CA CA - Barbara Thomas, 69, from Bullhead City AZ, disappeared in Mojave desert, 12 July 2019 #3

[cazador]

cant speak for the rest of my family but i am not very trusting of the mainstream news.

its more a barometer these days, of what a few large companies think we should know. thats the case globally. not just my opinion.

my dad is in no condition to speak to news. it had never occured to me personally. her son is eager to speak his mind on the news, so... stay tuned i guess.

barb used to be a cat lady who also had a dog. she went to school for art but dont know if she ever graduated. her art was around her apartment. when she visited us in may 2018 she brought a stick, like driftwood, but from the desert, which she had painted. gave it to my dad. i remember sculptures around her house back before robbie, including one which was a copy she had made of 'the thinker'. it was good and so were her paintings but she implied they were all things she'd made years and years earlier.
i had a pet iguana when i was about five, named iggy. she gave me an awesome painting of him.
I saw her about once a year until I graduated high school pretty much and then i saw her a lot less frequently.
she raised her son on her own and lived near her mum, so had that support out in san diego.
she was tough, not the type of aunt that spoiled you, but warm and quick to smile. her cats would always stay hidden when we would visit but her dogs were always very loving. shes always had at least one dog, and since meeting robbie has transitioned fully into dog person, i feel.
nore recently she collected desert rocks and sticks, kept a rock garden. dabbled from time to time in the art.

she was very excited about trump, not to turn anyone off to her, but was excited for something politically different. tried to sell me on him as the answer to america's problems. we could get into really good political convos, but she is a stubborn woman and rarely if ever do i remember her ceding any of her views. i like talking to ppl like that, and she could get a full head of steam on a topic.

she is a loving lady, loving aunt, loving mother whose son gave her a pretty hard time, though its not for me to share with all of you. i could go on but thats an intro.

these are all personal things. if this site and its users hadn't been so helpful so far, i would never share this information. not to msm for sure. gather most of my side of the family would agree on that.

"shes always had at least one dog, and since meeting robbie has transitioned fully into dog person"

How long have they been together ?

 

[darring21]

Statistics would say, in the event of death from a medical event, the person would be found.

I'm not sure anyone has run statistics on that. Perhaps you can link to some analysis. Look, I'm not trying to pick a fight. Its just that hiding behind statistics or Occam's Razor is ridiculous when the conclusion is predicated on your assumptions.

 

[wary]

"shes always had at least one dog, and since meeting robbie has transitioned fully into dog person"

How long have they been together ?

I’m not speaking for dbdb11, but I believe we’ve heard since 2006.

 

[K9Enzo]

Question to all, where do you think Barbara is?

Desert, just not recovered yet. No foul play. IMO

 

[crhedBngr]

Desert, just not recovered yet. No foul play. IMO

Ditto this.

 

[dbdb11]

Both she and her husband traveled all over the place, loved to hike, they were also around 70 yo and for sure did not want to get lost or in some sort of medical urgency without any means to find their way back or be located.

Therefor I am sure they were well equipped with GPS in their car, and a phone that could lead them the way.

I think Robert may not realise that this same equipment monitors his every move.

Barbara will be found, her disappearance will not remain a mystery, expect news soon. IMO

worried he is a lot smarter than many will expect. my own opinion

 

[Steelslady]

Sincere question- has LE been asking folks to keep an eye out for Barbara? Any sense of urgency that she needs to be found?

 

[AliceInPain]

@dbdb11
Thank you so much for sharing!
I do hope her son manages to get on the news. Regardless of our opininons on media, in a case like this they can be very helpful. Making more people aware might even make LE work that little bit harder.
I hope she's found soon!

 

[oviedo]

JMO

I do get a very odd sense from this case and I do have to say that the absence of any family or friends coming forward to publicly speak to the media to support RT is concerning to me. For example, "He is a great husband, they love travelling together....he buys her favourite beer every Friday....."

We haven't heard anything much at all in the ways of interviews (again from family, friends, neighbours, co-workers) to incite the public to help find this woman (if she was picked up, or abducted) and change the headline from being the bikini-clad woman who went missing in the Mojave Desert to something that tells us about her as a person who is missed and loved by many people.

Nothing out there to help the public get to know Barbara, to make people invested in finding her (again, if she was abducted or picked up.) I would love to hear about her hobbies, like, for example; "She loved to volunteer.....garden.....ballroom dance......swim.....be a Grandma" Anything to 'personalize' her from being a flashy headline to a person who needs to be brought home safely. Now.

We are all strangers to her here and are hoping desperately to do anything we can do to help find her. Why hasn't a single person who knows her said anything in msm other than her husband?

I would love know more about Barbara and who she is as person....she looks like she would be a pretty wonderful lady to get to know.

I hope this all came out right.... JMO

ITA - and think perhaps she may have been isolated to the point where she wasn't close with anyone else IMO

 

[LietKynes]

worried he is a lot smarter than many will expect. my own opinion

Respectfully ; Is there any chance that she'd planned to leave him ?

 

[10ofRods]

Desert, just not recovered yet. No foul play. IMO

I go back and forth. It's possible she walked onto a side path (but all trails were near the road). I don't think she took off cross country in the heat and with all the cholla cactus out there.

Still, there's a very good possibility that RT was out photographing longer than he thought, that she couldn't find the key to the truck/RV (which was it? both?) and that she sought shade and got way out of the (very large) search range. They couldn't use FLIR, just vision (and there's lots of brush). A human body with only a red cap that's very visible is hard to see from the air (skin and the color black are not particularly visible).

Sorry for the morbidity in this post. Death from misadventure is probably the most likely. Dogs have a hard time with scent in the desert. She could have walked miles along Hidden Hill (dirt) Road in the time in between when she was said to go missing and when searchers showed up...

 

[Lilibet]

Desert, just not recovered yet. No foul play. IMO

Agree. Desert, out of search area. There was plenty of time for her to walk too far to be found. No foul play.

 

[Teche]

As I understood it, I thought the point being made was that it was an odd job for someone who lacks the required communication skills to be successful in such an occupation.
Usually someone who works in sales requires an outgoing personality, or at least good communication skills.

Someone who is not a "people person" or who is a bit of a loner would not seem to be comfortable in such a position. Imo

It is an unusual career choice...but maybe he does property management.

 

[Stragnet]

I realize SAR can miss a body, I pointed out that very thing with the Elizabeth Shelley case.

But according to Robert, she was right in front of him and they were almost back to the trailer. This isn't a national forest, it's flat desert. If she took a weird wrong turn, she's not going to disappear into an abyss. If she was lost she could literally shout and he likely would have heard her. As another poster likes to point out Occam's Razor is likely to apply here. I really felt an abduction was a real possibility, but now unless it was arranged by her husband I'm not considering it.

I’m in total agreement with you in this case re: Occam’s Razor. I’ve read several posts where folks are making suppositions that expand the narrative. I think this is due to the lack of available information on this case, so people’s grey cells are whirring away developing various narratives as to what might have happened. Same happened in this site with the Amanda Lueck case, before her murderer was identified: some believed that the killer purposely gave away a mattress that had no involvement in the killing (as we now know, she was most likely on that mattress, whether dead or alive) in order to ‘throw off’ law enforcement. Good example of reading too much into the story.

 

[Liwthe]

And I am not?



It does not matter if it was said with contempt, admiration or anything else. As long as you think your 69 yo wife was abducted because she was wearing a bikini, you'd have to personally believe there would be an attraction there for any random passenger.



I haven't believed for one minute that she was abducted or ever was in that area.



Were you referencing Robert when you explicitly mentioned HER family and HER friends? Robert does not fit that category.

That may be one interpretation. Another could be that it made her appear more vulnerable.

 

[Liwthe]

Then why not just a cell phone?

Until last year I didn’t have a cell phone. I used a mini iPad for travel (you can make and accept calls) and in the car. I had a grandfathered plan with plenty of data for $10 a month that made it a great option. I’m pretty unusual apparently as people always react as if it’s bizarre. There’s always outliers.

 

[al66pine]

Then why not just a cell phone?

Some ppl dislike/detest/hate cell phones because of
- teensy tiny keyboards, esp. ppl. w elephantine thumbs.
- dinky- screens, esp. ppl. w dim vision, screens unreadable in sunlight, etc. jmo

Some ppl. prefer, use, and carry tablets instead.

Edit. @Liwthe Thanks for your comment re mini-iPad.

 

[Jo in Calif]

I’m in total agreement with you in this case re: Occam’s Razor. I’ve read several posts where folks are making suppositions that expand the narrative. I think this is due to the lack of available information on this case, so people’s grey cells are whirring away developing various narratives as to what might have happened. Same happened in this site with the Amanda Lueck case, before her murderer was identified: some believed that the killer purposely gave away a mattress that had no involvement in the killing (as we now know, she was most likely on that mattress, whether dead or alive) in order to ‘throw off’ law enforcement. Good example of reading too much into the story.

I believe you mean MacKenzie not Amanda Lueck.

 

[Stragnet]

Us being told she had no cell phone is really bothering me.
If she made a trip to Hong Kong a couple of months ago alone, without Robbie, did she not talk to him while she was there? Did she borrow others phones? Did she use the phone in her room, if she stayed in a hotel? How would she communicate with anyone while she was there?
Someone help me out here.

Is the info that she has (ie owns) no phone info that was provided by Robert? Can police verify that she owned no phone? Yes, through phone records/bank & credit card statements. This stuff takes time to work through for law enforcement....

 

[10ofRods]

There are some oddball aspects to this case. One is that RT wasn't allowed into the search area and apparently did not go back to it. Why is he so committed to the abduction narrative? You'd think that a devoted husband would be keen to search in a wider area than the SAR people were searching. He clearly thinks it's near impossible that she would have wandered too far away.

The search expanded each day for 10 days which is why I think LE definitely thinks/thought she was out there. If they do have his phone records and nothing else happens, then I think it's safe to assume she's out there.

I did want to say that this media business of describing people as "experienced hikers" when the hikers in question did not do any of the cautious things that truly experienced hikers always do (never get out of the car without your 10 essentials kind of hikers)...is codswallop.

If BT had acted in any normal, experienced hiker kind of way (less than half a mile from a road, according to RT), she'd have been found. If we give RT the benefit of the doubt and he was only 10 minutes behind her, at most, then she disappeared without a trace very quickly indeed. Hence the variety of opinions here on WS. Occam's razor is hard to apply when common behavior is not observed. BT did not stay near the RV for the 10 minutes it took for RT to catch up to her? BT could not find the RV (which was apparently visible from many points along the trail)?