Found Deceased WI - Kathleen Ryan, adult, teacher, car found burned with body inside, St. Francis, 2 Feb 2019

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I don't discount the possibility of suicide. However, having read many many ambiguous LE statements that start with "We have no evidence....", to me means, "we have no evidence YET,". If it had been 2 years and they said this, or this statement was accompanied with another statement that it was case closed, as they did with Cheryl DeBoer (whose death they did eventually rule a suicide), then I will get to that point. I have also seen time and time again that LE will not make any explicit statements about dangers to community even when there is evidence that innocents were outright murdered - they ALWAYS say "we have no evidence to suspect the public is danger, yada yada yada". It's just not what LE tends to do. Until they have the answers or reach a conclusion, their statements remain purposefully vague, and thus it's still very much a wide open case to me.
 
SuziQ said:
Assuming Kathleen left home under her own power, why did she leave her house so early?
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It could be so many different reasons;
some simple: fill up on gas, run a few errands, go to the post office, stop at Starbucks or all of these.
some sad: planned suicide
some not shared; meeting someone before hitting the road, picking up someone to ride along and talk
It hasn't been said whether she intended to drive back home that evening or stay till the morning.
The last she was seen is leaving the house around noon but that doesn't mean she didn't come back home and leave again, only that she wasn't seen.
 
cluciano63 said:
Jmo but suicide is not an insult to the victim or family. It is a sad fact of far too many deaths in the US.
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Yes, and it's also true that those with suicidal ideation, once they make up their minds to do it, often feel a sense of relief (or even elation). So, people who interact with them just before the suicide have no idea what they're about to do. Not that I think this is what happened with Kathleen. I have absolutely no idea.
 
nyonge said:
For those who think this a homicide, why did the police spokesperson go out of his way to indicate there was no evidence it was? You'd think that warnings would be liberally applied via the media if a middle-aged, middle class woman were carjacked perhaps at an area business, perhaps robbed or raped, and then murdered in the grisly aftermath of the first crimes. The police don't sit on their hats to suppress such warnings, they serve and protect. They don't hint at suicide in such a circumstance if they aren't darned sure that is what happened.

Why the distrust here of their spokesperson's statement?
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There is no distrust of the statement. It’s ambiguous. Interpretations are subjective.
 
OhThatVictoria said:
There is no distrust of the statement. It’s ambiguous. Interpretations are subjective.
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It's actually quite clear though indeed one must be mindful of its context ("investigation ongoing").

"There is nothing that has brought us to any conclusion that somebody did this to Kathleen," said Lake County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Sgt. Christopher Covelli. "We don't have any evidence somebody caused this to happen to Kathleen."
​
As of that statement [published 26 April], police had nothing to suggest this was other than an accidental death, or suicide.

Sons ask for answers in Milwaukee mother's mysterious death
 
nyonge said:
It's actually quite clear though indeed one must be mindful of its context ("investigation ongoing").

"There is nothing that has brought us to any conclusion that somebody did this to Kathleen," said Lake County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Sgt. Christopher Covelli. "We don't have any evidence somebody caused this to happen to Kathleen."
​
As of that statement [published 26 April], police had nothing to suggest this was other than an accidental death, or suicide.

Sons ask for answers in Milwaukee mother's mysterious death
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What evidence do they have (that we know of)? All we know is that Kathleen’s body and vehicle were incinerated. Any/all possible evidence at the scene was destroyed. All they had to analyze were burned bones. Her body was found in the passenger seat.

Edit to add: Therefore, if someone did do this to her, they left no evidence behind. Sounds like a perfect crime to me.
 
Would they be able to track her phone throughout the missing hours? Can you tell where a phone has been if not used, does it still show contact with towers along the way? If so, they may have been able to track her movements fairly specifically and watched all available video along her routes...and seen nothing of interest apparently.

Just checked...it can be done, unless she had turned off all location tracking apps.
 
OhThatVictoria said:
What evidence do they have (that we know of)? All we know is that Kathleen’s body and vehicle were incinerated. Any/all possible evidence at the scene was destroyed. All they had to analyze were burned bones. Her body was found in the passenger seat.

Edit to add: Therefore, if someone did do this to her, they left no evidence behind. Sounds like a perfect crime to me.
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Yup! Suspects have been known to burn houses and cars so no DNA left behind. I'm sure if someone did this to her, they had a record.
 
People...do none of you realize that LE more than likely has all of this stuff and just has omitted it from public knowledge? That's how a criminal investigation works. They aren't going to tip their hand until they have enough evidence to build a case. They aren't going to release to the public "we have her cell phone tracked to such and such at this time". There is no way they are telling the public everything they have. If they did, the investigation would be over.
 
Justice4242 said:
People...do none of you realize that LE more than likely has all of this stuff and just has omitted it from public knowledge? That's how a criminal investigation works. They aren't going to tip their hand until they have enough evidence to build a case. They aren't going to release to the public "we have her cell phone tracked to such and such at this time". There is no way they are telling the public everything they have. If they did, the investigation would be over.
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Yes, we “know” this. WS is a sleuthing site and we discuss information that is available.
 
cluciano63 said:
Would they be able to track her phone throughout the missing hours? Can you tell where a phone has been if not used, does it still show contact with towers along the way? If so, they may have been able to track her movements fairly specifically and watched all available video along her routes...and seen nothing of interest apparently.

Just checked...it can be done, unless she had turned off all location tracking apps.
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About her phone: During his May 2nd interview, one of Kathleen’s sons, Zach, talks about what he and his family did to find her after the game ended and she still hadn’t showed up. Starting around 7:15, he says:

“After the game, it’s probably now, I don’t know, it’s 6, 6:15, 6:30, ‘Hey, we haven’t heard from your mom,’ so we call, and you know, originally, it rang, um, I think, and then went to voicemail, and then after, I don’t know, maybe an hour or so, it just went, straight to, uh, straight to voicemail. So heard nothing.”
Lake County Sports Talk, Ep. 71: Zack Ryan
 
inmyhumbleopinion said:
About her phone: During his May 2nd interview, one of Kathleen’s sons, Zach, talks about what he and his family did to find her after the game ended and she still hadn’t showed up. Starting around 7:15, he says:

“After the game, it’s probably now, I don’t know, it’s 6, 6:15, 6:30, ‘Hey, we haven’t heard from your mom,’ so we call, and you know, originally, it rang, um, I think, and then went to voicemail, and then after, I don’t know, maybe an hour or so, it just went, straight to, uh, straight to voicemail. So heard nothing.”
Lake County Sports Talk, Ep. 71: Zack Ryan
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Good catch. So does that means it was turned off?
 
inmyhumbleopinion said:
About her phone: During his May 2nd interview, one of Kathleen’s sons, Zach, talks about what he and his family did to find her after the game ended and she still hadn’t showed up. Starting around 7:15, he says:

“After the game, it’s probably now, I don’t know, it’s 6, 6:15, 6:30, ‘Hey, we haven’t heard from your mom,’ so we call, and you know, originally, it rang, um, I think, and then went to voicemail, and then after, I don’t know, maybe an hour or so, it just went, straight to, uh, straight to voicemail. So heard nothing.”
Lake County Sports Talk, Ep. 71: Zack Ryan
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When the call went through (rang) before going to voicemail, it means there is record of which cell tower that carried the call, so the police knows where the phone was near at 6'ish that evening.

When it went straight to voicemail, the phone was turned off, or battery was flat, or it was being used, or the sim card was taken out etc. Police should be able to at least rule out some of the possibilities.

Moo
 
 
OhThatVictoria said:
Good catch. So does that means it was turned off?
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Via Marple said:
When the call went through (rang) before going to voicemail, it means there is record of which cell tower that carried the call, so the police knows where the phone was near at 6'ish that evening.

When it went straight to voicemail, the phone was turned off, or battery was flat, or it was being used, or the sim card was taken out etc. Police should be able to at least rule out some of the possibilities.

Moo
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I agree with what Via Marple said. LE should have a pretty good idea of where Kathleen was up until the phone started going straight to voicemail, IMO.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no way of knowing if the phone ran out of battery, was turned off manually, or destroyed.

Without additional evidence, they also wouldn’t be able to tell whether the phone was turned off by a third party for criminal purposes or Kathleen herself, or destroyed during comission of a crime, by accident (e.g., dropping it in water or on a hard surface) or on purpose by Kathleen.

It does seem to me that LE should be able to tell if the phone was in use or the SIM card was taken out.

Whatever information they can get from the phone, I hope it will help solve this truly tragic mystery.

All MOO

ETA: During his radio interview, Kathleen’s son, Zach, also shares (starting around 6:30):
“So the day went along, and all I knew was that she was coming, and [his wife] had been in contact with her [Kathleen], my brother Sam had been in contact, his wife, you know, I think had been in contact, and you know, the game started ...”
Lake County Sports Talk, Ep. 71: Zack Ryan

So I’m sure they have been able to provide LE with some insight as well.
 
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Sometimes when a car catches fire the doors can no longer be unlocked. I wonder if something like that may have happened if this was an accident. Maybe she can't unlock the driver's side door, so clambers over to the passenger side and can't unlock that either, and then it is too late and she perishes. This is a heartbreaking story, no matter what the cause. MOO
 
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