If Terri didn't do it, then why.....

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Originally Posted by Donjeta
To answer the question in the opening post (why is LE focusing on TH if she's innocent)...

IMO the amount of information we have now points to that she was lying about something and if she is innocent in Kyron's disappearance she is trying to cover for something else.

what could possibly be worse?

People don't always make rational decisions between outcomes.

A classic example of this is the old USSR or Chinese employment of the "swallow trap" or "honey pot" to turn diplomats against their own countries.

The brief outline of the operation is that a specially trained agent seduces a diplomat from another country. Usually a diplomat that is married or (in the past) a homosexual. Someone who would not want their liaison with a Soviet or Chinese person to become common knowledge. Once the diplomat is thoroughly hooked on the agent, that agent's handlers move in to use extortion to get information from the diplomat.

Now, sitting back comfortably at home and not involved in a sexual liaison with a foreign agent, it is clear that having one's wife discover an affair is much less worse than committing treason against one's own country. Wife finds out means a divorce vs treason discovered risks the death penalty! The choice seems crystal clear.

And yet history shows us that otherwise intelligent, dedicated diplomats made the wrong choice.

When under pressure, some otherwise rational people are not capable of making rational choices. It is an enduring puzzlement but there it is.
 
People make themselves collateral damage. No matter what you might have to hide, if you have any sense at all you're going to give it up if you're faced with something far worse. She's not under the bus by accident or by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She's under the bus because she couldn't come up with a plausible timeline, and her story didn't stand up. It also doesn't help that she was the last person known to see him.

Maybe she thought they'd mark him present after seeing him there, and nobody would be able to place just when he went missing. That way she wouldn't have to come up with such a wide timeline.

The easiest way to make sure you never fall under the bus is to lead an upstanding life.

Most would... yes. But what if Terri believes that sooner or later the truth will come out and she will still get to keep her little secret? What if she really had nothing to do with Kyron's disappearance, but can't prove it because it would reveal something she does not want Kaine or anyone else to know? Or what if she is protecting someone else? Someone she loves more than herself?

Unless they have a lot more on her than they've released so far, then she can afford to keep her silence for awhile longer, because I don't see the proof that she did anything to or with Kyron. It's got to be more than cell phone pings and her lying about where she was and the LDT's. That alone will not convict her.

Also... regarding circumstantial evidence... everything is circumstantial except a confession or an eyewitness to the crime, and so far we don't have either one.
 
Just hitting "thanks" didn't feel like enough.

I had a friend who failed a LDT miserably. She was one of the most rigourously honest people I've ever known, she had no reason to lie and the other guy's story was so fishy that even with the failed LDT, the police decided not to file charges.

Her experience got me started on reading up on polygraphs and I am now convinced that they are woo-woo science.

I tell my husband that if I ever disappear under mysterious circumstances, he is to call 911, then call a lawyer. And under no circumstances consent to a polygraph!

I agree. We fought a revolution for that right. That's why jurors are instructed not to consider absence of a defendant's testimony in his/her own trial also.
But guilty people have those same rights also. I'm aware as anyone Terri may be innocent. But she was the last to be known with him and all we ever have to discuss is based on news/media.

To me a free press is an important right as well. When I first heard of this case I couldn't shake her from my mind because she was last known to be with the victim. I'd wonder about anyone last with him. (known)
 
what could possibly be worse?

I believe KH and TH absolutely believe she is guilty. But I think KH and DY believe that because the police told them that THEY think she is guilty.

I have a lot of cops on my family. One a sheriff, patrol officers, detectives, and even MP. I can say without a doubt that they are good people, but they are just people. All police are just people. People are fallible. Policemen can "get a feeling" someone is guilty, they can be prideful and ignore anything that goes against what they think happened, they can be jerks, they can be wrong, and they can get tunnel vision. Even the most talented of LE officers can be susceptible to getting it wrong. Thats why there has to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict someone of a crime for which they are accused.

As websleuthers we know the basics of an investigation. We know that when harm befalls someone the first persons to be looked at are those closest to the victim (barring any obvious evidence that pointed directly to a perp). IMO, because they are the most likely to do someone harm. Statistics and all... But to move on to the next layer of possible suspects cops tend to want to verify the family's whereabouts, their aliby, etc... What I think has happened here is that they can't get past TH because 1) There is no definative proof of where she was immediately following Kyron's last known sighting (which could happen to any of us), and 2) because cops have concentrated on her for so long they have developed tunnel vision. Add to that an alleged MFH plot and that tunnel vision has morphed into a perceived truth. However, I don't think there is any evidence to support their suspicions, just as there is no evidence to clear TH at this point. They are stuck.

If you take into consideration that most of us respect the authority of our law enforcement officers, the fact that one of the victims in this case is married to a detective, and that a precious child is missing you might see what I see. Most of us don't have the first clue about how to handle situations like this (in fact we must involve LE because they are the authority when a crime happens), so we look toward LE to be our guide. We don't imagine that they could be wrong. We don't question them. We hang on their every word because its the only hope there is of getting the missing child back. So that makes people vulnerable to be used by cops with tunnel vision to put pressure on their suspect. If the cops are right they are geniuses, if they are wrong they're just doing their job and TH was just collateral damage.

I've been trying to say this without much success. You said it so much more clearly than I have.

I am not worthy, I am not worthy. <<LOL>>
 
Know what would really cause us to jump off that fence?? If there were ONE reliable witness who saw Kyron with Terri that day other than at school. Two or three would be even better. I hope LE is going over those security tapes from the two stores with a fine tooth comb. If he is spotted in one of them.... her goose is cooked.
OR we need one reliable witness who saw her leave ALONE, without Kyron and he is not on any of those security tapes.
Either way, it doesn't matter. I'm not one of those who are determined that she is guilty until I see some proof. Suspicious as all get-out, but not guilty.... yet.
 
I don't think DY's impression of TH has anything to do with DY's goodness. Bad things happen to good and bad people so that is just a non-issue. The weight of her personal opinion is that of the mother of the missing child and should not be qualified as to whether she is "good"? I am more than interested in DY's impression of TH because she knows her personally and we do not.

IMO, I do not see DY as trying to present an objective description of Terri, rather she says it is her feeling and tells us what she knows. To take it a step further I think DY has chosen her words carefully and has been gracious and cautious in her discussion of TH.

I think it is interesting to hear how others describe TH as well. I listen and take note of the good, the bad, and the ugly impressions of her. I don't know that we need to determine if the swim instructor is a "good" person to take this persons opinion at face value either. KWIM?

Good was, admittedly, an oversimplification, but there's so much about Terri being a bad person, a bad stepmother, a bad wife, etc., that I felt comfortable using the relatively simple word good.

DY certainly knows Terri, but knowing her may or may not give special insight; she has a relationship with her, but she also believes strongly that Terri is involved in her son's disappearance. That hardly makes her objective. Maybe Desiree was jealous of Terri's relationship with Kyron. It's fair to assume Kyron called Terri mom or some variation thereof because the swim instructor said he didn't know Kyron was Terri's stepson until Kyron disappeared. Some of what we're hearing may be true, all of it may be true, but none of it may be true, too. Desiree could be letting her anger cloud her judgment.

All the juicy details may interest some people, but they don't interest me. There are skeletons in everyone's life, and a lot of people would probably find it strange than any of us follow missing persons cases. Motivation could be formed from that bit of computer evidence alone if someone was so inclined.

Terri liked Dexter, she liked CSI, so any computer evidence could be traced back to research. Kaine and Terri had custody of Kyron, a fact Desiree may have resented. Maybe Kaine truly loved Terri, and maybe he treated her (he bought her a car!) better than he did Desiree, or maybe Terri is a pathological liar and Desiree is the voice of reason.

Desiree proclaiming Terri was uncooperative made me question Desiree's accuracy when proclaiming information. LE has stated that Terri was cooperative, and when asked to clarify, Desiree said that Terri is being uncooperative because she won't tell LE how to bring Kyron home. That's a bit misleading, IMHO. It's subjective to her in this difficult time, as are a lot of her opinions, IMHO.

It's just not helping. It's turning this more into a soap opera than a search for a missing child, IMHO.
 
People make themselves collateral damage. No matter what you might have to hide, if you have any sense at all you're going to give it up if you're faced with something far worse. She's not under the bus by accident or by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She's under the bus because she couldn't come up with a plausible timeline, and her story didn't stand up. It also doesn't help that she was the last person known to see him.

Maybe she thought they'd mark him present after seeing him there, and nobody would be able to place just when he went missing. That way she wouldn't have to come up with such a wide timeline.

The easiest way to make sure you never fall under the bus is to lead an upstanding life.

I'm not disputing the above in the case of TMH; it certainly appears bad for her.

But as a generalisation, I think you are mistaken. Ask yourself what Kevin Fox did to throw himself under the bus? He led an upstanding life, he told the cops the complete truth and he spent 8 months in jail for it.

Well, he was the father of a three year old, Riley Fox, who was abducted from the family home while he was asleep. When he realised she was missing, he hunted through the house, yard and neighbourhood before calling police, which seems to me to be a perfectly natural reaction.

Then he took Mark Klaas's widely known advice: he completely cooperated with police. Big, big mistake that led to 8 months in jail while the real perp walked free and unsuspected (and did commit further harm against other children).

After 14 hours of intense and coercive interrogation, Kevin Fox made a false confession. No, he should not have done that but people can only endure so much physical or mental torture before they snap. Kevin Fox was obviously pushed into snapping.

The police had a set of (probably unconscious) filters that led them to discard real, actual evidence, like the torn screen, the fingerprints (if they had bothered to run the fingerprints right away, it would have solved the case in the first hours of the investigation), the tennis shoes abandoned near Riley Fox's body that had the name of the perpetrator on them. A name belonging to a convicted sex offender.

The police also ignored that Kevin Fox's false confession was filled with contradictions, both internal contradictions and contradictions of the evidence.

None of the above raised any red flags with the investigators until Kevin Fox managed to persuade a Project Innocence lawyer that he was factually innocent. She took a look at the DNA test, which had been called inconclusive and figured out that the correct DNA test had not been done.

Once the correct test was performed, it pointed straight at the perpetrator. Whose fingerprints were on the Fox's screen door and whose tennis shoes with name on them were next to Riley Fox's body.

I don't believe that the police in the Fox case were innately evil people who were out to get Kevin Fox personally. I think they were well meaning officers who became so focused on a particular theory that they lost all perspective. Then they were able to justify to themselves that the use of any technique against Kevin Fox was justified because they saw him as an evil man who sexually assaulted and killed his own daughter.

And to me, that's the tragedy of investigative tunnel vision. Kevin Fox is obviously a victim. So is his ex-wife (the marriage between high school sweethearts did not survive the experience). So is his young son, who was subjected to coercive interrogation aimed solely at incriminating Kevin Fox.

But the officers involved were also victims. They were fired, they will no doubt ever work in LE again. And I imagine they felt a great deal of personal humiliation. Yes, they did wrong but I believe they did so with the best of intentions. They were under the influence of investigative tunnel vision and they didn't know it.

The thing is, LE with investigative tunnel vision never realise it.
 
I think the biological parent's opinion of the stepmother at this point is based on more than just what they've been told. Their son is vanished. The stepmother was last with him.

If the stepmom's story renditions to police don't match physical records why fear truth?


If there was more reason for TH not to be trusted why was she the one taking him to the science fair that morning? Funny how she became not trusted only after the police tell KH of an alleged plot against him. TH is the person who last admits seeing him, of course if someone else abducted him they aren't going to come forward and admit that they were the last one to see him.

We really do not know if what TH has told the police isn't matching physical records. Unless somone here has a source inside LE on this case who is willing to stand up and tell all then no-one knows that type of info.
 
I think there is a whole lot more to the story of the relationship dynamics between DY and TH. The more I hear, the more I am convinced that there was a very acrimonious relationship between these two. I am speaking from experience in being a custodial stepmother for over 10 yrs now and having the bio-mom just plain hate me! I can guarantee that if I was in a similar situation, the bio-mom would have me convicted and sentenced to death within the first 24 hours, regardless of the evidence. There is alot of guilt, insecurity, jealousy, vindictiveness, etc. that comes with being a bio-mom that does not have physical custody. I have been involved in my skids lives for almost 18 yrs now, and have emotionally and financially helped support them but I will never, ever hear a thank you or kind word from their mother, because to her I am evil incarnate.
MOO, but I think that DY's judgment may be very clouded by her own feelings towards TH. What better revenge than to get your ex to divorce the new wife that he left you for? Not saying DY was involved in any way, but that the emotional chaos Kyron's disappearance has caused has not left her in the most objective state, and she is going thru many emotional cycles and upheavals..i.e. anger, grief, etc.

It's sad those injustices exist. I've heard it said each brings his/her own life experiences to jury duty and no doubt that's true (Vincent Bugliosi). But it seems to me these people for all intents and purposes that we can glean from news had moved on with their respective lives. The only thing changed is a child is missing and that truely is not only a horrible thing but a horrible crime.

It couldn't not get everyone's attention and it happens the stepmother was the last known with the now-missing child. On top of that 5 LE from various agencies (not involved in the case investigation) have told news media she's not been forthright in her accounts of her whereabouts at the time of the commission of the crime.

For sake of discussion for every convicted criminal there are those who will never accept the conviction. Yet people are sometimes guilty of the convictions that have been handed down to them.

This case may never be solved. Many child abductions never sadly. Let's hope this poor unfortunate little boy victim does not fall into that column. That is the worst injustice of all.
 
Clearly... we are not the people who have access to all the information and who decide when there is enough to press the charges and go to the trial... and until then we won't know for sure. Everybody who was eventually charged and convicted of a crime was innocent until proven guilty up until that point. But they might have been lying.

It is interesting to me that the family members who are in the position to know more than we do seem to be very convinced that she's been lying, based on many different reasons.

It is possible that everybody who says she's lying is either trying to frame her, seriously misinformed or grossly incompetent and blind. But then again she might be lying.

My problem is that liars are not necessarily murderers. Far from it, at least in my experience. I've known many liars in my life but only one murderer. I'd say the ratio of liars to murderers is hundreds to one, if I include social fibbers ("oh what a pretty child" type fibs), just based on my own experience. And probably twenty or so to one if I only include people who lied repeatedly in serious matters.

If TMH is a habitual liar, as DY and KH have said, that means she is singularly ill suited for exonerating herself if she is factually innocent in Kyron's disappearance.

Things look very bad for her and I have to admit, my gut feeling is that she did it. But my gut feelings have been wrong in the past. For instance, every time my gut feelings have screamed "I'm gonna DIIEEEEEEE" they have been completely wrong!

So I tend to test those gut feelings as rigourously as possible.
 
If there was more reason for TH not to be trusted why was she the one taking him to the science fair that morning? Funny how she became not trusted only after the police tell KH of an alleged plot against him. TH is the person who last admits seeing him, of course if someone else abducted him they aren't going to come forward and admit that they were the last one to see him.

We really do not know if what TH has told the police isn't matching physical records. Unless somone here has a source inside LE on this case who is willing to stand up and tell all then no-one knows that type of info.

Exactly. If the biological parents detested the stepmom so much always I don't believe they would've allowed Kyron to be in her care. The father said he never suspected she'd go so far as to harm his child. He said in the RO he was given probable cause by law enforcement. Maybe it's that they can't disclose everything LE has shared with them re; the case. my paraphrase

Or it could be you're right and LE is just railroading her and telling lies about her to turn public opinion against her. You're right we don't know anything in the news is truth. It could be a concocted soap opera for sake of Internet drama. Maybe all these people are nothing more than actors and there is no missing child.

All any of us have to go on is news on any of these cases in the news.

I know she may be totally innocent of any wrongoing. I'm well aware cops are not infallible. I know they sometimes lie. I know they like to solve cases. But I'm not willing to throw away all of society's laws out of fear of wrongful conviction. It's always been legal to accuse/arrest any one at any time of any thing in the USA. Many who have been are still standing.

If there's no evidence against her in Kyron's disappearance that lack of evidence will be in court If it ever comes to that. (I know, I know or maybe not. People do get wrongly convicted). She may never be though and she may not be guilty of anything; correct enough.

Where'd they dig up the landscaper witness if they're all out to get Terri just because? That's no small matter testifying against her in court and purjuring. Wonder who paid him to do that & how much? That's a thick plot against the only adult last with the child who's stories don't jibe if news reports are true.

ETA: Everyone now on death row &/or doing life in prison were once trusted or they wouldn't have been free to murder in the first place. The ones who are truely guilty that is. Even each one of them has a bevy of folks insisting they're not guilty.
 
I'm not disputing the above in the case of TMH; it certainly appears bad for her.

But as a generalisation, I think you are mistaken. Ask yourself what Kevin Fox did to throw himself under the bus? He led an upstanding life, he told the cops the complete truth and he spent 8 months in jail for it.

Well, he was the father of a three year old, Riley Fox, who was abducted from the family home while he was asleep. When he realised she was missing, he hunted through the house, yard and neighbourhood before calling police, which seems to me to be a perfectly natural reaction.

Then he took Mark Klaas's widely known advice: he completely cooperated with police. Big, big mistake that led to 8 months in jail while the real perp walked free and unsuspected (and did commit further harm against other children).

After 14 hours of intense and coercive interrogation, Kevin Fox made a false confession. No, he should not have done that but people can only endure so much physical or mental torture before they snap. Kevin Fox was obviously pushed into snapping.

The police had a set of (probably unconscious) filters that led them to discard real, actual evidence, like the torn screen, the fingerprints (if they had bothered to run the fingerprints right away, it would have solved the case in the first hours of the investigation), the tennis shoes abandoned near Riley Fox's body that had the name of the perpetrator on them. A name belonging to a convicted sex offender.

The police also ignored that Kevin Fox's false confession was filled with contradictions, both internal contradictions and contradictions of the evidence.

None of the above raised any red flags with the investigators until Kevin Fox managed to persuade a Project Innocence lawyer that he was factually innocent. She took a look at the DNA test, which had been called inconclusive and figured out that the correct DNA test had not been done.

Once the correct test was performed, it pointed straight at the perpetrator. Whose fingerprints were on the Fox's screen door and whose tennis shoes with name on them were next to Riley Fox's body.

I don't believe that the police in the Fox case were innately evil people who were out to get Kevin Fox personally. I think they were well meaning officers who became so focused on a particular theory that they lost all perspective. Then they were able to justify to themselves that the use of any technique against Kevin Fox was justified because they saw him as an evil man who sexually assaulted and killed his own daughter.

And to me, that's the tragedy of investigative tunnel vision. Kevin Fox is obviously a victim. So is his ex-wife (the marriage between high school sweethearts did not survive the experience). So is his young son, who was subjected to coercive interrogation aimed solely at incriminating Kevin Fox.

But the officers involved were also victims. They were fired, they will no doubt ever work in LE again. And I imagine they felt a great deal of personal humiliation. Yes, they did wrong but I believe they did so with the best of intentions. They were under the influence of investigative tunnel vision and they didn't know it.

The thing is, LE with investigative tunnel vision never realise it.

I have followed this case all the way through, probably because I live in Illinois. Never have I shed so many tears in a case as this one. I had tears just reading your comment!

Kevin and his wife are so endearing, she never once thought her husband was guilty. As people became more convinced Kevin was guilty, hate was spewed his way.

And the hate goes on! I continue to hear people tell of his guilt, only now they are convinced Kevin was a crafty accomplice to the sex offender who raped and murdered his 3yo daughter.

Illinois has 40,000 unprocessed rape kits for identification of DNA. Certainly not an excuse in Kevin's case because as you say, fingerprints on the screen door and blood soaked gym shoes with his name were never processed. Kevin was charged with 1st degree murder and thank goodness finally released.

A case like this shows how easy innocence can be turned into guilt by LE and public opinion. moo
 
No one need worry about Terri in that regard based on the other case in Illinois mentioned because she has a lawyer and isn't talking. I doubt very much her lawyer will let LE bash her for hours on end until she spews out a false confession generated by total fatigue. Some LE really are horrible. But Terri did the right thing by getting a lawyer and not talking.

She hasen't been arrested and may never be. No one may ever be arrested. I sure wish they'd find Kyron though no matter who did what with him. He was only 7. Terri's a grownup and she's not missing.
 
I'm a person who was on the fence so to speak. Now, all I can hear in my head are words from Mark Klass---as a parent of a missing child you prove your innocence so LE will search for the actual perp. He asked to take a lie detector test---he knew he had nothing to do with Polly's disappearance.

I respect Mark Klaas a lot but I do not think of him as an infallible human being. I wouldn't put that burden on anyone.

Mark Klaas's situation differed from TMH's situation in some important ways.

He was not the last person known to have seen Polly; he had a pretty good alibi for the time Polly was abducted; he did not fit the eyewitness descriptions of the abductor; and he was able to pass that first polygraph.

His experience as a potential suspect would have been very different if one or more of those factors had been changed. What if he hadn't had a good alibi? What if he had resembled Richard Davis? What if, due to no fault of his own, his polygraph had been judged inconclusive or deceptive?

I think it's possible that his advice might well be different if any of those what-ifs were true.

So why did stepmom allegedly fail 1 or 2 polygraphs and leave early during another????? Why do cell pings disagree with her supposed location------ I know in an initial police interview when you are stressed and ?hysterical you may forget some events of the day, but I know as a parent I would mentally review everything that happened that day. I'd search my brain to remember if I saw any people I'd never seen at the school. I'd think about whether I saw any odd vehicles outside of the school. When my kids were little and visited their grade school I took notice of people hanging around the school who didn't belong. I would go over and over everything that happened that day. So why is SM not doing this. We all suspected Casey because she didn't behave like a normal mom would if your child had been missing for 1 month. Stepmom's actions just don't make sense unless she is trying to hide the truth.

So far, the picture I'm getting of TMH is of a somewhat insensitive, perhaps somewhat crass person. Maybe even a lying jerk. If being insensitive, crass, lying jerk is a crime, then my ex-father-in-law would have been convicted years ago.

She may well be guilty. Right now, I just don't think that she could be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt based on the information released so far.
 
Oh there's no way she could be convicted now even if all the stories are true which is why she hasen't been charged with any crime I would imagine.

Where's Kyron and who took him away?
 
With every crime case in the news there's always a myriad of stories it seems. I don't know what we can do but read and discuss what they say. There have been times stories were so conflicting it left me with nothing to discuss because I was at a loss which to believe was real.
 
Know what would really cause us to jump off that fence?? If there were ONE reliable witness who saw Kyron with Terri that day other than at school. Two or three would be even better. I hope LE is going over those security tapes from the two stores with a fine tooth comb. If he is spotted in one of them.... her goose is cooked.
OR we need one reliable witness who saw her leave ALONE, without Kyron and he is not on any of those security tapes.
Either way, it doesn't matter. I'm not one of those who are determined that she is guilty until I see some proof. Suspicious as all get-out, but not guilty.... yet.

What if the scenario was that TMH killed Kyron in the parking lot at school, placed his body in the footwell of the truck, disposed of his body, then went shopping to establish an alibi? A witness who saw her driving away from the school wouldn't see Kyron. Security surveillance tapes would show her alone or with baby K but no Kyron.

I'm not saying that is how she did it, I'm just trying to point out possible flaws in witness testimony or surveillance tapes.

I do agree that if Kyron is spotted in any of those surveillance tapes, then TMH is clearly guilty of causing his disappearance.
 
I want to make it abundantly clear if I haven't already that in our haste as a society to convict wrongdoers we don't railroad the innocent. I would much rather 100 evil people go free than 1 to goto prison who's innocent.

I completely respect those who are speaking of the other side of the coin in this case. Terri will be fine. She has an expensive lawyer it's said who's advising her not to talk. She hasen't been named a POI or a suspect. She hasen't been arrested or accused by the government. And she may never be.
 
*snipped*
I completely respect those who are speaking of the other side of the coin in this case. Terri will be fine. She has an expensive lawyer it's said who's advising her not to talk. She hasen't been named a POI or a suspect. She hasen't been arrested or accused by the government. And she may never be.

Wow, I would not want to be in Terri's shoes for anything. I do not think she will be fine in any way shape or form. I can almost feel the walls closing in on her. While I seriously doubt she will ever admit to anything, even if a mountain of evidence is presented against her, I do have a very strong feeling that this case will be solved, unlike the Cummings case. As far as Terri being named a POI or suspect, only time will tell, but I do think her time will come and justice will be served for that precious little boy. I know I am willing to wait until LE builds a solid case against her, if she is guilty.
 
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