All missing persons cases are mysteries, but this one was unique. It was a mystery inside a mystery. There was the mystery not just of the children's whereabouts but also of their mother's silence.
If Lori had ever spoken up, that second mystery would have disappeared, and the case would have turned into a much more ordinary single-mystery missing person's case. To be clear, I am not assuming Lori would have told the truth. But even a lie would have dissolved the mystery of her silence.
For example, if she had said "My kids were eaten by a bear in Yellowstone," few of us would have believed her. But the case would have immediately transformed itself from the double enigma that engrossed so many us for months to a sordid but, sadly, not unfamiliar case of a parent who tires of their children, disposes of them in some way, and lies to cover up their crime. Again, we would still have had the mystery of what exactly had happened to the kids and where their bodies were, but we would no longer have the mystery of a mother's silence.
Now that Tylee's and JJ's bodies have been identified, part of that mystery is cleared up. But not all of it. While we can reasonably presume that Lori didn't tell anyone what happened to the kids because what happened to the kids was illegal and would have landed her in jail, we are now left with a slightly different mystery: why and how she thought she would get away with her crime. As one mystery has receded, another has come into view.
But perhaps we have the tools we need to unravel this new mystery. If you watch Melanie Gibb's long interview, Nate Eaton asks her for her thoughts on why Chad would be willing to risk creating such a bad impression by marrying Lori just days after Tammy's sudden death. Melanie's answer is interesting. She says that Chad believed we were approaching the end of times and, therefore, that earthquakes and many other forms of massive disruption would so capture the world's attention that Chad's and Lori's little lives would go unnoticed.
One of the most infuriating things about this case was the sense that the key players kept acting like they could get away with everything. Chad and Lori both appeared to believe that they could simply not account for two missing children in any way. There were times, I think, when many of us wanted to jump inside our TV screens, shake them, and scream "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!"
Well, we may now have an answer. Chad and Lori said nothing because they were waiting for the apocalypse. They continued to think they could get away with not providing a convincing cover story for the disappearance of two children because they believed the end of the world would make their (and all) domestic dramas irrelevant.
One of the questions I have had about Chad from day one is whether or not he was a true believer. When I read his blog posts and comments he's made in interviews, I always get the impression that he is a master manipulator. He uses language in a way that simultaneously advances self-serving narratives and denies that he's doing anything other than describing the world as he sees it. He has, as I've written before, a "tell." While conveying the most fantastical things, he invariably professes bewilderment at other things that really aren't all that improbable.
So while Chad's writing would suggest he's the most cynical of manipulators, we now have some evidence that he believed his own lies. We have somehow reached a point where sincere belief in earthquakes, zombies, and a summer apocalypse is the most plausible answer to the question of why Chad believed he could get away with a series of brazen crimes that included burying his former adulterous lover's dead children in his own back yard.
What a case . . .
MOO
