CA CA - Barbara Thomas, 69, from Bullhead City AZ, disappeared in Mojave desert, 12 July 2019 #2

[sroad]

Thank you for that description.

Now having been there, what's your take on the different scenarios?

1) she got lost
2) she got abducted
3) she was attacked by animals
4) she was never there in the first place

I don't think enough information has been released for me to have any ideas on what really happened. That said, a hit and run on a clear day with as much traffic (a car every couple minutes sometimes more), or animal attack is not what I think happened. (Mountain lions avoid humans and attacks are extremely rare and that would have left clues, not to mention drag marks, etc).

Getting lost for that particular place is hard to believe as well, as there is a non-motorized trail which they presumably hiked, and Kelbaker road is visible, and audible. Also, very few hikers hike off trail, those who do would not be wanting to wear shorts, as the area is filled with various cholla cacti, which have hooks that get into your legs, very unpleasant to get stuck by those! Even the I-40 is visible and a turnout at the pass is visible by eye. Less than a mile west of the road which runs north/south you have Granite Mountain, which is a sheer wall of rocks, she wouldn't have walked that way, unless extremely disoriented. They don't sound like rock climbers, so that's highly unlikely.

I'm hoping the husband will offer much more specifics about the hike and time than he did in those two short interviews. Some mention all they had was a beer, another article mentions they brought a gallon of water as well. That small detail makes a big difference in how far you can hike. A beer in hand, and your hike during mid-day is limited to no more than a mile or two, but a gallon of water, and now you'd have to expand the possible range to search by a few more miles.

Having hiked at this location my main observation was just how many places there are there to shelter from the intense sun, which of course also makes the search harder and makes it harder for aerial photography to pick up any clues. The scattered boulders south of the main rock formations also had lots of nooks and crannies to hide. I noticed SARS had tags going for about a mile south, so it looks like they covered that area as well.

If I were in trouble with the heat I might be tempted to go under a large boulder and wait to feel better, these are great sheltering places, but that is not what Robert Thomas suggested. He implied they had already gone to the rocks and were on their way back, between the main rock formations and the trailer there are no rock formations to hide. If she had gone for the closest boulder formations, she would have been found though, because they searched those formations extensively, see attached photo for an example.

It is uphill to the boulder formations from the trailer location and only .5 miles away, downhill back to the trailer, so getting back would have made more sense for me if I thought I was in heat trouble. But RT did not mention his wife had issues with the heat during that hike.

I'll attach a few more pics so you can see landscape and trailer location in relation to the surrounding landscape. Last photo shows the wall of rocks on the western side and a orange tag showing they searched to that extend.

 

[Joe Friday]

I've been thinking that she went ahead of him because she was hot under the mid-day sun. The heat wouldn't feel good, imo, on bare skin for too long.

jmo

If my wife was hot and wanted to return to the camper, car, house, hotel, cabin or what ever, I would NOT have let her go ahead while I stayed behind dilly-dallying around doing what ever I pleased. Especially if I didn't have clear site of where she was heading to.

That just me and I'm not blaming RT for leaving BT go ahead alone. Maybe they hiked together all the time, but didn't necessarily stay by each others side the entire time.

JMO

 

[PommyMommy]

Did they say she was not kidnapped? or that there was no indication that she was kidnapped?

Here is the article:

JUL 22, 2019
California police say missing hiker who vanished 'in her bikini' was NOT abducted | Daily Mail Online
'We don't think she was abducted. It's a very remote area. There's no evidence to suggest she was abducted,' spokeswoman Jodi Miller told DailyMail.com.

 

[fridaybaker]

Our vultures are migratory and generally prefer to be residents of the area during the fall.(Although it is not uncommon to see the kettles come through at anytime) I honestly have never seen them circle a dead animal or otherwise as shown in the movies. Does it happen ? Maybe? But .. I personally, have not seen it.

This topic of vultures has been speculated back and forth some quite a bit over the BT threads here. Posters have brought out the fact that often dead bodies are found sans vulture activity, and also that if the vultures are under starvation pressure, they can "strip" a body within an hour, so that there would be a very limited time they would be seen.

Your point is well taken as another piece of information to add. Like so many aspects of this case -such as whether or not anyone would hike in the desert in a bikini top with a bottle of beer- our various points of reference show our own biases in approaching such things!

I'm from parts of the country where vultures are very, very common. If a squirrel dies, there's a cloud of them vortexing down upon it within minutes. Hundreds are often seen roosting alongside the roadside in dead trees. They're everywhere. So, I assumed that would be a key factor in finding her, since if she's been out there all this time, she's probably not still alive. However, I realize now it's probably not the case.

 

[Micheline]

Did they say she was not kidnapped? or that there was no indication that she was kidnapped?

'Our investigation does not indicate any signs that she was abducted,' Miller said.

California police say missing hiker who vanished 'in her bikini' was NOT abducted | Daily Mail Online

 

[PaulR]

'Our investigation does not indicate any signs that she was abducted,' Miller said.

California police say missing hiker who vanished 'in her bikini' was NOT abducted | Daily Mail Online

The article does not say the police have stated that she was not kidnapped.

 

[sroad]

@sroad , thank you so much for your most informative and detailed post and photos! Am I correct in thinking that the non-motorized trail is quite obvious to the eye, and not difficult to follow? Does it seem easy for someone to lose the trail?

It’s especially interesting to me that you could hear a car for a half-mile or so, and see so far by getting up on a rise or rock.

Glad to help in any small way I can. Yes, the non-motorized trail is very easy and obvious to the eye, and is also wide enough for a vehicle, so it would have been the obvious path for them to take to the rock formations. Only if you go around the rock formations do you lose sight of the main trail.

 

[Elliot_Alderson]

I don't think enough information has been released for me to have any ideas on what really happened. That said, a hit and run on a clear day with as much traffic (a car every couple minutes sometimes more), or animal attack is not what I think happened. (Mountain lions avoid humans and attacks are extremely rare and that would have left clues, not to mention drag marks, etc).

Getting lost for that particular place is hard to believe as well, as there is a non-motorized trail which they presumably hiked, and Kelbaker road is visible, and audible. Also, very few hikers hike off trail, those who do would not be wanting to wear shorts, as the area is filled with various cholla cacti, which have hooks that get into your legs, very unpleasant to get stuck by those! Even the I-40 is visible and a turnout at the pass is visible by eye. Less than a mile west of the road which runs north/south you have Granite Mountain, which is a sheer wall of rocks, she wouldn't have walked that way, unless extremely disoriented. They don't sound like rock climbers, so that's highly unlikely.

I'm hoping the husband will offer much more specifics about the hike and time than he did in those two short interviews. Some mention all they had was a beer, another article mentions they brought a gallon of water as well. That small detail makes a big difference in how far you can hike. A beer in hand, and your hike during mid-day is limited to no more than a mile or two, but a gallon of water, and now you'd have to expand the possible range to search by a few more miles.

Having hiked at this location my main observation was just how many places there are there to shelter from the intense sun, which of course also makes the search harder and makes it harder for aerial photography to pick up any clues. The scattered boulders south of the main rock formations also had lots of nooks and crannies to hide. I noticed SARS had tags going for about a mile south, so it looks like they covered that area as well.

If I were in trouble with the heat I might be tempted to go under a large boulder and wait to feel better, these are great sheltering places, but that is not what Robert Thomas suggested. He implied they had already gone to the rocks and were on their way back, between the main rock formations and the trailer there are no rock formations to hide. If she had gone for the closest boulder formations, she would have been found though, because they searched those formations extensively, see attached photo for an example.

It is uphill to the boulder formations from the trailer location and only .5 miles away, downhill back to the trailer, so getting back would have made more sense for me if I thought I was in heat trouble. But RT did not mention his wife had issues with the heat during that hike.

I'll attach a few more pics so you can see landscape and trailer location in relation to the surrounding landscape. Last photo shows the wall of rocks on the western side and a orange tag showing they searched to that extend.

My understanding was that they did have water, but that the water was in the possession of the husband so it wouldn't have been accessible to BT after their separation. MOO

 

[sroad]

I think it's entirely possible to fall in a crevice and cannot be seen. She was wearing a red cap, IIRC, and was carrying a beer mug - and I keep thinking that those items would be found - maybe they were discarded in a heat stroke stuper or fell off in a fall - or she could throw the items toward a path so someone would find her (but I also know the heat can muddle thinking so can't count on her thinking of displaying a signal).

So frustrating when someone is out there and can't be found.

jmo

The only way she could have fallen in a crevice is if she rock climbed to one of the 3 main rock formations and then slipped and fell into a crack. But SAR searched and climbed up there extensively from what I could tell, and there are not that many cracks in those large boulder formations. Unlikely that this happened in this case.

 

[BayouBelle_LA]

Here is the article:

JUL 22, 2019
California police say missing hiker who vanished 'in her bikini' was NOT abducted | Daily Mail Online
'We don't think she was abducted. It's a very remote area. There's no evidence to suggest she was abducted,' spokeswoman Jodi Miller told DailyMail.com.

I always thought that if she was abducted, it was by design rather than random. The area is very remote. The hubby thinks she was abducted so there’s that.

 

[Micheline]

The article does not say the police have stated that she was not kidnapped.

Well, it does, their investigation has given them the answer as to what did happen to her, and it wasn't an abduction.

Not for no reason the husband, who is a victim, was given a lie detector test.

 

[PaulR]

Well, it does, their investigation have given them the answer as to. what did happen to her, and it wasn't an abduction.

I wasn't aware that their investigation has turned up what happened to her. Can you provide a link to that news article?

 

[iscaremyself]

DBM

 

[sroad]

Welcome!
Can you make an estimation of how far a scream would carry in that area? TIA

Depends, too hard to say, and too many variables like heat exhaustion and vocal strength. Some folks have voices that can carry for hundreds of meters in the desert, others not so much. But I could hear the cars from half a mile to a mile away in the mostly silent desert.

 

[PaulR]

I always thought that if she was abducted, it was by design rather than random. The area is very remote. The hubby thinks she was abducted so there’s that.

Fowler and Deese were murdered in a remote area. I don't know if there is any proof about it being random vs. by design at this point, but it seems unlikely that their case involved murder by design rather than by opportunity.

 

[IceIce9]

The article does not say the police have stated that she was not kidnapped.

California police rule out husband's claims that his bikini-clad wife, 69, who disappeared during their hike was KIDNAPPED as search for her enters its tenth day

 

[PaulR]

The actual quote from police in that Daily Mail article doesn't say that at all. It specifically states that they don't think she was abducted, and that there is no evidence that she was abducted. It does not state that the police have ruled out that she was abducted.

 

[sroad]

@sroad

Thank you so much for this. I haven't been able to really picture the location and understand the surrounding landscape but I feel like I was dropped right down in BT's and RT's alleged footsteps. In my mind I can see it, feel it and hear it. If a vehicle went through every few minutes and they had been out there for over an hour when they separated, then I think the sound of a vehicle going through wouldn't have stood out to RT. I don't necessarily think an abduction happened and I know LE doesn't either but some here have suggested he should've noticed hearing a vehicle stop after Barb went around a corner.

In your opinion after searching some of the area yourself, do you think it's possible BT is still in the searched area but wasn't found?

Yes, I thought it was possible, that's why I also searched. There is just so many places to hide there. And SAR can make mistakes too, it's happened where they find a body where an earlier SAR team had already made an earlier pass through.

 

[Knox]

California police rule out husband's claims that his bikini-clad wife, 69, who disappeared during their hike was KIDNAPPED as search for her enters its tenth day

So the question is how was that ruled out? I saw another news story that used the word "abducted". I guess kidnapped grabs more attention. Regardless, I'm thinking of the ways LE could rule out that possibility? Curious as to everyone else's thoughts?

 

[Gardener1850]

I don't think enough information has been released for me to have any ideas on what really happened. That said, a hit and run on a clear day with as much traffic (a car every couple minutes sometimes more), or animal attack is not what I think happened. (Mountain lions avoid humans and attacks are extremely rare and that would have left clues, not to mention drag marks, etc).

Getting lost for that particular place is hard to believe as well, as there is a non-motorized trail which they presumably hiked, and Kelbaker road is visible, and audible. Also, very few hikers hike off trail, those who do would not be wanting to wear shorts, as the area is filled with various cholla cacti, which have hooks that get into your legs, very unpleasant to get stuck by those! Even the I-40 is visible and a turnout at the pass is visible by eye. Less than a mile west of the road which runs north/south you have Granite Mountain, which is a sheer wall of rocks, she wouldn't have walked that way, unless extremely disoriented. They don't sound like rock climbers, so that's highly unlikely.

I'm hoping the husband will offer much more specifics about the hike and time than he did in those two short interviews. Some mention all they had was a beer, another article mentions they brought a gallon of water as well. That small detail makes a big difference in how far you can hike. A beer in hand, and your hike during mid-day is limited to no more than a mile or two, but a gallon of water, and now you'd have to expand the possible range to search by a few more miles.

Having hiked at this location my main observation was just how many places there are there to shelter from the intense sun, which of course also makes the search harder and makes it harder for aerial photography to pick up any clues. The scattered boulders south of the main rock formations also had lots of nooks and crannies to hide. I noticed SARS had tags going for about a mile south, so it looks like they covered that area as well.

If I were in trouble with the heat I might be tempted to go under a large boulder and wait to feel better, these are great sheltering places, but that is not what Robert Thomas suggested. He implied they had already gone to the rocks and were on their way back, between the main rock formations and the trailer there are no rock formations to hide. If she had gone for the closest boulder formations, she would have been found though, because they searched those formations extensively, see attached photo for an example.

It is uphill to the boulder formations from the trailer location and only .5 miles away, downhill back to the trailer, so getting back would have made more sense for me if I thought I was in heat trouble. But RT did not mention his wife had issues with the heat during that hike.

I'll attach a few more pics so you can see landscape and trailer location in relation to the surrounding landscape. Last photo shows the wall of rocks on the western side and a orange tag showing they searched to that extend.

Thank you for the photos! There is a bit of something red in the lower part of your last photo. Any idea what that is? It caught my eye since Barb was said to have a red hat on.