This whole case is...strange. And maybe that is why it blew up the way it did. Obviously all of us here are in interest in crime for one reason or another. Many probably listen to crime podcasts and watch documentaries....read books on all sorts of crime related topics. So, it's not strange for me to see this case pop up here, or on a crime podcast. It's not unusual for me to see specific people know and/or speak about it. But when I start to see people - family members that have never shown an ounce of interest in crime, missing person, etc - talking about this case and posting information on social media. When it comes up as a general conversation and work when I've never heard anything similar to this discussed...it makes me wonder.
How and why did this blow up the way it did? Was it because TikTok got ahold of it? Was it the circumstances? Was it because the missing girl was a "cute little blonde?" Was it her very real and wonderful parents?
Why on earth are neighbors shouting daily thru bullhorns at the parent's home when the know BL isn't there and NO ONE "knows" what the parents do/don't know? What made some rando from Pennsylvania hop on a plane to just scream in front of their home? What made people check their go-pros and deer cams?
What about this case has elevated it to where it is? Arguably the circumstances of Maleah Davis's case had all of the same intrigue? Fake car jackings, missing baby, momma "out of town," hospital sightings, crazy *advertiser censored* attorney, etc. And that case didn't blow up the way this did and we're talking about a baby girl! Does it really all come down to a case of BIPOC v. White? Or is there something else?
Many victims are pretty and white, so while I'm sure that that has something to do with the level of interest, there were other factors that made it take off the way it has, I think.
1) The fact that when people heard about the case, and that she went missing while taking a van across the country, people could easily, immediately, get lots of visuals of the van, the trip, the couple. The videos made it look idyllic and fun and the last one had tantalizingly been posted a mere 2-3 weeks previous. It was still the same vacation season. Everything was very vivid and immediate. It was easy to feel like a sense of knowing this couple.
2) The mysterious circumstances. The van parked in the driveway. The seemingly normal, nondescript family in the seemingly normal, nondescript subdivision in the seemingly normal, nondescript town. That she was charismatic and he... was not. His bizarre silence. His parents' bizarre seeming acceptance of his return without one of the members of their household.
3) The fact that we were almost as up to speed as her parents were. She went missing weeks before, but her parents just learned of it. We learned just days later.
4) The rapid pace of developments during that first 1-2 weeks. Just as soon as one development occurred, the next one occurred. There was no time for interest to just die off on its own the way it usually just peters out over time. Something might happen at any moment. I've never heard of so many non-true-crime-obsessed people listening to police scanners the way they have been.
5) The body cam footage. You had already seen the idyllic side of the trip. Suddenly it had a dark and sinister underbelly. The sheer eerieness of watching a woman who would disappear not much longer afterward in such distress, being told that she'd be better equipped to deal with her anxiety when she got older. When we knew she probably wouldn't get older.
6) Watching witnesses come forward in real time, not just with testimony, but some with their own evidence. Being able to see and examine the evidence, not just read about it.
7) The frustration of not knowing where she was located and then the very quick release of the tension of not knowing when her body was discovered.
8) The domestic violence conversation that it has sparked. The protective parents. Family and inter-personal dynamics in general.
9) His status as a fugitive with a still-(somewhat) hot trail.
It doesn't hurt that her family hasn't been decrying the attention. If they were begging people to stop speculating on social media, it may not dampen interest immediately, but it would drive a lot of the speculation underground, into virtual whispers, make it less accessible and constant, and a lot of the more casual observers would fall away.
More than anything, the timing of all of the events and revelations has allowed for a building and release of tension that is almost cinematic, which part of why I think the case has hooked as many people as it has. People are naturally attracted to stories with antagonists and protagonists, heroes and villains, with plots and subplots, with tension that rises and falls, eventually reaching a climax, and this story has all of those things.
MOO