Carrie, thanks for posting all this. It gives a much better insight into what was going on with the parents than what I had from the few articles I had written. It seems these poor people were struggling to deal with what happened within the constraints of their of their strong religious faith.
Thank you.
Yes, I had that same experience concerning the parents as I was reading the articles. They give a much more complete and probably accurate view of extremely concerned and worried parents trying to hold onto their faith. It makes more sense than that the picture I'd gotten from those few articles from the Danville paper. Just goes to show how things taken out of context can distort the real picture.
The more I read, the less sense this all makes. The mother finding the doors to the apartment opened in the months prior to Christine's disappearance is eerie. I wonder how she determined the youngest child was not responsible. Did she know who was?
It does make less and less sense!! I don't think she knew who was responsible, because if she had and it cleared things up and was unrelated to the mystery, I don't believe she'd have mentioned it. It seems odd that this was mentioned in only one article. Many of the other facts and details were, naturally, repeated from article to article and paper to paper. This particular comment from Mrs. Wright was only mentioned this one time. I wonder if the police focused on it at all and what, if anything, they made of it?
IMO it HAS to be relevant. It MUST have something to do with Christine's diappearance. It's just too wierd not to. The killer wouldn't have had something to do with doors being opened each of those times, I wouldn't think. Why would someone do that? Unlock and open doors and harm no one (at the risk of being discovered). Unless maybe hoping they'd (the parents) get used to it and beging to think it innocuous? (pretty far fetched but anything is possible). . . But, if the killer had noticed the smaller child opening doors at night, sleepwalking, playing, whatever, that means he/she would have had to live in, or expremely close to, the apartment complex, (or work there, as some have already suggested).
Some times adventurous children, mine never did this kind of thing, but I've had friends whose children were known to get up and go outside while the parents were sleeping and get into all kinds of things, make messes, even go outside and down the street, be brought home by police! But they did those things in the early morning, not at dark, but in the daylight. Mrs. Wright stated that she'd awakened at
night and found
both the doors standing open. I really wish the article would have elaborated on that point. I believe it's very significant and important to finding out who the murderer is.
At first, when I read about the 4 year old sleeping on the couch, I assumed that was her usual sleeping place. Since they had four children, and there were probably no more than 3 bedrooms in the apartment. One article said they found "Christine's bedroom empty," as if it was hers alone. It would have seemed more likely though, that she and Christine would have shared a room and the two boys would have shared a room. But it's possible that for some reason the couch was where she slept. Who knows, maybe she was just graduating out of sleeping in the parents bed. They could have allowed her to fall asleep in their bed and then, once she was asleep, they could have moved her to the couch. Lots of parents let their children start the night off in their bed and then move them later once they're asleep. It's part of the transitional phase while trying to teach them to sleep alone. It said in another article that the parents bedroom was downstairs and Christine's was upstairs. No doubt the boys shared a room upstairs.
But now I'm thinking, after what Shadow wrote, maybe the child was up and doing whatever she possibly did in the middle of the night, sleepwalking, playing,??, and had opened the door and then later laid down on the couch and fallen back to sleep instead of going up to her bedroom (assuming she shared Christine's room). But i think the articles and police would have mentioned that. Not sure any of this even matters. It's just so eerie, as Shadow said, to think of those doors being open like that, in the months preceding the abduction. I guess it did "hang" in the mother's mind.
I know that some children do sleepwalk and do so quite actively. The trait ran in my ex husbands family. More than once, one of my nephews got up in the middle of thge night, left his apartment, walked down two flights of stairs, walked three buildings over and knocked on the door of his older married sisters apartment. She would open the door and see he was still asleep (he would be standing there in pajamas, barefooted, no matter what the weather was doing). As she was used to him doing such things while sleepwalking, she'd just put him in bed with her kids like it was no big deal and go back to bed herself til morning. This same boy was known to go out of their apartment, down the hall to a soda machine, buy himself a cannedd drink, then come back into his apartment and into his bedroom and get nack in bed, never opening the can of soda, all while sound asleep! I would not have believed any of this had I not seen him do similar things with my own eyes. At the time he was about 6 or 7 years old. It scared me to death, just the thought of what he could have wandered into. but they all took it in stride because they were used to it. His eyes would be open and he would even talk to you and respond to questions, though what he said didn't usually make much sense. This child gradually grew out of his sleepwalking habit. As I said, it ran in the family and quite a few of them did these kinds of things while sleepwalking, though actually leaving the house was less common. It was quite usual for one of them to get up and walk around inside the house or apt. They'd go to other rooms and wake up in a different place than where they'd fallen asleep. Talking a lot in their sleep was quite common and seemed to go along with it, as did nightmares and night terrors. The ones that did it, only did it as children and grew out of the actual sleepwalking as they got older.
But, getting back to Christine's case, if someone was aware of this sleepwalking or whatever was causing the doors to be unlocked, they had to be in very close view of the Wright's apartment. Does anyone agree? Disagree? They would have to either be a family friend, or relative, that heard the parents speak of it. OR, to have actually observed it they'd have had to live next door or right across from them , somewhere with a clear view of what was going on in the vicinity of the (Wright's)apartment.
If[/I] the youngest child were making nocturnal wanderings of the apartment, is it possible that someone there knew about it and SHE was the actual target that night? Could Christine have been up for some reason, heard someone tapping on the door, and been taken instead? The fact that there were no screams is another strange point in this story. I'd think even a 7-year old, grabbed from the open doorway of her home, could be hard to handle if she were struggling. The neighbors claimed to hear a tapping...How could they not hear a little girl struggling for her freedom?
Shadow, I believe it's quite possible that the younger child was the intended target.
As for no one hearing screaming, it possible that someone who was practiced and experienced at doing this would be ready for a possible scream and covered her mouth? Thrown something over her? Cloroformed her? OR, tricked with some kind of story to keep her quiet just long enough to get her out of earshot.
Another thing--I wonder why the dog didn't bark or make noise? No offense to Pekingese owners, but aren't they kind of yappy little dogs? This reminds me of a famous line from "Silver Blaze," one of the Sherlock Holmes short stories by Sir A. Conan Doyle. Holmes says to Watson something about the "strange occurence of the dog barking in the night." Watson replies, "But there was no dog barking in the night." And Holmes says, "That was the strange occurence."
. . . the same could be said of the scream too, Shadow. I think, since the neighbor/s were apparently observant enough to hear a tapping noise, and since neither the parents, siblings, nor neighbors reported hearing a scream, sounds of struggling, or other suspicious sound/s, that we can probably safely assume that Christine did not, for whatever reason, scream or struggle in the vicinity of the apartment doorway. Thoughts anyone?
This is far fetched perhaps, but, is it possible that the youngest child had done whatever she did at night and left the back door open and fallen back to sleep on the couch, and that the glass door being open the morning Christine went missing was just a coincidence and has nothing at all to do with her disappearance?
Someone mentioned a while back that they thought they remembered an article that told of one of the children being found standing and looking out of the open door and being sent back to bed as Christine wasn't known to be missing at that point? Does anyone remember reading anything like that? I didn't find anything to that effect in any of the articles I read. I'll have to go back and check and see who posted that. I think they said they thought they remembered it and they were going to look for the article.
Why would she go willingly with someone in the middle of a cold winter night, with only her nightgown on? Could it have something to do with her puppy, which she obviously loved?
It isn't stated how long the youngest girl was sleeping on the couch (when I first read that, I assumed she had left her bed and fallen back alseep on the couch, but I guess its possible that her parents let her sleep there normally.) If she had just wandered from her room and crawled up on the couch, she might not have been there long enough to get cold.
I wonder how deeply the police dug into questioning these kinds of details, since at first they seem to have thought she went off on her own and hid or whatever? I wonder how much weight they gave to the mysterious open doors or whether the couch was where the youngest daughter usually slept or not, and, if not, why she was there that morning, etc? It worries me that I only found mention of the mothers nagging fear re: the mysterious open doors mentioned in ONE article. If LE was focusing on that detail you'd expect it to repeated in more than one article. Other details were repeated over and over. The fact of the glass door being open and the curtains still being pulled together was repreated in virtually every article, but nothing about the prior incidences of mysterious open doors. I wonder if LE even got that part of the story? What I read was told by Mrs. Wright to a reporter. I hope they didn't overlook something vitally important to the case in that detail.
I know they took notice of the 4 year old on the couch because it states in the article that mentions it that because of that detail LE thought she hadn't been gone for very long. this may have led them to overlook evidence in the apartment, believeing anf hoping, natuarlly, that they would soon find Christine and that their efforts were best spent in searching quickly and thoroughly. Anyone else have thoughts on this?
The area where Christine was found is known locally to be a fishing spot, so I definitely think this Christine was taken by someone very familiar with the area. I'm surprised however that, this being February, the area of the stream she was found wasn't frozen over. Could the killer have already known that?
It stated in one article the closest house was 150 yards away? Did they check that house/person out I wonder? Were there other houses neraby? Did they check those out? Is there anyway to find out what was done back then? I wrote down the names of several detectives who were quoted by the press as being "in charge of the case" or "leading the search" etc. Can those people be contacted?
And lastly, the articles state that LE were checking some dozen names in relation to Christine's disappearance. I'd love to get a look at that list...
It said that in a couple of articles, that dozens of face to face interviews had been conducted. Also there was mention of polygraph tests being taken by the parents and others.
Either the police weren't able to lift any relevant prints from the door, or the killer wasn't yet in the system.
So they'd still have the prints most likely right? If there were any? It doesn't say whether there were any but there could have been and they might match something now right?
It's difficult for me to get a clear picture of a suspect in my mind...I would think if the person were young, Christine would be more trusting, maybe even someone she knew from the local restaurants or from walking her dog. The fact that she was dumped, alive in a stream, could indicate that the person panicked and, unable to kill her by any other means, just pushed her into the stream. With the water being at or near freezing, she would have died quickly. (Which brings another point...Was she placed into the stream? Could she have been molested somewhere in the area, been let go, and fallen into the stream?)
If she'd wandered or walked much, as she would have if she was let go and subsequently fell into the stream, would the autopsy report have shown that, since she was barefoot?
If she was thrown in the stream it seems she have tried to get out unless she was unconscious or very weak perhaps, or maybe couldn't swim. I don't know how deep the creek is though it's said to be quite shallow and that where she was found is "the widest and deepest part." By stating that, I wonder if LE mean to say that it's the only part of the creek she
could have drown in?
On the other hand, the fact that the person was able to get her from the apartment, leaving behind no sign, without awaking anyone in the apartment complex (including her parents) seems to be the work of someone more mature...Someone who had either thought the details out carefully or had done something similar before.
And we don't know if something had been prearranged by this person and Christine, someone who met her and got her confidence while she was out walking the dog? Remember her mom saying she didn't want to go to bed, though we don't know if that was that particular night, or in general. I think it's safe to assume she did not plan to leave the apartment barefoot and in a nightie though.
Questions, questions.....
Yes, questions. I have to get to the library again to check on the papers from when the body was found. There is also a weekly paper that was published back then called the "Chester News Journal." The library has it on microfilm and I want to see what it may have to say about Christine's disappearance. I had planned to go today but something came up so I'm hoping to go in the morning. MEANWHILE THOUGH . . .
Is is possible to do something to get some others reading this forum again. Maybe some of the ones who were reading at first but seem to have not checked back lately? I've read in some of the other threads about people "bumping" threads to draw attention to them, but I don't know what that means. Can we "bump" whatever that means and would it help. I'd just like to get some more brains working on this now that we have some new clues to go on. :sleuth::sleuth::sleuth::sleuth: