[Snipped for focus]
IMO it seems unlikely. If she wanted to meet someone online, it would have been far easier and much less convoluted to do it after going to bed or after school, unless she wanted her family to think she had been abducted.
I'm trying to remember how the Internet was back in 2003 (I'm a couple of years older than Tabithia, turning 15 years old in 2003). I remember doing instant messaging (IM) a lot. Other places people met or communicated was on gaming forums, those really old ones running on phpBB or other popular software. Possibly comment sections of platforms like Blogger, Xanga, or Livejournal.
A possibility: if she had met someone online and knew his/her appearance, it wouldn't have been a stranger abduction.
I'm reminded of the Erica Shultz case, strictly in the sense that it was unclear how she had left her apartment without taking her coat (unplanned) and with no signs of a struggle or fight. The answer was that she had been seeing someone who surprised her by coming over and picking her up. It would make sense if Tabitha knew her abductor.
I considered the online meeting theory, especially with the note found in Tabitha Tuder's room. But one thing does not make sense. Would she really want to meet someone while she was moving and walking between bus stops? Is she the type of person who would skip school and her homework assignments to do this?
If the person surprised her by driving up next to her in their car, would she really have told them, "I will be located at the corner of 14th and Boscobel. If the bus is not there I have told my mother I will walk to the corner of 15th and Boscobel. But if you drive up beside me first I will go with you and skip school." The only way this would work is that if Tabitha Tuders is open to complete spontaneity in being picked up by a stranger. The point is the stranger in the car
has to know where she will be at approximately a given time.
Looking at it from a stranger perspective the abductor would have no way of knowing where her bus stop is located unless they were told or followed her from her home. They would have no way of knowing when she gets on the bus either. They would have no way of knowing what school she goes to unless they were told or followed her bus.
If we are to believe the young witness who says Tabitha was walking towards the group waiting for the bus at 15th and Boscobel when she was approached by a car, then that would also mean the car would had to have known
beforehand to slow down enough at the corner of 14th and Boscobel in order to make the turn and approach Tabitha. They would have to assume Tabitha was walking at that point at that time because they would not have been able to physically see her from their car until they make the turn from 14th onto Boscobel and approach her from behind. There is not a stop sign going north/south on 14th street.
The movements associated with this case are sort of strange, in my opinion. Either the witness is wrong or Tabitha was possibly abducted by a stranger who was driving down Boscobel Street west to east at the time(since that is the only way they could see her in front of them). Or someone in one of the houses along the route she walked abducted her. Or as strange as it may seem, someone who knew her bus walking route already knew that she would be walking towards 15th and Boscobel. They pulled up alongside her when they figured she would be out walking to school and abducted her. It just so happened it was when she was walking on Boscobel between 14th and 15th streets.
The case has always felt like it was someone who was either very familiar with Tabitha Tuders and her movements or very familiar with the immediate area she was abducted from. I think police should look at people who left the immediate area along her walking route. In my opinion, I think this person probably would have moved or at least thought about it after she disappeared.
I know being abducted in a car makes it seem different and farther away, but I think the answer to the mystery in this case has always been close by.