First of all, it is not obvious to me that they are lying ONLY to cover up the fact that they left the kids alone if that fact did NOT play a role in whatever happened to Noah. Lots of people do foolish or even neglectful things but then come round to quickly realize when faced with something more serious. In your scenario with the accident happening when AW was napping as she said she was and not during the time the kids were home alone,
1) the fact that the kids were left alone has no bearing on the outcome, and is so much a lesser issue than a missing child, so WHY LIE? and 2) If that WAS the case, then these parents felt so little responsibility for their children, that they viewed saving their own hides over a far less serious charge was more important than finding their child that they actually thought was missing. IMO, that is a pretty awful. That makes them selfish monsters just as much as any of the other heinous things people have speculated about here.
And, in that scenario, if leaving the kids alone had NOTHING to do with what ultimately caused Noahs' demise then...
1) I think we would have heard about it in the bond hearing. We learned that they left the kids alone - this was new information for us and big news. If they had brought the charge of neglect based on AW leaving Noah wholly unsupervised while she napped, I think that would have come out yesterday.
2) If nothing had happened to Noah and/or Baby A while he was alone during the time AW frove PT to the store and to work, she still could have been charged with neglect for that but there is nothing there that warrants the greater charge against her. Additionally, the Commonwealth Attorney would have had a choice about pressing charges on that. If no harm came to them, it is the CA's discretion to press charges or not as Virginia does not have a strict code about unattended children and leaves each case up to the individual jurisdictions.
But I disagree with that scenario all together and I disagree that her deception does not alter the investigation and that the timing would be the same.
First of all, we never really got a definitive answer that we as lay people can consider reliable. The last official updated timeline for that Sunday morning that we have from LE (unless I missed an additional update) was clarified by Akers...
It was initially reported that Noah was last seen between 9 and 9:30 a.m. Sunday. However, at a news conference Wednesday, Assistant Pulaski County Administrator Anthony Akers clarified that Noah was actually last seen by his mother at 7 a.m. watching cartoons. His mother then went and took a nap, and woke up about 10:30 a.m. and noticed Noah was missing.
Akers said the mother did a search of the residence then immediately called 911, and the search began shortly after 11 a.m.
http://www.roanoke.com/news/local/p...cle_86971938-fb24-5957-9562-89fb1f087864.html
That was clarified for us on Mar 24 (Wednesday) but we now know that LE actually knew that AW & PT left the children alone as of March 23 (Tuesday) and still, LE left us with a time line for that morning that they *knew* was inaccurate. I believe that was part of LE's strategy to keep it quiet but had they known sooner, their investigation might well have gone differently.
Looking back at what we have from MSM and press conferences, we know that Sherrif Davis said that all along there were two side-by-side investigations being conducted. The investigation that looked at Noah as a missing child involved decisions made on the idea that he was on foot. How far can a 5 year old walk in 30 minutes, 60 minutes, three hours? How far in to the woods, the meadows? Could he be in this stream or that pond? And now, with the information that he was home alone...the time frame widens for LE. Clearly, LE knew more by then than they allowed us to know. But in the earliest stages of this...in the moments when she first called LE...they were told they were working with a much narrower window of time.
We also know now that she was probably gone longer than the 15 minutes she claims that it took to drive PT to work and return home. We know this b/c we know that his work is 5 miles, an approximate 8 minutes each way PLUS the time the stopped at the convenience store.
It is well established that the first three hours are CRUCIAL in any missing child investigation.
The Center for Missing and Exploited Children (the recognized experts in this matter) tell us:
The first three hours are the most critical when trying to locate a missing child. The murder of an abducted child is rare, and an estimated 100 cases in which an abducted child is murdered occur in the U.S. each year. A 2006 study indicated that 76.2 percent of abducted children who are killed are dead within three hours of the abduction. [2]
http://www.missingkids.com/KeyFacts
Yes, you are right that if he fell in the septic tank, he would have had mere minutes to survive before succumbing. But had she been home, would he be in the back yard alone and unwatched (we know from Courtney's cousin that the answer might well have been yes...but we can also give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she might have been watching him, supervising him from a window.) We know the lid if not the kind that can flip allowing him to disappear in less than a second as he plummeted down. He would have had to get to the lid, remove it (if it was not bolted down, it might still take him a minute or two to figure it out, grapple with it (it was only 2 or 2.5 lbs but would have been large enough around that it would be cumbersome for a child to remove quickly and easily). She might have heard him scream. She might have noticed the absence of "kid noise" in the yard (I worry more when my kids are silent).
There are a lot of "what if's" and could have beens. But in the "truly an accident" scenario that occurred AFTER she came home and was sleeping, none of them present a *reason* to lie other than saving herself...which, again, is pretty awful if she actually thought he was MISSING.
Aside from that...and I realize that these parents probably could not care less about this...but widening that time frame and allowing other LE agencies and several legitimate non-profit SAR's to participate in an ongoing search must have cost a small fortune.
IMO, LE knew that the parents had more to do with Noah's "disappearance" than they reported initially but without proof...or more specifically a body, they had to do their due diligence and maintain a legitimate "missing child" search as well. And that search got bigger and wider based on LE not really having a solid timeline until Tuesday when they admitted they had left him alone. Would AW & PT telling the truth about leaving the kids alone have saved Noah's life. No. I don't think, with everything we know, that it would have made a difference. But in your scenario, they don't have the weight of knowing that he is dead and in the septic pressing on them. I doubt that lie would have perpetuated for 2+ days if they legitimately thought he was missing.
Either way, LE and the CA either know or suspect something happened in the time the kids were left alone or they are using that to buy time until the final autopsy report is complete and they expect to increase the charges. I truly don't believe that if nothing happened to them in the time they were alone that the judge would have been so very clear about her distrust of both parents and they would have had a better chance for bond - especially PT.
and am woefully behind here 
i can't wait for the autopsy results to come back........for goodness sakes it sounds like paul just thought he could stroll right out of there (smh).......unbelievable........
