So a few MOO thoughts on what has led me to where I currently stand on what happened to PH:
1) We are not privy to cell phone data but LE is surely aware of PH’s phone location when the “trouble” text was made. And, in all likelihood, multiple times that day and evening. If it’s a single ping, it defines a radius on the tower. But if the phone is in motion and negotiating the best tower to use, that radius becomes a line. I doubt PH was radio-silent, whatever she was up to. This means everything and is probably the reason LE is not asking for help publicly.
2) Although the text was “unlike her” according to her brother, I believe she sent it only because it doesn’t make sense for anyone else to have done it. LE surely knows if where it was sent from and if any other phones were in the vicinity around the time the message was sent. And if so, they know who those phones belong to by now. If she was with friends, their phones would likely have been on too. If she was with people who meant to do her harm, though, their phones might be off. Either way, it’s telling. They know her phone’s movements for that day.
3) PH allegedly got a ride to the Tin Cup with a work friend at some point that day or evening. The story we’ve heard is that PH left her car at the friend’s house. I think we tend to picture it in a driveway or at the curb in front of the house — someplace obvious. But it could conceivably have been in an apartment parking lot, around the block, or some other less than obvious location. For now, I’m willing to believe the work friend didn’t realize PH hadn’t got her car (or hadn’t gone home herself), assumed PH had gotten home ok, and truly didn’t see the “trouble” text until the next day.
4) I believe that PH did in fact leave the Tin Cup with people she knew for a “better party”, either at a bar down the street, or someplace else, with the people she left with promising her a ride back to the TC or to her car at the end of the evening. Given the seemingly poor camera coverage she may have even come and gone unnoticed multiple times for smoke breaks or to talk to someone if the music was too loud or something. She may not have even been “with” the people she walked out with. (This happened all the time in my 20’s. It was no big deal back then. As a group of 10 or 12, we all looked out for each other and, over time, different cliques would even end up in different bars. At the end of the night you never knew who you’d be riding with. And sometimes where you’d end up sleeping.)
5) Ultimately, though, I think she found herself partying with friends of friends and maybe, in the end, total strangers. She knew the situation had gotten sketchy, her hinky-meter was in good working order, and she texted the work friend. But it was already too late at that point.
I originally believed she probably died of an overdose among friends. But I changed my mind when her body was discovered. Whoever she was with when she died, they weren’t friends. Maybe she did overdose, a stranger among strangers, and they took her valuables and hid her body. Or maybe she was the victim of a violent crime. Regardless, she was vulnerable and it’s a tragedy either way.
I’ve had two nephews in recovery, one didn’t make it and is now a stat in the fentanyl epidemic. The other did 8 years in prison for burglary and grand larceny. He’s been out for 18 months now and so far so good. But the stigma of recovery is real. He in his mid 30’s, has no friends, lives with his sister’s family, holds a job, pays his bills and child support. That’s his life. Clean people aren’t interested in socializing with him, he can’t drink or go to bars, and he can’t risk socializing with the previous crowd. He says one of the easiest places to get drugs is in the parking lot of a twelve-step meeting so you have to be hyper on-guard there as well.
If PH was fresh out of a detox (and by fresh I mean “not years”), I worry that she seems to have had as many people to hang out with as she did. It tells me they were either unaware of her struggle, didn’t care about her, or perhaps even enabled it. Or worse.
I also find it revealing that her family seems to be so accepting of her fate. It tells me that, directly or indirectly, they believe the challenges she endured played a key role in whatever happened to her.
ETA: All of the above, from beginning to end, is MOO and purely speculation since that’s almost all we have available to us at the moment. No doubt we will have answers soon.
