Forney is about 45 minutes or so from Grapevine, so them leaving at 8 am doesn't strike me as too odd. With traffic it could be quite a bit longer. One of the routes she could have taken would have been 635 so it's not as though where the vehicle was located is that far off of a possible route.
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As someone who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, I logged on to post exactly this.
Forney is a small city directly east of Dallas, and the most direct route to Grapevine, a slightly larger suburb located in the center of the DFW Metroplex, would be to take LBJ Freeway (Loop 635). The Midway Rd. exit where her van was found is the last exit as you are leaving Dallas and entering Farmer’s Branch and Carrollton. It is wall-to-wall business at that intersection... gas stations, fast food restaurants, retail, and even some office buildings.
What I find curious about where her vehicle was located is that it is well over halfway into her journey to Grapevine. Depending on traffic and where exactly in Grapevine the play date was, she was likely only about 15 minutes from her destination. If she intended to do self-harm or she had plotted a murder-suicide, it seems so random that she would pick that intersection of all places to carry it out. I mean, why drive all that way from Forney to end it all? If the goal was to be away from her house/neighborhood, surely she could have picked somewhere a little closer? And why somewhere along the actual route to the play date? If she planned her suicide ahead of time, then the play date was just a ruse. Why bother selecting a spot to end it all along the route to Grapevine?
To me, it seems like she either actually intended on going to the play date and then somewhere along her drive decided she was going to harm herself and her kids, or she met with foul play in that parking lot.
If this wasn’t a case of murder/suicide, then the reports that she had suffered a recent injury and had been in a lot of pain could point toward another explanation of why she and her kids were found where they were. Maybe she had gotten hooked on pain meds or other drugs to help cope with the pain, and she was meeting someone in that parking lot to buy them (drug deal gone bad)?
It seems highly unlikely that abduction/murder is the case here, given that they were found miles away along the route to the play date. Had a stranger carjacked/abducted her closer to Forney, he wouldn’t have known about her plans to drive all the way to Grapevine, nor would he have bothered to drive her most of the way there to kill her.
I think it’s telling that authorities haven’t released cause of death for the mother and children or really any other information other than that their bodies were located in that parking lot. Even a drug deal (or other interaction) gone bad, my second guess, would likely have resulted in the authorities releasing something to that effect.
