But why? There was no robbery, just 2 murders and taking Jayme.
That's what every theory comes back to - motive. MOO, I think Jayme was the target all along, for sexual reasons. Maybe having her see her parents killed/dead was for the purpose of terrorizing and controlling her. There have been quite a few cases of male/female teams abducting females, helping to keep them and control them for their "man" to fulfill his fantasies.
Colleen Stan comes to mind. The difference is Colleen was an incidental victim. I think Jayme was targeted and maybe the reason they didn't take her when she was waiting on the bus is maybe they didn't know about the change in her arrangement, didn't know she was waiting on the bus alone, but maybe knew that she wasn't where he had seen her before with her aunt after school. All speculation, of course.
I think the whole purpose of waiting until late at night is he/they knew they would all be home. Most robbers prefer to break in when no one is home and never confront someone. It's hard to tell if their home would have been easy to burglarize during the day, but it doesn't make sense to me that he/they would break in to steal, which they didn't do. Maybe they thought there was a lot of cash in the house and couldn't get James or Denise to admit it. I don't think so, because nothing was rifled through.
The sheriff said the crime was pretty quick. But if the shots the neighbors heard at 12:31 killed James and or Denise or just got them in the door, and the call was a couple of minutes before 1:00 AM, the perp(s) had to be in the house about twenty minutes. And there's a big chunk of time between when Denise talked to her sister at about 10:00 PM and the time the shots supposedly happened that we don't know anything about.
I think the perp may have been watching Jayme, maybe creeping around the house at night. Maybe he has even broken in before as a practice run. But he couldn't devote himself to watching her full time. Maybe he has a regular job. And, if he has a female accomplice, she may be helping to keep Jayme prisoner and he is free to go to work and be out and about.
BTW, what happened when the dog searched? I have missed some things on these threads. I know the dog didn't find anything, but was he a cadaver dog?