Thanks Oriah...interesting site!
Now, I'm kinda confused :waitasec:, though, as yesterday, I was going back over some MSM articles regarding Gail's disappearance and re-read the following one dated 5/17/11 wherein DN stated that the last ping from Gail's cell phone was "near the
north base of SM". Suck Creek, Walmart and Mtn Creek Apts seem to be in the opposite direction?! (Had read other postings of the last ping being near Walmart?)
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2011/may/17/missing-woman-search-continues-gail-palmgren
That article speaks volumes about the foul play or possibly an accident theories, also! IMO
A ping comes from a tower. The phone itself can be anywhere within a 20 mile radius of that tower.
To further complicate things, if a phone sends out a signal to a tower, and that tower is 'busy', the signal will go to another tower, usually the next nearest one, and that tower will send out a ping.
Because of all this, it's not possible to pin down exactly where the phone was when it sent the signal to the tower.
All you can do is look at the locations within that 20 mile radius, and take a guess at where the phone was.
If you look at the whole history of the person's pings, and you have information about where they were from other sources when they traveled certain routes, you can make a somewhat more educated guess about where they most likely were going on the day in question.
For example, if other information confirms that on other days when they followed the same ping route they were going to Taco Bell for lunch at that time, then you could say that since they were following the same ping route on the day in question, they were probably going to Taco Bell for lunch again. LE would then go to Taco Bell and try to find video or employees or customers who could tell them if indeed the person was there.
To even further complicate things, we have the cautionary tale of pings from Gabe Johnson's case. There we learned two important things about pings - that the ping info provided from the service provider to LE may be incorrect, and also that if the phone is disposed of - as it may be in clever ways - the subject person and their phone may be nowhere near each other.
Pings, unfortunately aren't exact. That's why it takes LE so long to analyze them. They have to study the history and come up with probable routes, and then go out and try to track down other witnesses, credit card transactions, store video, etc, to try to pin down where the phone and the person were. It takes a lot of work and a long time.