Last night I was reading John Douglas's book The Anatomy of Motive which is about criminal profiling, and I found a section at the end that may be relevant in the Occhi case, regarding her eyeglasses being mailed:
Douglas was talking about another case where a mother reported her toddler had been kidnapped from their apartment. After the child's disappearance, one of the mittens she'd been wearing when she disappeared was mailed to her home. When Douglas found that out he told the police to focus on the mother. It turned out Mom had strangled her daughter, hid the body and staged the kidnapping.
"The element that really gives it away is the mitten sent through the mail. If you stop to think it through, it doesn't make any sense... [Ransom kidnappers] will have to communicate with the parents to establish demands and make arrangements for payment. [Other types of abductors] will want nothing whatever to do with the parents; only in the rarest of instances--when you have a truly insane or sadistic individual--would you see any attempt at communication. But that would be a real long shot, extremely unusual."
I deeply admire John Douglas and trust his judgment and his remarks here make me wonder now whether Leigh's abduction might been staged as well. But if so, by whom? Or perhaps her abductor was one of those "truly insane or sadistic individuals" he was referring to. Certainly it seems like a violent, vicious kidnapping.