IA IA - Elizabeth Collins, 8, & Lyric Cook, 10, Evansdale, 13 July 2012 - #15

[GrainneDhu]

- Did the girls know their abductor(s)? I believe that they did/do. Maybe not well, but I think they know him/her/them somehow.
sed to go that far. I strongly doubt they went swimming though.

- Did Mr. G. see the bikes while riding? I think so. I'm not so convinced on the time. I completely understand using the cell phone to pinpoint a time but I find it odd that 3 days later you'd think "Oh I saw those bikes 7 minutes before I called this person." Wouldn't it be "5 minutes," "10 minutes" or "15 minutes"? I don't think that he was involved whatsoever I just think the time is probably off.

- Did Mr. C. see the girls while he was watering his lawn? I think so, but I also think he could've mixed up days if he saw them often. I think he'd remember seeing both of them as opposed to just Elizabeth though, so IMO it's likely he saw them.

SBM

Great post!

I think it is possible that the girls were in some way familiar with the perp but it could just be in the same way that they'd seen the same person at the grocery store or mowing lawns. It sounds like the parents have given LE every possible name they can think of. So I think if it was someone the girls or the family knew, it was such a casual connection that it didn't come up in the investigation.

I think Mr G may have been rounding off the time to the nearest round clock time. In other words, 12:20 pm, if he thought it was more than 5 minutes but less than 10 minutes.

I doubt Elizabeth would have been riding to the lake alone; at 8 years old or 9 years old. that seems quite a long way to go since she would not have had permission. I think it's more likely that the times she rode to the lake, she was with other kids (such as her 12 year old brother).

I wish there was some way to figure out who has lived in Evansdale in, say, the last 20 years. And then narrow it down by who shows signs of being enough of a walker or bicyclist to go around the lake, rather than just viewing it from the parking lot.

I know there must be other ways to narrow such a list down but I'm drawing a blank.

 

[hollyblue]

I've been following this case since day 1, and have gone back and forth as to what I think happened to Lyric and Elizabeth. I originally thought they'd be found in the lake, but obviously that was not right.

We've had theories posted that take into account all kinds of possibilities. After going through everything we know up to this point, I just can't come up with a good reason for the bikes being "staged" at the lake. Why would someone take the trouble of doing this once the girls were in his/their control? If it was only to buy time by making LE think the girls had been to the lake, why? Assuming the abductor(s) had a vehicle, they could have been on the highway and many miles away before anyone ever began looking for the girls. JMO

I'm having a hard time seeing how this act would benefit the abductor(s) in light of the risks involved in being found leaving the bikes.

I agree. One reason I can see for the bikes being staged is...the "abductor" wanted them to be found for the logic of non-logic. Nothing adds up with them being there. Not because of a time gain, since LE was scoping out all other possiblities at the same time as the lake being drained. imo. ( It was LE and MSM who kept our focus on the lake and not so much on what else they were looking into.) So if the bikes were staged, why would it be important, in the abductors mind, for the them to be found?

 

[Reverie]

That explains how the bikes might have wound up on the trail, but my original post, which RoseofSharon replied to and which was then responded to by GrainneDhu, was regarding the "staging" of the bikes.

Some posters think the bikes were placed on the trail after the girls were abducted, that the girls were never at the lake. My question was, why would someone go to the trouble of staging the bikes there.:waitasec: If it was just to buy more time so the perp(s) could get away, it seems to me there would have been easier places to dispose of the bikes other than staging them at the lake. JMO.

Respectfully, are there better places to stage the bikes other than by a body of water. I mean, IF they were staged?

I really enjoy your posts, btw. Gives me a lot to think about.

 

[hollyblue]

I really don't think any assumption can be made at this point. Depending on the accuracy of the timeline, there was plenty of time between the time the girls arrived at the trail where the bikes were found, and the time they were discovered. They could have been walked out of the area in a matter of hours...or walked a distance and then put into a vehicle. A perp could easily have been on foot or on a bike for that matter. Leaving the bikes behind could just have been the convenient thing to do and a distraction for those that ultimately found them. MOO BBM

That's not staged tho, it's just leaving the bikes behind for convenience. ?

 

[Confusion]

- Did the girls know their abductor(s)? I believe they knew them, if only by sight. I can't believe a total stranger to the area would think to go to exactly that spot to grab the girls or to stage the bikes. It seems like it has to be someone familiar with the area; if not a resident, then the friend or relative of one (and an occasional visitor)

- Were the bikes staged? I highly doubt it.

- Are the girls alive? I'll just say that I hope so.

- Was it the girls on the surveillance tape? Probably, but the timeline would be so much easier to work with if it wasn't.

- Was someone else on the surveillance tape? Someone or something was there and moved. A person makes more sesne than anything else I can think of.

- Did Mr. C. see the girls while he was watering his lawn? He may have, but I don't think it really makes any difference if TG and the CCTV were right.

- Did the girls go to the lake? Yes

- Did Mr. G. see the bikes while riding? He saw some bikes, and they were probably theirs. As with the CCTV, it would be much easier if it was someone else's, but much less likely.

- Were the bikes moved? Possibly, but not far. I don't really think they were unless the girls moved them.

- Was a paddleboat involved? I doubt it.

- Did the guy running at the lake really see the girls at around 2:30? I find it hard to believe they would have still been riding bike there at that time.

- What about the "little boy" fishing? I believe he didn't see anything, even if the girls rode right past him. Most kids I know who fish spend a lot of time staring at their bobber trying to will it to go under or something, and would be more likely to be watching the playground than the woods at other times. I'd also think he'd be watching his house at times if he lived close to the lake, or the parking lot if he rode there with someone else.

- Has the area been thoroughly searched? I think some areas could have been searched more thoroughly.

- Why drain the lake? I'd think to look for bodies or weapons that might have been thrown in there.
the most important question: when will these precious girls be home? Not soon enough.

SBM repeatedly, answers to questions added.

 

[hollyblue]

I've thought about that, too. But if the perp is local, it seems he/she/they would know of other, easier places to dump a couple of bikes. Again I come down to, why take a chance of being seen at the lake staging the bikes.

One thing about them being staged at the lake is... the perp was in his comfort zone and feeling pretty safe in do it.

 

[Reverie]

SBM

I think draining the lake kept the media's attention and manpower at the lake but the LE investigators, frankly, were barely there.
<snip>
Chief Deputy Abben gave away the reason that LE waited so long to declare it an abduction and it had nothing to do with the lake; in fact, before the lake was drained, he said that LE was already sure the girls weren't in it.

Abben said something to the effect that nothing in the investigation had changed but now they had to read certain people their rights...<snip>

Wow, I missed this^^^^^ . This really clarifies things. Evidently so. Wow.

 

[Reverie]

One thing about them being staged at the lake is... the perp was in his comfort zone and feeling pretty safe in do it.

As in, the hypothetical perp spends a lot of time there.

 

[superbee]

Noreen Gosch is a very engaging woman (I took a yoga class from her) and I think it will serve the girls well to have her helping the families. She is very aware of not only how to get media attention, but also how the sharp and often critical eye focuses on the families of the missing. I hope she can be a great resource for them.

I do quite a bit of work with the missing and unidentified, and I can say without a doubt, there are monsters in the world who prey upon the young. Many times it's a monster in the family, but I just don't see it here.

As the media attention focuses to newer, fresher horrors, the pain of these families will never go away. There is never closure for the families of the missing.

We had hummingbirds at our feeder today, and I thought of the girls.

The Navaho say hummingbirds are messengers. I hope the message is a good one. Praying for the girls to return home safely.

 

[hollyblue]

Or maybe... ride the mountain bike while pulling the other bike alongside? I wouldn't have even thought about this except I saw a similar scenario earlier today, someone was riding one bike and pedaling down the road holding the other bike. My first thought was the second bike maybe broke somehow and the guy went back to fix it then brought it home. Second thought was maybe the kid fell off and got hurt and the guy went back to get the other bike. Third thought was it was stolen. I can't believe it but I didn't even think about how the bike thing could be related to Elizabeth/Lyric until just a little bit ago.

With that said I truly don't believe the bikes were staged, but I don't have a strong reason for it. It just seems like too much hassle and risk. But in trying to think through the staging scenario a few things came to mind and this was one of them.

I hope you have a good memory of the guy and the bikes.....just in case.
Unlikely, but who knows?

 

[hollyblue]

The only thing that makes sense to me as far as the bikes *possibly* being staged....would be if the one who did it was somebody who is familiar with investigations...more familiar with missing persons investigations than the general public, that is... that would *know* with certainty exactly the kind of diversion it would cause if the bikes were to be left in a very specific type of location (ie: next to a lake, leaving others to have to entertain the possibility that the girls had ended up in the lake).

I just have a tough time believing that a "civilian" criminal (for lack of a better term - and without being specific as to the type of person I am alluding to) would think of it.

But I think they would leave a pair of shoes behind...somewhere.

 

[nikb]

Fifteen mph is actually an average cruising speed for a reasonably fit bicyclist.
<snipped for space>

Thanks for this! I couldn't find anything on it but thought the speed didn't seem super fast and was confused by people saying it was so impossible the girls might've ridden 1-1.5 miles in 8 minutes. I'm a slow as heck bike rider and still ride around 9-10 mph. I'm sure I was much speedier as a kid, and I bet that the girls could get much farther than G'ma or others realized and even be back within earshot fairly quickly.

Leading me back to the thought that I'm almost sure the girls rode their bikes to the lake. Where did they go after that?

 

[Aunt B]

- Did the girls know their abductor(s)? I believe they absolutely knew their abductor. I don't necessarily believe it was someone they felt particularly "close" to, but I do believe they knew the person.

- Were the bikes staged? I don't believe they were.

- Are the girls alive? Sadly, I believe that they are not, and have not been for a while. I hope and pray that I am 100% wrong about that and that they are found fast and returned to their families.

- Was it the girls on the surveillance tape? On the fence about this one.

- Was someone else on the surveillance tape? IDK...the things that people were pointing out as appearing to be "someone else"...when I blew the image up in MS Paint, one appeared to clearly be a window on the building behind, and the other just looked like a black square on the curb. MOO

- Did Mr. C. see the girls while he was watering his lawn? I think he is sincere but that it's extremely possible that he mixed up the days.

- Did the girls go to the lake? I believe they did.

- Did Mr. G. see the bikes while riding? Probably. It would seem unlikely (to me, anyway) for him to have seen a pair of bikes on the trail, left unattended, and then for there to be yet ANOTHER, entirely different set of bikes, also left unattended, in the same exact spot, just a little while later. What would the odds be of that occurring?? Unless he just made up the whole thing for attention, or something. Some people do bizarre things for attention.

- Were the bikes moved? I'm unclear on this....maybe someone just picked them up innocently and leaned them against the fence to get them off the trail after Mr G saw them but before LE showed up? That part of it doesn't seem sinister to me....albeit creepy in its own right just because the bikes were attached to such a scary event.

- Was a paddleboat involved? I don't believe so.

- What about the "little boy" fishing? Wow, I hadn't thought about it like that. Now it freaks me out, too.

- Has the area been thoroughly searched? A lot of ground appears to have been covered...but the searchers were volunteers mostly ( and bless their hearts for getting out there to look!), so by and large, these were very "untrained" eyes out there looking.

- Why drain the lake? I think LE *had* to make sure they weren't in there. After all, it was the most logical conclusion in the beginning. Lots of accidental drownings of children occur every year all over the country.

All of this is IMHO only. I hope very much that there are solid answers very soon...and that the person responsible for Elizabeth and Lyric's disappearance is quickly stopped from ever having the opportunity to affect the lives of another child and family ever again.
------------------

 

[nikb]

I hope you have a good memory of the guy and the bikes.....just in case. Unlikely, but who knows?

Yes, the good news is I do have a good memory of it and I also have it all on a pretty good quality camera. I haven't checked yet but said camera has helped LE before. Sheesh apparently I need to move. Anyway I've been watching the news in case of something coming up. I think it's beyond unlikely it had anything to do with these girls, but if me seeing the guy and bikes is involved with anything I'll be calling for sure.

 

[hollyblue]

Keep in mind that the movie is fictional and pulls together elements similar to a bunch of different abductions plus some stuff straight out of the writer's imagination.

In my opinion, it could be classified as a horror mockumentary and probably an attempt to cash in on the Blair Witch Project.

Yes, I recognized a few of the scenarios used from real cases, and although it was fictional, it still told a story quite possible and ran it though my brain in a very visual way as a reminder. I think we have a tendency to want to not acknowledge the reality of it; which is totally understandable.

My level of horror films is the guy coming out of the swamp in a scaled covered wet suit. LOL The Poltergeist was before real cable TV and I shivered to see that fuzzy screen late at night for the longest time.
This was around the time of a divorce and actually living alone for the first time. A girlfriend and I make a promise if we were ever scared late at night, we wouldn't get mad for receiving a 2 or 3 AM phone call from the other. She was reading a Steven King's book about the pig with red eyes at the time and couldn't fathom looking out a window after dark.

 

[nikb]

I think it is possible that the girls were in some way familiar with the perp but it could just be in the same way that they'd seen the same person at the grocery store or mowing lawns. It sounds like the parents have given LE every possible name they can think of. So I think if it was someone the girls or the family knew, it was such a casual connection that it didn't come up in the investigation.

I think Mr G may have been rounding off the time to the nearest round clock time. In other words, 12:20 pm, if he thought it was more than 5 minutes but less than 10 minutes.

I doubt Elizabeth would have been riding to the lake alone; at 8 years old or 9 years old. that seems quite a long way to go since she would not have had permission. I think it's more likely that the times she rode to the lake, she was with other kids (such as her 12 year old brother).
<snipped for space>

I completely agree with you. I really think the girls know or thought they knew this person. I can even think back on my childhood and think about grocery store clerks I used to 'flirt' with, not knowing what 'flirting' was at age 10 or so. I still think it was totally innocent but yikes.

I also think this trip is a long way for Elizabeth to go by herself but maybe not so much with her older friends, or cousin, or brother. The early interviews said she'd "never" been there so I think if she went there, even with someone older, it wasn't approved by Mom/G'ma.

 

[Marilynilpa]

I completely agree with you. I really think the girls know or thought they knew this person. I can even think back on my childhood and think about grocery store clerks I used to 'flirt' with, not knowing what 'flirting' was at age 10 or so. I still think it was totally innocent but yikes.

I also think this trip is a long way for Elizabeth to go by herself but maybe not so much with her older friends, or cousin, or brother. The early interviews said she'd "never" been there so I think if she went there, even with someone older, it wasn't approved by Mom/G'ma.

I also think the girls were familiar with their abductor, probably not someone they knew well but someone they saw often enough to feel comfortable with.

When my sister and I were kids, we rode our bikes everywhere. We had specific guidelines for where we could go, what we could do and when we needed to be back home. I know many times we pushed the limits a bit, and sometimes more than a bit! So it's very easy for me to imagine these two cousins going farther than Grandma knew about.

 

[hollyblue]

- Were the bikes moved? I'm unclear on this....maybe someone just picked them up innocently and leaned them against the fence to get them off the trail after Mr G saw them but before LE showed up? That part of it doesn't seem sinister to me....albeit creepy in its own right just because the bikes were attached to such a scary event.

RSBM

This sparked a thought from me....LOL, it's very late.

What if......... the girls arrived on the north/west side of the lake, laid the bikes down to either just play or use the restroom, and other kids came by and took them for riding around town, etc for awhile. The girls then look for their bikes and they are not there, then they start to panic because they have to be home...like now. Perp(s) comes along asks what's wrong, they explain, and the perp offers them a ride home. They can tell Grams their bikes were taken from the front of a store or someplace on Lafayette. The bike thieves bring the bikes back to the lake but lay them down in the concealed SE end fearing the girls may still be there and looking for them. Maybe they just threw EC's purse over the fence or placed it in just inside the gate near the underbrush after seeing the phone isn't a working cell. ?

Regarding it not being the girls on the bike. Yes, whoever was on the bikes were the only ones seen on video that day, but what if the girls never went west, but only east and south. The surveillance cams wouldn't have caught them. Abben's statement about headed away from the lake. Maybe they did leave at 11:45 or around noon? They were scooped up and the bikes taken by other kids. I wonder if the neighbor kids and our girls and their siblings ever rode each other's bikes?

Slim chance for the bike thieves to get by Gma, I guess, but just putting thoughts out there. :banghead:

 

[Thinkzerz]

Oh heavens, I just watched it. Did you guys let your kids watch that?
Not judging, just curious about your input. Not to mention I am one that was never fond of horror films.

I know times have changed, and I thought I was a pizzer at 13/14, but I never cussed those words or talked about sex like that. Geez Louise. If I had a teenage...I'd truly not know what I'd decide about their social media use after that. I wish I would have watched it earlier and not late at night. I don't how you guys with teens keep your sanity.

Yes, i did. You know what? Last night she was on fb and she got a friend of a friend request. She deleted it,where before she would have added that person.The personal so had no pic. She did not know this person. She is 15. Fifteen is different then when we were fifteen. She is aware now. But she handled it better than me. I still am horrified by that movie.

I know 15 is young for fb,but kids will make a fake account just to have one. I would rather know and monitor my kids fb than to not know and not be able to monitor her.

 

[TxLady2]

The only thing that makes sense to me as far as the bikes *possibly* being staged....would be if the one who did it was somebody who is familiar with investigations...more familiar with missing persons investigations than the general public, that is... that would *know* with certainty exactly the kind of diversion it would cause if the bikes were to be left in a very specific type of location (ie: next to a lake, leaving others to have to entertain the possibility that the girls had ended up in the lake).

I just have a tough time believing that a "civilian" criminal (for lack of a better term - and without being specific as to the type of person I am alluding to) would think of it.

You don't think a predator who has probably done this before would think to dump the bikes close to the lake to throw off an investigation? Of course they would! Posters here who are not LE have thought of it... why not a predator?