Nothing is certain of course, though I do feel obligated to counter absolute statements with those of my own.
But I stand by what I said. The MCSO hasn't been actively investigating this case for a long time. They believe they know who did it, but they have no evidence she did, so they're stuck. In my opinion, this case was bungled in the first weeks. They zeroed in on Terri before they had even interviewed everyone at school. And they changed their tack from gathering witness statements to pressuring Terri two weeks after the abduction, with the distribution of a poster with her face on it as well as the Horman truck. And while they're currently deep in the sunk cost fallacy, the initial events that triggered their suspicions (as far as I can see) are either invalid or were later shown to be wrong:
* June 4th. Desiree going to the investigators the first night to tell them she thought Terri was responsible. If this actually happened, it makes sense that the investigators would become suspicious, but according to Desiree herself her suspicion was based on the false notion that Terri wouldn't have been able to see Kyron's classroom from where she stood.
* June 7th. Polygraphs. They are, of course, bunk and should never enter into a serious investigation, but here they seem to have been given importance based on statements by Kaine, Tony and Dede. If Terri failed her initial polygraph, and the MCSO genuinely believed their silly toy was a lie detector? Another unfair strike against her.
* June 10th. Sauvie Island. The leaked reason for the sudden search of the island was that cell phone pings had placed Terri on the island. We know from leaked emails that Terri was dumbfounded by this, stating she had only been on hwy 30, not on the island. To the MCSO this would be a clear lie from her - and indeed that's what everyone else thought too. Look back at this forum in those early days, and see how many used the cell phone pings as a clear indication of Terri's guilt. Of course, at some point the MCSO realized that they were wrong - the ping did not have to have originated on the island, and indeed the cell tower was by hwy 30, where Terri was. But that was much, much later.
And at this point, the tunnel vision sets in. They have someone the family is suspicious of and who (they believe) lied to them. So the investigation goes into pressure mode. June 18th the poster of Terri and the white truck goes out. At this point, any sighting of a white truck on June 4th becomes a sighting of Terri's truck in the public mind. As an example, on this forum much digital ink was spilled over Chas who said he saw Terri in the white truck at hwy 30 on June 4th - however on a time that would later prove it couldn't be her. Chas himself admitted that he had only called in the tip after the posters had appeared.
At some point the police must have realized that Terri's timeline began to solidify in a way that made it very unlikely for her to have taken Kyron. Receipts, CCTV, witness statements placed her at where she said she had been between 9 and 10, and there were sightings of Kyron at the school after 9. Not to mention the whispers of a strange man at the school. So since Terri was guilty in their eyes (she had lied to them, after all) it had to have been an accomplice. A bit of digging into her finances and what do they find? A landscaper hired by Terri whose presence was hidden from Kaine. Jackpot! The MCSO must have thought they had their man, and (imo) they leaned on him heavily to get him to confess. I very much suspect the MFH "confession" was the landscaper's way of giving the MCSO something and get them off his back. It wouldn't be the first time someone made a false accusation under pressure.
Unfortunately (for everyone involved) the MCSO decided to prove this by a harebrained scheme involving the landscaper wearing a wire in a sting operation, along with turning Kaine against Terri and getting him and his daughter out of the house. Apparently they hadn't planned for the whole thing to backfire, which it did. Terri called the police on the sting, ended up with a lawyer who had no patience for police malarkey and Kaine's immediate divorce proceedings now became tangled up in the criminal investigation, creating a legal mess that would last for over three years. Still, the police kept up their strategy. Friends who stood by Terri were investigated and interrogated, their homes searched - all of them ended up distancing themselves from Terri. One friend, Dede Spicher, declined to take a polygraph, a sensible move, but the result is that the next day Kaine and Desiree outed her to the media, telling the world that she isn't cooperating. Soon her face too was put on posters.
While the landscaper was eliminated as an accomplice (apparently), and Dede doesn't seem to have been seriously considered as one, the police were reduced to asking the public about someone seen sitting in Terri's truck (aka, a white truck) at the school. No description or even gender was given about this individual, but I suspect the Dede posters backfired as soon it was leaked that the police didn't think the mystery person was Dede. If you ask me why this individual was never given a description, it's because they could never link him to anyone, least of all Terri, or find his identity. By giving out the description of an unknown man not linked to Terri they'd hand her ammunition for her upcoming trial.
Though that may have been optimistic on their part. They put the case before a Grand Jury, and while the results were secret, by October it certainly looked like they got no-billed - a rare occasion of the ham sandwich walking. This is when you notice the investigation dying down. You get some drip, drip as the police release dirt on Terri through Kaine and Desiree, and some more searches of Sauvie Island and surrounding areas, but little more. By 2011, what little info we get is that the MCSO are looking into things like a fire at Terri's parents garage in the 90s, or a prison snitch who claims to have been hired by Terri to murder her boyfriend. None of which have anything to do with Kyron, even if they weren't incredibly weak. In 2013 Dede relents and takes the polygraph, which doesn't change anything since her story remains the same as in 2010. What is the investigator's immediate follow-up? To plan another sting operation with Dede! She sensibly declined. Then Terri gets into some trouble after having moved to California. She's acquitted of the charges, but it's clear that the MCSO is sniffing at these cases. So for seven years, the investigative tactic appears to have been "let's poke and prod Terri until we can get anything to stick."
2017 seems to be the last time we get info on the Grand Jury (still meeting, according to legal documents). Since Oregon requires a court order to empanel a new Grand Jury in the same case, that would imply some new evidence, no? Well, turns out Multnomah county had a clever (
and illegal) work-around - they just "forgot" to register their no-bills. After getting caught in 2019 we haven't heard anything about a Grand Jury in Kyron's case. I don't think that's a coincidence.
The case isn't moving. They aren't doing searches. If Terri is the actual culprit, what could they possibly do to get her? They've basically tried everything, and nothing worked. You would think that at this point a fresh set of eyes and a new direction would be welcome.
