Here's the qna session.
I’ll take a few questions, if I may.”
- “What was the nature of the items that you discovered relating to her disappearance?”
“I’ll just give you, generally speaking, it’s uh, forensic evidence that is linking the two together.”
- “Does that mean, like, DNA, blood, or someth--”
“Yes. Yes. DNA, positive materials, yes.”
- “What type of things can you rule out, you said you were gonna rule out some things, what can you rule out?”
“We’ve had a lot of different eyewitness issues, that uh, eyewitness is that he was carrying a backpack, we have, we now have video that shows that he in fact, wasn’t. So, just, I mean, keep the tips comin’, that’s not a problem, but we have to obviously then take that tip and move backwards and investigate, and try to make sure that those tips are something that are true and usable, right?”
- “How important is it to find Lizzy when it comes to knowing what charges Alex could and will face?”
“Well I think our greatest concern right now is finding Lizzy for the family. We’ll deal with the charges later. But of course, Lizzy, finding her is ultimately important, not only to the family but also to our case preparation as well.”
- “So he hasn’t been charged yet?”
“Again, I’m waiting to see what happens this afternoon at about 1:30.”
- “Is this intense focus on Alex maybe at the expense of looking at some other suspects?”
“Again, the evidence strongly links him.”
- “Is it correct to be calling him the suspect in her disappearance at this point?”
“He’s definitely our suspect right now.”
- “Do you know what kind of condition Lizzy might be in?”
“We don’t know that, we, from the evidence that we have, we believe that Lizzy is hurt, but we don’t know what condition she’s in right now.”
- (question inaudible, concerning police’s hope that Lizzy is alive)
“Y’know, we would never dash the hope that she is alive.”
- “I know we (the public) talked about coming together and forming our own search groups. Are you guys really discouraging that, or at any point will you be asking ‘Hey, y’know let’s get some searchers together and ask them to look for Lizzy”
“Right, thank you for that question. Right now, we’ve had just a huge outpouring of Law Enforcement, to the point that we can’t, uh, keep up with all of the police agencies sending assistance. That will decline, that would be the point at which then we would reach out to the public, and coordinate efforts to search via volunteers.”
- “Do investigators know anything about his motive at this point?”
“No, we’re unaware of what would’ve, first of all what ultimately took place and obviously motive comes later.
- “What is his relationship like with the rest of the family?”
“I don’t know that I’m sorry.”
- “Can you talk a little bit about how this search has evolved, now that we’re on day four, maybe how it is different from how it was on day one or day two?”
“Well of course, initially, you take the strongest expectations, and move forward in your search patterns, right? And even the evidence that we’ve discovered through the searching has led us in a certain direction, we’re now circling back and not allowing that evidence to lead us, we’re trying to be more global in our search process right now.”
- “Can you talk about Alex and what he has been doing since he got out of jail, what kind of employment he was doing?”
“I don’t know his employment history, I know that he was allowed to stay with the family, other than that I don’t really know about his history.”
- “Was he living with the family?”
“No.”
- “Is there any other person you guys believe is involved in what happened?”
“Not at this point.”
- “He was found ten miles away, now do you guys still believe that he was all on foot, or a car was involved somehow?”
“We do know that he is a walker. He has a skateboard, that’s his mode of transportation according to what we’ve learned, it’s not unlike him to spend hours afoot, and so we believe that he walked to where he was found. Could that be wrong? Perhaps, but he does have that kind of history of walking and being that kind of a traveller, so at this point we believe he’s walked.”
- “On the same note, have you checked with the transit district to see if he might have -- (used a bus)?”
“We’ve checked with those folks, again we’ve got actual video surveillance cameras showing him walking, so it is pretty much what we believe at this point.”
- “The charging documents stated that he was found with a baseball bat, was that what had the evidence that gave you the strong indication that this was linked?”
“No, that’s not part of our evidence right now that I understand, that ball bat is not part of what we’re looking at.
- “In terms of the link, why do you feel so strongly that she was with the uncle?”
“We have DNA connection to the two of them.”
- “Has he been any more cooperative as the days have gone by, I know he was previously described as uncooperative.”
“Well cooperation is kind of a funny word because, I mean, he has rights, right? And so, in trying to visit with him, trying to talk to him and investigate him, he has the right, obviously, not to. So, I guess it is uncooperative, but at the same time, it’s also his right to remain silent.”
- “And that’s what he’s doing?”
“Yes, yes.”
- “Have you enlarged or made the search area smaller?”
“Well again, part of the difficulty is here, trying to come up with, what tips do we follow and what tips do we follow right now, versus the, I mean the FBI suggestion is one half mile of the last known area. And that’s where we spend a great deal of our time but we have some credible tips right now that we’re thinking, ah, we better, so we’ve got folks spread all over the valley right now chasing those tips and trying to understand whether or not they’re… we just had a trash bag that had a bad odor, y’know that’s terrible but it was not anything. But we have to go check, right? So all of these things are tearing at our resources, we’re trying to do our best to keep moving forward, our ultimate goal, again is finding Lizzy.”
- “Any water searches happening at this point?”
“Not to my knowledge today, but there was yesterday, as I understand it.”
- “It sounds like this is starting to become a recovery effort, instead of an SAR.”
“Well again, I don’t ever want to take hope out of the equation. We have a tendency to I think, at times, be policemen, and sometimes we look at things a little differently, so I don’t want to say it’s a recovery yet. Lizzy’s safety is certainly a concern to us at this point”
- “How important has it been, I know you guys have been asking people to check their personal surveillance, has that helped with the investigation?”
“Well once again, with some of the tips we’ve received, we’ve been able to backtrack with video and we’ve been able to decide some of that information is not as accurate as we’d hoped, so yes, absolutely it’s been helpful. And again, we reach out and ask, if you have that ability, take a look back at your systems, and see if you can be helpful to us.”
- “What is the earliest you have him on video, and is he by himself?”
“He is by himself, I don’t know timeframes.”
- “Those two pictures you gave us, looked like one was in a gas station and one was possibly in a department store, like a Walmart or something.”
“I’d be guessing right now if I gave you that information. I know my team knows.”
- “Would you walk us through a timeline really quickly, she was last seen at 2am, just what you know?”
“Well again, yes, the family was up late til about 2, they woke up at around 9:30 am, and both were missing at that point.
- “What time did he arrive at the home Friday night?”
“I don’t know that.”
- “Is there any surveillance video that of her that you have found so far?”
“Of the young girl, Lizzy? No, we don’t have video of her.”
- “Was he spending the night at the family’s home?”
“As I understand it.”
- “Was an Amber Alert ever issued and if not, why not?”
“No, there’s criteria for Amber Alert, this did not meet the criteria at the time, and again now we’ve moved past that notion of Amber Alert because we do have a strong suspect and it doesn’t meet the criteria.”
