Sentencing and beyond- JA General Discussion #8

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Re: the cut finger- Juan did show the pic from early 2008 with Jodi’s arm around Angela, but no, he didn’t spend much time refuting that testimony. And I believe Ryan & Leslie Udy confirmed the killer had her hand bandaged in Utah post murder 6/5. But why Juan didn’t cite this cut directly from the Flores investigation when the killer said it was done by the “ninja” female?
That finger....I hope every single day the incorrect healing of her finger reminds her of what she did to Travis. Her being left handed, it has to.
I’ve often wondered if that, after many years go by or on her deathbed, the killer will tell the truth about what happened that day. That’s a big “if”.
Ten years it will be on June 4 that Travis is gone. Ten years for the killer to be in jail. I am sure she’s acclimated by now but am sure she is in misery.
And next month - appeal brief due. With no new motions or complaints on the record since October 2017, I don’t see it being delayed. Her appeal - do you think we will know by the end of this year?
I personally think there is no way in the world she’ll be given a new trial. The evidence against her was too strong. Very few procedural errors were made by JSS; nothing that will warrant another trial as any procedural error IMO would not have changed the verdict.
A question I have is that if this first appeal is denied, what are the factors the killer & her legal team have to establish to exist for an appeal paid for by the killer? Apparently there is an “Appeal Fund”. Can a defendant simply ask for a “do over”? I don’t think so unless new evidence is found disputing the conviction.
She’ll never fade away, however. Killer loves herself too much to go quietly.

Salberg--

1. The COA appeal will be heard and decided (not before the end of this year, at the earliest).

2. If the appeal is denied, the has the option of petitioning the AZ Supreme Court to hear her case. They are under no obligation to do so. If they do, that appeal will also be state-funded.

3. The possible outcomes if the COA rules in her favor: the verdict can be thrown out & the case returned to Superior Court; the verdict can stand and her sentence be reduced; the verdict can stand but the sentence thrown out (most difficult option to imagine happening in this case, since the DP is off the table & there AZ doesn't allow parole).

4. If her COA appeal is denied, and the AZ Supreme Court declines to hear her appeal/she doesn't appeal to the SC, then she has one final option at the state level: to petition for Post Conviction Relief (PCR), which will also be state-funded.

5. She is almost certain to petition for a PCR because it provides her the first and only opportunity to claim ineffective counsel, and to assert that she has new evidence to present that could have changed the outcome of her (guilt phase) trial.

6. The court she'd apply to for PCR is the AZ Superior Court, and the judge reviewing her petition would be JSS- the trial judge. :D

7. JSS is obligated to review the petition, but is not obligated to order hearings in response. Her options: deny the PCR petition outright (the end), or grant hearings in which the "new" evidence and/or arguments about ineffective counsel would be argued.

8. If she allows those hearings (not going to happen, imo), then the arguments will be presented & refuted, and JSS will rule whether or not any portion of the original outcome (guilt & sentencing) needs a redo.

9. The may appeal the PCR being denied at any of these stages, but she would have to pay for that appeal herself, and it would have about a 1% chance or less of succeeding.

10. The can appeal to a federal court of appeals after all her State level appeals are exhausted, but again, she'd have to pay herself, and the cost would be prohibitively expensive- hundreds of thousands of dollars.

11. The does have an appeals trust fund set up in her name. I very much doubt it ever contained the $80-90k or so funds claimed. Even if it once did, I suspect she has used/is using a great deal of that money to pay her civil attorney for the various civil suits she's brought against JM and Nurmi.

And, even if she has $80-90k intact, that won't be enough to pay for even the retainer of a federal appellate attorney.
 
Here's the link to Hope's visit to Mesa(such dedication to the cause!) : https://www.websleuths.com/forums/s...ing-and-beyond-JA-General-Discussion-7/page47

Seeing those photos again gives me a little chill, just imagining her sitting there plotting in a cloud of rage and hatred. *Shudder*

Thanks for the link. It was quite the adventure. Look how many posts we were generating in a short time...Hope was posting photos and we were sharing ideas as she drove (actually, when she pulled over to the side of the road, IIRC).
 
��The meat has been picked from the bones of this case, for sure. Almost every rational (and quite a few whacky) theories has been debated intensely. Now the licence plates could have been replaced up to three times? �� Why not five? Or ten?

Joking apart, I'll have to give some further thought to this.


I can't believe I'm giving more thought to anything case related, but I have been about the license plate switching, so fwiw to your thinking about same, all interpretations jmo:

1. dwalded about in Pasadena, CA until it was well after dark. She called Burns from that area around 10PM to tell him she was on her way to Utah. Her route from Pasadena to Mesa was almost certainly on "the 10," a straight shot from Pasedena to Phoenix. I've driven on the 10 multiple times, from the NM border to Joshua Tree National Park. At that time she drove- approx 10PM to 4AM- there would be little to no reason for her to worry about having CA plates on her white, indistinguishable rental car, especially since there are typically a large number of CA-plated cars transiting back and forth from CA- AZ on that route.

Conclusion: she still had the CA plates on when she arrived in Mesa.

2. She arrived in Mesa around 4AM. She did not park in his driveway, because one or both of his roommates would have noticed her car there in the AM. I'll post the pic I took of where I believe she parked near his house. The walk from that sidestreet to his house would take less than a minute, and she would have had to walk past just one house to reach T's.

IMO she never planned on walking in, killing Travis with his roommates in the house, then leaving immediately.

She was very familiar with his neighborhood, and knew the routines of one roommate, but not likely of the other, more recent addition.

She always anticipated, then, that both she and the car would be visible for some length of time during daylight on the 4th. That's why she dyed her hair, and why she switched the plates.

(Have to go out, but next question- when did she switch the plates that AM?)
 
These are the photos I took of the sidestreet near T's house. I'm posting them separately, but they're relevant to the question of where & when she switched license plates:
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1. The corner of E. Queensborough and Bryce. Bryce is the little side street where she was most likely to have parked the AM of T's murder.. TA's house is 3rd up from this corner, on the right.

https://www.websleuths.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=99422&d=1470325377


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2.Sidestreet (Bryce)

https://www.websleuths.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=98705&d=1469318476

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3. Same corner, I'm on E. Queensborough, pointing in the direction of TA's house, just east of the corner

https://www.websleuths.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=99424&d=1470325566

_______

Note: the walls blocking off line of sight on other side; how short this side street is- about 6, maybe 7 at most car lengths, & that cars are only allowed to park on one side of the street.

It's less or not obvious from these photos that anyone travelling east on Queensborough ( to exit to a main thoroughfare) would see a parked car on Bryce without a license plate, if they were looking, and if the car was parked closest to Queensborough. The photos don't adequately portray just how narrow the streets are in his neighborhood, and how congested & closed in it feels driving through.

Queensborough is a major cross street in his neighborhood. E. Quade, which the Bryce sidestreet links to Queensborough, is essentially in a small cul de sac, far less travelled.

The possible significance of the latter is that only a handful of folks may have used Bryce to exit the neighborhood in the AM, and they all would have been driving past her car facing them, so would have no reason to notice her car or a missing back plate.

Conversely, it would have been unlikely that many if any of the handful of Quade residents drove home to their street via Bryce early in the AM (would have thus seen the rear of her car).
 
Part #2 of license plate thoughts:

The (no, Misty, not a legal term, it's just what you thought :D) had her choice of deserted places on the edge of T's neighborhood where she could take off the front plate completely out of sight, before she pulled onto Queensborough.

Maybe she did that to decrease the time she would be exposed near T's house, screwdriver in hand, fiddling with plates. It's possible, of course, that she removed both plates beforehand, in Mesa, though for the reasons I've explained, I'm not convinced (yet?) she would have risked parking a plate-less car for the hours she would be inside T's house, which no matter her intended timeline, was going to be the case.


So... she pulled in and parked near T's house around 4AM. Travis was on his computer, in his study, at the back of the house; the study opens to the hallway leading to the garage.

*We know that Travis never locked the doors to his house, including the side door to his garage (on the east side of house, facing Bryce). Even by her own account, she entered his house without knocking.

*I don't believe he knew she was coming, but it doesn't matter as relates to when and if she switched plates, IMO.

* Whether or not he knew she was coming, if he was still awake when she arrived, and if she made her presence known to him immediately, just when in that early AM, before daybreak & before folks, roomies & neighbors, began pouring out of their houses to go to work could/would she have gone back outside to play with plates?

Conclusion: either she removed both plates before entering T's house and left both plates off until after she killed Travis; OR, she removed both plates before entering his house and returned to her car & replaced at least the rear plate at some point before Travis took a shower, and, most likely, after his roomie returned & left again midday; OR.......

* As I think Val1 pointed out (years ago, sadly ;)) the knew Travis was not going to ever leave his house again, which meant he wouldn't drive his car again, which meant there was no possibility he would notice a license plate was missing from his Prius.

The could have slipped through the side garage door, removed one of T's plates, returned to her car (driving it elsewhere or not), put his plate on the rear of her car, and gone back to T's house through the side garage door again, and depending on what one believes, to "surprise" him, or to let him know she'd arrived as planned, or as I believe, to stay hidden until she heard him go upstairs & out of hearing.

Or...she could have waited until he went upstairs before she played with the plates.

--------

Next:

* If both plates were off until after she murdered Travis, then all there is to account for is whether or not she reattached her rear CA plate before or after she left Mesa.

If she put T's plate on her car in the early AM, she had to switch it back to his car before leaving his neighborhood, and also had to put a CA rear plate on her car, at the same time or afterwards.

If she had another plate to switch around, the timeline for switching would be the same as leaving both CA plates off the car.

*If she did go outside to switch T's plate & her own before she killed him, the only time IMO that seems the slightest bit possible & logical would have been in the late afternoon, just before he took his shower.

I don't think she would have risked telling him she had to go to her car, which would have given him the chance to text or make calls or go onto his computer to email or whatever.

So....either she didn't leave the house to play with plates because she didn't need to, or she did leave to make a hasty switch (not noticing she'd put it on upside down).

IMO, if she left to do a switch, it was after Travis thought she had left and had finally headed upstairs for that shower she had waited hours upon hours for him to take. (Perhaps he locked the doors after he thought she'd left, and she had to go through his study window, taking the screen off first)?

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She kills Travis. She goes to her car. She's left his house with either a bundle or a backpack with contents bloody enough to leave a large bloodstain on the backseat of her rental car, and smaller bloodstains on the front seat.

It is prime-time commuting time, which means the possibility of encountering/being spotted by neighborhood folks returning from work. She's already many hours behind schedule in reaching Ryan. He expected her around 10AM that morning & it's already around 6PM, and she has a minimum of 4 1/2 hours of driving to do before she exits AZ and can safely call him (lol, ) to explain why she won't be there for another 9-10 hours from where she is (it will take her about 12 hours from Hoover Dam, actually).

Gotta think the is in a big hurry to get on the road. I also believe her adreline was pumping, & that she was flying high from excitement & profound satisfaction.

First obstacle- getting out of T's neighborhood without attracting attention, while it is still daylight, in what I've experienced first hand & know would literally be bumper to bumper traffic, at the very least from off Queensborough through to the freeway. Miles.

That drive out, with no uncongested & reasonable place exiting Mesa to stop and put on a rear plate, is the best circumstantial evidence that she must have put her CA plate back on before she left T's neighborhood, which imo supports my shower scenario or some such.
--

If she put the CA plate back on in Mesa, I can't think of any reason why she would take it off again, much less take it off & put it back on upside down.

She was in enough haste that she called Ryan before she left AZ (she had to know that), and before she reached Hoover Dam (that's why she knew she was still in AZ).

We know she wasn't feeling pressured for time after she called Ryan, because she took hours extra to drive to his house. Lots of time to clean things up & cloaked by lots of seclusion.

Last- she wouldn't have driven plateless in her 4-5 hours getaway on major police-patrolled highways, and she wouldn't have any reason to take off her rear plate & reattach it before going over the Dam, and it makes no sense that she'd invite LE attention in Utah by deliberately turning the plate upside down after Hoover Dam.

The managed to make it through the dam security checkpoint with 3 prohibited gas cans & an upside down rear plate.

The beauty of the thing is that Ryan was there when Utah LE pulled her over for the plate, which meant Ryan could tell JM about that weird incident, which meant JM had one more piece of premeditation evidence to add to his pile, which IMO, this dissertation aside, is the only reason why anything about her license plates was-or is- significant. :D. :D.
 
Wow i didn't realize there were so many houses on the block.

For some reason I was imagining a more under developed area, with fewer houses.
It looks to be quite a (family) neighborhood.
 
Part #2 of license plate thoughts:

[Edited for brevity... no offense.] :)

The managed to make it through the dam security checkpoint with 3 prohibited gas cans & an upside down rear plate.

The beauty of the thing is that Ryan was there when Utah LE pulled her over for the plate, which meant Ryan could tell JM about that weird incident, which meant JM had one more piece of premeditation evidence to add to his pile, which IMO, this dissertation aside, is the only reason why anything about her license plates was-or is- significant. :D. :D.
Well, the possibilities certainly seem endless for what she really did with the license plates.

After reading everything you just wrote, Hope... I wonder how much thought she put into how much plate switching she would have to do to go un-noticed in Arizona. I wonder if she made a flow chart? lol Well, fwiw, here's my flow chart for the plates:

1- She drove from Starbucks in Pasadena to Arizona with both license plates on her non-descript rental car intact.

2- Before reaching Mesa, she stops somewhere (Buckhead maybe?) and swipes a set of AZ license plates off of a "local" car.

3- She changes-out her California plates for her temporary Arizona plates in an isolated area before reaching Mesa. (for as hidden as the sidestreet was that she parked on around the corner from Travis' house, I just don't think she would have chanced being seen there fooling around with license plates. I think she would have felt much safer just parking her car there with the AZ plates already on her rental) But with her, you just never know! lol

4- With Arizona plates already on her parked car, she can now do whatever she needs to do inside Travis' house and not go back outside until she's ready to hit the road.

5- She leaves Travis' house (at whatever time, and in whatever rush hour, stop-and-go traffic), and she's not driving with an upside down CA plate (yet), and she's not even driving a car without plates at all. She now blends in with all the other cars on the road with AZ license plates. But she's obeying all stop signs, stop lights and speed limits so she won't get pulled over. Because then she'd have to kill a cop. Oh, wait! Her gun jammed. Go straight to jail. Do not collect $200. Game over.

6- She now stops in the desert to clean-up before arriving at the checkpoint, and also to take the AZ plates off her car and put her CA plates back on. But it's dark and she unknowingly puts the rear plate on upside down. Oops! She still makes it through the checkpoint "A-OK". Yay!

7- She is pulled over in Utah for an upside down license plate on her rental car. Oops again! My friends did it to me, officer.

8- She gets rid of the two AZ plates the same way she gets rid of the other items of evidence she took with her. Here and there in the high desert of Utah and Nevada and perhaps even in the forrested mountains of California on her way back to Yreka. Are trash dumpsters here and there along the way too risky to dispose of stuff?

Stealing Arizona license plates off a local car is risky, but I think that's a risk she'd take as opposed to having to switch license plates twice after parking at Travis' house. I don't know when she began to plan the murder (after the May 28th email/chat fight they had, or when she moved back to Yreka in April), but she might have even swiped a set of AZ plates off a car before she crossed the AZ/CA border in April. I wouldn't put anything past her.
 
Well, the possibilities certainly seem endless for what she really did with the license plates.

After reading everything you just wrote, Hope... I wonder how much thought she put into how much plate switching she would have to do to go un-noticed in Arizona. I wonder if she made a flow chart? lol Well, fwiw, here's my flow chart for the plates:

1- She drove from Starbucks in Pasadena to Arizona with both license plates on her non-descript rental car intact.

2- Before reaching Mesa, she stops somewhere (Buckhead maybe?) and swipes a set of AZ license plates off of a "local" car.

3- She changes-out her California plates for her temporary Arizona plates in an isolated area before reaching Mesa. (for as hidden as the sidestreet was that she parked on around the corner from Travis' house, I just don't think she would have chanced being seen there fooling around with license plates. I think she would have felt much safer just parking her car there with the AZ plates already on her rental) But with her, you just never know! lol

4- With Arizona plates already on her parked car, she can now do whatever she needs to do inside Travis' house and not go back outside until she's ready to hit the road.

5- She leaves Travis' house (at whatever time, and in whatever rush hour, stop-and-go traffic), and she's not driving with an upside down CA plate (yet), and she's not even driving a car without plates at all. She now blends in with all the other cars on the road with AZ license plates. But she's obeying all stop signs, stop lights and speed limits so she won't get pulled over. Because then she'd have to kill a cop. Oh, wait! Her gun jammed. Go straight to jail. Do not collect $200. Game over.

6- She now stops in the desert to clean-up before arriving at the checkpoint, and also to take the AZ plates off her car and put her CA plates back on. But it's dark and she unknowingly puts the rear plate on upside down. Oops! She still makes it through the checkpoint "A-OK". Yay!

7- She is pulled over in Utah for an upside down license plate on her rental car. Oops again! My friends did it to me, officer.

8- She gets rid of the two AZ plates the same way she gets rid of the other items of evidence she took with her. Here and there in the high desert of Utah and Nevada and perhaps even in the forrested mountains of California on her way back to Yreka. Are trash dumpsters here and there along the way too risky to dispose of stuff?

Stealing Arizona license plates off a local car is risky, but I think that's a risk she'd take as opposed to having to switch license plates twice after parking at Travis' house. I don't know when she began to plan the murder (after the May 28th email/chat fight they had, or when she moved back to Yreka in April), but she might have even swiped a set of AZ plates off a car before she crossed the AZ/CA border in April. I wouldn't put anything past her.


Many LOL's, Wingy Dingy....:)

On my phone so I can't respectfully snip portions of your reply, but, it was diminutive enough not to warrant abbreviating in any case. :D


As you said, anything is possible when it comes to the . Not because she is so frightfully evil as to be incomprehensible, but because her pathology is evenly matched by her stupidity.

Think of JM's case had she just "borrowed" her gdad's gun instead of staging an implausible burglury involving a LE report, & thrown away the gas can receipt, and not left T's camera in the wash thinking bleach would erase all her tracks.

Because I don't underestimate her stupidity & misplaced certainty that she would pull off the perfect murder of Travis, yah, I agree that anything is possible when it comes to her license plate plans.

Almost anything, anway. She COULD have stolen an AZ plate along the way to Mesa....but IIRC the Pasadena-Mesa timeline, she wouldn't have had much time to do so. She'd have to have exited 10, driven into a bodunk town & driven around until she found an out of the way & lights car, then to have taken a plate off, which from experience on an older car anyway, isn't a quick process.

Also, that's a lot of work, and the is, as we know, fundamentally lazy.

Next to last thought: I don't think she chose ahead of time to pull a daylight plate-switch in the alley either. Consider though how abysmal she ever was at pulling off a successful plan B. (Winning entry: " I wasn't there. Plan B: I was there but the ninjas did it).


Last thought: if she did have 1 or 2 AZ plates handy, IMO it was because of that April stealing scenario you mention, which I think is entirely plausible. After everything we learned in PP2 and in docs released post-trial, I find it difficult to believe she did NOT leave Mesa with murder on her mind, and there's no doubt whatsoever she was acting upon her rage (prime example: blowing up T's BMW).

This plates exercise has been for me like believing I'd pulled up every thought-weed in my analysis & speculation garden years ago, only to see one last weed poking up, which I have now not only extracted, but annihilated (for myself, lol) by applying, one at a time, every anti-weed regent available on the market.


The end. ;)
 
Well, the possibilities certainly seem endless for what she really did with the license plates.

After reading everything you just wrote, Hope... I wonder how much thought she put into how much plate switching she would have to do to go un-noticed in Arizona. I wonder if she made a flow chart? lol Well, fwiw, here's my flow chart for the plates:

1- She drove from Starbucks in Pasadena to Arizona with both license plates on her non-descript rental car intact.

2- Before reaching Mesa, she stops somewhere (Buckhead maybe?) and swipes a set of AZ license plates off of a "local" car.

3- She changes-out her California plates for her temporary Arizona plates in an isolated area before reaching Mesa. (for as hidden as the sidestreet was that she parked on around the corner from Travis' house, I just don't think she would have chanced being seen there fooling around with license plates. I think she would have felt much safer just parking her car there with the AZ plates already on her rental) But with her, you just never know! lol

4- With Arizona plates already on her parked car, she can now do whatever she needs to do inside Travis' house and not go back outside until she's ready to hit the road.

5- She leaves Travis' house (at whatever time, and in whatever rush hour, stop-and-go traffic), and she's not driving with an upside down CA plate (yet), and she's not even driving a car without plates at all. She now blends in with all the other cars on the road with AZ license plates. But she's obeying all stop signs, stop lights and speed limits so she won't get pulled over. Because then she'd have to kill a cop. Oh, wait! Her gun jammed. Go straight to jail. Do not collect $200. Game over.

6- She now stops in the desert to clean-up before arriving at the checkpoint, and also to take the AZ plates off her car and put her CA plates back on. But it's dark and she unknowingly puts the rear plate on upside down. Oops! She still makes it through the checkpoint "A-OK". Yay!

7- She is pulled over in Utah for an upside down license plate on her rental car. Oops again! My friends did it to me, officer.

8- She gets rid of the two AZ plates the same way she gets rid of the other items of evidence she took with her. Here and there in the high desert of Utah and Nevada and perhaps even in the forrested mountains of California on her way back to Yreka. Are trash dumpsters here and there along the way too risky to dispose of stuff?

Stealing Arizona license plates off a local car is risky, but I think that's a risk she'd take as opposed to having to switch license plates twice after parking at Travis' house. I don't know when she began to plan the murder (after the May 28th email/chat fight they had, or when she moved back to Yreka in April), but she might have even swiped a set of AZ plates off a car before she crossed the AZ/CA border in April. I wouldn't put anything past her.

It's interesting to me that prosecutors left the license plate mystery with untied ends. If I had been a juror, I would have wanted to know more about it (it wouldn't have changed my thoughts on her guilt, but it's worth knowing more about.)

If she stole someone's plates in AZ, wouldn't they have reported it? And by now it would have been traced back to JA I assume. JG is a sharp cookie. Nothing escaped his eye!
 
Quite a few options to ponder there, Hope4More :thinking:

Before going into this in more depth let's rewind. Remember Arias said that she had been running or in training prior to the murder? It is possible she parked the car further away, intending to jog back? I don't believe Travis knew she was coming either. Arias knew the area very well and probably found somewhere quiet to rest when stalking TA in the past. Is there somewhere she could have parked that would have obscured the back and front plates? Putting on any other plates carried risk. The using Travis' plate idea is intriguing.

A very enjoyable dissertation.
 
Quite a few options to ponder there, Hope4More :thinking:

Before going into this in more depth let's rewind. Remember Arias said that she had been running or in training prior to the murder? It is possible she parked the car further away, intending to jog back? I don't believe Travis knew she was coming either. Arias knew the area very well and probably found somewhere quiet to rest when stalking TA in the past. Is there somewhere she could have parked that would have obscured the back and front plates? Putting on any other plates carried risk. The using Travis' plate idea is intriguing.

A very enjoyable dissertation.


Before going into depth with this? Eek. That sounds ominous. :D

Short answers: no, there isn't any place she could park in his neighborhood that would have concealed both front & back plates. She didn't need to conceal both, though- just the back plate, but that too would have impossible if parking on the street/alley.

T's neighborhood is fully & thoroughly developed within and on 3 sides (north, south, & west). Houses are jammed in side to side, driveways are very short, the roads within are quite narrow, which is why so few folks there park on the street (as opposed to one of those side alleys, which I'm guessing were intended in part for overflow parking).

The east side of T's neighborhood (his is a section of a larger, miles-long block development) wasn't developed at all when I was there. The west side of the eastern boundary road is chock a block housing north to south, on the east side, just cacti & sand.

There was a place just at the entry to T's neighborhood from that eastern side (far less travelled) where she theoretically could have parked (I took a pic), but.....don't think she did. T's house from there would have been at least a 5 minute walk, & she would have been fully visible the whole way.

If she intended to swipe T's plate & switch it on Bryce, she could very easily have done so in the early AM, before daybreak, undetected either by T, or by neighbors.


Here's another scenario I hadn't thought of if she did take T's plate in the AM & had to switch it back before she left his house (and it fits into my speculation about what happened that day):

After his roomie came back midday then left, there was only one car in T's garage- T's, and there weren't any cars in the driveway. She could have, with T being aware of it or not (in the shower?) left his house, then BACKED UP into his driveway, with only a missing front plate visible, which would have been no big deal.

For that matter, she could even have pulled all the way into his garage, though that Travis would have heard. If he was still alive.

Adding- wherever she parked her nondescript car, with a plate on it, it wasn't obvious or remarkable enough for anyone to have noticed. If she did use T's plate, what might have helped explain an unfamiliar car to passing drivers who frequently used Bryce was that T's Prius still had temporary plates.
 
It's interesting to me that prosecutors left the license plate mystery with untied ends. If I had been a juror, I would have wanted to know more about it (it wouldn't have changed my thoughts on her guilt, but it's worth knowing more about.)

If she stole someone's plates in AZ, wouldn't they have reported it? And by now it would have been traced back to JA I assume. JG is a sharp cookie. Nothing escaped his eye!

All that mattered to JM about the license plates was what that upside plate represented: premeditation.

As he said in his book, he put limits on what he investigated for the case, both because he had to (the rabbitholes in her case are nearly limitless), and because the only necessary investigations were those that produced evidence of premeditation and her guilt.
 
Putting on any other plates carried risk. The using Travis' plate idea is intriguing.

A very enjoyable dissertation.
Using Travis' plates on her rental car while she was parked near his house is certainly within the realm of possibilities, but doing so was also risky. Changing the two sets of plates twice would be time consuming and also put her at risk of being seen (at least in the afternoon) as she would also have to walk back and forth between her car and Travis' house an additional four times to change the plates twice.

She may have borrowed a set of license plates from Matt McCartney (knowing he wouldn't report them as being stolen), and then changed them out in Santa Cruz at her leisure and then continued on with her trip while whistling a happy tune.

Well I guess whatever she did with regards to the license plates carried risk. Only she knows how much risk she was willing to take based on what she did. I would write and ask her, but I don't want her or Matt McCartney knowing my home address.
 
Hope4More, there is an elementary school with a large car park not too far away. I don't want to write the name here but it's easy to find the car park if you zoom out from Travis' old address. Was it even built then? Would it be less risky to park somewhere like that? Just weighing up probabilities and risks. Would there be cameras covering that car park? Likely?

Where would a savage, slaughtering psychopath park? :laughing: Nearer (and risk being associated with a car in the immediate murder vicinity?). Or a walk away where she could have rested on arrival and possibly removed plates without being seen? These questions arise before I can give due attention to your dissertation. :smile:

Juan covered what was plausible and probable re the licence plates. Absolutely, they speak to advanced planning. He needed speculate no further regarding evidence. You and others above have come up with lots of options. Wing Ding, add these questions to your list for Juan Martinez please? :thinking: Did he have any theories on the plates that he couldn't or needn't prove?
 
Wing Ding, interesting question re Matt McCartney. Hope4More's Travis' plate theory is intriguing too. The safest option would to be to park somewhere she could remove plates and screen the car somehow - perhaps with shrubs or walls. That's why I considered a parking lot or school. I agree she removed them but where? How easy is it to have duplicate plates made in the states?
 
Using Travis' plates on her rental car while she was parked near his house is certainly within the realm of possibilities, but doing so was also risky. Changing the two sets of plates twice would be time consuming and also put her at risk of being seen (at least in the afternoon) as she would also have to walk back and forth between her car and Travis' house an additional four times to change the plates twice.

She may have borrowed a set of license plates from Matt McCartney (knowing he wouldn't report them as being stolen), and then changed them out in Santa Cruz at her leisure and then continued on with her trip while whistling a happy tune.

Well I guess whatever she did with regards to the license plates carried risk. Only she knows how much risk she was willing to take based on what she did. I would write and ask her, but I don't want her or Matt McCartney knowing my home address.

? One plate- just the rear had to be changed. Her front CA was likely taken off before Mesa & not put back on until before the Dam.

Only switching the rear plate posted a problem, and it did so only in daylight. Remember, she almost certainly believed she would be out of the house & on her way to Utah hours before she actually was. If things had gone according to plan, she would have needed to make 2 trips to her car- to remove T's plate & put on her own, then to return to his house (he would be dead) , put on his plate, then get back to her car & boogie. Risky yes, but less so than leaving her car plateless for hours in that fishbowl neighborhood.

But...things didn't go as planned, she was in a huge hurry, and I'm thinking the least risky plan at that point, in the afternoon, would have been to back up her car to T's house. One trip to the alley & one turn around of the car around a corner-- it would have taken her a minute or two.

PS. MM lived in CA...how would his CA plates help?
 
Hope4More, there is an elementary school with a large car park not too far away. I don't want to write the name here but it's easy to find the car park if you zoom out from Travis' old address. Was it even built then? Would it be less risky to park somewhere like that? Just weighing up probabilities and risks. Would there be cameras covering that car park? Likely?

Where would a savage, slaughtering psychopath park? :laughing: Nearer (and risk being associated with a car in the immediate murder vicinity?). Or a walk away where she could have rested on arrival and possibly removed plates without being seen? These questions arise before I can give due attention to your dissertation. :smile:

Juan covered what was plausible and probable re the licence plates. Absolutely, they speak to advanced planning. He needed speculate no further regarding evidence. You and others above have come up with lots of options. Wing Ding, add these questions to your list for Juan Martinez please? :thinking: Did he have any theories on the plates that he couldn't or needn't prove?

TW-- all I can say is that the number one question I wanted answered by going to T's house is where she might have parked that AM. That question was driving me nuts, for reasons having nothing to do with license plates.

I drove all over his neighborhood looking for possible hidey- holes. Bryce was it, the most likely spot, hands down, for all the reasons I've laid out, and one more: we know from texts, etc. that she'd parked on Bryce before- that's where she parked & slept in the moving van before leaving Mesa.

(My guess is that's also where she parked, routinely, on all those nights by her own admission that she'd snuck into his house and slept on his downstairs couch, without letting anyone know she was there, before slinking off in the early AM before anyone woke up.

Crap. Adding....

IIRC, all JM said that related to plates was that he didnt believe she parked in the driveway, that the CA plates were removed while she was at his house, and that she reattached the plate there.

Also.... remember the photo of T's open garage that JM included in his book? With T's Prius clearly visible? And with his rear license plate on crooked? I remember that we discussed the bejeebers out of that interesting clue.......
 
? One plate- just the rear had to be changed. Her front CA was likely taken off before Mesa & not put back on until before the Dam.

....

PS. MM lived in CA...how would his CA plates help?
I don't know about in Arizona, but in California you might be pulled over by L.E. for driving without a license plate on the front of your car.

But assuming in Arizona that it's legal to drive a car without a front plate and she only had the rear license plate to worry about, that cuts her time and trouble by 50%. If Arizona requires a front license plate, she's taking an unnecessary risk by driving in Arizona without one (even if it's only from Mesa to the checkpoint).

Re: Matt McCartney... if she borrowed a set of California license plates from him when she visited him in Santa Cruz (promising to return them to him when she got back from her trip), she would have had time to put them on her rental before she left for Pasadena, and then she was free to drive into Arizona using a set of plates that she knew would not be reported as stolen.

Or... she could have kept the rental's plates on her car until she got into Mesa, and then put the second set of plates on her car at 4am when people are still sleeping, and then changed them back again when she stopped before the checkpoint.

At this point, I'll consider just about any theory that doesn't include aliens.
 
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