Found Deceased IN - Abigail (Abby) Williams, 13, & Liberty (Libby) German, 14, The Delphi Murders 13 Feb 2017 #116

[Charlot123]

The GH video with Kelsi will give you a couple of answers. Kelsi identified the shoe.

Thank you! Do you remember if it towards the beginning, or the end?

 

[ScumbagTrav]

We are on the same page, something stinks about this. I was born at night, but NOT last night

There is specific protocol.

No amber alert?
Leave 'em be til morning?
Search resumes at what time the next day? 10:00? 11:45? Seriously?

Too many questions. No fool here, I smell a rat.

All my personal opinion, of course

No amber alert....because u have to have a car identified in order to do so. They didnt.

Leave 'em til morning is questionable tho.

I cant help but to wonder if it was Carter's kid....would the search have been called off?

 

[ScumbagTrav]

Dbm

 

[ScumbagTrav]

Thank you! Do you remember if it towards the beginning, or the end?

8:50 mark

 

[Charlot123]

Not being a pain at all. We don't know how...and we really dont need to know.

Knowing wouldnt do anything to assist in capturing the killer, except potentially get a lot of crazy people giving false confessions.

If no one but LE and the corner know how the girls were killed....when and if a tip comes in, and information is collaborated that only LE and the killer would know....then that helps out tremendously.

At one point it might help if some information is released.

DC is not releasing it because some details might be known only to the killer.

Well, a moment will come when DC will have to.admit that no one will provide "that" tip. It will happen.

I think it is lack of trust to.LE, but maybe people can not put things together.

But someone who will not talk to LE might say something to.a friend. ("What DNA can they get from a rock, or a stick?"). Without knowing the weapon, it will be missed. But if the weapon is announced, someone will suddenly get the epiphany, "wait a moment, it was a stick. How did he know it?"

 

[Falling Down]

No amber alert....because u have to have a car identified in order to do so. They didnt.

Leave 'em til morning is questionable tho.

I cant help but to wonder if it was Carter's kid....would the search have been called off?

I think LE had serious pangs of guilt early on about how the search was conducted on the evening of the 13th. Yet there was no indication the girls were in danger, except for the fact that they couldn't be contacted when DG got to the main trail area.

Hindsight being 20/20, IMHO that fact alone, that they could not be contacted and couldn't be found within a 20-30 minute time frame, should have been cause for serious alarm.

JMO

 

[Charlot123]

Does anyone know how quickly the FBI and ISP became involved in the case?

MOO - I believe a lot of the problems with the investigation, and April's "new direction", came as a result of Delphi's PD mismanaging the case in its early days. This is not a condemnation of local LE; we have seen time and time again that small, rural police forces are entirely unequipped to deal with major crimes like these.

When the girls first went missing, they were not thought to be in danger:

"Based on the information given by family and friends, police do not believe foul play is involved and have been given no information that would lead them to believe the girls are in any immediate danger, other than exposure to outside elements." (Posted at 1:00am on Feb 14)
​

Consequentially, IMO, this led to a grassroots search party and after the fact LE would have had a difficult time finding and interviewing everyone involved.

Naturally, without analyzing Libby's video first, police had no idea what the extent of the crime scene was. They only had the location of the bodies. In hindsight, they should have cordoned off the entire area around Monon, but again, they wouldn't have known that until they saw the video.

Perhaps items of evidence were initially overlooked. Perhaps potential suspects with flimsy alibis were ruled out too soon. Perhaps LE tunneled in on the first sketch and overlooked things.

This is all just my opinion, mostly ramblings.

A mistake, to cancel the search. But a horrible double murder of two teenagers out to walk on a bridge, in the middle of the day, probably never happened in Delphi.

Also, I know (very few) people who have this unexplained and rare intuition. But most of us are not especially intuitive, so we go with the logic. Logic said, maybe fell off the bridge? Nothing around. Maybe ran away? Etc, etc. They responded the way anyone would have responded. I think in the morning people felt that something was awfully wrong.

 

[mom2chloe]

Who among us could withstand a night without knowing where our children, niece, nephew or friend’s missing person were? On a cold, dark February night in Indiana?
Communities rise up in these situations. Even if the world supposed the girls fell to their death off the bridge why cancel a search? If there was indeed an Amber Alert called in the same night elsewhere why not call in State Police and the FBI? Other resources?
No way in hell I would have sat there twiddling my thumbs! Desperate times call for desperate measures!

 

[TTF14]

A mistake, to cancel the search. But a horrible double murder of two teenagers out to walk on a bridge, in the middle of the day, probably never happened in Delphi.

Also, I know (very few) people who have this unexplained and rare intuition. But most of us are not especially intuitive, so we go with the logic. Logic said, maybe fell off the bridge? Nothing around. Maybe ran away? Etc, etc. They responded the way anyone would have responded. I think in the morning people felt that something was awfully wrong.

I've been "here" since the girls were reported missing, and I remember being totally shocked that they were found dead....and then to find out they were murdered.....I was barely even concerned when I heard they were missing and assumed they just ran away for the night. I don't find it weird they called off the search that night. I mean, who would have thought they were murdered in those woods!?

 

[Charlot123]

Another question. About that rebooting of the phone. I heard in in BP's interview, but something changed after that.

It was my understanding that at night the girls made a video. Did they use a computer, or a cell phone?

Because if you make a video and it is on the cell phone, you are not going to reboot it afterwards.

Was it rebooted before? If so, it is clean, why the need to take BP's phone?

Or did they only start rebooting it, and left in the house, and went to the bridge?

This phone is bothering me, and I don't know why.

One of the ideas to switch phones is to.keep yours, with your GPS, in the house, so it is BP, not you, who is traced to the bridge. ("You are staying at home").

But if so, Libby would have never posted the Snapchat photo with the coordinates.

Was the rebooting done to erase all data, or was it done as the pretext to switch the phones? If so, why?

 

[max99]

I think LE had serious pangs of guilt early on about how the search was conducted on the evening of the 13th. Yet there was no indication the girls were in danger, except for the fact that they couldn't be contacted when DG got to the main trail area.

Hindsight being 20/20, IMHO that fact alone, that they could not be contacted and couldn't be found within a 20-30 minute time frame, should have been cause for serious alarm.

JMO

at the time they were reported missing it was also reported that Libby's phone was pinging around the town...they thought they were out running around...they had apparently done it before as some teens do...been there, done that...I don't blame the cops or family of a small town for not recognizing the situation...hind site being 20/20 and all...

 

[Ozoner]

We are on the same page, something stinks about this. I was born at night, but NOT last night

There is specific protocol.

No amber alert?
Leave 'em be til morning?
Search resumes at what time the next day? 10:00? 11:45? Seriously?

Too many questions. No fool here, I smell a rat.

All my personal opinion, of course

But for a small town police force, there probably is no protcol. You're looking at things from the perspective of a Monday morning quarterback.
You may not realize how casually some law enforcement agencies treat missing teenager cases. I can't tell you how many cases I've followed where no search was performed for days. Heck, I've followed cases where LE wouldn't even take a report at first.

 

[Charlot123]

Charlot, what date was this interview, do you know? TIA

i wish. I know the discussion of it started on Jan 25 2019 on Reddit. Also, it was a local person, (Angela Elliott Tanksley) who got the interview. I have a feeling he is blaming himself for that decision. He is a local, he knows the families.

 

[drama_farmer]

Another question. About that rebooting of the phone. I heard in in BP's interview, but something changed after that.

It was my understanding that at night the girls made a video. Did they use a computer, or a cell phone?

Because if you make a video and it is on the cell phone, you are not going to reboot it afterwards.

Was it rebooted before? If so, it is clean, why the need to take BP's phone?

Or did they only start rebooting it, and left in the house, and went to the bridge?

This phone is bothering me, and I don't know why.

One of the ideas to switch phones is to.keep yours, with your GPS, in the house, so it is BP, not you, who is traced to the bridge. ("You are staying at home").

But if so, Libby would have never posted the Snapchat photo with the coordinates.

Was the rebooting done to erase all data, or was it done as the pretext to switch the phones? If so, why?

Bbm
I know there was some conflicting info/speculation previously about whose phone Libby had with her at the Bridge, but I believe the consensus is that Libby had her own phone and not BP's. IMO

 

[BigTexas]

But you have to expect the unexpected. This day and age, I would not be taking any chances with the 'where is my daughter' thought. I also believe the search should have continued until those premises were thoroughly searched. What does it hurt?

 

[Cutiekitty]

Who among us could withstand a night without knowing where our children, niece, nephew or friend’s missing person were? On a cold, dark February night in Indiana?
Communities rise up in these situations. Even if the world supposed the girls fell to their death off the bridge why cancel a search? If there was indeed an Amber Alert called in the same night elsewhere why not call in State Police and the FBI? Other resources?
No way in hell I would have sat there twiddling my thumbs! Desperate times call for desperate measures!

Based on what I’ve read it sounded like the community did rise up and help with the search. It also sounded like LE searched, but maybe not with the amount of resources that would be deployed had this met the criteria for an Amber alert (this case did not meet the requirements and, in my state, federal and state LE are involved in Amber Alerts). The amber alert that was issued the same night probably impacted the amount of resources that were able to be diverted to Delphi.

Where I live we have had a few amber alerts, a lot of missing child notices/alerts and a lot of Silver alerts (missing elderly). The missing children for the most part have all been recovered alive and were runaways or missing as a result of miscommunication (intentional or unintentional) with a parent/caregiver. One was a runaway that had committed suicide in the woods. The majority of the silver alerts have ended positively. My point is people go missing all of the time. I do live in a bigger city so it happens more often, but LE presence is also proportionally larger. They don’t call in the cavalry every time a person goes missing. If they did that would be all they did. LE and the public would end up with alert fatigue and the public wouldn’t take them as serious, which defeats the purpose of Amber Alerts in the first place.

All of that being said, if it was my kid, mother, friend, friend’s kid etc... I’d want LE searching 24/7, but I get why they didn’t continue a physical search through the night. I’d bet they conducted other non-physical searches (phones, SM, sent bolos, communicated with other LE agencies, etc...) throughout the night that they just haven’t made public.

 

[Charlot123]

Another question. About that rebooting of the phone. I heard in in BP's interview, but something changed after that.

It was my understanding that at night the girls made a video. Did they use a computer, or a cell phone?

Because if you make a video and it is on the cell phone, you are not going to reboot it afterwards.

Was it rebooted before? If so, it is clean, why the need to take BP's phone?

Or did they only start rebooting it, and left in the house, and went to the bridge?

This phone is bothering me, and I don't know why.

One of the ideas to switch phones is to.keep yours, with your GPS, in the house, so it is BP, not you, who is traced to the bridge. ("You are staying at home").

But if so, Libby would have never posted the Snapchat photo with the coordinates.

Was the rebooting done to erase all data, or was it done as the pretext to switch the phones? If so, why?

Additional question to my own one. Two people here have mentioned that teenagers do not factory reset their phones without backing up the data.

I think it was unusual for Libby to do so, too. I think she was like a modern Miss Marple, very curious, with an active brain, and was more likely to make photos of things that looked strange, or “criminal”, or simply odd to her. I also think she noticed more than most of us.

If so, it is uncharacteristic for such a person to not back up her data.

Two versions: 1) she wanted something about her life to be buried forever and never found out, or

2) she did back up the data. Save it to a USB, or any other device. And someone else erased it later.

I am not thinking of her close family, people who have been cleared. But trying to imagine - I guess, everyone in her family was searching. Maybe they did not close the door, or made coffee for night searchers, somehow kept their house open. Could someone access the backup device?

Or probably, later, her personal belongings were taken by the police? So where is that memory stick?

Think of it...

 

[Cutiekitty]

Additional question to my own one. Two people here have mentioned that teenagers do not factory reset their phones without backing up the data.

I think it was unusual for Libby to do so, too. I think she was like a modern Miss Marple, very curious, with an active brain, and was more likely to make photos of things that looked strange, or “criminal”, or simply odd to her. I also think she noticed more than most of us.

If so, it is uncharacteristic for such a person to not back up her data.

Two versions: 1) she wanted something about her life to be buried forever and never found out, or

2) she did back up the data. Save it to a USB, or any other device. And someone else erased it later.

I am not thinking of her close family, people who have been cleared. But trying to imagine - I guess, everyone in her family was searching. Maybe they did not close the door, or made coffee for night searchers, somehow kept their house open. Could someone access the backup device?

Or probably, later, her personal belongings were taken by the police? So where is that memory stick?

Think of it...

She may have run out of cloud storage so she couldn’t back up. I believe she had a cloud account because of the legal stuff reference the family and Apple.

 

[Charlot123]

DBM

 

[Charlot123]

Bbm
I know there was some conflicting info/speculation previously about whose phone Libby had with her at the Bridge, but I believe the consensus is that Libby had her own phone and not BP's. IMO

Yes, I heard it, too. I found it. BP says it was done a week before the tragedy, but Libby did not reset some of her apps. They called AT@T trying to find her.