Found Deceased CA - Barbara Thomas, 69, from Bullhead City AZ, disappeared in Mojave desert, 12 July 2019 #13

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Beans said:
I thought I’d done a decent job of following this story but there’s a plane? Do you know where it’s based or anything about usage or flight schedules?

*wee wave to Bradford from north of border*
*edit: is there a Bradford in USA?*
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There was a plane RT owned at the time Barbara disappeared.

Our VI @dbdb11 mentioned the plane several times. It was brought to his attention by someone here on WS iirc.

I have no clue if RT still owns the plane or any other details about flights or where it is/was based.

I am sure that if someone here knows, they could get that info to you privately.;)

There is! Bradford PA :)

JMO
 
Auntie Cipation said:
I think the reasoning is that LE searched that location for, IIRC, nine days. That's a long time. I certainly hope they were simultaneously searching other areas and pursuing other theories.

Personally I don't think she was there that day.

I take RT's words/story and ask myself, how would he behave if he was innocent? And there are things I think an innocent spouse, no matter how socially awkward or media shy, would have done or said. That he didn't do.

I can definitely imagine realistic and non-criminsl scenarios where she disappeared while wearing a bikini and holding a beer, even while thinking she knew better than to undertake a hike or walk in such garb ill-protective for the sun and heat.

I'm inclined to think that, in general, when a guilty person tells a story, the details are often given such that when the body of the missing person is found, it will appear to validate the story.

So if in theory RT hurt her, he might have put her somewhere that would appear to be "on the way to Vegas" starting from the Kelbaker site.

On the other hand if he's innocent of hurting her and doesn't know what happened (and we all know it's sadly entirely realistic for a person to go down on the desert floor and not be found for years) then I have to wonder why he's not made a public correction of the quote that made the news implying he thought she was kidnapped due to her clothes and maybe alcohol level. I can see an innocent person nervously saying something awkward like that but not letting it stand after realizing how it came across. IMO MOO
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I’m not in the US but I imagine search and rescue protocols work in same way in many places. If you don’t have reason - solid evidence - to dispute only witness accounts then you have to search. You can’t take the risk of NOT doing it. It doesn’t necessarily mean LE believe witness or even specific accounts.
 
Beans said:
I’m not in the US but I imagine search and rescue protocols work in same way in many places. If you don’t have reason - solid evidence - to dispute only witness accounts then you have to search. You can’t take the risk of NOT doing it. It doesn’t necessarily mean LE believe witness or even specific accounts.
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True but nine days in that heat seemed (at least to us at the time) to extend far beyond the survivable window given the supposed lack of protective clothes, water, etc. So it appeared they might have had a stronger-than-usual reason for continuing for that long.
 
Auntie Cipation said:
True but nine days in that heat seemed (at least to us at the time) to extend far beyond the survivable window given the supposed lack of protective clothes, water, etc. So it appeared they might have had a stronger-than-usual reason for continuing for that long.
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True that. Also doesn’t indicate they either believed or disbelieved his story though. Once you start these searches you have to justify concluding them, and there will be a range of criteria and parameters for that.

I live in a part of the world where they generally consider danger of cold rather than heat and there will be some differences in terms of liveable conditions (longer probably) but general position seems to be to keep going until all possible - even vaguely possible - options or expectations have been exhausted. S&R and police just won’t risk the accusation that they didn’t look hard enough. Because ethical but also legal reasons.

if they think they might be looking for a body and possible evidence of criminality, that’s going to influence instruction too.
 
Beans said:
Exactly. A whole year of catching up occasionally on this thread and I still don’t understand why anyone believes she was even there in the first place. I could be wrong, so wrong, but is there any reason to think that even LE truly believed she was there at all?
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It has been reported that RT gave LE a picture of her that he had taken that day, in the area of the hike. So I do think she was probably there on that day.

But I don't believe things happened the way tha he described them.
 
I feel like I need to go back and read this case from the beginning, news articles only. Some of the theories and speculation are getting muddled in my head with the facts. I'm just confused at this point. When it gets cooler I would like to make a trip there and have a look for myself. I was there in January, but not in the exact location Barbara allegedly went missing.
 
Seajay said:
Checking in and seeing that there is nothing new on Barb. Where were the fliers, the reward, the news conferences, the searches in different weather. It’s like her husband just came back with “I lost her, I can’t find her, oh well, on with my life.” Like she was nothing. Only she was worth a pretty penny. If she controlled those assets, you can count the reasons someone would want her out of the way. IMO
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THIS ^^^^^
 
bradfordsleuth said:
There was a plane RT owned at the time Barbara disappeared.

Our VI @dbdb11 mentioned the plane several times. It was brought to his attention by someone here on WS iirc.

I have no clue if RT still owns the plane or any other details about flights or where it is/was based.

I am sure that if someone here knows, they could get that info to you privately.;)

There is! Bradford PA :)

JMO
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dbdb11 was aware of the plane, as he mentioned that RT and Barbara had flown a couple of times (to family in Canada, I believe?) and basically flew right past Barbara's son's home, but never went to see the son.

He also mentioned that RT had a lot of "business" phone calls and dealings that somehow involved the plane. There's more detail in the early threads.

RT only gave one interview, to the young woman reporter from Las Vegas, whose station owned the rights to many more minutes. They sold footage to Inside Edition (I believe it was), who then repackaged quickly for their nightly show. Only that one young woman got RT to talk, and he actually asked her inside the house to show her memorabilia (you can see the interior of the house in one clip).

I'm really mulling over all the things you've said, as the one year anniversary as just passed. I keep pondering whether RT actually said anything about Vegas (we don't hear him say it) or whether Inside Edition reporter (who filmed his spot in SoCal) added it in, as a nod to the Vegas news station that likely wanted Vegas in the story.

If he did say or imply a toward-Vegas direction, that's very intriguing. That new DNA search technology could be in use here, if only the area was narrowed down (it's vast). Future technologies may not be so limited.
 
10ofRods said:
I'm really mulling over all the things you've said, as the one year anniversary as just passed. I keep pondering whether RT actually said anything about Vegas (we don't hear him say it) or whether Inside Edition reporter (who filmed his spot in SoCal) added it in, as a nod to the Vegas news station that likely wanted Vegas in the story.
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^^sbm

I believe RT referred to LV when speaking about BT's possible abduction and the direction of her captors.
 
I cannot find a clip with RT mentioning Las Vegas. What I find is that the Inside Edition piece says (in "reporter" voice): "...husband believes she may be in Vegas..."

I want to know if the original reporter asked "Where do you think she is?" and if RT said, "She could be anywhere - Vegas, out in the desert, I don't know." Or he said, "Well if she got into someone's car, she might be in Vegas." Or...something else. "If she was abducted, maybe they took her to Vegas."

It would be normal for a man his age to think about a woman "being taken to Vegas" because there was a news story in the region, maybe 10 years ago, where it was believed this happened. Later, the woman turned up alive in Henderson (where RT lived at the time IIRC) BUT...she was never abducted. She left the man she was with, got voluntarily into a car, and partied in Vegas (and then asked to be dropped off near Henderson).

Was RT trying to paint Barbara as an aging party girl who might have gone to Vegas (being, perhaps, a bit miffed at him - like the woman in the above story)?

But I can't find any video of him mentioning Vegas, unfortunately. I think it came to the mind of the original reporter (and it came to my mind right away too, I live not too far away).

Anyway, when I heard "RT said she might have gone to Vegas," I wondered if they'd had a fight (plus the woman at the kennel saying Barbara was uncharacteristically abrupt or non-cheerful, something like that).
 
10ofRods said:
I cannot find a clip with RT mentioning Las Vegas. What I find is that the Inside Edition piece says (in "reporter" voice): "...husband believes she may be in Vegas..."

I want to know if the original reporter asked "Where do you think she is?" and if RT said, "She could be anywhere - Vegas, out in the desert, I don't know." Or he said, "Well if she got into someone's car, she might be in Vegas." Or...something else. "If she was abducted, maybe they took her to Vegas."

It would be normal for a man his age to think about a woman "being taken to Vegas" because there was a news story in the region, maybe 10 years ago, where it was believed this happened. Later, the woman turned up alive in Henderson (where RT lived at the time IIRC) BUT...she was never abducted. She left the man she was with, got voluntarily into a car, and partied in Vegas (and then asked to be dropped off near Henderson).

Was RT trying to paint Barbara as an aging party girl who might have gone to Vegas (being, perhaps, a bit miffed at him - like the woman in the above story)?

But I can't find any video of him mentioning Vegas, unfortunately. I think it came to the mind of the original reporter (and it came to my mind right away too, I live not too far away).

Anyway, when I heard "RT said she might have gone to Vegas," I wondered if they'd had a fight (plus the woman at the kennel saying Barbara was uncharacteristically abrupt or non-cheerful, something like that).
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From a couple pages back -- the original news interview.

CA - CA - Barbara Thomas, 69, from Bullhead City AZ, disappeared in Mojave desert, 12 July 2019 #12
 
I agree with @10ofRods .
I've always thought that the suggestion of Las Vegas probably originated with the interviewer. It's very typical of local news media to look for a local angle. She may have prompted him during the unbroadcast parts of the conversation:
Q - Do you think she could have been taken to Vegas?
A -It's possible, yes.

Or he could have mentioned it among a number of possibilities and it was cherry-picked for the local angle.

It's important to remember that we only saw a very small part of the interview, which would have been edited down in the studio, and the conversations would have been much more extensive than the snippets broadcast.
 
Seattle1 said:
From a couple pages back -- the original news interview.

CA - CA - Barbara Thomas, 69, from Bullhead City AZ, disappeared in Mojave desert, 12 July 2019 #12
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My point is that it's the reporter's voice who says "he thinks that" she may have been taken to Vegas. RT mentions the road, the beer, the bikini, but the words "Las Vegas" never are heard - that's Leah's voice. We still don't know if RT said "to Vegas" or "maybe to Vegas or Henderson" or whether he listed more places. Leah's beat is Vegas-based, so of course she's going to mention Vegas and encourage people to be aware of Barb's disappearance..

But I still would like to hear exactly what RT said when he mentioned Vegas and whether that was on a short lst of places she could be or the only place where he thinks she could be. Kelbaker Road is a way to get to Vegas (but traffic goes in the opposite direction as well).

Anyway, the initial focus on beer, bikini and Vegas certainly got national attention for this inexplicable disappearance of a woman in the desert. But for all I know, RT opined in various ways and the reporter did what reporters do.

My point is that we don't hear RT's actual voice say "and then they took her to Las Vegas" or anything like that. It's possible the reporter asked, "Do you think she could be in Vegas?" and he said, "sure - she could be anywhere by now!"
 
Cherwell said:
I agree with @10ofRods .
I've always thought that the suggestion of Las Vegas probably originated with the interviewer. It's very typical of local news media to look for a local angle. She may have prompted him during the unbroadcast parts of the conversation:
Q - Do you think she could have been taken to Vegas?
A -It's possible, yes.

Or he could have mentioned it among a number of possibilities and it was cherry-picked for the local angle.

It's important to remember that we only saw a very small part of the interview, which would have been edited down in the studio, and the conversations would have been much more extensive than the snippets broadcast.
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I spoke to the reporter more than once and she did try to get permission to release the full video to me (as part of a research project - not so that I could discuss it here). Naturally, the station said no and it wasn't clear whether the footage still existed or whether it was sent in full to Inside Edition (reporter didn't know for sure - her regular gig was as a weather person).
 
So she is known to be an inferior reporter?

Just because she works LV doesn’t mean she has to make up that RT believes instead of agrees its a possibility as a device to ask to keep an eye out.

Our weather person is a detailed, observant reporter when she does special pieces. But we do have the kind of weather that calls for a skilled person.

I believe it is all RT and if he was going on speculating then it seemed plausible to him. To blame it on her seems grasping when RT seems perfectly able to speak.

It would be interesting to see LE's report and the 911 call to see if LV came up then as a possible destination of the abductor.









 
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