GP didn't seem to have a lot of physical abuse signs displayed in her shared social media (e.g., bruises, scratches, scars, etc). It did look like she had bags under her eyes or maybe swollen eyes indicating post-crying (e.g., perhaps indicating that it was so normal for her that she didn't think it was abnormal to look like she had been crying). It looks to me like there was a lot of emotional domestic violence. I am 50 now, but I remember in my early 20s in college knowing people that preyed on each other mentally - without any physical abuse.
My speculative guess is that they had yet another fight where he was emotionally manipulating her feelings, she fell for it _again_, she physically responded, he ran across the creek, she followed, and fate took its course (e.g., he snapped).
My speculative guess is that the "van life" was more likely the "pressure cooker life" for emotionally juvenile individuals on the edge of desperation.
Looking at the police footage and the witness accounts I just see two young fragile individuals who were codependent on each other and who were documenting a false life. Social media is quite the oddity. Within the pressure cooker of their tiny van and having to document a fake existence, the pressures of honesty got to be too much.
I doubt the murder was premeditated. My speculation is that he lost control and ended her life. He probably looks at it like an accident. Truly a tragedy borne out of naive juvenile minds.
I'm perplexed by my own interest in this story. In my early 20s I traveled with the Grateful Dead tours which is not dissimilar from a "van life." We lived out of vans and went to different cites every couple of days. Maybe its nostalgia for me. I also have 3 daughters who are about the same age. Maybe that's it.
Either way I find determining the moral of this tragedy to be equally perplexing. The perils of social media? The perils of codependency? The perils of life on the road? The perils of existing in your early 20s with no plan for the future? The perils of finding America in your youth?
I just keep hearing her say "juice bar" to the police officer and it hits me hard. She was _so_ young...