I just had a thought I want to run by everyone:
One thing that is almost universally agreed upon is that the Time Out note is meant to misdirect in some way. Its been suggested before that it was either meant to suggest a motive for the murder that wasnt true or direct suspicion at a particular suspect. I had a different idea: What if the note was meant to disguise the fact that the writer
did not speak English very well?
The DNA suggests the killer was an Hispanic male. The Hispanic population of North Carolina isnt tiny, but at 9% (
http://www.pewhispanic.org/states/state/nc/), its not overwhelmingly large, either. And while many of them speak English just fine, there is a subset that dont speak it well, or at all.
Lets say for the sake of argument that the killer was one of the latter. He may have been able to kill Faith without being seen or heard, but was worried someone would see him, or worse,
speak to him in the complex after he had left her apartment. So he may have been trying to think of a way to misdirect police away from him should someone bring him to their attention.
He came up with writing a note in English, which is kind of a clumsy solution, but probably all he could think of on short notice. Since he didnt speak English well, it would have to be very short; otherwise, he would make a bunch of grammatical errors that would tip investigators off that hes not a native English speaker, which is the opposite of what he wants to accomplish.
He would know at least some English, so he probably just threw a few bad words into the note, since it didnt matter so much what it actually said (interestingly, in some parts of the Spanish-speaking world, the word stupid is not to be used in polite conversation, either). But even in just the five words he wrote, he managed to make a mistake, and switched the noun/adjective order to what is common in Spanish (noun first, adjective second). However, since the note was so short and obviously hastily written, that mistake isnt as noticeable.
I actually like this solution to the note problem- Ive never been able to figure out what the note accomplished for the killer when the cost was leaving his DNA all over it and the pen. As it turned out, no one saw him, but if LE had directed a lot of attention on the local Hispanic community in the first few days after the murder, the case may have turned out very different. Investigators had a lot of reasons to look elsewhere anyway, but maybe the killer didnt know that, and was just trying to help them along in any way he could.
