Here's my take. The article was poorly written in some critical areas, and that's not just an editorial comment about awkward sentence structure but about the way the information is presented. Is there anything new in here? Is anything other than a direct quote coming straight from Staton?
"The scope is narrowing. My belief is we should be relatively close to something by then; that's why I set the time frame I did," Staton said. "While we may not be at an arrest or an indictment phase, we're going to have it narrowed down to a point where we may be calling out a suspect, identifying certain people or things."
Since this is a direct quote, I feel okay about taking it literally. Also it matches some things said in press conferences by LE in the past. They have maintained for some months now that they're confident they will resolve this, and implied that the hindrance is the lack of physical evidence. This isn't really new - we already knew that they didn't know Kyron's present location. And because of that, didn't know his fate. We also already knew that there was no evidence that he was murdered (Kaine and Desiree have told us that). The searches on Sauvie combined with pleas to keep looking for a living Kyron have told us that they don't know if he's alive or not... so Staton's words just reinforce what we already knew about that.
A grand jury has heard from at least 40 witnesses and continues to meet intermittently.
I didn't know they were still meeting; interesting.
The stepmother failed two polygraphs and walked out on a third, exams administered by different law enforcement agencies.
Hmmm.. is that new, that the LDT's were administered by different agencies?
A slew of cell phone tower records were being sought, and computer records and thousands of e-mails were to be analyzed, but persons of interest had emerged whose alibis about where they were during the six crucial hours before Kyron was reported missing didn't stack up.
Gad, that's poorly worded, and I think it has even been re-written since the article was first released. I guess it's simply referring to the TMH time line and perhaps DDS's extended lunch break (or cell phone silence, or whatever).
Re: the sex offenders, etc. To me the article was meandering between identifying the original scope of the investigation and the present scope. I took from this that when a crime has been committed with little evidence, a major goal is to systematically eliminate possibilities. Narrowing the scope, as it were. So when they talk about interviewing sex offenders, I think they meant they had to eliminate the possibility of viable leads in that direction. Not that they hadn't done so yet, or that they were focusing on a sex offender abduction. Just one of the many alternatives they had to consider and eliminate.
Also they actually have eliminated people as potential suspects. It's no longer "everyone's a person of interest!". Some folks have been cleared.
Finally, I don't feel they've rebuked Kaine and Desiree. We already knew that there was stuff they'd been told that they were asked not to share, and other things that slipped out during press conferences in the heat of the moment (usually Desiree). I don't think LE is insensitive to the fact that the parents are emotionally distraught and are not professional LEOs. Stuff will slip out. I don't think it's surprising that LE would meet with them to tell them specifically what they wanted to keep under wraps, and remind them how important keeping some stuff private for now is.
I don't think there's much new in here besides the Feb deadline they've given themselves. Their main evidence is still circumstantial, still no knowledge of Kyron's location, still moving forward.