Months ago it was speculated that Casey abandoned the Pontiac @ Amscot 6/27 so she wouldn't be faced with taking Tony to the airport 6/30AM w/ the smell of decomp increasingly permeating her car...to further ensure she'd get the use of Tony's Jeep for the week.
Well...I bought it. I thought Casey had actually pulled something off that required a little planning & forethought.
Now...I've revisited the situation armed w/ a little more information...and I hafta conclude that Casey actually did run outta gas. :doh:
It requires a few working assumptions, but, here's how we get there...
On 6/23 Casey ran outta gas. We know exactly where AND, as a result of this incident from Tony's statement, we now know exactly what route Casey drove when she traveled between G&C's and Tony's. We know from Casey's pings the major trips she took, most likely in the Pontiac between 6/23 and 6/27. While Casey may have made a short trip or two from Tony's apt. to, say, Subway, for example, it doesn't appear she ventured too far...so, we've got decent information to work from here too.
- 6/23 after filling up, Casey & Tony returned to his apt. (Tony's statement)
- 6/24 Casey returned to G&C's (for the now famous scene) for 1 roundtrip (pings support)
- 6/25 Casey hung @ Tony's (pings)
- 6/26 Casey hung @ Tony's (pings)
- 6/27 Casey returned to G&C's and almost made it back to Tony's, calling for help @ 11:47AM. (pings support)
The exact total mileage of these trips is 47.2 miles.
From
G&C's interview on Greta we know the size of the two gas cans Casey used were a 2.5gallon and a 1.25 gallon (the volumes aren't listed on the police report). We prolly don't want to assume these were 100% full, and we can play with this a little to see the effect later.
I found 5 different models of the 1998 Pontiac Sunfire w/ varying specs, however, the estimate mpg for all ranged +/- 1 mpg for city & highway stats. We'll use 20mpg as the most-common cited city mileage.
Finally, I found at least one reference for a similarly sized engine that indicated it burned 0.18 gallons/hr @ idle. This isn't a perfect reference, but, is actually a little conservative.
From the pings we can see that Casey approached Amscot, on the move, @ 11:40AM. She placed her distress call to Tony @ 11:47AM. We can quickly conclude that 7 minutes was not sufficient time to run out any significant volume of gas whatsoever...@ a rate even 2x the 0.18gallon/hr listed above.
...so how does that match up w/ what we know about the rest of the scene.
If we just do the straight math and not make any allowances for Casey running the AC, driving heavy footed as she likely sped away outta G&C's driveway 6/24, etc....just straight 20mpg...for 47.2 miles she would've consumed 2.4 gallons
If the 2 gas cans had been a collective 63% full... (2.5 + 1.25) = 3.75 * 0.63 = 2.4 gallons => Casey would have run outta gas precisely @ Amscot.
If the cans had been, say, 75% full...@ 20mpg...Casey would've had 0.5 gallons left in the tank @ Amscot and would have had to idle for 2.5 hours to run the tank empty. One can arrive at similar combinations of 'empty' by simply decreasing the mpg & increasing the volume that one assumes was in the gas cans of course (e.g. 85% full cans and 15mpg also = empty precisely @ Amscot).
So....now...thinking about the consequences of not running out @ Amscot I'm thinking Casey woulda just begged off 6/30AM and told Tony she was "on Empty" if he'd asked her to take him to the airport...had she made it all the way to Tony's 6/27.
