@thecatmeows. re: nothing on phone/laptop
(sorry for getting long winded again)
That is not surprising at all. Example: If you were to look at my cell phone or laptop, you would not find anything traceable other than dead ends. And remember, Macin was an avid gamer. The gaming community (and there are a few really major entities and they are all connected in one way or another), is huge-many millions of members. And to sign up in these requires nothing really; fake name, fake email address, etc., nothing that could trace you back to your real identity. And with the use of VPNs, even more obscurity. (If you were to trace my ip address this minute, it would show I am in Warsaw Poland, when I am actually in the USA, but no one would ever know that). Tomorrow, I may choose to look like I am in Germany or Timbucktu. And all chatting and communications between people is done from within the community, and not Instagram, facebook or otherwise. (My facebook-which I never use- indicates that I have 4 friends).
And how do I know all this?
(Ok time to fess up) Well, I have been part of the internet and beyond gaming community since I was 12. I am in there 365 days a year for at least 1-2 hours a day, and on a fair amount of days, far more hours than that. With that much involvement over a long period of time, I have developed many, many close friendships with people. Some of them know more about me than my life-long 'real' friends that live down the block. I have friends in every state of the country (and beyond), and any number of them would assist me to escape or relocate if I desired to do that. And since they would not know my real identity (unless I chose to tell anyone - which sort of defeats the purpose), no one in the community would even know (or most likely care) if there were missing person posts about me, because there is simply no way to connect the two - real and alias identity. Yet, if you looked at my stuff, there would be no clues to any of this. And if it were me, wiping the browser history for the left-behind computer and phone would totally just be a red that herring I created, to sort of try to stop them from looking further.
On a side thought, that is total crap that they could not "decrypt the hard drive on the computer" or what not. That is a total lie. The only way that would be even partially possible is if Macin reformatted the entire hard drives before he left, and there is no public indication that he did that. Parents last post about that topic was a couple of years ago-said, "...are further trying decrypt the data...". This was not a government or NASA or Pentagon laptop that it would make it that difficult to decrypt, and certainly not over a multi-year time span. It was a 17-year-old kid's laptop computer. Yet we never heard the outcome of all that; Other than "we are still trying to decrypt", which does not surprise me at all for reasons I stated above, as well as on previous posts. And decrypted or not they are not going to find anything that would be of help to them.
He had tons of friends by virtue of his avid involvement in anime and gaming. And depending on when he first started in this (like I said I have been in it since age 12), he developed an entire network of good friends. And his parents, (as well as my parents), don't have a clue about any of this, because, well, they just don't. Macin was said to be "addicted" and if he was/is addicted, why would he not, how could he not, be operating in these communities to this very day. And with respect to the above, until or unless they find a body, I declare once again, there is absolutely no reason to believe he is not alive. And doing quite well for himself.
Again, I am only presenting an "alternative" possibility. Other than what I said about myself above, it's all speculation right...
