Would be curious to hear from other WS'ers. Has your opinion of why Abby disappeared changed now that so much time has passed?
I know that my initial gut instinct on this case was that she was taken by someone she knew and killed shortly thereafter. After the letter was revealed in November 2013, I felt that Abby had left willingly with someone older and was (at least in her mind) 'choosing' to be gone, but would be found or come home soon.
Now? It is my opinion that there was more contact with the family after that initial letter we heard about. But I am just not sure exactly what I think happened anymore.
Good question.
My thoughts have changed a little. At first I thought she most likely ran away (given the case details) and the famous letter from Abby to her mom made that seem more likely and then the 'open' letter style online responses from both her mother and also her father seemed to bear out that they too believed she had run away. No one was speaking to an abductor in those messages. No one was saying 'please release my daughter so she can come home' or 'I will pay you to just let her come home' but instead the open responses were spoken to Abby as if she probably could come home but yet tinged with just a bit of doubt about her ability to contact home, perhaps to encourage more communication from Abby.
Now if I had a daughter and really, in my gut, thought she was a kidnap victim I would not waste time pretending in open letters and videos that my daughter could willingly come home in my initial open response. I would be speaking to the kidnapper and asking for her return and offering to reward for her release and so forth. If I was unsure I would address both possibilities in my very first 'open letter'/ 'open video response' and not just speak to just one possibility in that response.
Both her parents
initial responses convinced me that they believed her to truly be a runaway and had some cause, more than what we in the public know, to see things in that light and very little indication of a kidnapping in spite of a parent's later assertions that they thought otherwise.
Having concluded Abby was most likely a runaway I then considered whether she ran away on her own or not. I read where it was said that she had no income of her own and right away I knew there is no way to know that to be true. People often work 'under the radar' taking cash at taverns or hotels and other places (not even mentioning the sex trade because it is possible to make cash money without that.) I have read a case of a person about Abby's age working for cash as a waitress before. So in my mind it is entirely possible that Abby could have an income of her own. She could even pretend to be an undocumented illegal in the country and we all know there is a huge underground economy involving undocumented workers.
Back to whether she went alone or not: She could, in my opinion, earn a living for herself. Additionally I have read cases where 14 and 15 yrs olds have hitchhiked out on their own and went several states away so I
know it sometimes happens. But my question was
did Abby leave all by herself and so to answer that I had to also look at other case details. I next looked at the fact that she wrote a snail mail letter. (Snail mail being a term for an old fashioned physical letter mailed through the postal service.) Snail mail has almost fallen completely out of use these days and so has cursive writing, especially for people Abby's age. It is more natural for someone 14 to 15 to think of text or cell phone call or email before snail mail as a means of communication. I did some reading online about cursive and learned it is considered dead to the new generations of children coming up through the schools.
But using snail mail does not equal having used cursive to write the letter and many still use block letter printing when handwriting so it is still possible to have a handwritten letter (as the letter from Abby was twice reported to have been handwritten) and yet to not have it written in cursive. Why all the words in my post about the letter being snail mail and being hand written? It is because it is something that older people seem to be more likely to do and seem more likely to think of doing and
that led me to think perhaps Abby left on her own on foot and went to meet an
older person probably a love interest and probably a male love interest who then prompted her to write a snail mail home. There has been a spate of cases in the news of young women about Abby's age (14 to 15) that took off with older male love interests, in some cases much older. So it is possible and not out of character for her age group. But
is that what Abby did? It would offer her the easiest way to get transportation out of the area and to have a place to stay all lined up and at first I thought it most likely was what Abby did. The change to that thinking is a slight one. I have noted that in one of his 'open letters' to Abby her father said he wrote a letter to abby's mom (
'. . .Once we hit the six month mark that you went missing I decided to take a leap of faith by writing a letter to your Mother. . .' (BBM) I did not link to source because I can't remember if WS allows us to in this instance but I went to the web page and read the letter again before posting today.
Her father having said that he actually wrote a letter to her mother made me realize that it is possible that he meant he wrote a snail mail letter and that in turn made me realize that a daughter learns things from her parents and thus Abby
could possibly have learned the use of snail mail from her dad. (She could also have learned it from her mom but this is the only time in MSM that it was reported about either parent possibly using snail mail in the time context of Abby's disappearance so I worked with what I have.) This made me ask myself if Abby learned snail mail from her dad and if so did she learn to use it a lot or only when you must communicate something really important. I do not know the answers to those 2 questions but it has raised the question of Abby having thought of sending the snail mail letter she wrote to her mom without an older person needing to suggest it to her and
that is a new possibility which makes me re-examine my earlier thoughts of her most likely being with an older person.
I still think she most likely is with an older someone but I now see more possibility than before that she could be on her own.
Next is the question of whether she met someone and then ran off only to change her mind and not be allowed to return home or perhaps to even have met with foul play. In one open letter style video Abbys' mother Zenya says
'. . .How much communication have we had
in the past four months . . .minimal . . .' (BBM) The word
minimal is heard if you play the video but not quoted in the text of the news article which stops quoting just short of that word.
http://www.newhampshire.com/article/20140205/NEWS07/140209516
This use of the word minimal leads me to think perhaps the first letter from Abby is not the only communication that has passed between them. It is not absolute proof but it does make me think it possible. This makes me think it possible that Abby has, or has had, some amount of ability to contact home which makes it seem less likely to be the usual straight up kidnap foul play sort of thing.
Abby
may be with some one older but I see less and less to make me think of foul play possibilities.
The snail mail addressing anomaly (that Abby sent the letter to a PO box instead of her normal home mailing address) has caused me to posit some additional thoughts about the case but for now I am mulling them over to myself.
Hope this helps.
