Yes, I agree. Up until today, I looked at the headlines and online sleuthing that was questioning the unknowns in X & E's timeline, and figured the police did have a pretty good idea of where they were, when they were there, and what they were doing, at least in a general sense if not specifically, and just hadn't shared those details with the public. It also didn't really seem to be a point of specific focus before today. Not that they didn't want info on it, it just wasn't really publicly prioritized like it is now, which led me to believe they either 1. had a decent amount of info and/or 2. didn't think X & E were the likely targets for whatever reasons.
After reading LE's direct statements about the need to nail down the specifics of the X & E timeline, it seems to me that they don't have nearly as much info as I thought they did about X & E.
Over the last few days, the walk-back/modifying of the potential victim targeting statements, and SG's reactions to those revisions by LE, it's slowly started to click for me. I really do think LE initially believed it was far more targeted, and not to general house, but to a specific girl(s). That is what they seemed to imply in their first week or so of pressers, where they spoke with more decision. And it's certainly what SG thinks LE led him to believe as well. I think when the mayor confidently stated it was targeted etc, then to be publicly corrected by LE, and then to shortly thereafter have LE qualify what sort of "targeting" is now on the table, the mayor reiterated what was a strong theory at the beginning.
The mayor should absolutely not have said anything of the sort before discussing the progress of the investigation and also making sure his statements were strategically aligned with the sort of info LE wanted to convey. At the time, I chalked up the mayor's statements as political hubris and didn't think much about it. I've worked with plenty of small-town political bureaucracies, and they are not fun, there are a lot of egos involved, political power struggles, and political grandstanding. But now I think the mayor may have been, kind of like SG, led to believe that the person-specific targeting theory was pretty solid (mentioned this before, but will say it one more time. as in the debbie collier case, i understand why LE truly believed it was targeted, and why they felt comfortable making pretty definitive statements that ended up being inaccurate after investigation. i'm not blaming them for believing certain evidence was indicative, just pointing out that things can appear one way, but there can be a myriad alternative explanations for what seems obvious initially).
So when the mayor repeats what he thinks is a fairly solid info (again, he shouldn't have done this without talking to LE and his administration first), LE has to say "wait hold up, no evidence it was targeted. but wait again, the house may have been targeted." Basically when the Mayor started the conflicting targeted statements whirlwind that seems to have pushed SG over the edge, LE was just finishing up a lot of more in depth review of info and expertise that made specific targeting less likely than they initially thought.
Wow, so yeah that was super convoluted. Sorry, it was rambling but i'm not going to bother trying to straighten up the flow. I'm basically saying I think they really did think K was targeted for legitimate reasons, but after three weeks and a whole lot of evidence later, they think it's less likely and they need more info on E & X to try to determine if there's any tangible connection to a potential suspect.
I think this is not going to be resolved in the near future. I think this is going to pan out more like the Delphi investigation, where it takes years and a ton of extensive digging and lead chasing to find the killer...
