Sure appreciate all your thoughts, folks, so very much, and thanks for the health food store recollections, carbuff.
The story suggesting Durst owned All Good Things, and Lynne shopped there December 10, 1971,
was in fact a new lead (as of 2012):
"Bowdish was assigned to the Schulze case in 2012....That was the year the department received a tip from someone saying that Durst had owned a store in town when Schulze went missing, Bowdish said. She refused to say who the tipster was..."
The tip came in July, and for some reason Bowdish then went to interview Allen Israel and showed him pictures of Lynne. Israel stated to a local TV station that "a woman policeman" had interviewed him and that he told her he knew both Lynne Schulze and Robert Durst.
At some point near or after Bowdish took the case (trying to get exact dates) a man came to Ripton asking about a particular property sometimes referred to by its old name, the "Charlie Miller camp." Shortly afterward, the town office received a flurry of outside questions inquiries into whether a Robert Durst had lived at that property, but the town staff never found anyone who remembered Durst. The only person on record saying Durst lived there are the Israels, who also lived there ("...after we moved out, Durst moved in.") The police searched the Charlie Miller property at some point. I don't know how many times or how thoroughly, but in 2015 they did apologize for not having searched it in 1971. This nags at me: why apologize for not searching a specific property? This, and the fact that police are acting certain that Lynne is dead, makes me wonder if they are sitting on forensic evidence, or at least a witness statement to a death.
Since Ripton itself has no record of Durst at the property, and the Israels are the ONLY people saying he was in Ripton, it's possible the story of Durst living at the Charlie Miller camp came from the Israels.
It's also possible, however, that someone else was going to police with a story connecting the Israel's to Lynne, and that in response, they inserted Durst into the equation. Either way, Bowdish interrogated Allen Israel after the 2012 tip.
I do think Lynne's dad's connection to the federal hearings may be meaningful, but may simply explain, for example, why he remained silent about Lynne's disappearance for an awkward length of time.
At the moment, though, I'm more interested in why Allen Israel (or someone) would call police in July 2012 with a new memory that 42 years earlier, on December 10, 1071 at 12:30 p.m., Lynne Schulze bought prunes from a man now realized to be Israel's friend Robert Durst. It's just all a little weird. But what missing person's case isn't, I guess.