We need to remember that while Tina and Brittany lived in Salem/Roanoke, her family lived in Halifax Co. which is 2 hrs away. We don't know which of Tina's friends might have known that JE was living with her. But with her work schedule, it's not out of the question that her relatives and she had not visited each others' homes until a major holiday rolled around. I don't know how often Brittany visited her father but I do know she was with him over Labor Day. What strikes me as very odd is that while the relatives were calling child protective services, it doesn't appear that they called her father, her other parent who happens to be a cop.
Pedophiles like JE are incredibly smooth characters. The ones who can maintain an attraction to an adult female while craving the child are particularly dangerous because they are so smooth. They know all the right things to say and do. They're full of charm. They pick the adult women they victimize just like they pick their child victims. JE hit the jackpot. A woman with a good job, nice home, no male presence, and a beautiful young daughter. She was 41...he was 32. He was nice-looking. She was flattered. Not hard to understand. He had her convinced that he'd be Brittany's baby-sitter whenever she needed one...that he was trust-worthy...that he loved her--TINA...Brittany was a child, not someone he could possibly be interested in. And because he was so charming and full of compliments and got along well with Brittany, she believed him. No matter what she might have suspected, he could sense it and say/do all the right things to calm her. Master manipulator, he was, just like so many others of his ilk.
It wouldn't surprise me to know that one of the reasons he's been in psychiatric lock-up in SF is that now that his story is going to be blasted all over the news, particularly in areas where the police inquired about him, other victims are going to come forward. At any rate, his life of seducing children is over at the age of 32. He's going to live quite uncomfortably in prison...pedophiles are reviled by other inmates and 'prison justice' is sometimes better than courtroom justice. What a choice...solitary on Death Row or constantly looking over his shoulder in the general population. He knows what awaits him...I'd be suicidal too if I were in his shoes.
I checked the 2 main (most publicly accessible) pedophile message boards and have found nothing about this situation though I didn't look too far or too deep...reading these boards is disturbing and, when they're just bantering about general things, quite boring. They're generally very quiet when one of their own screws up and gets arrested. They consider themselves 'child lovers' whose affection and introduction to sex is helpful to children. They pride themselves on their manipulative techniques. They swear on towers of bibles that they do not harm kids and blame the attitudes of "anti-pedophiles" and the uproar that follows detection of their "affection" for the harm that comes to children. They trade manipulative techniques. They cheer each others' conquests (though they're very careful about how they word those conquests online). If they're doing this on public websites, think about what must go on in their underground online groups!
JE was a master of manipulation who overplayed his hand in that room full of unsophisticated, down-to-earth, call-'em-like-you-see-'em relatives by underestimating how tuned in such woman usually are. But I'm still puzzled as to why none of those women thought to call Brittany's father, instead of social services. From their appearance on TV last night, there's no acrimony among them. And I think they would have said that they called him if, indeed, they had.