As we are coming up on the 7th anniversary of Mike Chambers's death, I was thinking of the top unanswered questions in this case. I thought I'd take a stab at answering them or at least providing a theory.
1. Why was Mike Chambers on the other side of Lake Tawakoni (Rains County) after the Wal-Mart for a brief period of time? This has always bothered me. Sheriff Meeks mentioned in the Disappeared episode that the cell phone data showed that MC sat on the other side of the bridge for 10-20 minutes (something like that) after the Wal-Mart trip. Why? This seems to lend support for the suicide theory because it makes people wonder whether he was contemplating suicide earlier in the day. Fair enough. However, if you think that MC was the victim of a well-planned plot to make a homicide look like suicide, the trip to the other side of the lake makes sense too. It's possible that someone asked him to go there to do something (wait for someone to bring clothes or an item that was left behind somewhere, etc.). That person never shows because it was a set-up and MC goes home to finish his trip. The problem is that his phone now shows him close to the location where his body will end up (which, of course, MC has no idea).
2. How did his body get to the location where it was found? I have no idea but I suspect this was very complicated. It's complicated because the cell phone data shows the phone (!) traveling at 4.2 mph, roughly from his house to the center of the 2-mile bridge. Some people have mentioned a boat traveling at slower speeds so as not to attract attention (maybe close to the shoreline) but I really have no idea about this. It's the biggest question in the case.
3. What do we make of the cell phone data? I'm not sure what to make of this either. The "Disappeared" episode talked about a cell phone expert (one person) analyzing this. I'd feel better if more than one person analyzed the data and came to the same conclusion. I'm pretty sure that cell phone data science has improved significantly in the last 7 years so I'd be curious what a fresh set of eyes on this would say. 4.2mph just seems to be so sketchy. I've always wondered whether 4.2 is an AVERAGE, not the continual rate of speed the phone traveled but I'm not sure I've ever heard an answer to that question.
4. What's with the blood and bloody dowel in the garage? That's simple, in my opinion. Even well-planned ideas can go crazy. It looks like there's a pool of blood but then drops moving away from that pool (toward the door). If MC was bleeding out the ear, then two people moved him toward the door, and that seems to fit the evidence. The bloody dowel was simply forgotten! If the garage was the crime scene (which I think it was), I'm sure it was chaotic and you don't want to get caught and so you want to finish things up in there ASAP! Things could be forgotten and I think that's what the bloody dowel was . . .simply forgotten, left behind. I've always believed that the people responsible for this never in their wildest dreams thought that LE would think that the garage was not the crime scene. I think they were extremely nervous on March 10, 2017, and got lucky when LE started floating theories that the garage scene was staged. The "staged" theory is preposterous for many reasons but the main reason being the bloody dowel. If you want to throw off investigators and have them think that you're injured and wandered off for a 3-hour bike ride, why plant the bloody dowel? It makes zero sense.
5. How many people were involved? Minimum of 2, I think. I'd say there is a 0% chance that it is only one person. What I am perplexed about is how the individuals have kept this completely private. Maybe they have talked to others out of a guilty conscience and maybe LE is aware of those conversations. It just seems very unlikely that the perpetrators have been able to sleep well at night and have not said a peep to others. That's just not how human nature works.
6. How do you explain LE's actions in this case? I'm going to let those from Hunt County and/or Texas offer opinions on this. one but I guess there is a chance that someone from LE or someone close to someone in LE came up in the investigation. Setting that issue aside, I think the more likely scenario is simply that this was a sloppy investigation. It doesn't seem like they treated the garage like a crime scene and by the time they could, it was too late. With a national TV show coming to town, I think the sheriff had to come up with a theory for the case (looooong, lonely bike ride then suicide!). That theory might make sense to those not from Hunt County who don't know the distance and type of roads that MC would have had to ride his bike, but I suspect that most people from Hunt County knew that this was a crazy theory. The suicide theory makes zero sense to me for about a 1,000 different reasons.
1. As someone who used to live in Rains County and traveled several times a week on 276 to Hunt County, this baffles me. The only reason I can think of is it might be close to the property he owned in the past? But I've never seen confirmation of the exact location of that property, so not sure how far away it is from where his remains were located.
2. I'm amazed his remains were found at all. It seems like the guy who found them randomly stumbled upon them. I saw the pics he posted on FB before they were taken down, too. Very strange how they got to that part of the lake. But Lake Tawakoni is just strange lol. Not the best lake in Texas, and that's an understatement.
3. The cell phone data.....I'm going to go ahead and say that it probably needs to be looked at by someone or some other agency not affiliated with Hunt County or Rains County, as it seems there was confusion about the results when they were first analyzed. I've said this before, but I've never seen someone riding a bike across the 2-Mile Bridge. I'm sure it can be done, but just not ideal, unless you have a deathwish, which may be a factor here. That being said, I can recall 2 times that people committed suicide by jumping off that bridge in the 90s, so it can be done. But those people drove their vehicles out on the bridge and then jumped. Anyway, I think the 2-Mile Bridge is irrelevant here, as his remains were found 4 miles past the bridge, a short walk from the highway. It is an isolated inlet of the lake that seems to be shallow even when water levels are up.
4. No idea. It seems to me to be staged, and poorly at that. Whether MC staged this and committed suicide or it was product of foul play, I'm not sure.
5. No clue.
6. So I have my opinions about LE in HC and RC. There's a lot of "good ol' boys" who work in LE and the courts system. I've heard the rumors about the wife being involved with either someone in LE or a very close realitve of someone in HC LE, but I'm pretty sure discussion on that isn't allowed here. If any of that were true, do you think it would be an effective and unbiased investigation?
This is totally unrelated, but what I do know about personally is, at least in Rains County, the kangaroo courts. I had a lifelong friend who was falsely accused of a very serious crime there and I attended the last day of his trial. He took his case to jury trial, and what a joke that was. My friend will probably die in prison for something he absolutely did not do!! All because of small town politics, he said/she said, petty revenge, the good ol' boy system, and liars.
