Ransom Note and Calls to the Boss

SubtleGrace

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I would like to discuss the ransom note and subsequent calls to AB's boss. Specifically, what was the plan? I can't figure it out and need a little help. I know it had something to do with covering up Zahra's apparent (not confirmed) demise, a ransom note makes sense, but not the calls to the boss. They wrote the ransom note then set the yard on fire, then called the boss. He must have freaked, call 911 you idiots! After all it was his property burning. He then shows up with his daughter, and voila, ransom note. If AB and EB never told the neighbors about Zahra, do you think they told the boss? Why didn't he ask where she was at the fire?

Fast forward to several hours later. They discover Zahra missing. Who do they call? That's right, the boss.

I'm not getting this.

Thoughts? Theories? I may have missed this discussion in the general threads.
 
Firefighters notified police, who approached the SUV and smelled the odor of gasoline coming from inside. The note written on the envelope was addressed to a "Mr. Coffey," identified in the search warrant as Adam Baker's boss, Mark David Coffey.

"Mr. Coffey, you like being in control now who is in control," the note said, according to the search warrant. "We have your daughter and your pot smoking red head son is next unless you do what is asked 1,000,000 unmarked will be in touch soon." In the bottom right, the note said, "no cops," according to the warrant.


http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/12/north.carolina.missing.girl/index.html?section=cnn_latest
 
EB says He ( AB) " pushed her " regarding the ransom note in the last paragraph of the first letter...
Either she is saying she was rushed into writing it before the police came but more likely that she didnt want to it but caved under pressure from Adam....

Thinking the ramson note was mean for police to ask and discover that Zahra had dissappeared at that time (all to AB & EB shock and surprise).... but when no one asked about Zahra that night then they had to come up with another plan B...which was AB calling 911 the following afternoon stating the mix up with bosses identify and therefore his daughter was taken in error....

The ramson note sounded more like information Adam would know about unless EB knew Adam's boss also and that he had a daughter...

Just a theory....
 
I would like to discuss the ransom note and subsequent calls to AB's boss. Specifically, what was the plan? I can't figure it out and need a little help. I know it had something to do with covering up Zahra's apparent (not confirmed) demise, a ransom note makes sense, but not the calls to the boss. They wrote the ransom note then set the yard on fire, then called the boss. He must have freaked, call 911 you idiots! After all it was his property burning. He then shows up with his daughter, and voila, ransom note. If AB and EB never told the neighbors about Zahra, do you think they told the boss? Why didn't he ask where she was at the fire?

Fast forward to several hours later. They discover Zahra missing. Who do they call? That's right, the boss.

I'm not getting this.

Thoughts? Theories? I may have missed this discussion in the general threads.

Calls to boss was to "try" their story on someone and secondly maybe Mr. Coffey's involvement was meant to be a mediator to the police....AB thinking his boss would call 911 instead but he didnt take the hint...

Why didnt EB or AB want to make a call to LE...
1. worried about possible warrants and arrests
2. They were quilty to disposing of Zahra
3. calls were being recorded...how could they convince LE with their made up story when they didnt have conviction enough to make it sound like they were depersate their daughter was missing....

"Hey, how you doing? " sounds like AB was calling to ask someone for a date not report a missing child....

JMO.
 
Firefighters notified police, who approached the SUV and smelled the odor of gasoline coming from inside. The note written on the envelope was addressed to a "Mr. Coffey," identified in the search warrant as Adam Baker's boss, Mark David Coffey.

"Mr. Coffey, you like being in control now who is in control," the note said, according to the search warrant. "We have your daughter and your pot smoking red head son is next unless you do what is asked 1,000,000 unmarked will be in touch soon." In the bottom right, the note said, "no cops," according to the warrant.


http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/12/north.carolina.missing.girl/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Could it have all gone pear shaped once LE got involved?
The ransom note though would seem a little ironic.

I have been wondering why would she write it.

Trying to look at every angle is too bizarre for me.
 
Calls to boss was to "try" their story on someone and secondly maybe Mr. Coffey's involvement was meant to be a mediator to the police....AB thinking his boss would call 911 instead but he didnt take the hint...

Why didnt EB or AB want to make a call to LE...
1. worried about possible warrants and arrests
2. They were quilty to disposing of Zahra
3. calls were being recorded...how could they convince LE with their made up story when they didnt have conviction enough to make it sound like they were depersate their daughter was missing....

"Hey, how you doing? " sounds like AB was calling to ask someone for a date not report a missing child....

JMO.

Are there any reports about the job AB had to check on? On the Saturday.
 
I have often wondered about this myself....what the ???? was the boss to do with this....

But I think what 2 of you above have written makes perfect sense and I have had an aha moment.....

I think the plan was this: call the boss to say his yard was on fire......
he calls 911 and the police or firemen discover the ransom note
or ask if anyone else was in the house and they go look for zahra
who is missing and go "oh no our baby is missing!!"
and then the motive becomes that the kidnappers have taken the
wrong girl.

something like this anyhow.......but something went wrong...... I can not understand why they did not say that there was a little girl in the house when the fire brigade came, cos they could have put on the fake "oh no our baby is missing"...
 
1) AB told boss that he had a daughter. Do we know if AB worked for boss before they moved to Hickory and into his rental house?

2) What the boss said to AB when he called both times.

3) If the firefighters were aware of a child at the house.

I have a problem with no one checking on Zahra during the fire. If the firemen were aware (after the ransom note was found) that AB had a daughter, I can't imagine that they wouldn't either check on her themselves or ask the Bakers if they had checked on her and been told yes.

I wonder if perhaps, besides thinking that boss would call 911 for them, if they thought that boss would give them ransom money for Zahra and they could then just take off? MOO

Trying to think outside the boss, er box.

I believe boss spoke to media yesterday regarding the eviction of AB. Has he made any other statements that we are aware of?

TIA
 
Thinking back, I guess AB would have had to have mentioned Zahra to the boss, otherwise, why would he call him first before reporting Zahra missing?

Curious and curiouser.

Answering my own questions guys. :blushing:
 
i dont get why it was not just one action ( fire, ransom, missing zahra) vs 2 seperate actions ( fire ransom) and ( missing Zahra) ..


To me it drew more attention to have called the police 2 times in the matter of hours. Where doing everything at once and involving the police once. ( that make sense?)

Because of this it makes me scratch my head about AB being clueless in the dissappearence of Zahra. If they were plotting how to not get caught for zahra then i would think that they would think this also and come up with a plan that didnt draw more attention to them.
 
Sometimes when you are dealing with cases like this, a current discussion will lead your mind back to previous discussions. That happened to me this morning while talking about the video of Elisa being arrested. In that video, she points angrily at someone and says something. I can't tell what she says exactly, but it gave me the impression that she was pointing at AB and saying something to the effect of, "I'm NOT going down for this!" That immediately called to mind her 911 fire call. It was everything I would have expected from someone who had just discovered a fire in their backyard. Urgent, direct, no rambling, just basically, "Send the fire department!"

Then I thought back to AB's 911 missing child call. In that call he says (regarding the fire earlier), "We woke up...my dog woke me up." Why the switch from "we" to "me"? Is he saying that both he and EB woke up? Is he saying that the dog woke HIM up and he then woke HER up? It's curious, and it's always bugged the hell out of me.

That thought lead me straight back to the ransom note itself. We know that Elisa wrote the ransom note, she's admitted that. But do we know WHEN she wrote it? Is it possible she wrote this note prior to the fire, as part of a kidnapping plan they had decided NOT to go through with? And is it possible that AB is the one who panicked, grabbed the note, stuck it to the car, and set the fire without EB being aware he was going to go ahead with the aborted plan? And if that were the case, would THAT explain why we later see EB being arrested, pointing her finger and saying something to the effect of, "I'm not going down for this!"?

If you were going to write a ransom note to explain why your daughter is missing, wouldn't you mention your daughter in it? This note doesn't. If you were going to make up some story about your bosses daughter being missing, and use that as a way to "suddenly notice" your own child missing, then wouldn't you point out to cops and firefighters that your kid isn't in her bed? AB and EB didn't. AB called to do that 10 hours later.

All of these random thoughts made me realize that I have ALOT more questions about this ransom note business than I did in the begining, when we thought Zahra might still be alive. Maybe other WSer's do too?
 
Mountain Kat - I agree the ransom note issue raises far more questions than it answers. I find my brain running in lots of circles so I drew it out on paper and used circles around each name - somewhere they overlap and there lies the truth. There is definitely info and perhaps names missing however. I am very curious why the boss was even called to the fire at 0530, and just as curious as to why AB called him about Zahra being missing before he calls 911. It almost reeks of making the boss a witness to something...

Just my quess - the ransom note was written around 0230 on 10/9/2010.
 
Mountain Kat - I agree the ransom note issue raises far more questions than it answers. I find my brain running in lots of circles so I drew it out on paper and used circles around each name - somewhere they overlap and there lies the truth. There is definitely info and perhaps names missing however. I am very curious why the boss was even called to the fire at 0530, and just as curious as to why AB called him about Zahra being missing before he calls 911. It almost reeks of making the boss a witness to something...

Just my quess - the ransom note was written around 0230 on 10/9/2010.

I'm starting to wonder if it might have been written PRIOR to 2:30 am on 10/9/10 .

We know that an employee of a business behind the house saw someone sitting on the back porch that morning playing with a lighter. He says it was dark and he couldn't see who. We also have AB, in the 911 call , first saying, "We woke up." and then changing it to, "My dog woke ME up." So...was EB sleeping? Was he, in fact, the first person up that morning?
 
Sometimes when you are dealing with cases like this, a current discussion will lead your mind back to previous discussions. That happened to me this morning while talking about the video of Elisa being arrested. In that video, she points angrily at someone and says something. I can't tell what she says exactly, but it gave me the impression that she was pointing at AB and saying something to the effect of, "I'm NOT going down for this!" That immediately called to mind her 911 fire call. It was everything I would have expected from someone who had just discovered a fire in their backyard. Urgent, direct, no rambling, just basically, "Send the fire department!"

Then I thought back to AB's 911 missing child call. In that call he says (regarding the fire earlier), "We woke up...my dog woke me up." Why the switch from "we" to "me"? Is he saying that both he and EB woke up? Is he saying that the dog woke HIM up and he then woke HER up? It's curious, and it's always bugged the hell out of me.

That thought lead me straight back to the ransom note itself. We know that Elisa wrote the ransom note, she's admitted that. But do we know WHEN she wrote it? Is it possible she wrote this note prior to the fire, as part of a kidnapping plan they had decided NOT to go through with? And is it possible that AB is the one who panicked, grabbed the note, stuck it to the car, and set the fire without EB being aware he was going to go ahead with the aborted plan? And if that were the case, would THAT explain why we later see EB being arrested, pointing her finger and saying something to the effect of, "I'm not going down for this!"?

If you were going to write a ransom note to explain why your daughter is missing, wouldn't you mention your daughter in it? This note doesn't. If you were going to make up some story about your bosses daughter being missing, and use that as a way to "suddenly notice" your own child missing, then wouldn't you point out to cops and firefighters that your kid isn't in her bed? AB and EB didn't. AB called to do that 10 hours later.

ITA and I find it extremely ODD that LE did NOT seem to even ASK.. if there was anyone (let alone a daughter!) inside the house at the time of the fire?

All of these random thoughts made me realize that I have ALOT more questions about this ransom note business than I did in the begining, when we thought Zahra might still be alive. Maybe other WSer's do too?

My biggest question about the ransom note is that AB didn't recognize his own "wife's" handwriting? I'm sure LE would have ask him if he recognized it, and if he said NO.. THAT wold be a big lie, right there.

All just moo
 
I'm starting to wonder if it might have been written PRIOR to 2:30 am on 10/9/10 .

We know that an employee of a business behind the house saw someone sitting on the back porch that morning playing with a lighter. He says it was dark and he couldn't see who. We also have AB, in the 911 call , first saying, "We woke up." and then changing it to, "My dog woke ME up." So...was EB sleeping? Was he, in fact, the first person up that morning?

I suspect anything is possible with this cast. Just something about a specific time for the last time Zahra was seen niggles me. I think there is some significance to the time, don't know why.
 
Noetic, I think AB knew that Elisa wrote that note. I think he was right there when she wrote it. I'm just not convinced that she wrote it the morning of the fire.

ETA: Listen to EB's 911 fire call again. Isn't it exactly what you would expect to hear from someone who just discovered a fire in their yard? Urgent, direct, no rambling irrelevant info added. Compare that call to AB's 911 missing child call. The differences are STARK!
 
Noetic, I think AB knew that Elisa wrote that note. I think he was right there when she wrote it. I'm just not convinced that she wrote it the morning of the fire.

ETA: Listen to EB's 911 fire call again. Isn't it exactly what you would expect to hear from someone who just discovered a fire in their yard? Urgent, direct, no rambling irrelevant info added. Compare that call to AB's 911 missing child call. The differences are STARK!

Yep, ITA!
 
Just to be clear, because there does seem to be some confusion regarding times:

10/9/10 @ 2:30 am is when Adam Baker (in 911 call missing child call) claims they checked on Zahra (later changing that to, "Her mother checked on her at 2:30 am. " in GMA interview.)

10/9/10 @ 5:20 am is when the 911 fire call was made.

10/9/10 @ 1:58 pm is when the 911 missing child call was made
 
I dont know how to snip things from different posts to add them to this one so please bear with me.
First in EBs letter to Damion she states that LE kept pushing her not AB as stated in post#3

None of us know if AB was ever shown the ransom note to know whos handwriting it is.

I cant fathom that no one asked about Zahra during the fire but if they did EB or AB could have said they just checked on her and she was fine.

I think EB did ramble on during her 911 call. She went on about her husband working for a landscape company.(not a direct quote) I also dont think she sounded panicy by any means. I also think the boss and his daughter were there because LE called him after the note was found. Why the note was written is beyond me, I dont think EB thinks like normal people do.

As for ABs 911 call I wonder if he just didnt believe anything had happened to Zahra. I take it more as him calling to apease EB. I think he thought she may have left the home to get away from EB for awhile,thus the broody statement. I also think this is where the boss being called comes in. I think he looked around the neighborhood and made a few calls trying to find her before calling 911.
JMO
 
Charlie, I totally agree, they needed the boss to make it look legit. My take on EB's 911 call however is that I think she sounded "scared and anxious", but not because of the fire, because they had set a plan in action. I honestly think they chickened out. Maybe because of the reaction they got from LE and the FD, or even the boss, but whatever the reason, they didn't got through with it. (Maybe the boss even told LE that EB was a drama queen..) Kinda like EB saying "nothing has gone the way"...blah blah blah.
 

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