h0db said:
I've lived in the Kensington-Wheaton area since 1985, and I think the layout was different from your recollection. The Mall is bordered on the N-NW by University Blvd, and on the NE by Viers Mill. The shopping center annex in the southern section of the parking lot--where circuit city and the cineplex didn't exit until 1990 or so, and the Hecht's extension and lower level didn't exit then either. The mall was enclosed at one point, but I think it was right around the time of the dissapearance, or shortly thereafter. Anchor department stores were Montgomery Wards, Woodies, and Hechts. There is a residential street, Faulkner Pl, that dead-ends at the current mall axis road which would connect it to Drumm Ave, which pedestrians use even today. Whoever named the streets to the west of the mall had a real Southern literature thing-- Faulkner, Stella, Decauter, etc.........
You are correct in stating that the northern and eastern border roads are Viers Mill Road and University Blvd. I had mistakenly thought that it was Georgia, but that road is a bit further east. I did not have my maps with me when I posted. The Mall borders, however, are almost identical to what they were in 1975. The mall buildings and parking lot have changed considerably since that time as you point out. Even the name of the mall has changed recently.
What seems to have changed also, is that in 1975, Wheaton Plaza was more accessable via back residential streets and walking paths through the woods to the west. It was likely that Sheila and Kate walked to the mall via Drumm Ave, which is (and was in 1975) blocked off in the center and only open all the way from Plyers Mill Road toward the Mall by walking. A car can drive only a short way on it from Plyers Mill Road, and only a short way down it from Viers Mill road.
If the girls had in fact made it as far as Devon and Drumm, then an abductor would have had to have driven from the mall parking lot out the Viers Mill Road exit, turned left accross traffic down Drumm and either waited for them, or caught up with them before they reached the place where the road was blocked off with steel pipes. No body ever claimed to have seen or heard the girls being abducted.
The boy who reported seeing the girls headed home on Drumm near Devon at around 2:30PM did not make his statement to the police until two weeks after the girls disappeared. His reasoning for not coming forward earlier was that he had heard a report that the girls had been seen at the mall around 7PM and that he did not feel that his information was important. But that when Police reported that they doubted the 7PM reported sighting, he felt that his information might be important. Police accepted the information as accurate, which would have meant that an abduction would have taken place in a limited time and place - in an area surrounded by houses and potential witnesses. A more likely scenario - assuming a careful and calculating abductor - would have been for the girls to have been coaxed into a vehicle in the parking lot, away from witnesses.
The link provided by marylandmissing to a map shows only a part of the back roads, but it is likely the path that the girls took to the mall and their intended path of return to home.
It would be interesting to know where the Orange Bowl Restaurant was in relation to the point where the girls entered or exited the parking lot. Could the Tape Recorder Man have watched where they came from and where they were going?
I first saw the Wheaton Plaza shopping mall about 1984, and I recall that at the time, there were some buildings which were only accessible from outside. When I visited the mall about 2000, I found it to be a completely enclosed complex.
