I'm looking at google maps and trying to piece it all together, just to get an idea about what went on that night in 1988.
The first thing that comes to mind when I see how desolate it is, is what the hell was she thinking trying to walk this?
Police suspect she hitched a ride to get to the college, which is 6 miles from where the boyfriend's house was. From there, she was seen leaving the exit to the college, and the kid in the Gremlin picked her up. He then took her to what I assume to be the 7-11 on 190 in 2124 E Highway 190, Copperas Cove, TX.
That's where she made the last call from.
One thing we don't know is whether she just hung up the phone call to her mother on her own or if she got disconnected--pulled from the phone.
From the events of the night, she may have just hung up the phone herself because she didn't want to be a bother or because she figured she could hitch a ride home. The reason being, getting a ride to the 7-11 worked out fairly well, and it had the added effect of driving her boyfriend crazy.
If she could hitch all the way home, then he'd really start to worry what happened by the next morning. It would teach him a lesson, she thought.
So, rather than being pulled from the payphone at 7-11, maybe she just hung up the phone and started walking. She thought she'd figure something out later--either get a ride or something--or maybe somehow her boyfriend would show up at the last minute and pick her up (which is probably what she really wanted).
We don't know how far she walked from the 7-11 payphone. It's not totally desolate out there where she was last seen, but it was probably very quiet that night. Anyone could have picked her up, and no one would have even noticed. Just another hitchhiker. Most of the girls who pull a stunt like this end up safe and sound at home (and we never hear those stories), but there's bound to be one in 100,000 that ends up like this. The wrong person picked her up and while promising to take her home, ended up taking her on a major detour.
It seems the person decided to dump the purse with its ID in it. The purse was obviously put somewhere it could be found. Unfortunately, it's hard to speculate why this was done since we have no idea where (specifically) it was found, when, or who found it. Wonder if the person who took her was surprised the purse was never reported when the case was all over the news. Here, he left a huge clue and no one ever said anything about it.
The story was all over the news, and the police couldn't figure out that the ID in the purse was this girl everyone's talking about? What a bunch of retards.
There's a case where Bundy kidnapped a college girl and left evidence at a nearby parking lot--a shoe or something that came off her foot. He said the cops were all over the place that next morning but were looking in all the wrong places--focusing on a nearby park instead of the parking lot where his car had been (he asked for help putting things into his car, and the girl helped, and he took her by force at that time). So, the cops were crawling all over the place looking for this missing person, and her blasted shoe is sitting in a nearby parking lot unnoticed. Ted said he thought the jig was up. He actually went over and collected it himself that morning, and no one noticed a thing (he told this story in an interview).
The brush and lipstick were kept as untraceble souvenirs. And the keys...