Found Deceased CO - Suzanne Morphew, 49, did not return from bike ride, Chaffee County, 10 May 2020 #15

[GordianKnot]

The Get me money page was made on the 13th and find Suzanne Morphew on the 14th. Indeed @Moonchime it does not make sense. Imo

Oh, but it does.

From my vantage point, it makes all kinds of sense.

The truth is sometimes ugly.

JMO.

 

[BeckyF]

This is beyond grotesque.

It's terribly, terribly wrong.

The Find SM page hasn't been updated since what, May 17th???

If anyone was ever in doubt about what this case is all about, just look at how quickly that Gimme $$$ page was set up. I want to know exactly how much of his own precious money BM contributed toward this private "search."

I made the mistake of checking out that Gimme page.

I'm now about to vent a spleen.
It makes me positively sick to my stomach to see good-hearted, well-intentioned people being taken advantage of this way.
How many more innocent victims is this perp going to claim?

Because, yes, I do consider the Gimme Your Money contributors victims, as well.

So. Much. Manipulation.

JMO.

Completely agree. It should be shut down.

 

[Tate123]

I don’t know if the following post will help my fellow Websleuths members with regards to how a major investigation is run . I have tentatively mentioned this in a previous post but I have had quite a few questions privately in response so I decided to tidy up and expand my previous post ...
Here goes ....

With any major enquiry wether that be a murder / Homicide or a missing person , a dedicated team of detectives is set up with a SIO ( senior investigative officer) as the lead .
Certainly in the UK, a policy book is commenced and everything that you know , everything that subsequently happens, every decision taken and every action followed up, is written into the policy book . Every decision made by the SIO and the justification behind such a decision, has to be written into the policy book .
I was responsible for leading a number of murder investigations and Missing persons investigations and I would lead teams of detectives and forensic experts etc
A twice daily briefing would be held where everyone has an input as to what has happened that day , any evidence found , any witnesses spoken to etc and a summary of the day’s investigation would be written up by the SIO.
Each investigation has a strategy and that strategy is followed from the Murder and Major Crime investigations Manual .
So at the start of the investigation, there will be various strategies drawn up to encompass all of the different strands of the Investigation.
They are :
1.Victim - what do we know ?
2. Suspect - Do we have any?
3. Circumstances of last seen
4. Intelligence - What do we know ? What can we find out?
5. Cell phone analysis
6. Forensics - what do we have ? How are they to be prioritised? Submissions to laboratory and cost?
DNA evidence
Fingerprints
7. Search parameters and recovery of evidence to include continuity of retrieval
8. CCtv - What’s available ? How do we prioritise it?
9. Cell Phones - Victims, Suspect’s, Family etc
10. Family History
11. Actions - those raised that need investigation and those that are considered but not deemed to take the investigation further ( but it still all needs recording )
12. Forensic mapping
13. Witnesses
14. Interviews - suspect/s?
15. Exhibits/Property Officer - to record everything brought into the enquiry and the continuity of that evidence
16. File of evidence - Who will create the file of evidence for submission to CPS/DA
17. Warrants - allocated officer to swear all warrants
18. Disclosure - Officer allocated to start a disclosure record ( court process )
19. Family liaison officer - Officer allocate to be the go between for the family and SIO
20. Media strategy - controlled release of information to press
I could go on but I think that you get the drift that any investigation of this type is massive and takes time and has to be that way to get it right so that by the time it gets to the Court process, there’s no room for doubt or for weaknesses in the investigation to allow the accused to get off on a technicality or procedural issue .
Then if there is a suspect you need to start thinking of who will do the suspect interview and the downstream monitoring and alibi checks .
And on top of all that, the biggest and most onerous task besides cell phone evidence retrieval, is CCTV ! And that is a biggie ... it takes Detectives hours upon hours to go through and watch CCTV to enable them to ascertain if there is anything of evidential value on each individual recording and that can be CCTV from the street , from a shop, car park, toll booth , buildings, churches , Public CCTV along a route and individual CCTV in peoples driveways or on their mobile phones etc
You start to get the idea of just how much work is involved in a major investigation and that’s before you go to a judge to swear out warrants and arrest the perpetrator. Once an arrest takes place, you then have interviews and downstream monitoring in real time of the interviews and then liaison with the CPS in UK and DA/attorney general I think maybe in the USA? And then putting the whole file of evidence together and ensuring full disclosure to the defence ... it’s massive workloads and it goes on and on ...
Cell phone data is also massive because of pings of location and subsequent searches and data dumps of all cell phones active within a specific MAST area and tracing who those numbers belong to and ascertain what they were doing in the area. And I can tell you that the evidence from one cell phone alone can run into thousands of pages for my detectives to read through and decipher what, If anything, is relevant to the case . So can you imagine when you have numerous people involved in an investigation, wether it to be rule them in or out or as an alibi or a victim, just how onerous this task is? And it is just one small part of the investigation.

Also the CCTV , people ask why now , 1 month later ? Well you don’t know what evidence that LE already have and if they had nothing else then the individual private residence CCTV would have been done immediately but it is a massive task and takes officers hours and hours to sit and watch every piece of CCTV that comes into the enquiry so it’s now easier to say , keep hold of your own individual residential CCTV and if you think that you have something of importance then let us know immediately otherwise we will get round to looking at it when we can because EVERYTHING has to be prioritised.

In the UK we have HOLMES ( home office Major enquires system ) and everything is entered into the system and looked at by three officers working with admin staff and any actions deemed necessary as a result of those 3 officers painstakingly going through every piece of information, item, cell phone number, cctv , search recovery evidence etc and allocating actions ( work ) to officers to compete before they are given another action . And some officers are individually given specific roles for example CCTV, Cell phones, Intelligence, Statement takers , Family liaison .

So this gives you an idea of just what is going on behind the scenes .
And the information released has to be protected and provenanced to ensure accuracy and the SIO doesn’t want information released unless absolutely necessary because the perpetrator may slip up and say something that hasn’t yet been released to the public and that then becomes dynamite to the investigation.
I hope this helps you all to understand the process , procedures and time for any major investigation to bear fruit .

Regarding technology- People do not realise just how much electronic tracking there is in our everyday lives and the footprint that we leave . Let’s take for example the obvious ones like public CCTV and residential / business CCTV and street CCTV , shop and bank and fuel CCTV, road surveillance CCTV to monitor traffic flow and speed camera CCTV etc The list is endless! Then there are tracking devices on the car if there is one , then there is the cell phone and text message/social media footprints alongside Pings
But - there are some footprints that we either don’t think about or are not aware of for example I own a luxury ( ish ) brand of car and I don’t have a key , I have a black plastic fob that I carry around which activates the car but without inserting it anywhere within my car console. Now when my car has a problem and I go to the dealership, this fob is inserted into their computer and it tell you every journey I have made and the status of the car throughout that journey, if the fuels low , if the seatbelt warning is activated, if any warning lights come on , if tyre pressure is low etc
I was gobsmacked just how much information that could be obtained and to be quite honest, I am a law abiding citizen but it scared even me , just how much we are being monitored. Then there is ANPR both mobile and static and lets not forget that it’s not only your cell phone that can be pinged and calls traced but LE can go to any mast and triangulate all mobile cell phones that ping off a particular mast at a given time and they can cross reference the data from this to any of the contacts in your phone and see if there are any patterns . So just from this you can start to see how many avenues are open for LE to look at. And then we have instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp and snapchat and Twitter and email and fit bits and apple watches and you start to get my drift .....
Edited to add: We have family Life 360 so that we can see where our children are and vice versa and my DH decided to turn his location permissions off
BUT although it does not now tell me his location in words, it does show him driving down the various roads and highways when he’s out and about. So another form of surveillance and if somebody was going to commit a heinous crime, they cannot possibly erase all their electronic footprints

Then we have Amazon Alexa and Smart devices ...
The list is endless!


◦

Thank you. It's nice to get an inside look into the process.

 

[Tate123]

Oh, but it does.

From my vantage point, it makes all kinds of sense.

The truth is sometimes ugly.

JMO.

To be honest I believe that the nephew (TN) was well intentioned in initially setting up the page. In his interview you could feel his pain. It seemed to me that after time, he saw the writing on the wall and backed off. IMO

 

[branmuffin]

I don’t know if the following post will help my fellow Websleuths members with regards to how a major investigation is run . I have tentatively mentioned this in a previous post but I have had quite a few questions privately in response so I decided to tidy up and expand my previous post ...
Here goes ....

With any major enquiry wether that be a murder / Homicide or a missing person , a dedicated team of detectives is set up with a SIO ( senior investigative officer) as the lead .
Certainly in the UK, a policy book is commenced and everything that you know , everything that subsequently happens, every decision taken and every action followed up, is written into the policy book . Every decision made by the SIO and the justification behind such a decision, has to be written into the policy book .
I was responsible for leading a number of murder investigations and Missing persons investigations and I would lead teams of detectives and forensic experts etc
A twice daily briefing would be held where everyone has an input as to what has happened that day , any evidence found , any witnesses spoken to etc and a summary of the day’s investigation would be written up by the SIO.
Each investigation has a strategy and that strategy is followed from the Murder and Major Crime investigations Manual .
So at the start of the investigation, there will be various strategies drawn up to encompass all of the different strands of the Investigation.
They are :
1.Victim - what do we know ?
2. Suspect - Do we have any?
3. Circumstances of last seen
4. Intelligence - What do we know ? What can we find out?
5. Cell phone analysis
6. Forensics - what do we have ? How are they to be prioritised? Submissions to laboratory and cost?
DNA evidence
Fingerprints
7. Search parameters and recovery of evidence to include continuity of retrieval
8. CCtv - What’s available ? How do we prioritise it?
9. Cell Phones - Victims, Suspect’s, Family etc
10. Family History
11. Actions - those raised that need investigation and those that are considered but not deemed to take the investigation further ( but it still all needs recording )
12. Forensic mapping
13. Witnesses
14. Interviews - suspect/s?
15. Exhibits/Property Officer - to record everything brought into the enquiry and the continuity of that evidence
16. File of evidence - Who will create the file of evidence for submission to CPS/DA
17. Warrants - allocated officer to swear all warrants
18. Disclosure - Officer allocated to start a disclosure record ( court process )
19. Family liaison officer - Officer allocate to be the go between for the family and SIO
20. Media strategy - controlled release of information to press
I could go on but I think that you get the drift that any investigation of this type is massive and takes time and has to be that way to get it right so that by the time it gets to the Court process, there’s no room for doubt or for weaknesses in the investigation to allow the accused to get off on a technicality or procedural issue .
Then if there is a suspect you need to start thinking of who will do the suspect interview and the downstream monitoring and alibi checks .
And on top of all that, the biggest and most onerous task besides cell phone evidence retrieval, is CCTV ! And that is a biggie ... it takes Detectives hours upon hours to go through and watch CCTV to enable them to ascertain if there is anything of evidential value on each individual recording and that can be CCTV from the street , from a shop, car park, toll booth , buildings, churches , Public CCTV along a route and individual CCTV in peoples driveways or on their mobile phones etc
You start to get the idea of just how much work is involved in a major investigation and that’s before you go to a judge to swear out warrants and arrest the perpetrator. Once an arrest takes place, you then have interviews and downstream monitoring in real time of the interviews and then liaison with the CPS in UK and DA/attorney general I think maybe in the USA? And then putting the whole file of evidence together and ensuring full disclosure to the defence ... it’s massive workloads and it goes on and on ...
Cell phone data is also massive because of pings of location and subsequent searches and data dumps of all cell phones active within a specific MAST area and tracing who those numbers belong to and ascertain what they were doing in the area. And I can tell you that the evidence from one cell phone alone can run into thousands of pages for my detectives to read through and decipher what, If anything, is relevant to the case . So can you imagine when you have numerous people involved in an investigation, wether it to be rule them in or out or as an alibi or a victim, just how onerous this task is? And it is just one small part of the investigation.

Also the CCTV , people ask why now , 1 month later ? Well you don’t know what evidence that LE already have and if they had nothing else then the individual private residence CCTV would have been done immediately but it is a massive task and takes officers hours and hours to sit and watch every piece of CCTV that comes into the enquiry so it’s now easier to say , keep hold of your own individual residential CCTV and if you think that you have something of importance then let us know immediately otherwise we will get round to looking at it when we can because EVERYTHING has to be prioritised.

In the UK we have HOLMES ( home office Major enquires system ) and everything is entered into the system and looked at by three officers working with admin staff and any actions deemed necessary as a result of those 3 officers painstakingly going through every piece of information, item, cell phone number, cctv , search recovery evidence etc and allocating actions ( work ) to officers to compete before they are given another action . And some officers are individually given specific roles for example CCTV, Cell phones, Intelligence, Statement takers , Family liaison .

So this gives you an idea of just what is going on behind the scenes .
And the information released has to be protected and provenanced to ensure accuracy and the SIO doesn’t want information released unless absolutely necessary because the perpetrator may slip up and say something that hasn’t yet been released to the public and that then becomes dynamite to the investigation.
I hope this helps you all to understand the process , procedures and time for any major investigation to bear fruit .

Regarding technology- People do not realise just how much electronic tracking there is in our everyday lives and the footprint that we leave . Let’s take for example the obvious ones like public CCTV and residential / business CCTV and street CCTV , shop and bank and fuel CCTV, road surveillance CCTV to monitor traffic flow and speed camera CCTV etc The list is endless! Then there are tracking devices on the car if there is one , then there is the cell phone and text message/social media footprints alongside Pings
But - there are some footprints that we either don’t think about or are not aware of for example I own a luxury ( ish ) brand of car and I don’t have a key , I have a black plastic fob that I carry around which activates the car but without inserting it anywhere within my car console. Now when my car has a problem and I go to the dealership, this fob is inserted into their computer and it tell you every journey I have made and the status of the car throughout that journey, if the fuels low , if the seatbelt warning is activated, if any warning lights come on , if tyre pressure is low etc
I was gobsmacked just how much information that could be obtained and to be quite honest, I am a law abiding citizen but it scared even me , just how much we are being monitored. Then there is ANPR both mobile and static and lets not forget that it’s not only your cell phone that can be pinged and calls traced but LE can go to any mast and triangulate all mobile cell phones that ping off a particular mast at a given time and they can cross reference the data from this to any of the contacts in your phone and see if there are any patterns . So just from this you can start to see how many avenues are open for LE to look at. And then we have instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp and snapchat and Twitter and email and fit bits and apple watches and you start to get my drift .....
Edited to add: We have family Life 360 so that we can see where our children are and vice versa and my DH decided to turn his location permissions off
BUT although it does not now tell me his location in words, it does show him driving down the various roads and highways when he’s out and about. So another form of surveillance and if somebody was going to commit a heinous crime, they cannot possibly erase all their electronic footprints

Then we have Amazon Alexa and Smart devices ...
The list is endless!


◦

Thank you so much for that overview. It really hits home the level of dedication, expertise and discipline it takes to focus on an active investigation. And that's just one!

 

[oviedo]

What a powerful read. It gives us hope that the CBI is searching diligently for SM. They're not going to give up until they have found out what's happened to SM and the person responsible for her disappearance. MOO

My thoughts exactly - I’ve made up a little parallel investigation for SM based on what they’ve done in Kelseys case and gannons plus what I’ve learned in Jennifer’s - I’ve got a pretty good idea of where they are now
JMO

 

[Madeleine74]

You’re welcome
It took me a while and my fingers got a little tired so it may not be as succinct and professional as I would normally write but I think it gives you all an overview of just what it entails and what LE May be doing behind the scenes when some people believe them to be either doing nothing or having nothing to go on. I have said it before and I will say it again, none of us know what LE May have in evidential terms or what they know, unless we are involved in this particular case, which we are not.

Good stuff!

It's too bad the belief LE is doing nothing or has nothing persists, when the reality is LE isn't disclosing investigation details or evidence they have found. The sentiment "if I don't see it, it must not exist" is a common logical fallacy.

 

[oviedo]

I don’t know if the following post will help my fellow Websleuths members with regards to how a major investigation is run . I have tentatively mentioned this in a previous post but I have had quite a few questions privately in response so I decided to tidy up and expand my previous post ...
Here goes ....

With any major enquiry wether that be a murder / Homicide or a missing person , a dedicated team of detectives is set up with a SIO ( senior investigative officer) as the lead .
Certainly in the UK, a policy book is commenced and everything that you know , everything that subsequently happens, every decision taken and every action followed up, is written into the policy book . Every decision made by the SIO and the justification behind such a decision, has to be written into the policy book .
I was responsible for leading a number of murder investigations and Missing persons investigations and I would lead teams of detectives and forensic experts etc
A twice daily briefing would be held where everyone has an input as to what has happened that day , any evidence found , any witnesses spoken to etc and a summary of the day’s investigation would be written up by the SIO.
Each investigation has a strategy and that strategy is followed from the Murder and Major Crime investigations Manual .
So at the start of the investigation, there will be various strategies drawn up to encompass all of the different strands of the Investigation.
They are :
1.Victim - what do we know ?
2. Suspect - Do we have any?
3. Circumstances of last seen
4. Intelligence - What do we know ? What can we find out?
5. Cell phone analysis
6. Forensics - what do we have ? How are they to be prioritised? Submissions to laboratory and cost?
DNA evidence
Fingerprints
7. Search parameters and recovery of evidence to include continuity of retrieval
8. CCtv - What’s available ? How do we prioritise it?
9. Cell Phones - Victims, Suspect’s, Family etc
10. Family History
11. Actions - those raised that need investigation and those that are considered but not deemed to take the investigation further ( but it still all needs recording )
12. Forensic mapping
13. Witnesses
14. Interviews - suspect/s?
15. Exhibits/Property Officer - to record everything brought into the enquiry and the continuity of that evidence
16. File of evidence - Who will create the file of evidence for submission to CPS/DA
17. Warrants - allocated officer to swear all warrants
18. Disclosure - Officer allocated to start a disclosure record ( court process )
19. Family liaison officer - Officer allocate to be the go between for the family and SIO
20. Media strategy - controlled release of information to press
I could go on but I think that you get the drift that any investigation of this type is massive and takes time and has to be that way to get it right so that by the time it gets to the Court process, there’s no room for doubt or for weaknesses in the investigation to allow the accused to get off on a technicality or procedural issue .
Then if there is a suspect you need to start thinking of who will do the suspect interview and the downstream monitoring and alibi checks .
And on top of all that, the biggest and most onerous task besides cell phone evidence retrieval, is CCTV ! And that is a biggie ... it takes Detectives hours upon hours to go through and watch CCTV to enable them to ascertain if there is anything of evidential value on each individual recording and that can be CCTV from the street , from a shop, car park, toll booth , buildings, churches , Public CCTV along a route and individual CCTV in peoples driveways or on their mobile phones etc
You start to get the idea of just how much work is involved in a major investigation and that’s before you go to a judge to swear out warrants and arrest the perpetrator. Once an arrest takes place, you then have interviews and downstream monitoring in real time of the interviews and then liaison with the CPS in UK and DA/attorney general I think maybe in the USA? And then putting the whole file of evidence together and ensuring full disclosure to the defence ... it’s massive workloads and it goes on and on ...
Cell phone data is also massive because of pings of location and subsequent searches and data dumps of all cell phones active within a specific MAST area and tracing who those numbers belong to and ascertain what they were doing in the area. And I can tell you that the evidence from one cell phone alone can run into thousands of pages for my detectives to read through and decipher what, If anything, is relevant to the case . So can you imagine when you have numerous people involved in an investigation, wether it to be rule them in or out or as an alibi or a victim, just how onerous this task is? And it is just one small part of the investigation.

Also the CCTV , people ask why now , 1 month later ? Well you don’t know what evidence that LE already have and if they had nothing else then the individual private residence CCTV would have been done immediately but it is a massive task and takes officers hours and hours to sit and watch every piece of CCTV that comes into the enquiry so it’s now easier to say , keep hold of your own individual residential CCTV and if you think that you have something of importance then let us know immediately otherwise we will get round to looking at it when we can because EVERYTHING has to be prioritised.

In the UK we have HOLMES ( home office Major enquires system ) and everything is entered into the system and looked at by three officers working with admin staff and any actions deemed necessary as a result of those 3 officers painstakingly going through every piece of information, item, cell phone number, cctv , search recovery evidence etc and allocating actions ( work ) to officers to compete before they are given another action . And some officers are individually given specific roles for example CCTV, Cell phones, Intelligence, Statement takers , Family liaison .

So this gives you an idea of just what is going on behind the scenes .
And the information released has to be protected and provenanced to ensure accuracy and the SIO doesn’t want information released unless absolutely necessary because the perpetrator may slip up and say something that hasn’t yet been released to the public and that then becomes dynamite to the investigation.
I hope this helps you all to understand the process , procedures and time for any major investigation to bear fruit .

Regarding technology- People do not realise just how much electronic tracking there is in our everyday lives and the footprint that we leave . Let’s take for example the obvious ones like public CCTV and residential / business CCTV and street CCTV , shop and bank and fuel CCTV, road surveillance CCTV to monitor traffic flow and speed camera CCTV etc The list is endless! Then there are tracking devices on the car if there is one , then there is the cell phone and text message/social media footprints alongside Pings
But - there are some footprints that we either don’t think about or are not aware of for example I own a luxury ( ish ) brand of car and I don’t have a key , I have a black plastic fob that I carry around which activates the car but without inserting it anywhere within my car console. Now when my car has a problem and I go to the dealership, this fob is inserted into their computer and it tell you every journey I have made and the status of the car throughout that journey, if the fuels low , if the seatbelt warning is activated, if any warning lights come on , if tyre pressure is low etc
I was gobsmacked just how much information that could be obtained and to be quite honest, I am a law abiding citizen but it scared even me , just how much we are being monitored. Then there is ANPR both mobile and static and lets not forget that it’s not only your cell phone that can be pinged and calls traced but LE can go to any mast and triangulate all mobile cell phones that ping off a particular mast at a given time and they can cross reference the data from this to any of the contacts in your phone and see if there are any patterns . So just from this you can start to see how many avenues are open for LE to look at. And then we have instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp and snapchat and Twitter and email and fit bits and apple watches and you start to get my drift .....
Edited to add: We have family Life 360 so that we can see where our children are and vice versa and my DH decided to turn his location permissions off
BUT although it does not now tell me his location in words, it does show him driving down the various roads and highways when he’s out and about. So another form of surveillance and if somebody was going to commit a heinous crime, they cannot possibly erase all their electronic footprints

Then we have Amazon Alexa and Smart devices ...
The list is endless!


◦

Thank you! I meant to save your prior post and @riolove77 regarding the investigation itself and then the prosecutor and I got sidetracked but this time I’ve got it- many thanks !

 

[Lilypad13]

Yes. The gun box body found in the Ninnescah River is SNG. I believe SS is still missing. RIP, SNG...

Such an evil disrespectful thing to throw someone away like trash to rot in the water. I feel awful for all these people and their loved ones. At least their families will have closure and a proper funeral. To never know and always be wondering and looking would be even worse hell.

 

[Madeleine74]

The 'Give Me Some Money' page is getting more updates then the find Suzanne Morphew page on Facebook. Just does not feel right. Imo

I think it's time to accept that particular FB page is not going to be active and updated for probably a variety of reasons, but most specifically the nephew who created it is not saying anything about the case and as the owner of the page there's no one else who will be updating it. Better off pretending that page doesn't exist.

 

[Madeleine74]

Thank you for this thoughtful post. That's one of the weirdest things about the timing of SM's disappearance. Not only did it occur that she was alone on Mother's Day, but the entire mystery occurred during a worldwide Pandemic. We were all on stay at home orders. It makes SM's disappearance all the more perplexing. MOO

Respectfully, it's possible her demise occurred 1 or more days prior to Mother's Day. The timing isn't about Covid or Mother's Day, IMO, it could have been something sudden -or- something pre-planned.

 

[TKG]

My thoughts exactly - I’ve made up a little parallel investigation for SM based on what they’ve done in Kelseys case and gannons plus what I’ve learned in Jennifer’s - I’ve got a pretty good idea of where they are now
JMO

I would love to read your idea of where they are now!

 

[10ofRods]

You’re welcome
It took me a while and my fingers got a little tired so it may not be as succinct and professional as I would normally write but I think it gives you all an overview of just what it entails and what LE May be doing behind the scenes when some people believe them to be either doing nothing or having nothing to go on. I have said it before and I will say it again, none of us know what LE May have in evidential terms or what they know, unless we are involved in this particular case, which we are not.

I want to add my thanks. And yes, it will be helpful if you can repeat some of it as needed.

It could be a very winding road, this one.

 

[Fireflize]

My thoughts exactly - I’ve made up a little parallel investigation for SM based on what they’ve done in Kelseys case and gannons plus what I’ve learned in Jennifer’s - I’ve got a pretty good idea of where they are now
JMO

I so enjoy reading the discussions here, but without the reassurance, explanation and opinions of veteran sleuthers like yourself, I'd be a wreck. Many thanks to all who contribute thoughts and theories.

 

[Ontario Mom]

JMO
All the different changes in the "Give Me Some Money" website has me suspicious just from the fact it has been changed so often.

I dont usually pay much attention to those sites during cases other than to just know they exist but it sure sounds like this particular one has had a lot of changes in who is part of the site and who will ultimately be getting funds from it. That alone has my eyebrows raised.

I mean wouldnt they normally be setup right from the start for a single defined purpose and have a single beneficiary in mind for the funds. If so, then why is this particular one needing all these changes. It seems unusual to me.

It may be nothing but then again at least for now I am putting that in the "Hmmmmm" category along with some other "Hmmmmm's" about this case.

I don't usually pat attention to the FundMoneyMe stuff either.
The only reason I am in this one, is because there's plenty of attention being payed to that account, while the public FIND page for SM is being pitifully neglected, day after day.
No updates, no identifying items the public might be looking for, no planned prayer vigils (you can even do that while social distancing), no coordinated volunteer searches literally no activity at all that indicates the people running it still believe she's "missing", or that we always see on FIND pages where their families are all in, to help bring them home.
Either they believe she's deceased and the urgency to find her isn't as compelling as it was in the beginning, or they're just more concerned about the free cash account, and making sure all the right names are attached in all the right places.
Or, shoot, maybe LE has contacted whoever's running the find page and told them to just stand down. I guess that's possible too.
Who knows. Nothing about this case rings true, for a missing person's case.
It reeks of a homicide investigation, all the way.
I mean, you don't normally dig up a home's concrete foundation, in search of a living person.

jmo

 

[Truecolors]

I don’t know if the following post will help my fellow Websleuths members with regards to how a major investigation is run . I have tentatively mentioned this in a previous post but I have had quite a few questions privately in response so I decided to tidy up and expand my previous post ...
Here goes ....

With any major enquiry wether that be a murder / Homicide or a missing person , a dedicated team of detectives is set up with a SIO ( senior investigative officer) as the lead .
Certainly in the UK, a policy book is commenced and everything that you know , everything that subsequently happens, every decision taken and every action followed up, is written into the policy book . Every decision made by the SIO and the justification behind such a decision, has to be written into the policy book .
I was responsible for leading a number of murder investigations and Missing persons investigations and I would lead teams of detectives and forensic experts etc
A twice daily briefing would be held where everyone has an input as to what has happened that day , any evidence found , any witnesses spoken to etc and a summary of the day’s investigation would be written up by the SIO.
Each investigation has a strategy and that strategy is followed from the Murder and Major Crime investigations Manual .
So at the start of the investigation, there will be various strategies drawn up to encompass all of the different strands of the Investigation.
They are :
1.Victim - what do we know ?
2. Suspect - Do we have any?
3. Circumstances of last seen
4. Intelligence - What do we know ? What can we find out?
5. Cell phone analysis
6. Forensics - what do we have ? How are they to be prioritised? Submissions to laboratory and cost?
DNA evidence
Fingerprints
7. Search parameters and recovery of evidence to include continuity of retrieval
8. CCtv - What’s available ? How do we prioritise it?
9. Cell Phones - Victims, Suspect’s, Family etc
10. Family History
11. Actions - those raised that need investigation and those that are considered but not deemed to take the investigation further ( but it still all needs recording )
12. Forensic mapping
13. Witnesses
14. Interviews - suspect/s?
15. Exhibits/Property Officer - to record everything brought into the enquiry and the continuity of that evidence
16. File of evidence - Who will create the file of evidence for submission to CPS/DA
17. Warrants - allocated officer to swear all warrants
18. Disclosure - Officer allocated to start a disclosure record ( court process )
19. Family liaison officer - Officer allocate to be the go between for the family and SIO
20. Media strategy - controlled release of information to press
I could go on but I think that you get the drift that any investigation of this type is massive and takes time and has to be that way to get it right so that by the time it gets to the Court process, there’s no room for doubt or for weaknesses in the investigation to allow the accused to get off on a technicality or procedural issue .
Then if there is a suspect you need to start thinking of who will do the suspect interview and the downstream monitoring and alibi checks .
And on top of all that, the biggest and most onerous task besides cell phone evidence retrieval, is CCTV ! And that is a biggie ... it takes Detectives hours upon hours to go through and watch CCTV to enable them to ascertain if there is anything of evidential value on each individual recording and that can be CCTV from the street , from a shop, car park, toll booth , buildings, churches , Public CCTV along a route and individual CCTV in peoples driveways or on their mobile phones etc
You start to get the idea of just how much work is involved in a major investigation and that’s before you go to a judge to swear out warrants and arrest the perpetrator. Once an arrest takes place, you then have interviews and downstream monitoring in real time of the interviews and then liaison with the CPS in UK and DA/attorney general I think maybe in the USA? And then putting the whole file of evidence together and ensuring full disclosure to the defence ... it’s massive workloads and it goes on and on ...
Cell phone data is also massive because of pings of location and subsequent searches and data dumps of all cell phones active within a specific MAST area and tracing who those numbers belong to and ascertain what they were doing in the area. And I can tell you that the evidence from one cell phone alone can run into thousands of pages for my detectives to read through and decipher what, If anything, is relevant to the case . So can you imagine when you have numerous people involved in an investigation, wether it to be rule them in or out or as an alibi or a victim, just how onerous this task is? And it is just one small part of the investigation.

Also the CCTV , people ask why now , 1 month later ? Well you don’t know what evidence that LE already have and if they had nothing else then the individual private residence CCTV would have been done immediately but it is a massive task and takes officers hours and hours to sit and watch every piece of CCTV that comes into the enquiry so it’s now easier to say , keep hold of your own individual residential CCTV and if you think that you have something of importance then let us know immediately otherwise we will get round to looking at it when we can because EVERYTHING has to be prioritised.

In the UK we have HOLMES ( home office Major enquires system ) and everything is entered into the system and looked at by three officers working with admin staff and any actions deemed necessary as a result of those 3 officers painstakingly going through every piece of information, item, cell phone number, cctv , search recovery evidence etc and allocating actions ( work ) to officers to compete before they are given another action . And some officers are individually given specific roles for example CCTV, Cell phones, Intelligence, Statement takers , Family liaison .

So this gives you an idea of just what is going on behind the scenes .
And the information released has to be protected and provenanced to ensure accuracy and the SIO doesn’t want information released unless absolutely necessary because the perpetrator may slip up and say something that hasn’t yet been released to the public and that then becomes dynamite to the investigation.
I hope this helps you all to understand the process , procedures and time for any major investigation to bear fruit .

Regarding technology- People do not realise just how much electronic tracking there is in our everyday lives and the footprint that we leave . Let’s take for example the obvious ones like public CCTV and residential / business CCTV and street CCTV , shop and bank and fuel CCTV, road surveillance CCTV to monitor traffic flow and speed camera CCTV etc The list is endless! Then there are tracking devices on the car if there is one , then there is the cell phone and text message/social media footprints alongside Pings
But - there are some footprints that we either don’t think about or are not aware of for example I own a luxury ( ish ) brand of car and I don’t have a key , I have a black plastic fob that I carry around which activates the car but without inserting it anywhere within my car console. Now when my car has a problem and I go to the dealership, this fob is inserted into their computer and it tell you every journey I have made and the status of the car throughout that journey, if the fuels low , if the seatbelt warning is activated, if any warning lights come on , if tyre pressure is low etc
I was gobsmacked just how much information that could be obtained and to be quite honest, I am a law abiding citizen but it scared even me , just how much we are being monitored. Then there is ANPR both mobile and static and lets not forget that it’s not only your cell phone that can be pinged and calls traced but LE can go to any mast and triangulate all mobile cell phones that ping off a particular mast at a given time and they can cross reference the data from this to any of the contacts in your phone and see if there are any patterns . So just from this you can start to see how many avenues are open for LE to look at. And then we have instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp and snapchat and Twitter and email and fit bits and apple watches and you start to get my drift .....
Edited to add: We have family Life 360 so that we can see where our children are and vice versa and my DH decided to turn his location permissions off
BUT although it does not now tell me his location in words, it does show him driving down the various roads and highways when he’s out and about. So another form of surveillance and if somebody was going to commit a heinous crime, they cannot possibly erase all their electronic footprints

Then we have Amazon Alexa and Smart devices ...
The list is endless!


◦

This is all extremely informative and helpful in understanding how LE may be approaching this case. But I also just have to add how much I love that the system in the UK is called HOLMES

 

[Ontario Mom]

I don’t know if the following post will help my fellow Websleuths members with regards to how a major investigation is run . I have tentatively mentioned this in a previous post but I have had quite a few questions privately in response so I decided to tidy up and expand my previous post ...
Here goes ....

With any major enquiry wether that be a murder / Homicide or a missing person , a dedicated team of detectives is set up with a SIO ( senior investigative officer) as the lead .
Certainly in the UK, a policy book is commenced and everything that you know , everything that subsequently happens, every decision taken and every action followed up, is written into the policy book . Every decision made by the SIO and the justification behind such a decision, has to be written into the policy book .
I was responsible for leading a number of murder investigations and Missing persons investigations and I would lead teams of detectives and forensic experts etc
A twice daily briefing would be held where everyone has an input as to what has happened that day , any evidence found , any witnesses spoken to etc and a summary of the day’s investigation would be written up by the SIO.
Each investigation has a strategy and that strategy is followed from the Murder and Major Crime investigations Manual .
So at the start of the investigation, there will be various strategies drawn up to encompass all of the different strands of the Investigation.
They are :
1.Victim - what do we know ?
2. Suspect - Do we have any?
3. Circumstances of last seen
4. Intelligence - What do we know ? What can we find out?
5. Cell phone analysis
6. Forensics - what do we have ? How are they to be prioritised? Submissions to laboratory and cost?
DNA evidence
Fingerprints
7. Search parameters and recovery of evidence to include continuity of retrieval
8. CCtv - What’s available ? How do we prioritise it?
9. Cell Phones - Victims, Suspect’s, Family etc
10. Family History
11. Actions - those raised that need investigation and those that are considered but not deemed to take the investigation further ( but it still all needs recording )
12. Forensic mapping
13. Witnesses
14. Interviews - suspect/s?
15. Exhibits/Property Officer - to record everything brought into the enquiry and the continuity of that evidence
16. File of evidence - Who will create the file of evidence for submission to CPS/DA
17. Warrants - allocated officer to swear all warrants
18. Disclosure - Officer allocated to start a disclosure record ( court process )
19. Family liaison officer - Officer allocate to be the go between for the family and SIO
20. Media strategy - controlled release of information to press
I could go on but I think that you get the drift that any investigation of this type is massive and takes time and has to be that way to get it right so that by the time it gets to the Court process, there’s no room for doubt or for weaknesses in the investigation to allow the accused to get off on a technicality or procedural issue .
Then if there is a suspect you need to start thinking of who will do the suspect interview and the downstream monitoring and alibi checks .
And on top of all that, the biggest and most onerous task besides cell phone evidence retrieval, is CCTV ! And that is a biggie ... it takes Detectives hours upon hours to go through and watch CCTV to enable them to ascertain if there is anything of evidential value on each individual recording and that can be CCTV from the street , from a shop, car park, toll booth , buildings, churches , Public CCTV along a route and individual CCTV in peoples driveways or on their mobile phones etc
You start to get the idea of just how much work is involved in a major investigation and that’s before you go to a judge to swear out warrants and arrest the perpetrator. Once an arrest takes place, you then have interviews and downstream monitoring in real time of the interviews and then liaison with the CPS in UK and DA/attorney general I think maybe in the USA? And then putting the whole file of evidence together and ensuring full disclosure to the defence ... it’s massive workloads and it goes on and on ...
Cell phone data is also massive because of pings of location and subsequent searches and data dumps of all cell phones active within a specific MAST area and tracing who those numbers belong to and ascertain what they were doing in the area. And I can tell you that the evidence from one cell phone alone can run into thousands of pages for my detectives to read through and decipher what, If anything, is relevant to the case . So can you imagine when you have numerous people involved in an investigation, wether it to be rule them in or out or as an alibi or a victim, just how onerous this task is? And it is just one small part of the investigation.

Also the CCTV , people ask why now , 1 month later ? Well you don’t know what evidence that LE already have and if they had nothing else then the individual private residence CCTV would have been done immediately but it is a massive task and takes officers hours and hours to sit and watch every piece of CCTV that comes into the enquiry so it’s now easier to say , keep hold of your own individual residential CCTV and if you think that you have something of importance then let us know immediately otherwise we will get round to looking at it when we can because EVERYTHING has to be prioritised.

In the UK we have HOLMES ( home office Major enquires system ) and everything is entered into the system and looked at by three officers working with admin staff and any actions deemed necessary as a result of those 3 officers painstakingly going through every piece of information, item, cell phone number, cctv , search recovery evidence etc and allocating actions ( work ) to officers to compete before they are given another action . And some officers are individually given specific roles for example CCTV, Cell phones, Intelligence, Statement takers , Family liaison .

So this gives you an idea of just what is going on behind the scenes .
And the information released has to be protected and provenanced to ensure accuracy and the SIO doesn’t want information released unless absolutely necessary because the perpetrator may slip up and say something that hasn’t yet been released to the public and that then becomes dynamite to the investigation.
I hope this helps you all to understand the process , procedures and time for any major investigation to bear fruit .

Regarding technology- People do not realise just how much electronic tracking there is in our everyday lives and the footprint that we leave . Let’s take for example the obvious ones like public CCTV and residential / business CCTV and street CCTV , shop and bank and fuel CCTV, road surveillance CCTV to monitor traffic flow and speed camera CCTV etc The list is endless! Then there are tracking devices on the car if there is one , then there is the cell phone and text message/social media footprints alongside Pings
But - there are some footprints that we either don’t think about or are not aware of for example I own a luxury ( ish ) brand of car and I don’t have a key , I have a black plastic fob that I carry around which activates the car but without inserting it anywhere within my car console. Now when my car has a problem and I go to the dealership, this fob is inserted into their computer and it tell you every journey I have made and the status of the car throughout that journey, if the fuels low , if the seatbelt warning is activated, if any warning lights come on , if tyre pressure is low etc
I was gobsmacked just how much information that could be obtained and to be quite honest, I am a law abiding citizen but it scared even me , just how much we are being monitored. Then there is ANPR both mobile and static and lets not forget that it’s not only your cell phone that can be pinged and calls traced but LE can go to any mast and triangulate all mobile cell phones that ping off a particular mast at a given time and they can cross reference the data from this to any of the contacts in your phone and see if there are any patterns . So just from this you can start to see how many avenues are open for LE to look at. And then we have instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp and snapchat and Twitter and email and fit bits and apple watches and you start to get my drift .....
Edited to add: We have family Life 360 so that we can see where our children are and vice versa and my DH decided to turn his location permissions off
BUT although it does not now tell me his location in words, it does show him driving down the various roads and highways when he’s out and about. So another form of surveillance and if somebody was going to commit a heinous crime, they cannot possibly erase all their electronic footprints

Then we have Amazon Alexa and Smart devices ...
The list is endless!


◦

This entire post should be pinned somewhere & made required reading for when we all get impatient with a case.
Excellent insight, thank you so much for taking the time to share this.

 

[PaulaDC]

I got nothing.

I was going to say "Dave's not here" Cheech & Chong

 

[BeckyF]

Oh, but it does.

From my vantage point, it makes all kinds of sense.

The truth is sometimes ugly.

JMO.

Very strategic on someone's part wasn't it?

 

[oviedo]

This entire post should be pinned somewhere & made required reading for when we all get impatient with a case.
Excellent insight, thank you so much for taking the time to share this.

I did save it for us