His guardedness could be a clue to a possible motive for Kelly's murder. It makes me think that she discovered something (i.e. his cache of CP) that night he didn't want her to know or maybe in a euphoric state of being stoned on cocaine, he felt safe enough to confide his interest in CP to her and she reacted by threatening to go to police. Either way, he may have then wanted to silence her.
This would suggest he didn't plan her murder (if in fact he did it - I'm not prejudging) and so a first degree murder charge may not be in the cards.
The damaged goods reference is interesting as it is indicative of low self esteem which may be consistent with both his drug use and CP interest.
It's hard for me to imagine anyone threatening somebody, to their face, with threat of telling the police, unless the matter at stake was something directly relevant to their own interests. The idea that KW would have acknowledged her discovery in a way that troubled him is hard for me to buy, especially since it seems their relationship (and I don't mean this judgmentally) had him as a sort of financier. Plus, no matter how drunk/high on coke you were, I think it'd be pretty clear that telling somebody you were onto their CP habit would mean they would immediately do everything in their power to erase any evidence of that fact. I suppose the laptop being at a friend's house could be indicative of that, though.
But I really doubt any sort of CP related discovery plays into this. Have there been cases where "silencing" was a factor in somebody's disappearance? If so, and if the perp had a few days head start, wouldn't said perp find it just as easy to conceal computer evidence as they did to murder somebody and dispose of their body?
Edit: I didn't see (re: silencing) that Plumeria5 mentioned JVDS (is that the proper initial?). That's a valid point, but a murder accusation would generally warrant much more attention and investigation than CP, IMHO. I can see KW going to LE with the tip and severing ties with him, but again, he'd have had a head start and as an IT guy, I don't think it'd be that hard for him to paint a "I broke up with her and she's trying to ruin my life" situation, with only circumstantial evidence remaining as a worst case scenario. I feel like somebody with his money/status is more likely to argue his way to a "Limewire ruined my computer forever, I have no idea what these things are, I was trying to







music, oh god that's illegal right?" defense than, you know, committing an unforgivable crime to prevent that from happening. MOO and so forth.