CA CA - Bob Harrod, 81, Orange County, 27 July 2009 - #17

[zwiebel]

We learned about JuM changing the linens from a post she made on her community forum. Julie stated she went down to change the linens....

What doesn't make sense is why wait until he is missing to change the sheets- sheets she claimed on her community forum were a wedding gift. Why were they not given at the heated family meeting? OR prior to his disappearance? The heated family meeting was not the only time Julie saw Bob while Fontelle was in MO. Julie posted on her community forum that she and her sister were at dads helping box up her mothers things during the time Fontelle was packing in MO. Why not give him the sheets then?

Oh, gosh, she ambushed herself. That figures. She ambushed her own timeline for her husband too.

 

[zwiebel]

Well it seems the consensuses is that the 3 or 1 sister/sisters and j were involved.
So Ill leave it alone. But when the day comes, and they say that is what happened I admit Ill be amazed they were able to pull this off for all this time with so much heat and investigations going on.

My only intention commenting here was to offer something outside the box since its been 4 years. But i meant no one any discomfort. Bob WILL have his justice one day, and those responsible will be brought to trial and prosecuted.
You can walk on ice for only awhile, eventually you will fall.

I considered the housekeeper. I considered everyone and anyone I thought could have disappeared Bob.

Now, I have the very good impression I gained of the housekeeper from Disappeared, but before that, this is why I believed she had absolutely nothing to do with Bob's disappearance;

1) If she'd wanted Bob's money, it had been hers for the taking for well over a year, since Bob's first wife died. All his daughters, and his best friend, agree Bob was desperate for company and did not like being alone.

2) Bob was giving away big lumps of cash to he and his first wife's barber and her family. Would a housekeeper with an avaricious eye for the money really have allowed someone to 'move in' on her target?

3) One of Bob's daughters says he offered money to the housekeeper, and she refused it, and reported it to the daughters because she was worried. Long before he disappeared.

4) Imagining housekeeper changes her mind when it is all much too late, and decides to disappear Bob in revenge for him remarrying;
She changes her cleaning day so no-one will suspect her. Bob, she says, told her 'Jeff will be coming', but she still goes to the house anyway.

As luck will have it, she manages to arrive in a roughly 15-20min timeframe when Jeff is out on one of his numerous shopping trips. In 20 mins she manages to:
Disable/murder/persuade Bob out of the house and into - a waiting car? To hide somewhere?
Until she has finished sitting on the stoop, waiting for Jeff to return, so she has a witness to the fact she was ever at the crime scene in the first place.
Then she works all afternoon at the house, while either; her accomplice finishes disappearing Bob or
Bob stays in hiding, meets up with the housekeeper later, and then she disappears him.

Only a very reckless person indeed would have tried to disappear Bob when they knew his son-in-law was at the house that day.

If Bob actually did not tell the housekeeper Jeff would be there, then she was very, very lucky to turn up when he was out shopping, and absolutely daft to sit on the stoop waiting for him to return, after committing a crime.

She would also be very foolish to have participated in the Disappeared episode, and not have engaged an attorney ( I don't believe she has, as the attorney would have run through hot coals to stop her participating at all).

 

[zwiebel]

I've just noticed a point above doesn't make sense - if the housekeeper didn't know Jeff was in the house that day, why would she have waited on the stoop for him anyway?

 

[sreshowtime]

hmm....she must have known JeM was going to be around??
have to admit I have wondered why she was supposedly sitting there waiting

 

[zwiebel]

Well, if you'd just had to take a bus to get to work, and you needed the money and you were also worried about your employer, I guess you might hang around for ten, fifteen minutes hoping he'd show up, before alerting someone.

That's what I think the housekeeper would have done, if Jeff hadn't turned up and been so nonchalant about Bob's disappearance. He was family, for heaven's sake - if he wasn't worried, it must really have put the housekeeper in an awkward position - 'Hey, you, your father-in-law's missing! What's wrong with you, call LE!'

It would have been nice if she had done that, but impossibly brave and confident under the circumstances, I think.

If the housekeeper had disappeared Bob, I just cannot see any reason for her to have sat on that stoop for a single second. She'd have been long gone, imo.

 

[chris24]

Why wouldn't you wait?? She probably believed Bob forgot that she had changed the day. If it was me I might have waited for a while and if I had a cell phone and knew any of his friends or family's numbers called to say "Where's Bob? Is he with you and he forgot my day changed?"

If anything CL interrupted the SIL.

 

[chris24]

I've just noticed a point above doesn't make sense - if the housekeeper didn't know Jeff was in the house that day, why would she have waited on the stoop for him anyway?

I assumed she was waiting for Bob. Maybe she thought he was talking to a neighbor or on a walk, or had gotten picked up by a daughter to do some shopping? Maybe out to breakfast or lunch?

 

[zwiebel]

Yes, I think you're right. That's what she said she was doing, and that's what I believe she was doing, because it is what I would do too.

I know some of our posters - especially those who may have been involved in search and rescue, and have great knowledge and experience behind them, wouldn't hesitate for a second. It wouldn't occur to professionals to hesitate for a second.

For others though, like myself, we would hesitate and chew our nails for a while, and be a little uncertain. I think the housekeeper's reaction seems perfectly reasonable and explicable.

When I look at the behaviour of son-in-law though, it doesn't make sense at all. If he really thought Bob had just popped out to visit a neighbour, why mention it to his wife at all? She was the one who called her sisters, not him, so he must have told her something. And if he was worried, why didn't he do something before he packed up and left? At least check with the neighbours, or call Fontelle or family, to ask if they'd heard anything.

And as for him seeing a 'suspicious car' driving up and down the house for about ten minutes, but he didn't connect it at all with Bob's disappearance until his second (I think) police interview, when he suddenly remembered it........there's a really big hole in that plot, if you ask me.

 

[sreshowtime]

Poor CL had to be so confused, with JeM in there with her and no sign of Bob

 

[zwiebel]

Oh, I have an example. An old neighbour of mine - great intellectual, but very physically impaired - had a carer who visited daily. Only sometimes he wouldn't want any caring, and would yell out the window;
"Not today, thank you!"

One day he didn't answer the door (normal) but didn't yell out of the window (abnormal). So the carer came to my house asking if she could look out of my upstairs window into his bedroom window, just to see if he was okay. With my birdwatching binoculars ( really, I have them just for birds and small critters) we could see he was in bed and just not responding.

So then she called emergency and he had been taken ill - but was soon back to his normal grumpy, but very clever, self. I guess her 'hesitation' took ten minutes and maybe could have meant life or death, but that's just what well-meaning people do in emergencies. Faff around a little.

What they do not do is wait from 11am until 9pm and then get someone thousands of miles away to call emergency. But that is what Bob's daughter Julie did, the wife of son-in-law, the last known person to see Bob alive. Why she did that is a question she and her husband have yet to answer.

'Daddy's missing." Youngest daughter JuM called and told Fontelle.

'Right. So how come you're telling me here in Missouri and not police there in California?' is what I would have said when Julie called, but I don't think Fontelle was quite aware of what she was dealing with then, otherwise I am sure she would have asked that too.

 

[zwiebel]

O/T
The small critters I watch here are squirrels and something that causes havoc here that was introduced from the USA. I don't complain, but all the veg growers do. They call it a 'washbear' because it apparently washes the veg in the river before it eats it. I don't care. It can share my veg anytime. - it's cute.

 

[Opie]

More O/T - Do you have a picture of the washbear? (I'm wondering about raccoons, groundhogs.)

 

[sreshowtime]

I guess all cylinders weren't firing- so let me see if I get this- how it supposedly went-

JeM had said Bob was maybe walking or at a neighbors...then CL does her thing and then leaves, and then at some point supposedly JeM just leaves with no wondering where the sam hill Bob has been all that time??? Like oh well??

Now I do recall something about someone called for a welfare check by LE later that evening...... and yet none of Bob's family, that supposedly had keys came to check themselves first?? Didn't the grandson live very near by?

 

[sreshowtime]

wash bear-lol- sounds raccoon ish, they like to wash their food

 

[Grainne Dhu]

Well it seems the consensuses is that the 3 or 1 sister/sisters and j were involved.
So Ill leave it alone. But when the day comes, and they say that is what happened I admit Ill be amazed they were able to pull this off for all this time with so much heat and investigations going on.

My only intention commenting here was to offer something outside the box since its been 4 years. But i meant no one any discomfort. Bob WILL have his justice one day, and those responsible will be brought to trial and prosecuted.
You can walk on ice for only awhile, eventually you will fall.

I hope it didn't feel like I was piling on your posts because that was not my intent at all. Over the years, some of us have discussed this case from so many angles and possibilities that we have the pros and cons of many different theories already established in our minds.

Sometimes I think that Bob's disappearance may be one of those "everyone knows but no one talks about it" family sorts of things. Like the way, not so long ago, no one would really talk about how Aunt Jane's "premature" baby was 6 pounds and perfectly healthy at birth, particularly for a preemie of 7 months gestation (she got pregnant on her honeymoon, you see...).

 

[believe09]

Poor CL had to be so confused, with JeM in there with her and no sign of Bob

to me, and this is jmvho, it seemed that she thought he was dead in the house somewhere, specifically upstairs. She thought Jeff had found "something" upstairs in the bedroom because he took so long.

Bob was of advanced years. She told him she was coming and there was no key in the mailbox. Jeff took a long time upstairs...I think the conclusion was a reasonable one.

That was her go to place-that he was dead or perhaps hurt inside of the house. She was worried. She had no key.

 

[sreshowtime]

^ yeah that is why I wonder if she looked under the bed(s), or closets...or in the bathtub???
egads I gave myself shiver

I wonder what exactly were her tasks & what she did do that day in particular

 

[believe09]

^ yeah that is why I wonder if she looked under the bed(s), or closets...or in the bathtub???
egads I gave myself shiver

I wonder what exactly were her tasks & what she did do that day in particular

I think she probably looked everywhere. And I think she is a very strong material witness. Again, jmo.

 

[Grainne Dhu]

^ yeah that is why I wonder if she looked under the bed(s), or closets...or in the bathtub???
egads I gave myself shiver

I wonder what exactly were her tasks & what she did do that day in particular

Just the facts that she was scheduled to be there for three hours and we have a good idea as to the size of Bob's house gives us a clue as to what she probably did.

My guess would be that she ran loads of laundry, vacuumed all the carpeted rooms that were in regular use, mopped any hard surface floors, changed Bob's bed linens, cleaned the toilet(s), wiped down any bathtub or shower Bob used regularly, wiped down all counter surfaces in the bathrooms and kitchen, did some light straightening up (putting things into their usual places), removed obvious dust and may have done any dishes that had accumulated.

That's a good three hours for someone who is a brisk worker looking after a home with one or two residents. She was familiar with the house and Bob's habits plus she was there weekly, so things didn't accumulate beyond a week.

It's also possible that when Bob had more involved cleaning tasks (such as washing windows or doing the walls), he mentioned them in advance and she scheduled more time on an as-needed basis to do them.

So I think she probably vacuumed under the bed because if you let dust accumulate under there, the bedroom starts to smell not quite fresh. She probably didn't look into every closet, particularly the ones in rooms that were not in regular use. I'd be surprised if she didn't wipe down the bathtub/shower area because that's another one of those chores that goes fast and easy if it is hit up once a week but starts to get grungy and harder/longer to clean if only done once a month.

How does that sound to anyone else?

ETA: the above would not be so much to do that she wouldn't have time to do a little chatting with Bob while she did the quiet tasks and it sounds like she probably did have such a relationship with him.
Since he had become socially isolated, she may well have been an important social contact for him.

 

[bourne]

I considered the housekeeper. I considered everyone and anyone I thought could have disappeared Bob.

Now, I have the very good impression I gained of the housekeeper from Disappeared, but before that, this is why I believed she had absolutely nothing to do with Bob's disappearance;

1) If she'd wanted Bob's money, it had been hers for the taking for well over a year, since Bob's first wife died. All his daughters, and his best friend, agree Bob was desperate for company and did not like being alone.

2) Bob was giving away big lumps of cash to he and his first wife's barber and her family. Would a housekeeper with an avaricious eye for the money really have allowed someone to 'move in' on her target?

3) One of Bob's daughters says he offered money to the housekeeper, and she refused it, and reported it to the daughters because she was worried. Long before he disappeared.

4) Imagining housekeeper changes her mind when it is all much too late, and decides to disappear Bob in revenge for him remarrying;
She changes her cleaning day so no-one will suspect her. Bob, she says, told her 'Jeff will be coming', but she still goes to the house anyway.

As luck will have it, she manages to arrive in a roughly 15-20min timeframe when Jeff is out on one of his numerous shopping trips. In 20 mins she manages to:
Disable/murder/persuade Bob out of the house and into - a waiting car? To hide somewhere?
Until she has finished sitting on the stoop, waiting for Jeff to return, so she has a witness to the fact she was ever at the crime scene in the first place.
Then she works all afternoon at the house, while either; her accomplice finishes disappearing Bob or
Bob stays in hiding, meets up with the housekeeper later, and then she disappears him.

Only a very reckless person indeed would have tried to disappear Bob when they knew his son-in-law was at the house that day.

If Bob actually did not tell the housekeeper Jeff would be there, then she was very, very lucky to turn up when he was out shopping, and absolutely daft to sit on the stoop waiting for him to return, after committing a crime.

She would also be very foolish to have participated in the Disappeared episode, and not have engaged an attorney ( I don't believe she has, as the attorney would have run through hot coals to stop her participating at all).

Good points. I would add not only does CL have NO motive but there was absolutely no reason for her to wait around for SOMEONE to show up at Bob's home had she been Bob's murderer/kidnapper. That JeM had showed up while she sat on steps to wait for Bob was a fortuitous fact.

No one knew CL was coming to clean Bob's home. She didn't even know JeM was going to be there that day. She also changed her cleaning date so no one would have expected her there that day Bob disappeared. Had she been Bob's killer/abductor, she could (and likely would) have left Bob's home and none would be the wiser.

Also, she was not physically capable of hiding Bob's body on her own. As others said, Bob was a very tall man. Had the CL been the culprit in Bob's disappearance, she would have definitely had to have someone else help her "disappear" Bob.

~~~~~
On another note, glad everyone here is still searching for Bob