Why? Even if the perps were inexperienced and Evelyn put up more fight than they expected, it seems they would either have run off and left her, or tried to get her out of the house the easiest way possible.
I just keep coming back to my main question - why the basement window?
Just a thought - this theory ties together a lot of the facts that are perplexing otherwise so Id like to know what everyone thinks..
The facts that confuse me:
1) Why break into
that home considering that not only would it would be a struggle for someone to fit through the window but the climbing through process would leave the person vulnerable to people being able to see him.
2) Since the entry point was through the basement why was one of Evelyn's shoes at the bottom of the stairs? If the person came through the window, up the stairs and to the living room which is where the struggle took place at what point did her shoe get to the base of the stairs?
3) Since there is no blood in the home we know that she wasnt hurt until she was outside and nearly at the house next door, its apparent that a
violent struggle went on in the livingroom, if that person had a knife (and seemingly no qualms about using it) why wouldnt they have used it on her during that struggle?
4) The person that fit through the window had to be quite thin in order to get through it but the man described by eye witness leaving the bloody shirts was much bigger than someone who could fit into that window.
And the most troublesome to me -
5) WHY take a dying girl with you when leaving a crime scene?
Possible theory..
She wasnt the target,
something in the home was. I wonder what sort of things were in the basement? The Rasmusen's lived in a new home in a developing area so its certain that at some point there had been workers coming in and out often - between the building of the home and all the normal things were you have to let people in your home there are a lot of people that would be coming in and out and anything in the basement could be plain view..
It wasnt uncommon in that time to have a built in safe in the basement of a home, I wonder if they had something like that? I remember reading about someones home that kept getting broken into due to such a safe because people would always
seethe safe and assume something good was in it.. This stopped when the person started to leave the safe open all the time so that people woul see its empty.
This theory would involve two people, one of which small enough to climb through the window and the other to keep a lookout - perhaps even watching evelyn through the window to make sure he could warn the person in the basement if she got up or went near the basement.. Their plan could have been for the smaller person to climb through the basement window, get whatever was in there they wanted, climb out of the basement window and off they go with nobody the wiser until days/weeks later when the item was found missing.
There is a bit of a drop from the window to the floor in the basement and there are many things that could have went wrong and made enough noise that Evelyn would have gotten up to look into - there could have been something under the window that made noise when he landed on it, whatever he was putting his feet on to get down from the window could have fallen over/broke or he simply could have been looking for stuff and making noise he assumed she wouldnt hear.
She hears it and gets up to have a look around (could have even assumed that it was the baby) and narrows the sound to the basement - opening the door and either seeing the person right then or going down a step or two to attempt to see what was going on then saw him, kicking her shoe at him in shock when he starts up the stairs - she runs away, he catches her around the living room and then the struggle occurs, the 'look out' person would be able to hear what was going on but wouldnt be able to get in because the doors were locked - only to be opened when evelyn runs out the home in an attempt to get away from the attacker only to directly run into the other person waiting outside, that person catches and stabs her because she clearly saw at least one of their faces.
This crime is just way too sloppy and careless for me to believe that the people/persons came into the home with the intent of taking Evelyn with them, I think its more likely that she saw something she shouldnt have (their faces) and became a liability and there didnt know
what to do with her so they took wounded Evelyn with them so they had more time to figure out what to do.
Taking a heavily bleeding person with you after harming them is foolish at best, it seems more to me an 'oh my god what just happened, what are we going to do' sort of thing mixed with being paranoid that the police would be showing up any moment due to the noise made during the stabbing.