortunately she never went, and the only time that they met in person was once at some sort of hippie gathering. They laid in a truck together tripping on something, he got kind of pushy with her physically and kept attempting to press boundaries. Of course this is all alleged. But the screenshots of the messages are not.
5- Nearly a year after Ericka vanished, Hopkins allegedly 'found' a hat, homemade bong, and lighter that belonged to her. This was approximately 11 days after he had been released from the Josephine County Jail on reckless driving, reckless endangerment, and possession of methamphetamine charges.
The items were located on the outskirts of the property that she vanished from, in a somewhat wooded area. From what I could find out, they did seem as though they had been out there for a while. Still, in nearly a year's time you'd think that he'd be scouring the area for her or some sign of her. Not to mention, there had been previously conducted searches, complete with tracker dogs, that did not pick up on these items immediately after her disappearance.
6- While Harry Oakes, the 'dog guy' that Ericka's family hired, claims that her scent led in the direction of Bend, his techniques have been scrutinized by other members of the search-and-rescue dog handler community.
Yeah, people might just be talking out of their rear ends, but this is something that I feel is important to at least consider in this situation. A lot of people claim that he tells his clients what they want to hear. Is this a normal thing to accuse people in this field of?
