It feels pointless to do after so many years passed and interest in the case fade away with nothing new to discuss but since Kayelyn was one of the missing person's case that I happened to follow since the very beginning I still want to add my two cents. It's also one of the cases that scare me the most.
IMO, apart from the strong given narrative, there was not much here to suspect that she had some sort of mental breakdown.
WITH this narrative - oh my gosh, hardly possible to consider anything else. It basically forced people to see her acting bizarre in the surveillance videos, but with a closer look it all kinda falls apart.
What I mean by this?
Let's start with her outfit.
Her outfit seems totally appropriate for me.
When you're hiking and it's cold, taking off as much clothes as possible and hiding them in plastic bag/backpack is the smartest thing to do. Cause then you can get into shelter with dry clothes or put them back dry when it stops raining.
She wasn't hiking, just walking her dog. Close to her condo, mostly not out in the rain but along the tree line where it looks thick enough to not be rainy. Wasn't cold. Wasn't late. Why not shorts and top? Less fabric to get soaked in rain.
If she were the kind of person who felt comfortable being tidy, always taking an umbrella while it rains, dressing up with certain style (very different from shorts & tank tops) then yes - her being caught on surveillance like that on the street would be very significant, very concerning.
But was she? Nope. Then, why is that seen as so odd?
On those videos she's close enough to her appartement to resonably compare it to a person walking around their backyard - NOT to a person going out to have a walk in park nearby.
Video clips.
Is what we see on surveillance beyond the range of normal?
I believe it was released like that to give people relatively good idea of what she was wearing and how she looked like and then all those tales were inspired by it.
In so many retellings it was presented as bizarre, but anyone who bought into that should be concerned about their behaviour 24/7, cause this way literally anyone can be gaslighted into having some obvious mental issues. Few seconds of surveillance here and there, and I'd bet that anyone who doesn't act like some sort of lord or comtess all the time can be edited to appear like a crazy person.
Video one: looks like she's just casually walking on that path which runs along the creek. She's barefoot, wears tank top and shorts - neither her moves, outfit, map of the terrain or the fact that there are two later clips of her from same exact spot indicates that she was going anywhere far. Where was she going?
Video two: she runs out of the alley in the back in kind of a hurry, heading in direction of her appartement. Looks like it's raining significantly heavier than in the first clip.*
Video three: she comes out of that place carrying the dog, then puts the dog on the ground as they are out of the near-creek alley and looks like she's saying something to the dog and looking in the direction of the creek (where water level rised significantly).
Is anything odd or unusual there? Seriously?
Only "odd" thing for me there is that she goes out, runs back and comes back again but with the dog. So between the vid 2 and 3 she had to come back home, take a dog, go for a walk and get to the spot while coming back.
And as far as I know, dog was found safe at home. So best guess would be that not all surveillance with her was released - cause either she came back once again and got out for the third time, without her dog.
As she gets out of the path along the creek, and isn't covered by trees anymore, she's running.
Isn't that exactly what anyone would do?
Maybe walking out of the building and trying to get into a car left on rainy parking lot? Or leaving some sort of roofing and trying to get into another building while it rains? Aren't you people running then? Or at least walking faster to not get so wet?
Videos about her case are all made to be spooky and generate views that are more concerned with getting creepy entertainment than looking for facts.
Kayelyn was not talking to herself while caught on surveillance, she was talking to her dog. Most pet owners do that and it doesn't mean that they're all schisophrenic or mentally unstable.
Walking barefoot on a rainy day is nice. Could be sign of something, could mean nothing, or only as much that her usual flip flops used to take dog on a walk got slippery on wet surface and she felt too lazy to put on other shoes and went barefoot. Asphalt looks relatively smooth there, not much little stones, no gravel.
Walking barefoot on such surface feels nice. It wasn't a cold day.
Another thing: depression.
All credibility was taken away from Kayelyn. She surely not in the best shape mentally prior to her disappearance, but that happens to everyone at one point or another.
Any healthy human being wouldn't feel peachy as their brother would end up in prison for killing another family member while both were under influence of one the most mindwrecking drugs out there - after years of struggle to help him get out of the addiction.
And the last thing: calls for help.
I'd wish that thorough examination of possibilities offered by reality would always preceed a consideration of mental issues. Cause that's what we should do: go from the most probable explanations and only if they don't fit starting with exploration of less likely scenarios.
Mental issues, minor or major, ilnesses that hit people with next to no previous warnings - those are possibilities. But in reality those things are very rare in comparison to being accused of having one - either by ill will, misunderstanding or ignorance.
We're all relying highly on Kayelyn's flatmate statements and we know next to nothing about her - and no reason for us to do, BUT that should be kept in mind for the God's sake.
Her involvement in case I saw discussed here and there, but pretty mondain explanation of how her and Kayelyn's accounts could be so different was not put out there and possibly missed by many.
She may be simply not the caring type, preffering to mind her own business, tired on that day, but most importantly she was living in another room and from there she could be unable to hear anything. She may have experience with annoying roomates, possibly some drug users from the past and simply not think that much about Kayelyn's behaviour, brushing it off as "probably nothing serious".
As far as I know they weren't friends. They weren't family. They didn't knew each other THAT well to expect - her to leave everything and focus on analysing Kayelyn's behaviour, trying to figure out if it's something concering about it or not - and to expect that Kayelyn would trust her words over her own senses and intuition.
Usually things are not going this way, but it's still a possible scenario:
1. Fight reported by Kayelyn really happened, but as cops showed up to check on it, everyone denied any disturbance occured.
2. For a roomate that should be the end of the story, but Kayelyn was still hearing disturbing things and still worried.
3. Kayelyn spend whole night sleepless, listening to the noises from the clubhouse while partygoers, annoyed that she called cops on them decided to mess with her making even more creepy noises so in the morning she was totally scared and called once again.
4. Till late afternoon same day she calmed down, went out somewhere quickly, then got her dog on a walk, came back home... and then something happened and resulted in her ending up dead in the creek, carried by water far away from there.
There is one thing that rings my alarm bells, but I'll come back to it later.
First call
Kayelyn reports some disturbance in the clubhouse, she's suspecting that guns are involved.
And they very well might be. No shooting happened as far as we know, but people were there - why would they admit that they had some disturbing fight happening recently (or that any peculiar occurence took place)? Just for the sake of Kayelyn's credibility?
If nothing serious happened or they didn't wanted cops to know that it happened they obviously would deny anything, cause everyone does that.
But they were people there, they were doing some activities, she could definitely hear some things and misinterpret them to the very least. OR possibly - she did not misinterpreted anything, just thought that something feels sketchy about it so she called cops to check on it. As anyone should. And people who whitnessed or took part in the fight saw no reason to incriminate themselves. Roomate might not not hear anything from her room and not care what Kayelyn thinks about it.
Second call
Kayelyn is reportedly mumbling a bit. Maybe cause she's experiencing some sort of mental of physical issues, OR maybe cause she's trying to explain why she tried to call again, while in the mean time she dealed with unhelpful, unvalidating and mocking roomate. Also as anyone would. To this point it seems like this could be totally normal scenario:
1. Caring person who tends to act and not ignore things (as literally everyone who claimed to know her told her she was) hears something disturbing and possibly dangerous so she does the right thing and calls cops.
2. Cops arrive but nothing is happening anymore and all people present deny that anything was going on.
3. As soon as cops left they got back into what they were doing before - or got annoyed and angry about the fact that someone called cops on them.
4. Caring person is still worried about it. Her uncaring companion is of the belief that she should mind her own business and stop causing her trouble by making fuss out of it.
5. After being called paranoid and delusional caring person tries to call cops again to let them know what's happening but gets caught by the companion who disapproves of the call - so she hangs up.
6. Dispatcher calls her back to make sure everything is okay - it's not, but it's hard to explain things while trying to hide the call from roomate. Not much comes out of it.
One hour between the calls. 9 and 10 pm.
Everybody but Kayelyn seems to agree that nothing happened, but I'll repeat it once again: her roomate may not hear anything from her room and others had no interest in admitting that anything disturbing happened.
What's worth noting is that rainy weather and high humidity are affecting the way sounds and smells are travelling significantly, it'd be a huge difference from usual dry, desert weather.
IMO is very possible that she was suddenly hearing everything what was happening in that clubhouse. Maybe she misunderstood what people were doing there, maybe she don't but there is something big in here I think.
Second call happened around 10 pm, Friday night it was.
Third call - 8:18.
So... that's 10 hours later. 11 since the first call.
Was Kayelyn's pug using litter box?
Cause that's ELEVEN hours.
That should be long after they got out for a morning walk. Haven't they on that day? Were they never going out on the morning walks?
Was she so scared that she didn't take her dog out and it just sh** and peed all over the place?
Or was she just reporting disturbance the previous night, then woke up, went out with her dog and THEN something terryfing happened, and only then she got so distressed and scared that she called again, terrified by possibility that someone got inside?
Kayelyn screams and wants the intruder to "leave", while her roomate is making a bit weird statement.
May be not that weird if it was a part of longer discussion between them (and it probably was), and that bolt being still in place was just one of the "proofs" that nobody's inside, but still...
Wouldn't saying someting to the accord of "Calm down, I've checked, nobody's in here and the doors are locked" more obvious reaction to Kayelyn's claims?
But she says "no one can be in the house cause the bolt on the door is still locked". That's not reassuring.
What sense does it make?
"Nobody's in here, I just looked everywhere." makes perfect sense.
"Nobody else is here, I checked, we can go and check together once again" does as well.
But "the bolt is still locked"?!
Like there is no chance on Earth that anyone could get inside some other way?
Or got in while doors were open and hided somewhere inside?
Also no chance that she allowed someone in, locked the bolt back and kept gaslighting and bullying Kayelyn cause she was annoyed with her?
Those last few questions are not meant to make a roomate look like guilty of something.
But if Kayelyn got outside to have a walk with her dog (then during the very short outing doors could be left open, and even if closed with keyes) bolt wouldn't be locked at the time, but locked back, as Kayelyn got back - and if so, then roomate's argument would hold no value for Kayelyn. If that bolt was "still" locked for an hour or two, and Kayelyn calmed down just to get scared with unknown noises again...
All her supposed "crazy" behaviour could be just her, getting scared in the morning and not feeling reassured by the roomate, cause of badly chosen arguments.
Why everyone is even so sure that nobody was there then?
Were there any reports that cops checked the appartement and made sure that indeed nobody is there?
At least that'd be a proof that nobody was there anymore, but it all relies on the roomate's credibility. And it relies on it kinda inconsistently.
Shouldn't it be either all in: so we believe that she was acting reasonably and made the best judgement about evening noises, and morning events but also about Kayelyn - and since she didn't took any actions to seek some medical checkup on Kayelyn or notify her family, she apparently haven't figured that Kayelyn's behaviour is really that concerning
Or all out: so maybe she didn't care that much and haven't heard anything, and wasn't concerned about Kayelyn making yet another mistake?
We have no idea what happened then, but since Kayelyn wasn't there anymore to defend herself we just all need to conclude that roomate was speaking for the fact and acted reasonably.
And maybe she was, after all we know only the bits of it, and it may be not representative of all the action she took and all she said - but I don't know that, and neither do others who took her narrative as gospel.
Did these cops even found anything that contradicted Kayelyn's story?
They found no signs of a break or robbery, but the claims were that some intruder is inside (not that he broke in, that was the roomate's narrative that bolt is in place and doors are fine).
To be petty: neither Kayelyn or the roomate claimed that any break in with visible signs of such happened.
Neither Kayelyn or the roomate claimed that some of their possessions got stolen/are missing.
So they kinda made sure that everything seems kinda okay but that's not contradicting anything.
Kayelyn reported that she heard someone/some people taking things.
She might heard that for real. All those wedding preparations may be still going on (or again) in the Saturday morning. And she may be hearing it LIKE it was happening in her appartement, cause it was raining and noises travelled significantly different than usual.
It doesn't explain why she got this scared, but I bet that being called "delusional" didnt sooth her anxiety before.
And the final conclusion here is that it's more likely that:
- Kayelyn developed instant schizophrenia,
than that:
- in one of the most dangerous cities in whole US people would lie to the cops (as they showed up to check what's going on) and not admit that some disturbance fight/happened, kept doing that later and possibly even felt like scaring the person who called cops on them even more?
I disagree.
