CA CA - Barbara Thomas, 69, from Bullhead City AZ, disappeared in Mojave desert, 12 July 2019 #7

[Hair of the Dog]

I'm just wondering why he even mentioned it at all. Do you normally tell a cashier where/why you parked the way you did? Is an RV unusual enough in Needles that everyone would have been gawking at it or something?

Context is everything....

Maybe RT complained that he couldn't get in and out of the parking lot without his wife's help and he was glad he had been able to score a space on the shoulder across the street since he was just grabbing a bag of ice.

Maybe he wanted the clerk to know that his wife was in the rig waiting for the ice, to hurry the clerk along?

Maybe he was just making small talk and was feeling grateful for Barb and expressed it as "she is my right hand, couldn't get by without her in my life"

IDK

 

[happyday]

BBM:

Yeah. This. I'm wondering, too.

A lot.

I find it weird.

In fact, I find that whole conversation RT purportedly had with the cashier weird.

To me, it almost sounded like mentioning RT mentioned "his wife" just to establish with an indenpendent witness the fact that "his wife" was waiting for him in the RV.

JMO.

Lol we pretty much posted the same thing at the same time.

 

[campbellsouup]

The conversation with the gas station clerk sounds like intentional breadcrumbing of an alibi with poor execution IMO. I'm with @GordianKnot and @happyday

 

[Cherwell]

You can make it mean whatever you want it to mean.

 

[CSIDreamer]

You can make it mean whatever you want it to mean.

What are you referring to?

 

[Tillicum]

I don't find that unusual at all. When our children, friends or grandchildren call my hubby he always puts his phone on speaker.

That way we both can hear, and both of us can converse with whomever is on the phone.

Our kids do the same when we call them so their wife or husband can hear us too, and both can talk to us at the same time.

Imo, If Barbara did this it shows what she had to say or what was being said back she had nothing to hide that she didn't want him to hear.

Imo, it shows their relationship was an open, and honest one. I know many elderly couples who do the same thing.

Imoo

Here's the problem though IMO. Our opinions are a reflection of our own experiences and they all vary from person to person. The situation you explained is common to many but then you have my MIL and FIL who take and make all calls on speaker phone even if there's 20 people in the room. The simple reason is that they're very nosy people who want to know everyone else's business. And the poor soul on the other end of the call has no idea there's a captivated audience waiting breathlessly on their every word.

And then there's my ex who used speaker phone to control everything I said and to interrogate me after the call ended in order to find the 'hidden' messages I or the caller really meant instead of what we said.

I hope it's purely innocent just like your family but coming from different situations, I think some of us will react differently to this information from our VI.

 

[Cherwell]

What are you referring to?

The conversation at the gas station.
That was the subject of the foregoing posts, no? I didn't want to clog the place up with multiple quotes.

 

[CSIDreamer]

The conversation at the gas station.
That was the subject of the foregoing posts, no? I didn't want to clog the place up with multiple quotes.

Sometimes we reply to something from 5 pages back. Lol. You get a gold star for being caught up.

 

[MsBetsy]

Context is everything....

Maybe RT complained that he couldn't get in and out of the parking lot without his wife's help and he was glad he had been able to score a space on the shoulder across the street since he was just grabbing a bag of ice.

Maybe he wanted the clerk to know that his wife was in the rig waiting for the ice, to hurry the clerk along?

Maybe he was just making small talk and was feeling grateful for Barb and expressed it as "she is my right hand, couldn't get by without her in my life"

IDK

I think this is yet one more thing that can be interpreted a dozen different ways, depending on the situation.
Some people come into a store and say nothing, others make small talk about the weather, and some talk about their personal lives.

I'm not sure why he would purposely make a point that his wife was in the truck.
We already know she was in the desert because apparently there are pictures of her from that day.
How else would she have gotten there if she had not been in the truck with him? Imo

 

[Hair of the Dog]

BBM:

Respectfully snipped by me for brevity...
To me, it almost sounded like RT mentioned "his wife" just to establish with an independent witness the fact that "his wife" was waiting for him in the RV.

JMO.

BBM I just can't quite let go of that idea myself.

 

[happyday]

You can make it mean whatever you want it to mean.

Of course. That’s always true. And I agree with @HairoftheDog that context is important. We weren’t there so perhaps his statements made sense in the way he said it and other things that were said etc.

For me, going by what our VI told us (that the clerk thought he was “naggy” and that he remembered the encounter as odd b/c R.T. jogged back to the RV & hopped in after saying he needed help getting in & out of it) I do find his conversation suspicious. “Naggy” doesn’t mean friendly and chatty to me. Quite the opposite. But that’s just my feeling about it & doesn’t mean it’s correct.

 

[MsBetsy]

The conversation with the gas station clerk sounds like intentional breadcrumbing of an alibi with poor execution IMO. I'm with @GordianKnot and @happyday

Yet he has been described as being more intelligent than others may think.
Why would he claim to need his wife's help getting into the truck and then turn around and jog across the road and hop into the truck by himself?
I've seen some not so bright people keep up an act longer than that. All it takes is to be aware others can see you. Imo

 

[MsBetsy]

BBM I just can't quite let go of that idea myself.

If she wasn't in the truck, how would she have gotten to the desert?

 

[Tillicum]

Of course. That’s always true. And I agree with @HairoftheDog that context is important. We weren’t there so perhaps his statements made sense in the way he said it and other things that were said etc.

For me, going by what our VI told us (that the clerk thought he was “naggy” and that he remembered the encounter as odd b/c R.T. jogged back to the RV & hopped in after saying he needed help getting in & out of it) I do find his conversation suspicious. “Naggy” doesn’t mean friendly and chatty to me. Quite the opposite. But that’s just my feeling about it & doesn’t mean it’s correct.

So according to our VI, the gas station attendant and the worker at the kennel, Barbara was agitated and RT was naggy at the beginning of their trip. Me thinks they may have had a wee bit of a disagreement about something

 

[10ofRods]

The most common reason is that the lawyer is not being paid or there aren't funds to pay the attorney in the future. Another reason could be because the attorney doesn't practice the area of law required in the future.

Eric D. Anderson certainly practices in criminal law, but also in several other areas. I expect it's the funds/retainer issue.

It is interesting that RT retained him long enough to deal with the initial barrage of reporters (like the one from Indiana who was referred to Mr. Anderson). It's also possible that RT is more confident now that LE do not consider him a suspect. In theory, now RT has to deal directly with LE to find out how the investigation is going.

Typically, when hiring a lawyer on a non-contingency (fee) basis, the client pays, say, $5000. Then the lawyer bills against that amount (for criminal lawyers, $300 is not uncommon). When the money is spent, more money has to be given to the attorney.

In this case, all a person would have to do to find out if Anderson still represented RT is call Anderson's office with a request for information. Just about the only thing an attorney will say is whether or not they are representing the client.

 

[oceanblueeyes]

Here's the problem though IMO. Our opinions are a reflection of our own experiences and they all vary from person to person. The situation you explained is common to many but then you have my MIL and FIL who take and make all calls on speaker phone even if there's 20 people in the room. The simple reason is that they're very nosy people who want to know everyone else's business. And the poor soul on the other end of the call has no idea there's a captivated audience waiting breathlessly on their every word.

And then there's my ex who used speaker phone to control everything I said and to interrogate me after the call ended in order to find the 'hidden' messages I or the caller really meant instead of what we said.

I hope it's purely innocent just like your family but coming from different situations, I think some of us will react differently to this information from our VI.

I can understand that, my friend.

Just from my own experiences from being around many elderly people/couples because I'm one too..lol! Older people are much more open, and not nearly as secretive or private as others may be when talking on the phone. Just saying...

Neither my hubby nor I have anything to hide, and neither do any of our children, and their spouses so being on speaker doesn't bother any of us.

Now if speaker phones were in when I was married to my obsessive abusive ex husband, many moons ago now, I still wouldnt have anything to hide, but I'm sure he would have made me use the speaker on all calls I made or received.

I still dont think it was odd though for the speaker feature to be used for this couple.

I don't think it tells us anything one way or the other.

NTSY like always Tillicum.

 

[Curiousobserver]

Context is everything....

Maybe RT complained that he couldn't get in and out of the parking lot without his wife's help and he was glad he had been able to score a space on the shoulder across the street since he was just grabbing a bag of ice.

Maybe he wanted the clerk to know that his wife was in the rig waiting for the ice, to hurry the clerk along?

Maybe he was just making small talk and was feeling grateful for Barb and expressed it as "she is my right hand, couldn't get by without her in my life"

IDK

And he was a little naggy because he was parked in the road and in a hurry to get out of there before someone bashed into his new rig.

 

[Hair of the Dog]

If she wasn't in the truck, how would she have gotten to the desert?

Just to clarify, I am having trouble letting go of the idea that he made it a point to reference his wife being in the truck but of course the relevance depends on the context in which it was said and the surrounding circumstances.

MOO

 

[Tillicum]

And he was a little naggy because he was parked in the road and in a hurry to get out of there before someone bashed into his new rig.

He was parked in the road?

 

[Jazzy5980]

Eric D. Anderson certainly practices in criminal law, but also in several other areas. I expect it's the funds/retainer issue.

It is interesting that RT retained him long enough to deal with the initial barrage of reporters (like the one from Indiana who was referred to Mr. Anderson). It's also possible that RT is more confident now that LE do not consider him a suspect. In theory, now RT has to deal directly with LE to find out how the investigation is going.

Typically, when hiring a lawyer on a non-contingency (fee) basis, the client pays, say, $5000. Then the lawyer bills against that amount (for criminal lawyers, $300 is not uncommon). When the money is spent, more money has to be given to the attorney.

In this case, all a person would have to do to find out if Anderson still represented RT is call Anderson's office with a request for information. Just about the only thing an attorney will say is whether or not they are representing the client.

Attorneys cannot release any information related to representation including whether they are representing a specific individual.