Thanks, dotr. I was just looking at a map of Carlsbad a few minutes ago. Another reason I don't think the murderer was someone from Carlsbad is that the sheriff's office personel told Sunshine the girls were picked up on Church Street. If the abductor was familiar with Carlsbad, he would have been apt to know that if he stayed on Church headed west, he would have run into N.Happy Valley Road, also known as route 524 or County Road 657, and that is if the two, Church and Happy Valley intersected back in 1961. If they did, then the killer easily could have been into a desert area much quicker if he'd only known that. Killers who have done preplanning often like loop roads to kill or dispose of victims. The road where the girls' bodies were found was just such a road or rather, I should say it connected into a road that looped back into the Artesia highway.
N. Happy Valley runs northwest. If you pull it up on Google Maps, traveling northwest, you will see a loop road on the west side of N. Happy Valley, which I'm guessing from the lack of housing in that area today would have been a good kill or dump site back in 1961. So for that reason, I don't think the killer knew Carlsbad all that well. I think he came from or through Artesia, may have been stalking girls for sometime at the Beach. Police should have inquired of the rest of the local girls back then, via the local newspaper, to report to them if any had had had any creepy encounters with men at the Beach . From that, there's a chance they could have gotten a description of a possible suspect. Maybe that was done. Who knows now, 50 years later?
I was the same age as Mattie back in 1961, just a few months older than her. I feel sure both girls were naive about what dangers lurked for young girls, just as I was. Life seemed so much safer back then, whether it truly was or not. My girlfriends and I used to ride our bikes around White Rock Lake in Dallas. We noticed there were lone men hanging out in their cars around the lake, but we truly didn't give that a second thought until one day, some guy in a car, pulled up and tried to approach us, asked for directions and wanted us to come closer. We didn't, thank goodness, but that ended our bike riding days around the lake when we told our parents.
That's why I wish so much, someone in LE would have stayed on this case, and not let go. At barely age 13, back then, a girl didn't know whether to cling to her doll playing or move forward. That's pure innocence, and that's where these girls were, struck down in their innocence. All it takes is one caring LE person with pit bull tendencies to not let go until the case is solved. Sunshine is probably beyond gaining justice at this point, this being such an old case, but just knowing who did this or who might have been responsible would give Sunshine something. Anything is better than not knowing at all!
