Here’s what I’d like to know more about: the lockbox. Not necessarily what was in the longbox, but what is known about the lockbox itself. Questions I have:
1. I take it that despite the occasional reference to it as a “strongbox” this thing wasn’t a full-blown safe, but merely a metal box, sort of like a tool box, which (duh) could be locked? As such, was it something that she had purchased back in roughly 2004 with her impending marriage and/or cohabitation in mind, or was it something that she purchased back in the late 80’s-early 90’s?
2. Exactly what did she tell her husband about the box? What sort of conversations did they have about the box? Was she paranoid about him or his family getting into it and learning of the contents? Did she come up with a lie about the contents?
3. I sense that her husband did not get around to prying open the box for several days or weeks. Why?
4. Was it an especially difficult box to pry open? This sort of goes back to question #1--was this a cheap box with a cheap lock, or did it take some realy tools?
5. Was the key to the box ever found?
I just have way too many unanswered questions about the life this woman led from roughly 1990 through her marriage to Ruff. Except for the mention of stripping, we don’t know where this woman worked, where she lived, how she supported herself, or anything from anybody with any sort of relationship with her, whether it be at the parachuting school, the ladies’ business club, her church, or her doctors. Which is why I get annoyed when a reporter for the Seattle Times dismisses these questions by stating that “the best information is likely to come from people who knew her long ago,” (especially in light of the fact that they appear to have been absolutely unable to find anybody who knew her long ago to give them all of this fabulous information.)
This whole “investigation” appears to be something of a joke—The family suddenly seems either completely uninterested in learning the truth, or overly interested in preventing the truth that they have learned from becoming public; Velling admits that the goal of his investigation is to determine whether there was some sort of identity brokerage conducting business back in the late 80’s; and the journalist who wrote the most extensive article on the case poo-poo’s the idea of actually interviewing anybody who actually knew her and dealt with her within the last two decades.
