Found Deceased IA - Mollie Tibbetts, 20, Poweshiek County, 19 Jul 2018 #12

[Marie224]

I did some research on disappearances where the victim was found alive. I only looked at cases from the USA and from the years 2000 to date, so the past 18 years. Again, they were found alive.

The following were the circumstances:

1. Walking Home from work/school/friends house and taken by a complete stranger/unknown person against their will.
2. Met a perp online via chatroom or craigslist and they set up a meeting in-person after several days/weeks of grooming the victim. The perp used a fake profile name/picture/age etc.
3. Decided to run away from home, missing for days then found.
4. Fraud, it was intentional to collect insurance $ and/or attention seeking.
5. Amnesia/Disoriented from a recent car accident, forgot where they lived/their name, later identified.
6. Undiagnosed mental illness/side effect from medication and they went missing for days.

If you are thinking of other circumstances, the victim was found deceased and not listed above. :/

 

[bestill]

Not sure if this has been posted but the employees were issued two red shirts and asked to wear them to special excursions like the fair trip. Photos of the shirt in this link...Red shirt tied to missing Iowa college student, 20, found near previously searched pig farm | Daily Mail Online

 

[Veracity]

Rewards are sometimes used as psychological tools to misdirect a suspect, and lead him/her into thinking, "Damn, LE is desperate for info or else they'd not be offering so much cash. I can relax a bit."

Really liked your post. Have a few questions - which case did this happen?

4. The co-op payment arrangement point is relevant, but there's a twist to it that might, sadly, cause it to lead nowhere: If a baddie had been driving to the night-drop payment box and somehow encountered MT, he might have decided to forego dropping a payment off. A clever perp would realize that a dropped payment would be a time-location marker of his presence.

What if he was dropping off someone else's payment. I wondered about someone who may have offered to run a payment in for so and so. His name wouldn't show up and the only way LE would know is if they pulled all the payments and interviewed all of the folks whose payments were made during that window or the person whose payment was made LE aware of it. I wondered about the 100+ interviews that one Friday. Maybe they were checking to see who made each of the payments?

Also wondered since the "hog containment" location is outside the city limits how far folks might drive to drop off a power payment to that specific location?

I was trying early on to figure out why someone might be on that road after 5:30 on Wednesday night.
1- visiting a neighbor
2. live there
3. using it as a short cut
4. making a payment or somehow associated with that power company location
5. working on that tower across the road.

6. I grew up in a town, about the size of Mollie's, and we knew very little about most of our neighbors. Maybe in the 1940s and 50s, the Mayberrys of the US were places where everyone knew everyone else's business, but from the 60's onward many of these small Midwestern towns are composed of a few gregarious souls mixed in with a good number of very, very private individuals.

Very interesting. I found this article early on,

Brooklyn, IOWA?! A brief history of our Midwestern sister city

"Manatt family made its fortune in cement, is the area’s biggest employer, and even today, virtually everyone you meet is either a Manatt or a Kriegel — and many are both because of all the marriages between the clans."

 

[Stippling]

Continuing to hold promoted public appearances that disclose nothing new could cause the very public you're relying on to go tone deaf.

 

[dub]

Its hard to disappear without a trace these days , cell phones, Fitbits , GPS etc keep track of us all...but there are definite categories that we all fall into and it can determine who is who ...
Most folks over the age of 60 are surface literate when it comes to tech, (me included) we use it but dont delve too deeply..We were born into a world of manual transmissions and rotary phones .
However, there are those of our age quite fluent in tech... it’s part of the job (IT , military, LE) or you live in the world of the dark web (*advertiser censored*). Pehophiles of any age are quite proficient in tech, it’s been their way covert way to interact for a long time.
Millenials and younger were born into tech, they live and breathe it. They can manipulate it and know hacks in and out of it.
I would imagine depending on the level of sophistication of tech , social media etc involved, LE had a profile right away.

BBM

I hear what you're saying, but in my experience I think this is overstating it.

I'm at the older end of millenials (born in 1982) and people I know around my age are, as you put it, "surface literate" with technology, maybe to a higher degree than what you have in mind, but for the most part not super proficient. I didn't have a cell phone or an email address until I was 19.

This proficiency (and dependency) does seem to increase to some extent as age decreases, and I don't know that many people in their early 20s, but those that I do know are for the most part hardly master manipulators of technology, although there are exceptions for sure.

 

[Hatfield]

Watching the demeanor from the presser today, family seems dejected and sad. Step mom extremely so. Dad is so thoughtful to embrace the media and the investigators as family, class act!

JMO
I noticed they seemed sadder today. I hope that is not a sign that they got bad news or something.

 

[LarryLujack]

JMO
I noticed they seemed sadder today. I hope that is not a sign that they got bad news or something.

Where were the two brothers?

 

[Bits777]

Watching the demeanor from the presser today, family seems dejected and sad. Step mom extremely so. Dad is so thoughtful to embrace the media and the investigators as family, class act!

Mollie's Mom has diamond strength- and her Dad - if everyone had a Dad like her this world would be a much better place! Also her bf his bro and her bro's and stepmom- such poise- how do they keep it together?? I cannot imagine walking 1 minute in their shoes- I would crumble- these people are sooo strong!!!

 

[mnnative]

Wow. These hog confinements are every bit as large as I was envisioning if we are seeing just a section of it.

That does sound like an ideal place to hide a body.
I hope LE has enough tips to focus on where she may be and search whatever needs searched.

I agree that a slurry retention pond on a hog farm might be the ultimate hiding spot for a body. It is ultra toxic, can't be inspected by divers and would cause a massive environmental disaster if it were drained. And the permitting required by the EPA to do so would take months/years. The only way to search it would be with hooks and the bottom is likely so thick with toxic muck that any body thrown in would sink in and dissolve pretty rapidly.

 

[Amonet]

What bothers me, and I realize it doesnt matter, is that in many cases it is a family member who ends up being the perpetrator. Not allowing discussion of family members would be similar to LE not being allowed to consider immediate members of family either. Everyone is a suspect, regardless if LE has said otherwise.

Yes, and that happens (family member being the perp) in a number of cases on here. What we usually do is have this period where we're not allowed to sleuth anyone not named as a POI or suspect and we use it to share thoughts on what might have happened, how it could have happened, and we collect and discuss media links, keeping our discussion within the rules. We make mental notes (or notes on paper) of things that we can't say in the thread, or sometimes we open a conversation (in the inbox area you can private message with people and discuss things that you can't discuss out here). And in those cases where a family member ends up being named a suspect or gets arrested in relation to the case, then we go crazy posting all those things we had made mental notes on earlier. And at that point we can sleuth openly about things like criminal histories and what's on their FB page and things like that.

Somehow we manage to do this within the TOS. We're not LE, we don't have access to all the information they have, sometimes we can be completely shocked at who gets arrested, sometimes we're not at all surprised. Sometimes you can read between the lines in news articles or pressers, and if you're inclined to doing things like that, there's a good crowd here who you can do that with as a group and get new perspectives or feedback on your thoughts.

I think there are a hundred places online where you can go and find people who are there to slag off their personal suspect in a case, or a thousand news sites with comment sections filled with comments like "I'm sure the butler did it!" when if they'd read all the articles they'd know the butler is a total impossibility. Here you get a group of people who immerse themselves in the fine details of cases, and yes we can debate things like red shirts or bin lorries and discover everything you (n)ever wanted to know about fitbits and snapchats. It's not for everyone, but if you're into it I find it a good place to be with like-minded people, who I don't know personally, but I go into a new thread and see new names who I haven't encountered before and they're always very nice to me, and I enjoy the jumping off of other people's ideas side of things, and fifty people here can gather together so many more articles than I can look through alone, and I find that really useful.

And each person here has, not just their own way of looking at things, but also often their own interests within cases, or specialties that can be brought to bear. I have a personal goal to learn more about statement analysis and criminal psychology. In this thread I'm sure there are a bunch of people who never thought it would come in handy that they know how snapchat or fitbits work or that anyone would ever be listening agog to their explanations of how these things work. In some threads we have people who have expertise in health and medicine, law, autopsies and decomposition, and you don't get all that on your average news article about a crime. So for all the limitations that the TOS give us, there are also a lot of advantages to joining in in this forum and making it one of your 'go to' places when there's a crime you're interested in and you want to talk about it inside out and back to front.

NB no one paid me for writing this, but if they want to I can take Paypal ;-)

 

[GraceG]

Bastions of journalistic integrity

Agreed . But the websleuths rules states you have to provide a link if making a statement that's other than opinion. Just sharing for those that know how to access court records.

 

[Hatfield]

.....snipped payment parts out for focus......

What if he was dropping off someone else's payment. I wondered about someone who may have offered to run a payment in for so and so.

Also wondered since the "hog containment" location is outside the city limits how far folks might drive to drop off a power payment to that specific location?

4. making a payment or somehow associated with that power company location

JMO
I lived in a small town with an Electric Coop and I was surprised how many people still liked to run their electric payment personally over to the electric company rather than mailing it in.

It was more common than I ever would have thought.

 

[Tricia]

What bothers me, and I realize it doesnt matter, is that in many cases it is a family member who ends up being the perpetrator. Not allowing discussion of family members would be similar to LE not being allowed to consider immediate members of family either. Everyone is a suspect, regardless if LE has said otherwise.

What bothers me, and I realize it doesnt matter, is that in many cases it is a family member who ends up being the perpetrator. Not allowing discussion of family members would be similar to LE not being allowed to consider immediate members of family either. Everyone is a suspect, regardless if LE has said otherwise.

Normally we would remove this post because it is off topic but I feel with all the new members this is a subject I should address.

Yes, if I gave the go ahead we could talk about any suspects we want. However, stop and think just how out of control things would become probably within minutes of allowing an open discussion like this.

Let's take Mollie's brother. He has without question, been cleared by law enforcement. What gives me the right, as owner, to allow you to destroy this young man's life with random wild speculations? Can you imagine your sister goes missing and her case is the top of every news story, everyone suspects you but finally, the police clear you. WAIT. Not so fast. Your name is being talked about all over a true crime discussion forum. You are being accused of horrible crimes against your sister. No matter how what happens in your life from now on, whenever anyone googles your name, all of these horrid things being said about you, even though you were cleared, will come up in this Google search.
As the owner, I have a responsibility to do my best to keep the discussion on topic and void of hurtful speculation when possible. There are exceptions to every rule of course but I hope you understand why we almost always stick with the suspects the police give us.
Please everyone let's end this discussion here and go back to Mollie OK? Thanks

 

[Knox]

I agree that a slurry retention pond on a hog farm might be the ultimate hiding spot for a body. It is ultra toxic, can't be inspected by divers and would cause a massive environmental disaster if it were drained. And the permitting required by the EPA to do so would take months/years. The only way to search it would be with hooks and the bottom is likely so thick with toxic muck that any body thrown in would sink in and dissolve pretty rapidly.

There are specialized vac trucks that could be brought in to drain such a pond. I work in the environmental industry.

 

[mnnative]

There are specialized vac trucks that could be brought in to drain such a pond. I work in the environmental industry.

Correct but, assuming this is a large hog operation slurry pond, it would take a LOT of trucks or a lot of loads with a few trucks and by the time they got it emptied I'd imagine there wouldn't be any evidence left to recover. And they'd need to find an empty, legally permitted slurry pit to transfer it to which would likely also be almost impossible.

 

[LarryLujack]

Normally we would remove this post because it is off topic but I feel with all the new members this is a subject I should address.

Yes, if I gave the go ahead we could talk about any suspects we want. However, stop and think just how out of control things would become probably within minutes of allowing an open discussion like this.

Let's take Mollie's brother. He has without question, been cleared by law enforcement. What gives me the right, as owner, to allow you to destroy this young man's life with random wild speculations? Can you imagine your sister goes missing and her case is the top of every news story, everyone suspects you but finally, the police clear you. WAIT. Not so fast. Your name is being talked about all over a true crime discussion forum. You are being accused of horrible crimes against your sister. No matter how what happens in your life from now on, whenever anyone googles your name, all of these horrid things being said about you, even though you were cleared, will come up in this Google search.
As the owner, I have a responsibility to do my best to keep the discussion on topic and void of hurtful speculation when possible. There are exceptions to every rule of course but I hope you understand why we almost always stick with the suspects the police give us.
Please everyone let's end this discussion here and go back to Mollie OK? Thanks

Of course I understand, your site your rules. But in your example you used Mollie's brother but what about Wayne Cheney, its ok to suspect him because he hasnt been cleared by LE? Not trying to be combative, just trying to understand if its a family thing or a being cleared thing.

 

[mnnative]

...but what about Wayne Cheney, its ok to suspect him because he hasnt been cleared by LE? Not trying to be combative, just trying to understand if its a family thing or a being cleared thing.

Correct. He has been named in several MSM articles and has not been cleared by LE.

 

[Paige Franklin]

I have been following for several day but this is my first post. With so many unknowns there are so many possibilities.

I assume since Fitbit has the ability to track things like heart rate and steps that the info is logged on a server somewhere for a short time even if its not sync'd to a device. I'm curious if LE saw data from one or more of these stats that would leave them to believe MT was alive at least for some time outside of the window that we knew she went missing. Of course once the devices died you would stop seeing this but would explain why they have confirmed gathering Fitbit data but nothing else and also why they have been talking in terms that seem like they have hope MT is alive.

 

[MrsWatson]

Very intriguing information about the slurry retention ponds. And may I just add, wow, YUCK.

 

[Marie224]

Correct but, assuming this is a large hog operation slurry pond, it would take a LOT of trucks or a lot of loads with a few trucks and by the time they got it emptied I'd imagine there wouldn't be any evidence left to recover.

I believe LE uses something called a ROV.. A sonar-equipped ROV (remotely operated vehicle). They usually deploy the ROV into the water vs. draining ponds/rivers/lakes etc.