Apologies for the extreme vagueness of that post & late response with this one. I posted a fuller explanation with links in the last thread & wasn't sure about doing it a second time. This thread's so fast-moving though that I guess it's best to err on the side of caution, so if it happens in future, I'll just link my old post.
In the meantime I'll try & make a bit more sense here :
Before the calls came in that identified Karlie & Khandalyce & linked the 2 cases, I'd been wondering why they were discussing all sorts of cross-checking between govt records & going to extremes with data- matching etc that had never been used in an Aus unidentified case before, yet they never even mentioned facial reconstruction as a possibility? (I have some background in physical & forensic anthropology,
partial only, didn't finish my degree, but I have friends who work in the field & it remains an interest of mine, so these weren't completely random wonderings).
I moved on though & didn't think much about it until someone posted in the last thread re the "missing item". At that point I thought back to those early appeals by police, where they asked for the person who may have removed something important from the suitcase, to please come forward. Like many others I wondered what item could be removed in a situation like this, that
by it's very absence, from a scene police had never viewed before made immediately clear the following things :
the fact it existed at all, it's general importance, it's relevance to the case, AND the knowledge that it went missing after the suitcase was left by the road, rather than being taken beforehand by the person who dumped it.
A while ago the Canadian case of Ramsey Rioux & Kenneth Lutes ran on CI down here, & when I thought about the missing item this time, I found myself suddenly remembering this case & why it had stalled for years - a man found Kenneth's skull in the woods & thought it looked cool, so rather than calling police, he took it home where he promptly forgot all about it
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-darker-side-of-stanley-park/article13942211/
http://lawandordnance.com/The-Mystery-Of-Stanley-Park.html
If something like this had happened at Wynarka, it would explain why/how police knew something was missing & that it was taken after the suitcase was placed by the road & not before. It would explain them not discussing facial reconstruction as a future possibility if the child remained unidentified. It would also explain how so many people could rummage through/around the suitcase & fail to realise the bones were human.
**Overnight though I've become a lot less worried that this might've happened. I hadn't seen the police quote using the word "value" or "valuable" in relation to the missing item. I agree with others that this makes it sound as though the missing item had a monetary value
- & if that's the case, we can immediately dismiss all of the above.
Edit & obviously, as hideoustroll points out "complete skeleton" is a pretty good reason for dismissal too
