Sadly, it is starting to look as if there isn't going to be the breakthrough that those who wanted justice for this poor young girl were hoping for. It seems to me that the longer it goes on, the less likelihood there is of a conviction. Unless, of course, the police and CPS have kept a stash of stuff out of the public domain and are waiting to clobber the suspect with it when charges are finally laid.
As I said in a previous thread, in one sense they have no need to hurry - except that continuing to delay charges gives the impression that they may not have enough evidence, and also creates an information vacuum to be filled with conspiracy theories. They have the suspect under lock and key on unrelated matters and I guess the acid test will be in July if he is acquitted of those or is convicted but does not get a custodial sentence. Rather than let him loose, the police and CPS may be forced to arrest and charge him at that point.
Even then, though, would a charge be murder or manslaughter. If I find myself attracted to someone to the point of physical desire, make an effort to get to know her, and ask her out and she rebuffs my advances and I go away and brood on it and brood on it and decide that if I can't have her then nobody will, and I go out one dark night and lie in wait for her, specifically, waylay her and kill her deliberately and with forethought, then that's murder.
Similarly, if I am driven by the sort of proclivities that beset, say, Jack the Ripper and I have a mission, a compulsion, to murder young girls, and I go out at night to areas where they may be found with the deliberate intent of killing one or more, then that again is murder.
Clearly neither of the above scenarios its this case.
So we have two people in a car, one vulnerable and the other looking to take advantage, and the situation develops via the suspect perhaps trying to initiate some sort of sexual contact, which then gets out of hand, develops into a struggle, maybe temper flares, and he ends up with a dead victim. I note that several people have pointed out how long manual strangulation can take, but this is not the only way in which such a dreadful outcome could happen. There are several martial arts blows that reputedly can kill outright. Also things such as "burking" and "yoking".
In that scenario presumably the lack of premeditation means that the only realistic prospect of conviction is manslaughter. But in this case, unless they are sitting on something they aren't releasing, it looks like they don't have anything evidentially connecting him to her after the playing fields CCTV.
Finally, I don't know if anyone's said this recently but I am sure that everyone here is motivated by wanting to get justice for Libby Squire, even though some of the posts (eg like this one of mine here) might be hard to take or seem weird/prurient to the first glance...
