I don't think there was much intense investigation at the very start. There was plenty of time for SA to move things around and clean things up. They put the couch out for pick up ---the same couch that HD slept on ---and no investigators were concerned about that.
There is a big difference. WS members are looking at these cases from point of view of the victims and their families. We are looking for ways to solve crimes and get justice for the families.
SA was looking at horror movies from the point of view AS THE KILLER. He wore the leather serial killer mask when he watched the slasher films because he imagined himself as the murderer, and he enjoyed that violent aspect of it.
There were indications that he was inappropriate towards HD. She described him lurking outside her bedroom door at night, and she could see his feet through the crack of her closed door in the middle of the night.
This boyfriend was not a very upstanding, decent young man. He was a creepy drug using, loser who liked p__orn. HD had reason to feel uncomfortable around him.
So that^^^ is in conflict with your statement in first paragraph, where you claimed the Schittt hit the fan the very next day, preventing SA from cleaning up or hiding the body. If they were not suspicious of foul play for awhile, looks like he had plenty of time.
It is not weird that he quit his job on the very morning that HD came up missing? To me, it is very weird and makes him look guilty.
He was literally the last person to see her that day. And he did have motive---one of the oldest and most primal motives for murder that we see here on WS all of the time.
I don't think a custody dispute had anything to do with her murder at all.
There may not have been a lot of investigation but there was investigation and people were paying attention. The only other opportunity to have done something like that would be the morning following HD's disappearance, before anyone knew she was gone. On that day he drove BD to work and presumably did not return home, since DD was there, and if he did DD would be able to account for him until the time the drama began. We don't know too much about where SA was at that time, however, for your hypothesis to be true we would have to believe that he deposited the body somewhere in town, then casually did nothing the rest of the evening and next morning, without behaving in a manner that would get BD suspicious. That just seems pretty improbable to me. And where would he leave the body? It was not at the house and it was not in the car, so where? If you are going to make a case for such a scenario, what would the evidence be? If the body was not in the house then anyone could have discovered it in the interim, and how would it get to the lake, since we know it was not in the car (which was subject to a forensic search specifically for such evidence)? If you are going to propose that as a scenario, then how would it work? Where would he conceal the body? How would he get it to the lake? Plus, while we may not know about his movements that day, other people may well know. And since this has not been suggested by the prosecutor as an alternative to get around their time frame problem, we can assume that they believe that the next day is accounted for.
Your distinction about what WS members are or are not doing, and what their motivation is, is moot, the fact remains they are interested in and are possibly researching true crime. People do have an interest in that sort of stuff for all sorts of reasons, it is not an indication of criminality.
Lots of people enjoy the horror genre, it is one of the most popular types there is. There is an endless stream of movies on that theme released for a reason. People go and watch them.
There were no indications of anything inappropriate going on. Going to the washroom at night is not inappropriate. Also, these were second hand accounts from the grandmother only, not HD herself. HD probably did not care for SA being in the house, and teenagers in that sort of situation will misrepresent motives and exaggerate things. Then the grandmother could further exaggerate things on retelling her account. This is why hearsay is not accepted in court. In any case, even with what the grandmother said, she never claimed that SA actually did anything inappropriate, just that HD was suspicious.
No one claimed SA is an upstanding person, he was (and presumably still is) a semi employed unskilled laborer and was being supported by his girlfriend. These sorts of men (and I think there are quite a few of them in this story like that btw) are usually kind of shifty IMO. But that does mean they are killers, just not the sort of people you would rely on. There is no evidence that he was using drugs other than casually, possibly weed or something like that. The only indication of any drug use IIRC is him and BD supposedly buying some weed on the evening HD disappeared (feel free to correct that if there was anything else). As for
, I am sure he was not someone who particularly liked
, he simply did not have enough of it for that to be the case. He might have viewed it occasionally, like pretty much most other men in the country do, but that does not mean he especially liked
. The amount of
found directly associated with him was actually very little, there were just a few images and videos. And if he was really into it then he would have definitely had at least a computer in the house and some sort of collection. I don't understand why everyone is so fixed on this
aspect, maybe it is because they don't know very much about
themselves, but the amount he had is actually very small to the point of being trivial. I would go so far as to say that given that there were two young males in the house and considering how
is used, the amount of
actually there was shockingly low. There was a lot of
in his mother's house, as well as a computer, however he did not live there, it is a 45 minute drive away. But other people did live there, and it was their computer, so I doubt that collection had anything to do with him.
Quitting his job that particular day was not weird at all IMO, if he was planning to do it, it would have been the proper time. And, as I said, I believe him quitting his job is what actually triggered everything that happened later on, due to HD's antipathy towards him.
There is no motive for SA. For there to be a motive there has to be preceeding actions, and as far as we know there were none. A motive has to be based on something real, not speculative such as "well, anything could happen, so that is a motive".
And I disagree with you on the last point. I think custody and SA's presence in the house as it related to that are the core of this case. Because on that we know from the grandmothers interviews that there were preceeding actions that could be constructed into motive. Not to kill HD, but to figure something out so that she could not be in BD's house, with everything else following from that. The question in my mind really is not that so much, but rather who specifically it was if the scenario is correct, on that point I think it is pretty murky. There are candidates in both families, possibly friends as well. I imagine there were quite a few connected people who were not at all happy about SA's presence in the house.
Now that I mention it, it may be constructive to dig up what the grandmother said in all her interviews, there may be some clues in all of that (even if a lot of it is hearsay) that could provide further insight into motives, such as they might be.
