Some1Nose, I think those are good questions. Rather than go through them one at a time, though, I'll say for starters just what if Gail really were paranoid and suffering from mental illness? That would answer a lot of your questions in a different way than from the domestic violence perspective. What if there were various areas of their lives that MP wanted to try to protect from public scrutiny, such as the details of his infidelity and her mental illness? This could account for many of your questions. Not that all his choices were good ones, but cheating on the wife and wanting to keep family matters private is a far stretch from making her disappear.
I see all the DV patterns as well as anybody, and for a long time I looked at the case from that angle almost exclusively. But what I also see, that troubles me greatly, is that the media manipulation has been awful and that people wanting to tell "another side of the story" have been bullied into silence to a great extent. It's easier to argue a point successfully without opposition.
The power of suggestion is a powerful thing, and I wonder how much of the available information has been tainted by it. JMO and all related disclaimers.
I agree.
What I can't get past is why the need for so much power of suggestion. Media is hungry? Or is it closer to LE? To family? To Gail herself? To her friends? No matter who, I suppose... but why? kwim?