Spreading rumors in a convoluted case doesn't help.
We know from technology experts it's a FACT no way to tell if / when batteries were removed from a device and it dosent matter . Few Facts are known in this case be nice to eliminate one .
Not sure what devise or provider she had but remember iPhone didn't come out til over a year after this disappearence .
Providers have different Info far as pings and pinging between two towers dosent mean they were " on the move ". And accuracy 11 years ago was not as good as today .
Here's what I wrote:
"The police told Drew the phones were manually powered down at 10:40 pm and presumably batteries removed. The police would say this because the phone companies told them this. As I said earlier I don't know the basis for this, it is reasonable that there is a signal sent went powering down. I can only guess that there is something missing that indicates batteries were removed instead of using the power off button."
No amount of conjuring can make a rumor out of that. I can only guess that there is something missing that indicates batteries removed instead of using the power off button is not a rumor, it's a declared guess explanation. If it was truly that difficult to understand I would do more research and post it but it's not that difficult to understand.
The traffic to cell phone towers are not just pings, they are the entirety of all signals between the phone and towers, including the digitized audible of phone calls. I would expect there is a disconnect sequence sent from a phone during power off. As I said, I don't know this but I said it's reasonable to think there is something missing when the traffic stops that lets the analyst looking at the data determine that power ended abruptly versus going through a power off sequence with the shutdown button.
Pinging is just location of towers. It is not GPS or pseudo GPS locating of the device, so the lesser technology accuracy issues of locating the precise location of the device are not relevant. I don't know what provider(s) the phones had, but it would be the providers who gave this information to the police. I didn't know, and of course I posted about it, whether there was any ping data. I am certainly glad there was.
In any event, what was relayed to Drew who relayed via post is not a rumor, and presumably batteries removed is what he was told. I have said twice in past few days that I don't know the basis for it, that phones don't ping when powered off, you can check my posts above. But I can say that I can guess there's something missing in the interchanges to base it on without it being called a rumor. Such an ugly word.
I'm a career programmer and spent the 80's writing low level code. I was one of the original PC telephony programmers in '84, working for a startup that became a large company, writing and installing systems such as an emergency notification system for nuclear plants, absentee notification systems for large school systems, and install notification systems for Cablevision up and down east coast. I wrote device drivers for all existing scanners after that, and other imaging analysis. And I've been programming for Fortune 500's since then. My guesses are informed guesses.
I have also written a true crime book and been at this a long time, and not fond of serious crime work being muddied up with rumors. So I understand your concern, but you really need more work on identifying rumors.
rd
