In my opinion, the odds in this case point strongly to tragic accident/accidental death. She was known to go for walks in nature and had told her son she was going to do that very thing that day. With there being a major body of water nearby, that increases the odds of a drowning scenario.
The only other outcomes would be self-harm, murder by stranger, murder by hired killer, murder by acquaintance, or still alive and just needing time away or a fresh start due to a mental break.
While suicide has occurred in multiple cases before where the victim seemed like a totally happy person, this case just really doesn’t seem like it lines up with that. She had scheduled a Super Bowl party for that night. If she wanted to kill herself, it would have almost had to have been a decision she made that day when it was too late to cancel the party. Odds are slim she would have planned a big get-together knowing all along she was going to harm herself that day and leave her guests wondering what was happening.
Murder by stranger is a possibility, but it just seems like a lower probability, given all the circumstances. Did a random murderous stranger just happen upon her house or stake out her place, just waiting for his/her chance to commit the crime? Did she happen upon a psychopath along her walk who decided she needed to die? Was it a kidnapping or robbery gone wrong? Those all seem pretty far-fetched, given that this was a sweet 60 year old woman living in a relatively safe area. Plus the house was reportedly in order and there were no disturbances reported in her neighborhood. The police say no signs point to murder right now, too. Plus, most sickos target younger women as victims. When older women are murdered by strangers, it is most often as part of a home invasion, robbery, or carjacking turned violent. It just doesn’t feel like the likeliest of scenarios.
Murder for hire is an option, too, as it always is when someone goes missing without explanation and there are family/friends/acquaintances out of town at the time who could have ordered the killing to avoid suspicion. It’s happened plenty of times in other cases. But again, that just doesn’t seem like what happened here. Everything that has been reported says that she had a wonderful relationship with all of her family members and that she was the kind of person who was loved by everyone. Without knowing all of the inside details or having personal knowledge of all of the people involved, I’d still put the odds of this scenario at less than 1%.
And lastly there’s the chance she’s still alive and is either trapped somewhere or hiding out due to having some sort of mental breakdown. But if she’s trapped, it would need to be somewhere outside of the elements where she somehow has access to water. And on the extremely low chance she had a complete meltdown just before the party and needed to get away from it all, you’d think she would have come to her senses by now and at the very least notified her kids that she was ok. I’m afraid that neither of those scenarios seem even plausible at this point.