Somebody on this thread brought up footnote #13 in the appeals court's report that I posted the link for in the OP. I now post it verbatim below. It bears discussion:
13 For instance, Deborah Frazier testified that she was over at her mothers house, which is
approximately one mile from the McCracken residence, on the night of the incident in question. At
approximately 3:00 a.m., Deborah heard a female voice screaming. She then heard another female
voice yell stop, youre going to kill her and then the screaming stopped. The disturbance came from a
house two doors down from Deborahs mothers house. Robert Frazier, Deborahs father, testified
that one of the men that lived in that house bore a striking resemblance to defendant. Further, the
residents of this house owned an older model gray primer van. Donald Tompkins, another neighbor,
confirmed those elements of Robert Fraziers testimony.
Hmm. So here we have a man who "bore a striking resemblance" to Andrew Trombley who had access to a gray primer van that belongs to this residence located a mile from the McCracken residence. This information was verified by two people who lived on that same street. This was not Trombley, however, who lived with his mother in a small apartment above the Hitching Post Bar which I have driven past many times over the years and can verify is totally isolated from any houses in the area. The footnote doesn't make clear that the man with the van was involved in the altercation described but if he was then we have someone who apparently could get violent with females (which Trombley has no record of), looked like Trombley, drove a gray primer van and who was up at 3 am on the night Deanna Seifert disappeared. Maybe it was this van people claimed to have seen.
My reason for bringing this up is to, once again, drive home how muddled and confused the eyewitness testimony is. This area is not exactly a wealthy one. This is largely a blue collar working class area. There are a lot of Andrew Trombleys living out this way. He was by no means unique. Out here, he does not stand out at all. The Hitching Post Bar is not exactly a family joint. It often caters to bikers and other roughnecks (such as Trombley himself) and you cannot even walk in. You have to ring a buzzer to be let in because businesses along that stretch of 8 Mile are robbed routinely (I was in an eatery on 8 Mile when three guys with guns burst in, made us lay on the floor and robbed us and, that same week, two other places were robbed along that same stretch, one of them resulting in murder). So you'll see a lot of people in beaten up vehicles who look like Trombley and probably share a very similar life story driving around at all hours of the day and night. You see them in every bar, restaurant, gas station, neighborhood, apartment complex, trailer park and strip mall in the area. I was just talking to one such guy I ran into in a liquor store on the corner who told me about a good Chinese restaurant to order from. If you replaced Trombley's photo with his no one would even notice.
When you get right down to it, anybody could have abducted that girl. In fact, I think I know who was behind it but I won't say here because I could easily be wrong and that would amount to nothing more than slander. And if it is who I think it is, he couldn't have acted alone. There are enough low-lifes and down-on-their-luckers in this area that anybody could have done it or been recruited to do it.
