A 'first thing' in the list of what new home owners typically do is to have a landline installed, not removed... as there would be nothing to remove upon initial move-in.
If the M's did have their landline removed it would have had to have occurred after they had had it installed. It could have been they decided their mobile phones were all that was needed and they eventually dropped the landline.... an action that has been common place in the age of cellular communication. I don't expect they would have had it removed if their cellular service was unreliable or nil.
We have no idea of the frequency of communication the M's may have had with family and friends and whether or not "several days" was an unusual or typical time frame nor how often. Exaggeration is not unusual during times of stress and suspicion.
Has AM explained why his status ('how you doing' ) request messages were not sent directly to SM? Why go through BM? Did SM not have a mobile phone? I was under the impression she does have a phone.
We can not assume a controlling nature simply based on BM's disagreeing with SM 'taking medication for Depression or medical marijuana for Cancer'. It is well known that taking certain medications can cause adverse side effects that might not justify taking them, which may include mental and physical manifestations, i.e. libido, mental focus, etc. We have no verified information regarding how SM reacted to those medications, or even if she was indeed taking them.
The divorce element is a possibility, but we have no definitive indication. Speculation isn't enough. I wouldn't expect disappearance being a first and immediate choice if talk of divorce was only recent. I suspect it would have had to have been an issue for some time, weeks, maybe months at least? I can't see money being the only catalyst in a disappearance scheme in this case.
I do find it odd BM and their daughters were away from home for Mother's Day. Was that typical? You'd figure given SM's medical issues that everyone would want to 'be there' on Mother's Day. My focus is on this element of the case. WHY was no one there?
I'm confused. It would take all my fingers and toes to count all the places I've lived (at least 12 different houses and many apartments). Never once did I have to have a phone installed. Every single place already had the phone line, all I had to do was contact the phone company, have the bill moved into my name, and they charged me for the start-up service (which in the last 25 years has always been remote - no one came to the house).
We still have a landline, we just don't pay for it, we had it turned off about 10 years after moving in.
The only thing we've ever had to have installed was television cable (which is what I'm using as an internet provider right now).
"We" aren't assuming anything. There are many of us here, we aren't all in one group. I assume BM is controlling for a collection of reasons, which is how many people work. One observation by itself almost never tells us anything. It's the total package, not all of which we can discuss here.
But we can say that someone who knows him says he is "controlling." It was early in the media thread. Then we can all have our own views and analysis of his linguistic and para-linguistic behaviors as seen on camera (moving or still). Then there's the marginal area around "controlling" such as "competitive" and "makes up own rules in situations."
I find plenty of specific moments of BM-watching that I can put on my list. So yes, I can say I think he's on the controlling end of the spectrum, I can't say that he's super-controlling, as I don't know him, but he's not a submissive kind of guy. I can back that up with my own sense of what I've observed - and to the extent that anyone else here agrees (and I know many do), then *we* who think he's controlling can indeed continue to believe so.
YMMV. It's okay for there to be two groups of us. I do wonder if everyone has watched all the footage available (even just the things here on the media thread).
The entire event in Indiana (that resulted in BM being criminally charged) was about control. He was upset that his crew couldn't get in and do work, because other contractors with bigger things to do (electrical, plumbing, can't recall which) were in there already and he didn't get his way. So he lost it.
Who does that? Sure, he had to be irritable in addition to controlling. I get irritable at myself when I fail to put the milk back in the refrigerator - but not at someone else for the same thing. I can't imagine what it's like to live in the head of someone who loses it and assaults someone because they didn't do something quickly enough.