Boy, lots of traffic on this tread this week.
I have long been a critic of the First Responders, in terms of what was reported to have been done and reactions were so foreign to what I would have done.
Like many, I saw the 'Disappeared' program as well, focusing on the first twenty minutes, as that's the part I saw some half a dozen times. The program didn't really capture the circus atmosphere of the house, in fact, I don't know how clear it would have been to the viewer how other friends were camped out there for hours. It just mentions 'family and friends,' with a focus just on Janelle and Mrs. McCall. With all of this, I lean on the side where these three girls were not as close as I first thought. We know high school kids call friends anyone they hang out with for more than ten minutes. So, we're really talking about three acquaintances.
Accepting that, it is odd to me she would even go to the house, although it was her boyfriend Mike who drove. Did he know them ? If we accept they were just casual acquaintances, calling all morning and not hearing from them would be enough to conclude, 'Oh well, guess they went to Branson,' and that would be the end of it. Instead, she goes over, sees three cars, goes inside, I guess sees the three purses, answers two creepy calls and later concludes, 'Oh well, guess they went to Branson.' In the program she mentions, 'We didn't have cell phones in those days to get ahold of people.' I graduated h/s seven years before this, I remember teen life without cell phones. The current adult population isn't that deep yet, that cannot recall life before cell phones.
In my observation, this crew is far more casual, laid back, carefree and spontaneous than I ever was, not a bad thing in and of itself. But, if this was just 'casual friends' even by the standards of h/s, why go over there ? If this was something of a deeper friendship than that, why leave ? You can't ride both those horses. Two quick asides on this area. One, all the booze being served that night, probably wasn't that much compared to adult parties, but where were the adults in all of this, at the various homes ? This is in the land of Civil Law, although I suspect the statue of limitations has been reached. Two, in a recent piece of video on KOLR-10's webcite, had to do with an interview with one of (I'm guessing) current investigators. He brought up the delay to law enforcement reporting the girls missing, and went on with the contaminated crime scene. In every account I have read about this case, that point was in ALL of them, generally not making much more of it than that. But, it was there. Why bring it up again ? I don't know if this is code with, 'we don't have much folks, cuz we were out of the loop during the critical hours, don't expect much.'