I could easily explain Jimmy waiting 3 days. Fear. ...
...maybe he just didn't want people to make a big fuss about him.
In the end he did the right thing, or realized no one else was coming forward with the TRM info and shared it. 3 days before a witness coming forward is not significant IMO. quote]
You make some good points regarding adolescents and their reactions to events and to the world around them.
In regard to "Jimmy" delaying for three days before reporting his sighting of the Lyon girls and the Tape Recorder Man I have printed below an excerpt from the interview that he gave to Mary Ann Kuhn of the Washington Star (note this is the same reporter who interviewed Mrs. Lyon that same week).
This is about as close as I have come to an origional source document on the TRM incident. Certainly the police would have much more detailed statements and notes in their files, but this is the story as "Jimmy" (not his real name, just one assigned by police) told it.
Note that news of the girls disappearance was not in the TV news until the day after they disappeared - that is Wednesday 26 March 1975. It is stated by Jimmy's mother that when they first heard the news of the girls being missing, Jimmy immediately told her that he had seen the girls at the mall the day they went missing.
According to his mother, it was two days later, Friday the 28th, that he mentioned the part about seeing them with the Tape Recorder Man. Jimmy did not seem to realize the significance of his information and actually thought that TRM was a reporter. It was the mother's idea to bring him to police that same afternoon.
Note that the article mentions that Jimmy spent two and a half hours with police and that they also questioned his friend who verified the story.
Here is that excerpt and a link to the entire article...
-----------------------------------------
Excerpt from:
Eyewitness: Last Time the Lyon Girls Were Seen
Thursday, April 3, 1975
By Mary Ann Kuhn and Rebecca Leet
Washington Star Staff Writers
...
"It was about 1 or 2 o'clock." Jimmy related. "I was out with a friend. We were down near ... um ... Peoples (Drug Store) and the Orange Bowl (pizza carryout) and we saw the two girls talking to a man with a tape recorder."
"I heard the man ask one question: ' Are any of you two involved in sports?'"
"And then ... um ... 30 seconds later I looked back. He was walking away toward Wards (Montgomery Ward) and the girls were walking the other way toward the fountain."
Jimmy stopped talking. Up to then, the words had tumbled out. He sat there and crossed his hands over his maroon lettered football jersey.
His parents didn't say anything.
His mother sat on the sofa with an untouched glass of red wine on the next table while her husband sat across the room with the newspaper opened across his folded legs. Jimmy was asked to give more details about what he had seen.
He smiled when he told how he and his friend had joked about going over to the man and asking him to interview them so they could get on television.
"I said to my friend, 'Hey, look over there. I wonder what's going on. It looks like a reporter.' We thought he was some kind of a reporter," Jimmy explained. "We were joking around that maybe we should go over there and get him to interview us."
"The man was holding a microphone in his hand between the girls, and asking questions. He had a tan briefcase on the ground. It was one of those hard ones that sat up." the boy said, adding that the tape recorder was sitting next to the man, out of the briefcase.
The man was sitting on the ledge next to an island of (illegible word - bushes?) in the middle of the plaza, Jimmy said. People sit on the ledge to rest during their shopping sprees or to eat a snack or pizza from the carryout.
Jimmy said he had never seen the man before or since. He said the man was well dressed in a brown suit.
Jimmy, who lives several blocks from the Lyons said he and his friend rode their bikes up to the plaza that day "to see friends. We just went up there to ride around. We had nothing else to do so we decided to go up there and look around."
Jimmy's mother said that right after the news came out that the Lyon girls were missing, her son told her he had seen them at the plaza. But it wasn't until Friday that he mentioned anything about the man with a tape recorder, she said.
"On Friday, he said that the girls were talking to a reporter. I said, 'How do you know he was a reporter?' He said because he had a microphone. I told him that could have been anybody and notified police."
At the police station on Friday, Jimmy said, the police "had me look through two files of mug shots."
(The beginning of the next sentence seems to have been left out of the printed article)
... in a while, a police officer would ask me if everything was all right (with the sketch). I'd tell them what was right and what was wrong." Jimmy said he thought the sketch was a good likeness. His mother said he was at the police station 2 1/2 hours that day.
Jimmy's friend who was with him the day the Lyon girls were seen with the man at the plaza verified virtually everything Jimmy said except that he said he did not hear any of the conversation between the man and the girls.
"I hope they find them." Jimmy said. ...
See the following thread in Websleuths for entire article:
News Reports, Articles, and Links on the Lyon Sisters Case Post number 4
LINK:
News Reports, Articles, and Links on the Lyon Sisters Case - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community
