For the sake of conversation, if we assume LE roughly did what they were suppose to do and we don't point the finger at them (can complain about lack of roadblocks all we want, but honestly was there enough LE manpower in those first 10-20 minutes to setup a solid perimeter and keep a solid LE presence at the Bobo home? Also, why did everyone that had shown up stand in the driveway and not patrol the local area?- maybe some did. Why did all these people showing up not recognize any vehicles out of the ordinary? Did that sudden influx of worried/curious people confuse the situation? Did this help the abductor blend back into the scene or to create enough traffic to skate on through? Much, much, much more to figure than just roadblocks and not sending everybody there into the woods after a dangerous and more than likely armed suspect with a victim in tow.) HB was abducted and LE can't change that, all they can do is make the best of it. If I was going to criticize LE, using what we know as fact for anything in this case, IMO it is clearly their media relations. They are abysmal to non-existent. The door was left wide open for tons of crazy to get packed in with all the rumors and odd characters surrounding this case. I am not sure that LE in this case had any idea how to handle ANY kind of media scrutiny, especially on a national level, so they just shut them out completely.
I know it has been hammered in, by all of us, but just focusing on possible mistakes LE made or CB made or anyone involved in this case is pointless at this time without looking at them as a whole. As an example, CB has certainly confused us all with his stories, but is it possible his original statements were just as confusing, if not more so, and that may have effected the way LE handled the situation early on? Maybe something much more sinister happened there than we have been lead to believe? Also, lets not lose focus on what do we know as fact, or more accurately what we think we know as fact.
Let's exclude some parts of the story we know and see how we feel about it then, trying to stay as true to the accepted timeline. Please excuse the 10,000th post about the most likely series of events, doing it to make my point. CB hears voices and sees his sister and what seems to be her boyfriend arguing in the garage and possibly looking at a turkey. CB talks to his mother at work because he hears voices and now knows HB should be leaving for school by this time. The mother hangs up, calls 911 and then this is when she possibly has a very public panic attack (if not here, then she had it right before her coworker drove her back home.) CB then observes his sister and a man in camo casually walking away towards the woods and apparently did not think much of it. CB tries to call HB and then her boyfriend phone, both ring 5 times then go to voicemail. He talks to his mother again who tells him that her boyfriend couldn't be the man at the home, to grab a gun and go look for them and to call 911. CB has said he still was not concerned at this time, but he grabs a phone and a gun and goes into the garage where he saw them "looking at a turkey." He sees X amount of blood on the garage floor where they were at. He then pokes around the area where he last saw his sister walking away but is then standing in the driveway dialing 911 as the neighbor pulls into the driveway. This all happens in a 10-15 minute span. LE shows up at the home and it apparently did not take them long to call in all the additional man power and any LE agencies they could. That is quite a response from the eye witness seeing the victim casually walk away and motherly instinct knowing that something is wrong.
CB gives them his story and then writes it down on paper in a truck, tries to preserve possible evidence, prevents others from going into the woods and makes statements like he did not think his sister would be back anytime soon.
I don't know about all of you, but that story has no continuity as a whole, much less the individual sequences. I do not say this to try and bash this family, I say it because it is what it is. It could be due to circumstances out of their control or it could be the way they are comfortable telling the story, I don't have the foggiest.
The only part that really seems credible is possibly a man in camo came to their home and abducted HB, everything else does not go together at all. It's like on the show Sesame Street, one of these things isn't like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong. Most of the narrative plays out that way. As in CB being the oblivious eye witness while the mother has motherly instinct to KNOW what is happening and all the while it is the oblivious witness who is supplying her the information. It just does not work for me. If we were to tweak the story and say CB witnessed something bad/dangerous/questionable in the garage sequence and then called his mother, who then had a very public panic attack, now that would fit together.
Bottom line is we do not know even half of this story, we probably do not even know 10%. You could take everything that seems off in this case, have X amount of people pick the one aspect that seems strange to them and I bet in the end you will have alot of even splits. Plenty of strange to go around.