I was reading a LOT of the articles regarding the case. And there was something what made me wonder if I understood it well. And, please, do not think I am judgmental or nosy or curious. Not at all.
It is about Evelyn’s family. It was written that Evelyn did not feel well one day, and she asked her Mom to bring her soup. Her Mom is going there and finds an empty apartment. Her brother said that they found only a baby stroller. Wasn’t that suspicious to them that Evelyn would move out of the apartment without telling them, especially if she spoke to them already that day or day before? And that she would leave the stroller behind when she was heavily pregnant?
Also, it is said that the family did not report Evelyn missing because she was living with her boyfriend. But wasn’t that boyfriend abusive toward her and wasn’t he locking her in the apartment? Were they afraid of him? Or were they afraid that he would take revenge on her if he finds it out?
They were looking around for her for sure. I also read in one article that Luis’s family lived close to Evelyn’s family. Couldn’t they provide any information about Evelyn and Luis?
There is one gruesome detail. I will put it in white letters. I think that I read that baby was cut out of her womb and if Luis did it, he should’ve known the gender. Why would he write then that a baby boy was born?
Also, her brother said that she didn’t look like any of her composite drawings, but her niece said that she did.
I know – it is too many questions and maybe some of them will be answered later. I was just wondering if I got it right.
I expect that some of these inconsistencies or head-scratching "facts" now being documented are confusing us because news sources are scrambling for info in the immediate wake of Evelyn's identification and charges laid against LS, and are choosing to publish first, possibly clarify later. Also, the family members being interviewed were mostly children at the time of Evelyn's disappearance, and their memory of the timeline may be sketchy.
My ideas on some of your questions:
– Regarding the soup, in one news source I saw a relative was quoted as saying the soup was not delivered the same day that Evelyn asked for it, but later in the week.
– I can't address anything about what LS' family might have known, but he was legally an adult and may not have been in regular contact with them, as it seemed 15-year-old Evelyn was with her own family. Even her family seemed to view it as not abnormal that a man and "woman" with their own apartment might decide to up and move without giving advance notice to family, without saying where they'd gone, and without making further contact beyond one "we're fine" note.
– The niece and brother may well have different recollections of Evelyn's appearance. Perhaps there were not many family photos to aid their very youthful memories. (This was the era of film, and processing usually cost more than the film roll did, so people didn't take nearly the number of pictures we're now used to.)
– I agree with a poster above who said that LS claiming the baby was a boy was an expression of his misogyny, or possibly of machismo. Even though he'd killed the baby, it apparently was generally understood by those who knew the pair that this was his child, and he may have wanted people to think he'd fathered a son, because that made him feel more virile than acknowledging a daughter did. (It's really revolting to me that he apparently had no problem at all referencing his baby as alive and healthy in the misleading letter to poor Evelyn's family, when he knew exactly what he'd done to that baby and its mother. That is bone-chillingly cold.)
– Apparently Evelyn told her mother that LS might kill her, but it seems that was not taken seriously even when Evelyn disappeared. I find this hard to fathom, but we are coming at it from the perspective of 45 years later. Domestic abuse was usually not even considered an offense worth interfering in then. A man's home was his castle and all that. Maybe Evelyn's comment was just seen as something a dramatic teen girl would say to get attention. Or maybe a certain level of men "disciplining" "their" women was seen as unremarkable by her family.
I hope these and other confusing points in the narrative of these first few days will be clarified in the weeks ahead, and that the case continues to draw a good amount of interest and coverage. Evelyn deserves to be recognized as a young woman whose potential was stolen from her by a brute at a tender age, her almost-born daughter Emily Grace deserves to be recognized as an innocent victim of a callous monster, and their murderer's name – the one person who, above all, should have cherished and defended them in his household – should go down in infamy.
