Yes, I'm back after a long break!
I have some questions/thoughts about all of this. In reading the criminal complaint, the same pattern of behavior emerges in all of the Paynesville incidents as well as in Jared and Jacob's kidnappings. In fact the similarities are shocking--kids walking or on bikes taken from public areas, perp is wearing a mask dressed in camo and boots, kids are all about the same age, perp grabs kids over their clothing (ugh), threatens kids with gun/death, etc. The circumstances of Jacob's kidnapping fit right into all of this. Except that Jacob disappears.
LE had access to DJH's car--we know this because there are photos plus the tire info. I wonder if they took any samples of fibers, cloth from the seats, or other evidence from the interior of the car at that time as well? If they felt suspicious enough to ask for his shoes and access to the vehicle, you'd hope that they took some samples from the interior, but who knows.
Talk about stating the obvious, but I'm stumped about what happened to Jacob. In the previous kidnappings, the kids are released. For some reason that doesn't happen with Jacob--we don't know what that reason is, but for the sake of discussion we could assume that DJH was also planning to release Jacob. He has no reason to kill him and it doesn't fit the previous pattern. If he shot him, there is/was a crime scene out there somewhere. I think shooting is unlikely, but that's just my opinion. There'd be blood and too much evidence--too hard to cover up for this long especially when LE did connect with DJH shortly after the kidnapping. Also, he still has the problem of disposing of the body. That car seems like a huge key to this whole thing. Seems like someone would have seen something if he buried the body. There are bodies of water all around that area--disposing a body there is possible, but eventually clothes or something would turn up. Also seems like quickly disposing of a body in a lake would not be a particularly easy thing to do--does he have a boat? I just don't see this as being likely. Maybe DJH keeps the clothes, but why hang on to evidence? Of course there might be sick reasons for keeping souvenirs, etc., but now we are talking about a lot of things happening in a very short period of time with no trail of evidence. What gets me about this is that everything had to happen so quickly, and if he wasn't planning to kill JW (if that's what ended up happening), he's thinking on the fly with all of it, perhaps having to hide a kid/body for who knows how long. Hard to believe he didn't make a mistake somewhere, or maybe he did and LE didn't catch it. Clearly he got away with a lot.
Can someone refresh my memory--did DR tell the cops that he saw a strange blue car that day? Did he specifically mention a blue car? And then someone phoned in a few days later saying they saw a boy in a red jacket urinating on the side of the road--was a blue car mentioned there as well?
It's just so odd that LE didn't nab this guy. I wonder if he has any connections to DR. I'm not fishing for connections, just wondering.
Do we know anything about DJH's father? Any photos of him?
If the car was blue and it was dark, I can see why the boys didn't see the car that night. He might have parked it up the driveway or even in the woods by DR's place
--how long did he wait before taking off? If Jacob put up a fight, why not just let him go, push him out of the car, or whatever?
IMO DJH looks like a great suspect. But there are so many perplexing questions.