AZ - Isabel Mercedes Celis, 6, Tucson, 20 April 2012 - #18

[Whisperer]

It's not a false door. It opens and closes. IF the kids are leaving on foot/friend's mom picking them up to go play, they most likely would exit the front door and then go through the courtyard door/gate and leave. Otherwise they would leave the garage door wide open if that is the only exit from the house to the front.

I call it a false door. It resembles a door that you would find in a home (from the outside) It's just semantics. I see them all the time out here and still get fooled into thinking it is a door to a house. I see that it is a door/gate to the courtyard and if one has dogs they would keep it locked, otherwise every kid, delivery person or salesman/bible people coming through could let the dogs out.

 

[Prof]

How did the perp/s enter and exit the property? :waiting:

In the week after Isa disappeared, media caught a father and a teenage boy entering the Celis yard, as that front gate door was not locked.

Maybe they try to lock that at night, maybe they don't, and the wall looked shorter than the neighbor girl on the NG video posted earler today. I thought, that's an easy wall to scale. If it was not a possibility, I don't think LE would waste half of their resources and time looking at external sources as they made clear they are doing at the presser 3 days ago.

 

[Whisperer]

I see now why all visitors to their house come through the garage. They keep everything locked up...probably because of the dogs.

 

[GrainneDhu]

When we get down to the nitty gritty of this case, the abduction theory is not fairing well. When you back to square one and start dissecting how the perp/s entered and exited, the theory breaks down.

I will assume the back gate was locked when LE arrived...if it wasn't the dogs may have escaped. So we have a locked back gate that can only be locked by someone on the inside of the property.

We have locked doors inside the house. If this is not true and a perp got in, he had to walk past Sergio x2. as there are three doors in the back:

1. at the master bdrm
2. at the den
3. at the family room.

The main door was locked to the best of my kge...but even if he came in that way, he had to walk past sergio x2. Sergio is sleeping right in the middle of the whole house.

BBM

What about the front gate? That's the gate I'd go through if I were in the middle of abducting a small child.

Stand inside the gate for a second to check traffic, then calmly open the gate, bring the child through (either carrying her or leading her by the hand), calmly walk away like I owned the neighbourhood. Chances are, no one would notice me, particularly if I cut around to the back via the breezeway.

And while it may seem impossible for a perpetrator to walk right past a sleeping parent twice, it has happened before.

Yes, the perp would have to be a risk taker but that's characteristic of perps. They do take risks. Otherwise, they'd stay at home and download whatever tickles their fancy via the internet.

 

[Whisperer]

You have to assume the front gate was open to advance this. I know we saw pics of it open AFTER the crime. I can assure this was not the norm in their daily lives. I say this because they had two dogs that were left outside. It would be kept locked because of the dogs.

I would think if they are advancing the stranger theory, a negligent house member must have left it unlocked...and at the same time Isa slept in room the stranger knew she would be in.

 

[GutFeeling!]

All the talk about dogs knowing the person, gates being locked, someone knowing the layout takes me straight back to JM (well I never really left him)

 

[Whisperer]

If Isa normally slept in her brothers' room, how did this stranger get so lucky? I wonder how he chose her room, instead of the boys' room.

 

[Ransom]

The 0630 barking was the perps taking a quiet child out the window. Why didn't Isa scream? I can't imagine her not whining, crying or yelling about being awakened, going through a window with a stranger, and walking outside in the early morning. She knew she had a little league game. She should have put up a fight if able.

I don't know, but neither did Danielle Van Dam or Jessica Lunsford yelled/screamed. Taken right out of their home and neither their dogs/nor family heard anything.

 

[GrainneDhu]

Guest house is in the back of their property. We have an overhead view and a poster circled in red so we could all see it. lol. I'll see if I can find it.

During AS's interview with Nancy Grace, she started out standing next to another woman (maybe a NG producer?) in front of the breezeway. NG asked her to show the breezeway and Isa's window.

AS turned and walked away from the camera into the breezeway. As she walked, she said that her window was right across from Isabel's window. She walked by a normal looking window that looked to me to be a few feet forward of where Isa's window is located.

Then AS stopped opposite Isabel's window. Just beyond her was a rectangular opening that could have been a window with a wooden lattice over it or might have been a swamp cooler opening (I'm not familiar enough with the architecture of the area to know for sure which is which).

I wasn't certain which of the two AS was indicating but she was clearly saying that her window is opposite of Isabel's window.

 

[Whisperer]

I can't keep help but recall Becky saying the search for evidence was concentrated in Isa's and the brothers' room.

 

[GrainneDhu]

Another local "color" explanation re: window bars. They are very common in/around Tucson. But not merely in higher-crime areas. Many of the homes in Tucson belong to snow birders (people who own/live here only in the winters). They want their home to appear from the outside to be entirely secure and deter squatters, local kids, etc., etc. In some of the older neighborhoods they are vestiges of the building style (Spanish, Pueblo, etc.) and mostly decorative. Personally, I call them cages and would never install on my home, unless purely the historical/decorative types original to a very old home.

Like you, they look like cages to me. Like something that would keep you trapped inside with the fire, rather than letting you out into safety.

I'm surprised that, since snowbirds seem to favour them, they don't actually attract burglars. I have a friend who lives in an area that has lots of summer houses. She says it's the houses with gates across the driveway that are often targeted for burglary because those gates are an indicator that a burglary won't be discovered for days, weeks, even months.

 

[Starry Night]

I just wonder if Sergio stayed up-had a late night visitor-got high-blacked out and passed out/went to sleep-Isabel was taken-mom gets up-gets ready and leaves for work-Sergio wakes up suddenly in am by sheer body clock--finds her gone and ????
maybe he was in a blackout and can't remember much of the night-into-morning.........

I can't square 2 things:
1)his voice demeanor to the 911 operator
2) the stay-away thing with CPS etc.

I am trying hard to exclude him but these two things don't bode well for him.

Bad things happen to good people........

 

[GrainneDhu]

My house came with the bars and it is kind of scary to think how I would get out, if there was ever a home invasion or a fire...I have an irrational fear of home invasions...well, I am sure everyone does, but I mean, they've never happened in my area, yet I think most about this type of crime, probably because my husband works graveyard and I am home alone at night.

Do you have house fires in your area?

 

[SmoothOperator]

Makes sense. So she would've been home at 6:30 when the dogs were barking like crazy. I guess she didn't bother to check either.

No. It certainly appears from everything known that she didn't bother to check either.. so you've got a girl next door who is the only person to my knowledge that says dogs were barking crazily.. tho she.. herrself does not even bother to roll over and look out the window that was literally right there at her bed(so she says) ..and no one at the Celis residence appears to have heard or atleast not heard anything that appeared bothersome enough to check..

Moo is from what very little is known id say the dogs weren't barking very crazily that morning.. jmo

 

[Prof]

I may have misunderstood, but I took him to mean that if/when she is drinking, she cannot drive or else she would get another DUI.

One other thing I noticed in that FOX video, was the older dog in the backyard was on a very long metal chain fastened to his collar.

Bump
BBM
=

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1647897013001/where-is-isabel-celis

 

[cluciano63]

Do you have house fires in your area?

Not as a rule. I am in a regular suburban neighborhood of older homes and no one really uses fireplaces much. I have lived in this house for 12 years and have never seen a fire nearby. But still, I will check my bars to see if they release.

 

[pieper4]

Another probably pointless local "color" commentary. I've used my front door about 12 times in 5+ years. My Dad has used his about the same in 8 years. Most people I know use their garage door/carport to come and go. Lots of these houses have very (useless) formal living spaces (LR/DR) just inside the front door and the kitchen and family room areas are generally off the garage.

 

[pieper4]

OT. I cannot take Mark Fuhrman seriously. Sorry.

 

[GrainneDhu]

Not as a rule. I am in a regular suburban neighborhood of older homes and no one really uses fireplaces much. I have lived in this house for 12 years and have never seen a fire nearby. But still, I will check my bars to see if they release.

I really meant thanks. The last thing we want around WS is cluciano as a crispy critter!

 

[Prof]

I just wonder if Sergio stayed up-had a late night visitor-got high-blacked out and passed out/went to sleep-Isabel was taken-mom gets up-gets ready and leaves for work-Sergio wakes up suddenly in am by sheer body clock--finds her gone and ????
maybe he was in a blackout and can't remember much of the night-into-morning.........

I can't square 2 things:
1)his voice demeanor to the 911 operator
2) the stay-away thing with CPS etc.

I am trying hard to exclude him but these two things don't bode well for him.

Bad things happen to good people........

I agree that those two things don't bode well for SC.
I am going to add a third, the CPS visit previously.

I am a bit concerned about previous TPD calls to the home as well.
What percentage of families in the US have police calls to their home?
Maybe I am living in a bubble, but to have more than one call on record in 5 or 6 years seems something to note

I suppose bad parenting does not always result in a missing child though. I imagine more often that it doesn't or less of us would be around lol