by adamghost » Wed Jul 01, 2015 1:58 pm
I think Tom's point that Bill would have been under the impression there was water in SWC is fair...but I also agree with Richard that it still doesn't seem like a very plausible move (though as I said, it was the most plausible theory available) - the one mitigating factor might be that once he gets out of SWC he's back at the California Riding and Hiking Trail, which is a straight (though long) shot back to his car. So a loop might have been attractive.
The Bill wandering around lost theory made the most sense to me too - this is why I spent so much time in Upper Covington. The problem is the ping location + the topography and geography. There's plenty of places for Bill to wander to the west, but once you're far enough north to hit 10.6, you have to ask yourself why he didn't just walk out, particularly if he knew the geography well enough to orient himself, and the badlands present a hard limit for where Bill might have gone unless he intentionally went in there and was more able-bodied than one would expect. I have to stress there are just MUCH easier ways to go from that point and in any direction he hits a road or a clear trail within a mile or so (he also should have hit a trail on the way in, but it is conceivable that he crossed it without seeing it). I have checked this out. If Bill goes to Smith Water, then again, he can see his way out and he should have just headed down to Quail Spring. No reason to go back (unless he sees a helicopter) and climbing down and up the north side is just nuts. Now, there ARE plenty of places up on the south side of SWC where Bill could have been hidden, but Tom and his guys have been thorough; I can attest to that. I was wandering up what I thought was a horrible unlikely approach thinking nobody would have searched there before when lo and behold I encountered the footprints from Tom's previous search party. And even though I made a big deal out of that one spot on SWC that fits all the facts, it's still very hard to understand how he got to that spot without pinging earlier. Yes, you could do it, but you'd have to almost be trying to avoid hitting a cell tower. The topography doesn't seem to add up.
To me it all hinges on the ping, and the more I have run down locations and senarios, the ping makes the most sense by far if it was a staged event. I know this sounds off the wall at first, but having looked into a lot of missing persons cases, throwing off false clues is fairly common practice, and cell phone evidence is one of the first things law enforcement looks at. I dismissed this theory out of hand for a long time because I couldn't figure out how it would be done, but after awhile I realized it did all track a particular scenario.
The ping went off just after sunrise on Sunday morning - that is to say, just after dawn, on the first full day after Bill's car was found, just as the search is being formed, but before anyone is out. It goes off for 10 seconds (LATER EDIT: per posts below, "10 seconds" is inaccurate. Ping was actually characterized as "extremely short", not a specific length of time), strong signal, supposedly Bill is moving - none of which makes any sense. Why would Bill leave his phone on moving around if he's been out for nearly three days and the battery is almost dead? Why only 10 seconds if it's a strong signal? Why no ping before or after? And so forth. However, if you were trying to plant a cell phone record, these characteristics and timing are exactly what you would expect. You get up bright and early before the search gets underway and take the phone into an area near where you believe there is reception and where it would strongly imply Bill was wandering into a wilderness never to be found, walk around until the texts and voice mails start coming in, and then turn it off. That fits what we know of the ping perfectly.
Is there a place where if the ping was triangulated it would strong imply a lost hiker heading into an area where he would never be found, and to which Bill could conceivably wander without pinging a cell tower in the interim, but nonetheless would be very easily accessible? Why yes there is - the west side of Upper Covington. Even though it is a very remote area, it is just a 20 minute drive from Yucca Valley, and then a 15 minute easy walk from the road. Get up at the crack of dawn the day after the car is found, drive down, walk over, wave the phone around, walk back, drive back, long before anyone would be mobilized. Chances of detection would be zero. The information about the cell coverage areas necessary is easily obtainable to anyone from Verizon's website.
Once the ping goes off, in the concern to find Bill alive everyone understandably overlooks the considerably odd circumstances of Bill's car not being seen by the rangers and supposedly being seen on Saturday wrong way around (which is also suggestive to me of a particular scenario), not to mention other oddball details like Bill's pass not scanning that I'm not sure have significance or not, and stays focused on looking for Bill. Which I think was probably the intent.
That's how it adds up to me. Now who would have staged it and why, I'm not prepared to speculate publicly about that. Certain scenarios fit better than others. The bottom line is nobody knows for sure, and the theory above could easily be all or partly wrong. It's just what, as of now, tracks the known facts to my thinking. But I had roughly the same ideas and concerns as you Richard, and once I got on the ground and tried to make it work, I couldn't, even though the west end of Upper Covington kept proving out to be the most likely spot for the phone to have gone off (to me).
Last edited by
adamghost on Fri Jul 10, 2015 2:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
