Solve this crime!

[Stacko]

Interesting, thanks. I can see it would be easy to make a body disappear for a long time under the snow but what about tracks?

Snow would conceal those too as long as you dumped the body before the storm. I think the culprit(s) got lucky with the weather rather than any exceptional cunning on their part with regard to the crime.

 

[anglolawyer]

Snow would conceal those too as long as you dumped the body before the storm. I think the culprit(s) got lucky with the weather rather than any exceptional cunning on their part with regard to the crime.

OK. They have to be real nuts these two, to kill her then use her phone and steal her car. If they did it it should be easy to prove.

 

[Grinder]

I assume there are no signs of violence in the apartment itself, as one might imagine if there was a row about the rent that got out of hand. So did these two young people plan and execute a perfect crime, disposing of the body that has still not been found? How? If they used the car to ferry it somewhere it should yield some evidence. Anyway, this detail justifies some skepticism IMO.

Good morning! One of the biggest issues with the Knox case was the early dissemination of details of the case. Perhaps in this case the police are keeping details secret that need not be public in order to better pursue suspects.

 

[Dissolution]

Doesn't there need to be more than that? They might opportunistically have stolen her car. Do we know whether they were found with her phone and cards? How do you access the money in an online bank account by phone? Don't you need a card and an ATM?

According to article that you posted that contained the interview with the boyfriend it seems that the fraud charge is in connection with Saunders' credit card, so they appear to have obtained that somehow.
Seems unlikely that they'd have been able to get hold of both her credit card and her car without taking them from her, though it's possible that she could've left the card in the car and they could have just stolen the vehicle.
The dubious text also suggests that they had her phone, though there's been no confirmation of that.

Would there need to be more than that to convict them? I think so, but I'd be surprised to see the police making much effort into other avenues, unless there's some interesting evidence discovered to turn the investigation.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

OK. They have to be real nuts these two, to kill her then use her phone and steal her car. If they did it it should be easy to prove.

They just need to be idiots.

Most people steal because they do not have the intelligence or education to make money legally, or some life event drives them to desperation. Professional criminals are relatively rare, so yes you get a lot of hold-up artists that look at the security camera then remember to pull their mask down; and junkies who murder someone because they can't think beyond their next hit, and you find them asleep on the victim's couch.

 

[Bob001]

The boyfriend's already talking about her in the past tense.
Is it wrong that it strikes me as odd behaviour?
....

Hey, Anglolawyer, would you consider this odd behavior? Would a reasonable person believe that someone who had been missing a week was probably dead, or would he hold out hope for another explanation? (Personally, I think missing + stolen car + stolen bank cards + shady roommates would probably add up to bad news.)

...
Why didn't he phone her to see why she was stressed and acting oddly when he received the text?
....

That seems strange too, but he could have texted her back and gotten no response and decided that she was too busy to deal with him. But it's surprising that he didn't turn up on her doorstep the next day or try to catch up with her at school.

Interestingly, the boyfriend is a featured face on the web site for Dalhousie U., where he is apparently a computer student (and whose campus is a few blocks from hers).
http://www.dal.ca/admissions/international_students/turkey.html#profile
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.6363633,-63.5830377,15z

 

[Antiquehunter]

The timeline is a bit bewildering. In one of the articles, it says that the police suspect the vehicle was stolen on the 13th, and that Loretta was in contact with family on the 14th. Its unclear what the nature of that contact was, or if that contact was simply the weird message to the boyfriend, saying she needed her mother's maiden name.

The family didn't report her missing until the 17th, which seems odd - especially if she was close to the family, as was implied (usually in contact daily) and presumably, if the car was gone on the 13th, having your car stolen would be a topic of discussion with one's family?

Then there is the issue of how quickly things must've moved to get the car from Halifax to Windsor Ontario. This is about 1600km, and the entire region has been having winter weather issues. Its an intense 2 day drive in good road conditions.

Assuming the two suspects who have the car and the bank card are wrapped up in the disappearance somehow, it strikes me as the height of stupidity to use the mobile phone to try and get identity details (like mothers' maiden name) presumably to gain bank account access, especially if they already are drawing heat from using a stolen car, and are in the midst of a frantic getaway of 1600km in winter conditions.

If the two are indeed involved in the murder, it doesn't sound like they're the sharpest tools in the drawer, and wouldn't have had much time to be creative in concealing a murder, in conjunction with everything else they've had to do in those days.

Killing someone, concealing the body & evidence, getting the car and bank card details, driving 1600km across rural stretches of Canada in the snow, impersonating victim in an attempt to gain information - it must've been a pretty intense 3-4 days for those two. I'm surprised they didn't just fall apart under questioning.

There must be lots of gas station / convenience store footage of those two in the car - they must've bought fuel 3 or more times en route to Windsor. Presumably using the hot bank card each time, showing time stamps of their movements. If they needed the maiden name, they must've been trying to break the PIN code on the card, which implies that someone phoned a bank call center, or went into a bank branch - likely a recorded phone call and/or more surveillance footage/witnesses.

If it is those two suspects, I'm pretty sure they won't need to be railroaded.

 

[anglolawyer]

Good morning! One of the biggest issues with the Knox case was the early dissemination of details of the case. Perhaps in this case the police are keeping details secret that need not be public in order to better pursue suspects.

WTF! Grinder strays from the Knox thread! Somebody call security, quick!

Yes, maybe you are right. The interesting thing about this one is that it seems so obvious whodunnit and yet the two are not accused of murder and there are some odd things, like the inactivity of the boyfriend, that suggest the obvious explanation may not turn out to be correct.

 

[Antiquehunter]

The boyfriend's FB profile is public. He hasn't tried to hide any tracks online, and he's been forthcoming with interviews to the media. That takes guts, if you're a murderer on the run.

 

[anglolawyer]

The boyfriend's FB profile is public. He hasn't tried to hide any tracks online, and he's been forthcoming with interviews to the media. That takes guts, if you're a murderer on the run.

It does but it goes with the turf for these relationship murders. They had one in Oxford a few years ago where the guy said his missing girlfriend saw him off at the station. Her body was eventually found (after a number of 'thorough' searches ) parcelled up under the stairs at her flat share and it turned out she never made it to the station at all. He had appeared publicly pleading for information before they arrested him.

 

[Dissolution]

I could be wrong about this, but I think that quite a lot of murderers involve themselves in this sort of media appeal for missing people.
I've lost count of the number of step-fathers doing it when a child's missing, only for it to be revealed that it was them at a later point.
It's got to the point now that I almost assume that it'll be them, which is rather unfair, I must admit.

I doubt that the boyfriend's involved in this case, though. Just struck me as a little odd.

 

[anglolawyer]

They just need to be idiots.

Most people steal because they do not have the intelligence or education to make money legally, or some life event drives them to desperation. Professional criminals are relatively rare, so yes you get a lot of hold-up artists that look at the security camera then remember to pull their mask down; and junkies who murder someone because they can't think beyond their next hit, and you find them asleep on the victim's couch.

I completely agree. Once you've bumped her off its in for a penny in for a pound. It is very probably these two but the fat lady hasn't sung yet.

 

[anglolawyer]

This is that boyfriend case I was thinking of before (I am sure there are several like it)

On the evening of 13 April 1991, Tanner was due to arrive in Oxford by train at 6pm. McLean, 19 years old, went to meet him at the station. Discovering that the train had been delayed, she returned home. At around 7.30pm, Tanner arrived at the house by taxi.[3] The following day was FA Cup semi-finals day in football, and McLean and Tanner, an avid Nottingham Forest fan,[3] planned to spend the day at home. She studied in the front room while he watched the game on television. Afterwards, the couple were seen by neighbours outside the house at around 4.30pm, which was the last time McLean was seen alive.
Later that evening, Tanner strangled Rachel, then forced her head face down and tied a ligature around her neck.[3] In his confession, Tanner told detectives that he spent several hours looking for a hiding place for the body in the house. It took police searchers seventeen days to locate the body hidden in an eight-inch-high gap at the back of a cupboard under the stairs, crammed with household junk. After emptying the cupboard's contents, Tanner had dragged McLean's body, clothed in silky ski pants and a T-shirt, from the adjacent bedroom, along the hall, and into the recess under the floor. He then crawled along under the hallway to hide the body under the floorboards of her bedroom.

Tanner left the house the next day to return to Nottingham, where he was a classics student at the city's University of Nottingham. He was seen by a passenger on the 5pm bus bound for Oxford railway station. As he waited for the 6.30pm train to Nottingham, Tanner penned a love letter to McLean, which he later posted to her Argyle Street address. In the letter, he stated how fortunate it was she had been met by a long-haired man who had offered her a lift home from the station when they were going their separate ways. On 16 April, Tanner telephoned Rachel's home but there was no answer. He tried again the following evening and was answered by Victoria Clare, McLean's 20-year-old housemate. Tanner asked to speak to McLean, but Clare said she knew nothing of her whereabouts. Tanner's letter arrived on 18 April, and Tanner called the house again that evening, asking for McLean.[3]
By 19 April, five days after she was last seen, McLean's friends had begun to wonder where she was. She was due to attend a meeting with her tutor that morning to discuss work for the new term and sit a pre-term exam at St. Hilda's in the afternoon.[3] A phone call to McLean's family in Lancashire confirmed that she had been left in Oxford the previous weekend.

 

[qayak]

They just need to be idiots.

Most people steal because they do not have the intelligence or education to make money legally, or some life event drives them to desperation. Professional criminals are relatively rare, so yes you get a lot of hold-up artists that look at the security camera then remember to pull their mask down; and junkies who murder someone because they can't think beyond their next hit, and you find them asleep on the victim's couch.

I disagree. People steal for many reasons, opportunity being the most common in my view. You are simply looking at a very small group/class of criminal to the exclusion of all those that don't fit the narrative. Amateur or professional, the vast majority of people who steal, never get caught.

As for murder, I would think that most are a result of personal conflict not random violence or other crime. In this case, if they did murder the missing woman, it was probably the result of a conflict over the rent and the decision to steal her car and bank cards most likely came after the deed was already done.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

I disagree. People steal for many reasons, opportunity being the most common in my view. You are simply looking at a very small group/class of criminal to the exclusion of all those that don't fit the narrative. Amateur or professional, the vast majority of people who steal, never get caught.

I didn't exclude opportunity as a contributing factor.

I didn't say the majority of criminals are idiots that are easily caught.

I didn't say anything about most criminals getting caught.

 

[catsmate]

Doesn't there need to be more than that? They might opportunistically have stolen her car. Do we know whether they were found with her phone and cards? How do you access the money in an online bank account by phone? Don't you need a card and an ATM?

Depends on the system. Some banks have advanced ATMs in branch that can do stuff like ETFs, they use card and PIN security; generally online banking either uses a physical token of some sort or a multi-element authorisation process with logon, password and a separate PIN.
Resetting such over the phone to a bank generally also requires multiple pieces of information only the account holder should have.
In practice it's rarely that secure, especially if the miscreant has access to the account holder's computer.

Hey, Anglolawyer, would you consider this odd behavior? Would a reasonable person believe that someone who had been missing a week was probably dead, or would he hold out hope for another explanation? (Personally, I think missing + stolen car + stolen bank cards + shady roommates would probably add up to bad news.)

Generally once there's a heavy police investigation into a missing person people start assuming the worst.

That seems strange too, but he could have texted her back and gotten no response and decided that she was too busy to deal with him. But it's surprising that he didn't turn up on her doorstep the next day or try to catch up with her at school.

Meh, depends on the relationship.

It does but it goes with the turf for these relationship murders. They had one in Oxford a few years ago where the guy said his missing girlfriend saw him off at the station. Her body was eventually found (after a number of 'thorough' searches ) parcelled up under the stairs at her flat share and it turned out she never made it to the station at all. He had appeared publicly pleading for information before they arrested him.

Shades of the Crippen and Evans/Christie cases.

 

[anglolawyer]

Shades of the Crippen and Evans/Christie cases.

There was no abortive search in the last. They just didn't notice the human femur propping up the back fence when they found the bodies in the out house!

It's true thought that the cops are crap at finding bodies in confined spaces .

 

[wasapi]

I don't know if this is on topic, but I am curious.

If it turns out they are guilty and charged, wouldn't the charge be double homicide? It seems I recall that was what Scott Peterson was charged with after the murder of his pregnant wife, Lacey.

 

[anglolawyer]

I don't know if this is on topic, but I am curious.

If it turns out they are guilty and charged, wouldn't the charge be double homicide? It seems I recall that was what Scott Peterson was charged with after the murder of his pregnant wife, Lacey.

In California yes, England no. Depends on the jurisdiction. Foetuses cannot be murdered here (England).

 

[Antiquehunter]

There are conflicting reports about her possible pregnancy. One article said she had recently tested positive using a home kit, but said the 3 month report was in error.