It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but like you all I’ve been following this case and have some thoughts.
For starters, I don’t fault LE for being vague or walking back leaks with little or no additional clarification. LE is focused on an eventual conviction as much as they are about finding NG. Part of that is making sure they’re not doing anything to jeopardize the State’s case in such a high-profile crime, like contaminating the AZ jury pool by releasing their speculative conclusions or any real evidence they’ll need to present at trial. LE is in a tough spot with no CODIS DNA match, little physical evidence left at the scene, and no obvious suspects that family or friends could point to. It could be a long slog.
MOO
My thoughts about the crime itself, for what they’re worth, are not encouraging. I don’t think this was a burglary gone wrong: the perp apparently cased the house and presumably the victim and chose to enter in the middle of the night with a gun while she was home, and then he didn’t take anything except her as far as we know. He came fully covered not just to hide his face but also to prevent his DNA or fingerprints being left at the scene. If his plan was just to commit a property crime/cat burglary, I don’t think he’d need to worry about LE collecting DNA samples afterwards.
I also don’t think it was a kidnapping for ransom or other motivation. The ransom demands came pretty late, after the crime had gathered national attention, and the figures of $6m and $9m in crypto were exorbitant and unrealistic, imo. I think the ransom emails and the “1 Bitcoin for identifying the perp” emails were opportunistic and sent by people with enough tech savvy to hide their digital trails. I’m not seeing the person pulling off pieces of shrubbery to cover a Nest cam as that guy.
Finally, I’m not seeing this as a sex crime. Aside from the unusual step of taking the victim with him when he left, I believe we would have been seeing much different activity from LE if there had been ANY evidence of a sexual motive at the scene.
I’ve wondered a lot about what evidence LE must have been able to present to the judge in order to show probable cause for those search warrants of LD’s car and his mother’s house. If it wasn’t a DNA match, it had to be something more than just suspicion and his prior criminal convictions. This is my pure guess: LE was perhaps able to trace the “1 Bitcoin” emails to LD or KD. That seems like the sort of thing opportunistic drug-addicted criminals tangentially related to a high-profile victim might try to pull off. I wouldn’t expect a violent abduction with a gun and potential murder/disposal of a body from those two, but I could be wrong. If LE collected DNA from LD while he was detained during the raid (assuming his DNA wasn’t already in CODIS), I would think they’d have gotten results by now that either confirm or exclude his presence at the crime scene.
Finally, I haven’t heard anything about NG having enemies that could make anger/revenge a motive, and the perp doesn’t appear to be insane.
If I rule out the motives listed above (Financial Gain, Sex, Anger/Revenge, and Insanity), that leaves Power/Thrill as a remaining possibility.
So right now, I’m thinking this was someone who had been thinking or fantasizing about killing for some time and this was perhaps the first time he acted on those impulses.
Here are my reasons for thinking this. First, on one hand he seems to have methodically prepared for that night via surveillance and gear/clothing, but on the other hand demonstrated inexperience and off-the-cuff troubleshooting with the Nest cam. Second, his nonchalance and calm demeanor in the video is consistent with, among other things, someone with a low fear response, i.e. a psychopath. Third, he inflicted injury on NG at the scene causing her to bleed, something that given her age and the fact he had a gun to threaten her with seems gratuitous and therefore leads me to believe it was something he wanted to do. Fourth, he selected as a possible first victim someone who was relatively weak and nonthreatening. Finally, if power was one of his motives, he selected a victim with some connection to fame that would heighten the profile of his crime and make it more egotistically rewarding to him. If this was a power/thrill crime, the perp could be someone NG had never even met before; perhaps someone in the area who was merely aware of her or had encountered her once and then had done a bit of research.
This is obviously just my speculation based on very little information, but I’m trying to find the most consistent possibility with what little information we do have.
MOO