CO - Jessica Ridgeway, 10, Westminster, 5 Oct 2012 - #15

[scadder21]

He might have had his reasons which we have no way of knowing what they might be.

I'm starting to think that the backpack and body drop happened the same night.

 

[Confusion]

Tme for something different. Maybe the guy is someone who lived in Westminster in the past, but moved somewhere south of there (about to show my lack of knowledge about geography again!) like maybe Boulder. He could have taken her from an area he was familiar with, placed the BP in another one he was familiar with (but in the opposite direction of his home) and put her remains in a third place in the general area that he knew well. That would lead most people to think he probably lived within the triangle the three sites made, but he's actually 10-20 miles farther south (or north for that matter). We keep giving him credit for being organized and/or intelligent, so why assume that he'd follow the same patterns that most perps do?

 

[pinto]

There is no reason at all that he couldn't have simply taken the body and the backpack at the same time. I believe most likely they were transported together and her body was dumped after the back pack was dumped.

Sure there are reasons. He (forgive me) might not have been done dismembering it. I do think it's possible, as others have said, that he lives close to the area of Ridgeway's house/Witt Elem/Ketner/crime, and was feeling the heat, yet needed another day to do whatever he was doing, so he took the backpack the other way.

Or, he very might well have taken both body and bag at the same time, and went opposite directions (up to Superior, down to Arvada), spreading out the evidence.

 

[PlainJaneDoe]

I've heard from LE officers (and so have other posters) that hashing and re-hashing and re-hashing the re-hashs is actually how LE solves crimes that are not easily solved.

With a little luck, all that tedious rehearsing of what is know suddenly triggers a moment of insight.

I also know that's how microbiology labs work. Someone gets a result that is odd or fails to get a result and everyone goes around and around in circles on it until someone suddenly goes "well, what if...?"

It seems to me that most people don't learn or think in a straight line process. There's loops and swirls and backtracks and ups and downs until all of a sudden, something happens.

It's messy. It's biological. It's not binary and it is darn near impossible to teach a computer to learn the way humans learn.

Or, as my mama would have said, every beautiful garden benefits from a lot of compost. She could grow anything!

Rbbm...neuroscience labs, too.

 

[Claudette]

Discussion topic:

For past successful stranger abductions in broad daylight with no witnesses - how did the perp do it? Let's discuss similar cases to this one.

A lot of us are wondering how people could not have noticed, but it's happened before. Perps, and survivors, have given details.

 

[scadder21]

Sure there are reasons. He (forgive me) might not have been done dismembering it. I do think it's possible, as others have said, that he lives close to the area of Ridgeway's house/Witt Elem/Ketner/crime, and was feeling the heat, yet needed another day to do whatever he was doing, so he took the backpack the other way.

Or, he very might well have taken both body and bag at the same time, and went opposite directions (up to Superior, down to Arvada), spreading out the evidence.

Why do we think that the time frame was a different time? Because it too so long to find the body or the decomposition when it was found? People seem to think it's a given they weren't dumped at the same time and I'm not sure why.

 

[mck16]

I was just considering a fact about the backpack--we don't know for sure that this is the place the perp left it. It could have been found by someone earlier, even on Friday. It could have been searched by whoever found it, they saw nothing of value and just tossed it somewhere. Someone else could have picked it up, etc. Of couse you would think that they would have come forward by now, but by the same token, we don't know they haven't and LE just has not released that info. Just a possibility I think. jmo

 

[cindersoot]

Local gossip:
I was just at a school event and listened in on two women talking about this case. One of the women said she drove past Jessica's house on Friday (totally tacky, IMO), and that there were still cop cars there (5) and that they were videoing every car that drove past, and taking down plate numbers.
Smart of them. Yet so very sad. She said the house was all decorated for Halloween.

It would help the investigation if the woman didn't tell the community that they were videotaping every car that went by. Im sure he wouldn't be on that tape now.

 

[SapphireSteel]

Post #281 in thread #14 attempted to compile all missing persons/attempted abductions etc. With suspected vehicles and locations and timelines.

The vehicles sighted on/around the "attempted abductions" are not what I am referring to.

I meant, one particular vehicle near Jessica's house or school.

The fact that she was apparently taken about 30 seconds after she left her house implies to me at least, that he was waiting for her/a child like her.

If he was waiting for her then his vehicle may have been spotted lurking in the days leading up to the abduction.

Jessica lived in what is described as a "modest neighbourhood", one where I assume people would take note of a strange vehicle, even if they didn't realise what they were looking at at the time. I live in a modest neighbourhood too, and a strange vehicle parked for any length of time is going to be noticed by somebody.

There have been no reports of strange vehicle sightings specifically around Jessica's environs?

 

[Thorn]

I'm wondering about the person who said they checked 100's of houses. Did the police physically go into the house without a warrant or did they knock on the door and move on if someone wasn't home? I get that they would want statements from everyone but did they physically enter the house and check?

Someone can correct me if I am mistaken, but I remember that LE was going around the neighborhood and asking homeowners to allow them entry to their home. Which would mean it was voluntary and no search warrents would be necessary. I also recall that LE went back to the homes to search the ones where folks were gone during the initial canvas at a later time.

 

[GrainneDhu]

Here's the thing, if you go out late at night to dump the book bag, why not also take the body at that time? It seems silly to take the book bag out at night, wait for it to be called in and then during day time when it's called in take the body and dump it.

It makes sense to me to wait until the backpack was found before moving to dump the body.

By dumping the backpack outside the established search perimeter, he was increasing the amount of area LE had to cover. Yes, he'd be adding in some of the Superior PD into the active search but he'd be moving a whole bunch of other LE out of the original Westminster area.

So, dump the backpack and wait for the big fuss to be made, sucking LE away from Westminster.

Then wait for dark, knowing that LE activity would decrease markedly.

My guess is that he waited until late Sunday night, then drove to Pattridge Park to dump Jessica's remains. From local reports, we know that the road going by Pattridge Park had been closed for weeks and had only just re-opened the previous week. Which means that it probably was not getting the usual level of travel on it, since people would have formed new habits in the time it was closed and not all of them would realise it had opened again.

Again, from local reports posted here on WS, we know that the particular section of road Jessica's remains were found along does not have street lights and that headlights from traffic can be seen for quite a way in either direction.

Sounds like just the sort of place to quickly dump something you don't want to be caught with.

Because the remains were found concealed in a garbage bag, I am leaning towards the backpack placement being more of a panic move than a taunt. I think he badly needed for LE activity in the Westminster area to be slowed down.

 

[Bonnie Blue]

I'm starting to think that the backpack and body drop happened the same night.

We have no idea when the body was placed. If you know something about it I suggest you call LE.

 

[izzyblizzy]

Tme for something different. Maybe the guy is someone who lived in Westminster in the past, but moved somewhere south of there (about to show my lack of knowledge about geography again!) like maybe Boulder. He could have taken her from an area he was familiar with, placed the BP in another one he was familiar with (but in the opposite direction of his home) and put her remains in a third place in the general area that he knew well. That would lead most people to think he probably lived within the triangle the three sites made, but he's actually 10-20 miles farther south (or north for that matter). We keep giving him credit for being organized and/or intelligent, so why assume that he'd follow the same patterns that most perps do?

Could be, but glad you already acknowledged your geography skills! Someone has probably already said this, but Boulder is north. But that doesn't discount the overall gist of your post ... :seeya:

 

[mck16]

The vehicles sighted on/around the "attempted abductions" are not what I am referring to.

I meant, one particular vehicle near Jessica's house or school.

The fact that she was apparently taken about 30 seconds after she left her house implies to me at least, that he was waiting for her/a child like her.

If he was waiting for her then his vehicle may have been spotted lurking in the days leading up to the abduction.

Jessica lived in what is described as a "modest neighbourhood", one where I assume people would take note of a strange vehicle, even if they didn't realise what they were looking at at the time. I live in a modest neighbourhood too, and a strange vehicle parked for any length of time is going to be noticed by somebody.

There have been no reports of strange vehicle sightings specifically around Jessica's environs?

I thought that there was one of a suspicious van the morning before. Maybe that has been debunked. jmo

 

[Claudette]

Discussion topic:

For past successful stranger abductions in broad daylight with no witnesses - how did the perp do it? Let's discuss similar cases to this one.

A lot of us are wondering how people could not have noticed, but it's happened before. Perps, and survivors, have given details.

Leiby Kletzky was lost in his neighborhood in NYC and a fellow Orthodox Jew came to his aid and he walked to this guys house, in which the guy killed him. Leiby went with him in broad daylight surrounded by people and yet no one noticed the passive abduction. No one came forward with this tip, security cameras were the witness that helped LE.

 

[Confusion]

Could be, but glad you already acknowledged your geography skills! Someone has probably already said this, but Boulder is north. But that doesn't discount the overall gist of your post ... :seeya:

I thought that might be the case. On a midterm in a college geography class, I put NYC in Pennsylvania. Enough said? :blushing:

 

[pinto]

SOmeone was asking about suspicious vehicles; there were reports from the day before Jessica was abducted that a white van followed some kids after school. This report is from 10/8. Interesting, I didn't remember that the girls thought they saw two people in the van. Lawrence Elem is about 8 miles from Witt Elem, and also about 8 miles from Pattridge Park, so even though it's south of Witt, it's in that same general vicinity.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/new...a-thursday-while-they-walked-home-from-school

ARVADA, Colo. - Although police have said they don't believe a person is abducting children at random, they are aware of a case in which a white van approached children in Arvada one day before a girl vanished in Westminster.

<modsnip>

Police have also ruled out the involvement of a black van in Jessica's disappearance.

 

[beach]

You guys are taking my post too literally, which is my fault for wording it that way. Someone killed Jessica. Until we know who that person is, in my mind, he could be a cop, he could be a doctor, he could be a student. We just don't know, period. We only know who has been ruled out at this point.

I totally agree with you, Meri!

Re: my response - I was just making sure everyone understood we couldn't sleuth every person that gave us the heebie-jeebies and post about it here.

If I were LE I would be digging into all those backgrounds. The difference is, they don't publicly expose the backgrounds of everyone they're investigating. If they rule them out, none of their skeletons are rattling around for the public to know.

 

[scadder21]

We have no idea when the body was placed. If you know something about it I suggest you call LE.

No i'm stating that we are going on the assumption that the the backpack was a diversion. Obviously placed at night. Yet in order for the diversion to be successful he would have to know that the area of the search changed and then wait till dark to dispose of the body. When it's just as reasonable to think that if the person is out dumping the bag at night, they can also then go dump the body that night too.

 

[SweetT]

It makes sense to me to wait until the backpack was found before moving to dump the body.

By dumping the backpack outside the established search perimeter, he was increasing the amount of area LE had to cover. Yes, he'd be adding in some of the Superior PD into the active search but he'd be moving a whole bunch of other LE out of the original Westminster area.

So, dump the backpack and wait for the big fuss to be made, sucking LE away from Westminster.

Then wait for dark, knowing that LE activity would decrease markedly.

My guess is that he waited until late Sunday night, then drove to Pattridge Park to dump Jessica's remains. From local reports, we know that the road going by Pattridge Park had been closed for weeks and had only just re-opened the previous week. Which means that it probably was not getting the usual level of travel on it, since people would have formed new habits in the time it was closed and not all of them would realise it had opened again.

Again, from local reports posted here on WS, we know that the particular section of road Jessica's remains were found along does not have street lights and that headlights from traffic can be seen for quite a way in either direction.

Sounds like just the sort of place to quickly dump something you don't want to be caught with.

Because the remains were found concealed in a garbage bag, I am leaning towards the backpack placement being more of a panic move than a taunt. I think he badly needed for LE activity in the Westminster area to be slowed down.

Def sounds like a local person who did this then.