CA CA - Barbara Thomas, 69, from Bullhead City AZ, disappeared in Mojave desert, 12 July 2019 #4

[diggndeeperstill]

I wonder though if most of us saw the danger in it and our partner walked ahead because they didn’t want to wait... would we immediately stop and catch up to them? It tells me he either didn’t see or realize the danger in it, or he said he said it.

If my spouse were to go missing during a walk/hike, I would want everyone to know that I had asked him to stay with me but that he decided to go on without me. And I would probably be pretty angry at him. It wouldn’t be to make him look bad, but to let people know I tried to keep us together.

 

[LietKynes]

Has anyone contacted TES ?

 

[artsy1]

Not as a ruse, but it's not uncommon for LE to suspect someone and not reveal that information to the public.
Sometimes it's because they don't want the suspect to know he or she is a suspect. Imo

Or because they don't want to name someone without evidence. I watched an old Dateline where a man was publicly announced as a person of interest in a case - not because of any evidence, but because he had a "checkered" past. Public harassed the man, who committed suicide because of the pressure just before LE announced he was totally innocent. Cost LE a lot of $ for what they did.

 

[cazador]

Nice - dated today: SAR Drone Mission Request

Missing Person in Mojave Desert

This is Awesome.. It is the perfect Drone search area.

 

[dspdenver]

Nice - dated today: SAR Drone Mission Request

Missing Person in Mojave Desert

And it even links to Websleuths!

 

[LAhiker]

For those who think Robert was involved, if so, why would he do 2 lengthy interviews on TV? Inviting them inside his home, sharing personal things?
On top of that claiming him being the prime suspect and failing a lie detector test?

What would be the benefit of this if he was the perpetrator? Why not stay away from cameras to begin with?

Why would a perpetrator not only seek media attention, but also do it in such a way that the case would peek everyone's interest, even in Europe? A 69 woman in her bikini, drinking beer, probably kidnapped to Las Vegas, husband says he is the prime suspect. It almost seems like a well thought out pr stunt for a missing persons case, that otherwise would not have gotten that much media attention, if any.

I'm not saying RT is a perpetrator or in some other way involved in BT's disappearance, but here are some reasons a perpetrator might do that:

• They might think they had committed the perfect crime so they could do or say what they liked.
• They might think that their explanation of what happened (in this case, bikini, beer, probable abduction) as well as their delivery of that explanation was convincing and hence wanted to promulgate it.
• They might feel guilt about their deed and unconsciously want to be caught. This might especially be true if they had accidentally caused their spouse's disappearance or death and had quickly created a cover story.
• If they had arranged the disappearance with others, they might be trying to signal to those others for some reason.

Again, I'm not saying any of these things happened or are relevant to this case. Just trying to answer your question. MOO

 

[10ofRods]

If I were farther south and east, I would take a little drive and see if I could find a remote spot where I thought I could park a large truck and RV for a bit. Because like I posted yesterday morning, I don't think BT is where RT said she was. So, if she isn't, the question becomes 'where's a place that she's likely to be?' With all those wide open spaces, that's a big question, but he could not part that truck/RV just anywhere. MOO

ITA. And if I lived closer, I'd be doing that and submitting what I found to the SAR volunteers. One of my projects this school year is to collect twitter/email contact points for SAR teams (many reasons I want to do that). SAR volunteers like to go out and practice their skills in new areas of interest. Also, if people on forums like this one know locals, the word can get out to the ATV community (I just read recently that bodies are more often found by ATV enthusiasts than by hikers, they cover more ground and go off trail). Not sure what the MNP policies are on ATV bikes.

There's an interesting area south of Mojave NP (the Mojave Trails National Monument, it allows way more off road activity, is even more isolated than Mojave NP, and has plenty of places that a 5th wheel and truck could pull off or stop). No cameras out that way that I know of. I would guess that RT and BT would be familiar with it too (and if he had been down that way, unless he knew to turn his phone off, there'd be a record - but I don't know that SBCS is investigating that heavily). Anyway, all he'd have had to do to get to Kelbaker/HH would be drive under the freeway and up the road 6 miles.

 

[10ofRods]

BBM

His words.
Why volunteer that information if you don't have to ?
Odd.

The only reason I can think of, honestly (and I think about this case way too much), is that he has absolutely no one else to tell except the cameras. No friends, no close family, no one. And he's shaken. When holding onto to stress-inducing information (such as failing a polygraph and being considered a suspect in wife's death), many people just can't handle it without telling someone. So he told the whole world.

I doubt he thought through his reasons very consciously (unless of course, he really did have a nefarious plan). If he did have something to do with Barbara's death, it was as part of a jointly planned camping trip, I don't think he planned all the way to how to handle the media. I could be very wrong. MOO of course.

 

[Kapua]

I have a hard time believing that the SBCSO told him he's their prime suspect. Stranger things have happened, I suppose, but that just doesn't seem likely to me.

If he made that claim because he's paranoid about being told his polygraph showed deception, then he lied. Because he said they told him he was their prime suspect.

Either way, dude should have gotten an attorney before speaking to the media. He did himself no favors in those interviews. MOO

How many varmints do you have running around out there?!

I also have a hard time believing that LE said "prime suspect", because I haven't seen LE use that term at all in recent years. Typically, LE will say "person of interest" in the early part of a missing person investigation, or they will say it's a missing person investigation and they are exploring all angles. They tend to be very tight-lipped. IMHO.

 

[Kapua]

Or because they don't want to name someone without evidence. I watched an old Dateline where a man was publicly announced as a person of interest in a case - not because of any evidence, but because he had a "checkered" past. Public harassed the man, who committed suicide because of the pressure just before LE announced he was totally innocent. Cost LE a lot of $ for what they did.

In the Mollie Tibbets case, a man with a "checkered" past involving an ex was suspected by many here and elsewhere, also with no evidence whatsoever. He was innocent.

 

[PommyMommy]

Oops...wrong thread.

 

[artsy1]

I’m glad you mentioned the backpack; one or two initial reports stated he had a backpack in which he carried BT’s cell phone, but those reports seemed to have disappeared. I’m guessing the initial reports of a backpack were incorrect, explaining why I can’t find those initial news blurbs about it.

IIRC, that info came from VI, not MSM

 

[PajamaSleuth]

Much harder to stage an accident than it looks, I think. There are rarely any climbable heights to push someone off of, and pushing someone off a 20 foot tall boulder is an iffy way to cause their death. The murderer would have to cover any traces of themselves being at the top of that rock (including DNA). The very fact of being on top of an outcropping would make the scene visible and you can see a long way in the desert. ATV riders, mountain bikers, target shooters...can all be out there.

Anyway, most places in the Mojave don't have immediately drop offs, but look very much like the Granite Hills, so the person would bounce and scrape (and possibly come to rest badly injured but not dead; the perp could let them die but that would be obvious to a coroner).

A person who was given a really hard shove would have a different bounce pattern than someone who slipped (but a person who was suicidal and jumped might look a lot like a murder victim, I think). If foul play is expected (and sometimes even when not) they do examine the fall area for blood, to try and reconstruct what happened. I can remember this really awful time in Sequoia when two young men fell from Moro Rock during an ill-advised attempt to climb off its nose (without climbing equipment). They sent a helicopter with a person dangling and a kind of basket thing for body part retrieval, but they also examined the rock (out of interest, I think - the coroner's report ultimately mentioned such things as the length before first impact).

Contriving to lead someone someplace and then abandoning them might work. In so many couples and especially in groups, only one person is paying attention to the actual route (in most cases when I hike, that would be me, and if someone else was doing the route finding, I'd still have a map and I'd still memorize my own route, but lots of people go right across small intersecting trails without noticing, because they are all into staring in wonder at the land around them).

But I could envision someone saying "Let's go on a short walk" and then making sure it was a much longer walk, with many turns onto other trails, then the leader suddenly vanishes (pretense of going to pee?) and that's it for the other person.

Or the walk could just be much further than the leader knows the follower can really handle (or has gear to handle).

Anyway, pushing someone off even a 45 degree slope in the Mojave isn't going to kill them, they're going to roll and get stuck (and still be quite visible from the air, I'd think). You'd need to get to a good sized canyon. A few people have murdered their spouses at Grand Canyon...and it's possible that some have done it and gotten away with it. At least one man murdered his wife near Tunnel View in Yosemite, too, by pushing her off a trail.

Thank you so much for such a well-thought out explanation! I really appreciate your experienced point of view. I saw pictures of the area but couldn’t really get it.

All this talk of murders and fatal accidents makes me not want to ever go hiking again.

 

[GordianKnot]

Husband of missing 69-year-old hiker says police consider him a suspect

Linking this Fox video clip from 07/19 again. Points raised in the piece include a couple of bonafide head-scratchers:

• SBSCO remaining tight-lipped.
• No evidence that BT was abducted.
• Not a single trace of BT having been found.
• LE is "unaware" of how long RT and BT were separated before she disappeared.
• LE "doesn't know" how far BT was from the RV at the time they became separated.

One logical explanation for the first 3 bullet points would be that BT was never at that location.

There is NO logical explanation for the last 2 bolded bullet points...if one assumes LE believes RT's version of events is true, at least.

The last 2 bullet points do make perfect sense if one assumes LE does not believe RT's account of what happened that day.

It's as plain as the nose on Pinocchio's face:

LE doesn't believe that BT is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the circumstances surrounding BT'S disappearance.

JMO.

 

[Twistinginthewind]

If I were farther south and east, I would take a little drive and see if I could find a remote spot where I thought I could park a large truck and RV for a bit. Because like I posted yesterday morning, I don't think BT is where RT said she was. So, if she isn't, the question becomes 'where's a place that she's likely to be?' With all those wide open spaces, that's a big question, but he could not part that truck/RV just anywhere. MOO

That's a grand idea. If I lived in the area and I could drive around or do a flyover with a plane or even operate a drone camera, I would also focus on places where you could pull off at an 'overlook' next to a canyon or formation with a sheer drop (between Bullhead City and the area she went missing and within say an hour or two driving distance of there). JMO

 

[HongKongPhooey]

Does it help the public in the Dulos case? I don’t think so, but they did, and they do in many many cases.

Also I think the info can help. It can help families and loved ones feel that their suspicions are being taken seriously. It can help the community feel like LE is on the case.

I’m asking because people are speculating here on everything, so why not this? It’s certainly intriguing to me.

You're kind of luckier on this front in the US than we are in the UK. I'm always shocked at how much info US police share. Ours tend to be totally schtum.

 

[LietKynes]

Kudos to everyone who has been searching out there, in the heat, for this lady !!

If I lived close enough, I'd want to go out there myself to where the RV was parked at and start looking and poking around .

Graphic warning :

By now, there'd be an odor if she was out there, deceased ?

 

[Twistinginthewind]

My take on RT saying after he couldn't find BT back at their RV he went to look for her at a cave "that we were both familiar with in the area" (RT's words) in case she had gone there to explore:

It was a plausible reason why an hour passed between her disappearing around a corner before he called 911.

He must have been searching high and low, including in a cave far afield from where they were walking, and that took some time, and was probably quite a strenuous amount of activity for a 72 year old to do that extra mileage on top of the 2 mile walk in rough terrain in 100 degree temps when he was also feeling "really panicky" in his words. MOO

Been reading backwards to catch up again and sorry to hear she still has not been located.

JMO
The whole "cave thing" bothers me because when I looked at the supposed parking spots and looked at the trails leading to the base of the rock formations, those trails are relatively flat leading from parking spots to base of rocks.
Once at the base of the rock formations then that would be about the only area a cave could be in.

So any caves would be toward the end of the initial hike area. And this means in order for him to "go back to look at a cave they saw earlier", that would mean he would basically have to do the entire hike all over again to even get to the area where a cave would be.

Also, he already knew the exact spot he last saw her as they were heading back to the RV. So that means the cave would have to be inbetween the spot he last saw her and the RV. Which further means the only way they could have seen a cave "earlier", it would have had to be on the initial way in and towards the rock croppings. It could not be behind him at the moment he last saw her, otherwise she would have had to pass him to get to it.

Im probably reading too much into things since we dont know the exact point of where he last saw her and we dont know the exact location of the cave he was talking about. If LE can determine these exact two locations then they may be able to uncover a discrepancy in the story about the cave.

I can understand wanting to go back to look in the areas of the rocks for a cave they knew about, but not if it was all the way past where he last saw her heading to the RV.

 

[Auntie Cipation]

Some bikini tops and bras look quite similar. (And these days, some women's swimsuits come with underwire or "soft cups"!)

Frankly, I'm not sure it would make much difference. JMO

Technically, IMO "bikini" refers only to the cut or style of garment, so there are bikini swimsuits (and other kinds of swimwear), bikini briefs and bras (and other styles of both of those).

I think the problem here is that we don't know specifically what RT was referring to, if he even recognized the (minor IMO) difference between a bra and a swimsuit top, and then each time the media repeats it they may be adding their own spin on it.

But I agree with those who have said it's not relevant as a source of moralizing about BT -- it's only relevant in terms of her last-seen description, an assessment of how vulnerable she may have been to the elements, and IMO as a potential assessment of RT psychologically, in terms of why he has emphasized it (and the beer) so strongly, in a tone that some have interpreted as victim-blaming or moralizing.

 

[Auntie Cipation]

My take on RT saying after he couldn't find BT back at their RV he went to look for her at a cave "that we were both familiar with in the area" (RT's words) in case she had gone there to explore:

I wish we knew whether "familiar with the cave" meant "we'd been there on previous trip/s" or "we noted it earlier in the day, on the outward leg of this walk"