You're right there, katydid, about Lonnie being dropped off at 12.30-ish, which is the last time anyone saw him alive. The boys (with their girlfriends in the car) said he looked shaken up, but that he calmed down after a while.
Lonnie left the fair late, as far as we can tell. He was picked up, looking 'shaken'.. there's a chance he had some contact with the killer prior to being abducted. Maybe he was just panicking about being out that late, worried about walking in the dark -- but I somehow think a kid who had to do for himself, who was allowed to stay at the fair without supervision to that hour, whose carers weren't caring enough to go looking for him that night.. somehow I think Lonnie was hardly an overly protected, easily frightened sort of child and was used to getting around by himself and being alone at all hours. So I'm inclined to believe that -someone- shook him up, so much so that a bunch of teenagers would notice right away that he was in a bad way when they picked him up.
He didn't look like he'd been tortured or beaten or anything.. just scared. So I am thinking, whatever injuries he had happened after he got out of the teenager's car.
Now, his body still had undigested food in it when he was discovered. This tells me he wasn't kept for all that long before he was killed.
But -- and this is what doesn't make sense to me -- why pick up a child and take him directly to the kill site, and then kill him right away? If this monster WAS a sexual predator, he'd likely have kept Lonnie for a time (in his vehicle, or another site) before killing him. However, if he -did- keep Lonnie, it was not for very long.
Food doesn't take long to pass through the stomach - all the hard digestive work is done in the intestines, which takes a few more hours. If food was found in Lonnie's stomach, and it's fair-type food, then Lonnie ate it not long before his death. Lonnie died soon after he left the fairgrounds, or that fairground type food he ate would have been more than partially digested.
And here, I have to wonder -- if the killer had attacked Lonnie in any truly horrible way prior to his being picked up by those teens, would Lonnie have been somewhat more than just 'shaken up'? Would he have become more relaxed at all, once he was in that carful of teenagers? I kind of doubt it. And the teens would have noticed something like bloody fingertips, surely. So I am thinking, Lonnie was visibly scared but not totally terrified at 12.30
Forgive this personal interjection -- but this part gives me total chills, having been myself picked up hitchhiking by the brother of a well known serial killer who was suspected of being an accessory. I had the wits scared out of me before he let me out of his car (which had no inside door handles, except his own) - making sure I knew this was 'special treatment' and he was doing me a huge favour , letting me go like that .. the next ride I took - and keep in mind that I was 18, and that I was not molested or harmed in any way, only scared stupid, and that I did not know at the time that this guy was the brother of a serial killer - the next ride I took, I was visibly a bit more than "shaken", I was near hysterical. The teens who picked me up let me out at their turn-off (like Lonnie was let out) and there I was .. back on the road, not knowing if that car had been followed, no rides in sight, only open road and cane fields.. I say all this because it would have been so easy for that guy to follow and find me, if he changed his mind and wanted a victim. And because I think if Lonnie had been molested already, he would not have 'calmed down' so much that the teens would notice it.
It's possible Lonnie spent time with a molester at the fair or shortly after he left the fairground (this time before 12.30 is the missing hunk of time I was talking about), got scared, took off, got away from him, and tried to hitch-hike home .. and was caught again?
Or the killer wasn't a child molester at all, and had another motive for executing Lonnie like that .. and took the time to make it look like Lonnie was the victim of a transient pedo.
I think the police were very cagey about announcing the actual state of Lonnie's body. One examiner said for sure he was not raped. But the papers make it very clear the police considered this a 'sexual crime'. It's really important, this issue of whether or not Lonnie was molested sexually - keeping in mind that of course, anal penetration is not the only way to molest a child. If he was molested at all, there might have been other signs.
If not, then things take a whole different slant, here...