I just felt inclined to ask my 9 year old daughter what she felt happened to these girls, after only giving her the basic information (they'd been out riding bikes, bikes were found at a lake, the girls are not IN the lake).
Sometimes she gives me a pure, innocent child's point of view in cases like these. Other times she gives me her gut instinct, which often surprises me because it will often end up being close to the truth in the end.
So, for what it's worth (no more but perhaps no less than everyone else's opinion here, I suppose) here is what she said:
"Well, it's pretty easy to, like, tell someone something, like, that maybe I'm a friend of your parents and you should come with me or something. But... I think that, like, maybe someone who was a relative came and said that I'm gonna take you to do something really fun but we have to hurry and go now so you have to leave your bike and so they went with them but then they took them somewhere and... like..."
so I said "did something bad instead?"
and she nodded.
I almost wonder if this will end up being a case of "out of the mouths of babes"...