The feeling I am getting is they have reason to believe he is deceased and aren't searching because they are working a different angle.
The ping coming from the area of the stadium is interesting. Did his team ever play or practice there? If he harmed himself, that might also be a sentimental choice - I wonder if they have searched it (including high points you can only get to via ladder or utility access)
I'm not sure they think he is deceased, but perhaps they are privy to some inside information that law enforcement wants to keep from the general public.
If you look at this map, you can see that the high school and middle school are beside each other near the top. The middle school parking lot is where Tom's vehicle was parked and where his friends dropped him off that evening. Although there is a practice football field at the high school, the football stadium is near the elementary school several blocks south. Best I can tell, Tom's home is located very near the high school. Hwy 60 is the main highway through town. In town it is 2nd Street, and this is the main thoroughfare. The closest gas station to Tom's home and the middle/high school is an Allsups located on 2nd St. This is a 24 hour convenience store and might be the gas station he used, although there are several others on up and down that main road (not all are 24 hr, and I'm not sure which would have been open). After he got gas, the video shows him driving towards the middle/high school again. This would have likely been the same path he would have driven home, and it would have made sense that he would have done just that. Instead of arriving home, however, Tom evidently traveled several blocks south to the football stadium, which would have likely taken him past his home, then continuing south several blocks. As far as I can tell, they only know this because his phone pinged near there about 20 minutes after he left the gas station. By all accounts, he was always conscientious about making curfew at 11, so if he left the gas station, he knew he had 9 minutes to arrive home. I estimate his home was about 1 minute from the gas station. It's possible a stranger slipped into his vehicle and abducted him as they left the gas station (but there was video of him leaving), or that he went to the football stadium to briefly meet someone, and that encounter ended badly. Of course, he may planned the entire thing and left town voluntarily with an unknown person, however, no one seems to have had reasons to suspect this in advance.
Football is huge in this part of the country, and Tom had been very active on a state championship team up until this year. I'm sure he had played on both the practice field and at the stadium many times. I'm not sure if the "practice" field I mention is used by the high schoolers or just the middle school, but I supposed he used both of them over his years attending school there. Parking lots at both locations seem to be very popular places for teens to hang out or meet up, so him being at those 2 locations doesn't seem suspicious, except that he bypassed his home and was at the stadium past his curfew.
I can't see any way possible a dead body could have been at the stadium or any of the schools without being found quite quickly. I've been to school events at these locations before, and there just aren't hiding places that wouldn't have been easily searched.
