I appreciate your work on this, pdxmama.
I just had a chance to look at it and I'm even more confused now (which has nothing to do with the quality of the map)! The span of these three locations suggest someone very comfortable with a decent expanse of terrain. Did the assailant(s)/killer(s) travel on foot? If they were driving, what would they do with their car in these cases? The descriptions of the individual attacks make it seem like the assailant(s)/killer(s) may have known Bill's route and laid in wait for him. The way the three pushpins form a sort of diagonal trajectory jumps out to me as the shortest distance between school and home. And it does sound like Bill walked/biked to and from school ... but perhaps he stopped doing this after the second attack and that's why they had to catch him at home? (Because clearly, notes or no notes, they wanted
Bill!)
The final site, C, is not far at all from the BC home (if you move left from that pushpin to Maple, the residence is 2/3 of the block south toward Kanard -- or more specifically, nine lots north of Kanard on Maple). Unfortunately, we don't know how this buildout differed in 1980. However, the homes do look like 50s/60s tract houses -- and this 'burb is very close to Columbus -- so the development in this neighborhood may be somewhat the same. Perhaps at the time the industrial complex across the tracks was open land? It's also possible there were more open lots on Buena Vista, since it's a border of the neighborhood?
Trying to imagine what it would have taken to get from the BC house to site C, I am dumbfounded. The properties are clustered very close together, with no alleyway between the homes on Maple and Buena Vista. I see only three possibilities:
(1) The killers either got their car VERY close to the BC house, snatched BC without causing any reaction on BC's part, and drove north on Maple with him.
(2) Or they took him on foot through backyards along Maple and Buena Vista (wha-?!?!). We did this all the time when we were kids, as there were few fences in those days, but how could they do this without being seen?! Without BC making a fuss?! And if they immobilized him, how would they carry him?!?!
(3) Or they snatched him on foot and went through Bill's backyard, and the neighbor's yard behind the BC house, out onto Buena Vista, where a car was waiting for them, or they boldly ran down the street to the tracks.
Re the idea that these attacks may have been done by "kids" (though perhaps 2-4 years older than Bill) -- which I am basing on the assailants attacking Bill at various spots on his route betw. home and school and on their apparent comfort with the terrain -- I wonder HOW the F did could kids pull this off?!
My mind is officially blown. I am going back to tweets. Maybe we just don't have enough information.
