I just watched today’s press conference and the messaging felt very unusual.
The officer spent a large part of the briefing warning against speculation, directly referencing social media and even calling people “keyboard detectives.” That choice of words is telling. Normally police just sift through whatever comes in, filter out the noise, and keep going. They rarely stand at a podium and tell the public to stop theorising unless they are very aware that the official story they are presenting is already under strain.
What stood out even more is how this messaging sat alongside the rest of what was said. On the one hand, he repeated firmly that “everything we know is that Gus has wandered off onto the property and cannot be located.” On the other hand, he announced the search is being scaled back and stated that expert advice is Gus could not have survived this long. That is a very odd balance, presenting the outcome as grim with absolute certainty while still tying it only to the wandered off explanation even though no supporting evidence has been found.
There were also some telling slips in language. At one point he almost said “Gus’s disappearance” before stopping and correcting himself to “missing from the property.” That is a big difference. “Disappearance” carries the weight of something unexplained, possibly suspicious. “Missing from the property” pins it narrowly to the wandering off line. The fact he had to catch himself shows how tightly the wording is being managed.
Then came the question about major crimes detectives being on the property earlier in the week. His response was, “with the evidence we have at the moment we believe he has wandered off.” That phrasing is careful and conditional, not the language of someone convinced by their own theory. It leaves the door wide open for the narrative to change later. If police really believed their own line, would the answer not have been much firmer?
Put all of this together and the position police are taking is strange. They are doubling down on “wandered off” while scaling down the search, pre-emptively warning against speculation, correcting their own wording mid sentence, and carefully hedging when pressed. To me it feels less like confidence in the wandered off theory and more like deliberate narrative management while other possibilities are being worked quietly behind the scenes.
