Young Hikers Missing in Joshua Tree Since Thursday [7/27/17]

[Wildhorse]

Thanks, Myth.

If you were in Smith Water Canyon @ 4pm, how might you leave the park from there without being noticed?

Also, Otherhand, any thoughts?

[Ed]

Cell systems used to use triangulation a lot, but that was before about every new phone got a GPS chip stuck into it.

Thanks for the explanation, you can tell how old my cell phone is.

[Myth]

Wildhorse - depending on whether I'm at the north-east or the south-west entrance of Smith Water, I would exist via Quail Wash ( north-east ) or via Covington Flat road ( a long, long, long slog and extremely unlikely if I started my walk at Maze Loop ).

Note that Quail Wash dumps you out pretty close to the Park entrance, basically into the backyards of the Joshua Tree suburb up there, and the low shrubbery doesn't offer coverage. So "without being noticed" may not be as straightforward as it appears on paper. But, if you walked out around dusk, you could probably feel that you can safely slip by.

I don't, myself, think that an elaborate staged disappearance is what happened. In modern society you can't just disappear that easily. You have to eat, and sleep somewhere, and show your face, and avoid suspicion. And what reason could there possibly be for that, anyway? If something criminal happened, I think it would have been something different, something unplanned. I think the families are desperately hoping that their loved ones are still alive, and since they can't be alive inside the Park any more, they are hoping that they are somehow still alive outside of it. I don't know that it is anything more to the reward the family is offering than that.

[Wildhorse]

Thanks, Myth.

That ping is a very puzzling thing.

As for me, I have no theories. I am skeptical that SAR would not have found them in maze or Smith Water Canyon. I believe it more likely that they are elsewhere, but where, no idea. I think the parents are doing the right things, searching and offering a reward for finding them alive. I think nps does not look good in this, even if they may have done all they can.

Early in the news cycle, facts, which are few, became mixed with assumptions. Confirmation bias intruded then. Speculation mainly sheds light on ourselves, on our feelings and thoughts, I think. That's okay and normal. Now, all anyone has is a few facts that reveal little and disappoint much. And the parents are alone now with awful grief and humble hope.

[Perry]

Sean and Myth, if it becomes known for sure that the cell phone was near Smith Water, would your opinions change? We already know they were in another canyon near the Maze loop because of footprints found and scents picked up by the dogs.

[cynthia23]

To be very plain and so there is no confusion as to what I mean, when I say 'staged disappearance' theory, what I mean is the THEORY that Orbeso murdered Nguyen, (because she'd broken up with him and was dating someone else) , committing the crime either somewhere in the Maze area or elsewhere in the park, hid her body in a deep crevice, and then staged it to look like they'd both perished on a hike near the Maze, while he slipped away, presumably into Joshua Tree. While this could be done and would explain problematic things (the oddity of both becoming incapacitated, the oddity of SAR being unable to find two bodies in a fairly limited area, and the peculiar drive up the week before to look at the town of Joshua Tree) the theory also has big problems.

Myth points out the obvious one--it's very difficult to disappear in modern day society. To do so requires a fair amount of money and a lot of smarts, and it's not clear that Orbeso had either. He was a young guy who still lived at home with his parents, went part time to Cal State Fullerton, worked as a security guard, and perhaps didn't even have his own car. Even had he been able to catch a bus to Palm Springs, unclear what he could do next without significant reserves of cash, which he'd need if the plan was to go to Mexico. Also, to be running around all day in JT in summer, killing people, concealing bodies, and then hiking out xc, would require a desert-hardened, physically very tough person, and no indication Orbeso was that either. Overall, really hard to see how he could carry off such a scheme, thus far successfully--although there is such a thing as dumb luck. But basically it seems to me if he'd done this, he'd have been caught by now. So--even if 'murder followed by staged disappearance plan' was in play, my inclination would be to argue it was basically a fantasy, and once reality set in (i.e. he'd committed the murder) he succumbed to despair, and walked off to his death.

But even this theory is seeming dubious to me. At a gut level, foul play theories are beginning to all seem too complicated to me, too artificial if you will. Human beings do have an innate need to explain away or look for patterns where there really aren't any--i.e. resist the notion of random bad events. In the absence of those facts, I think I'm leaning more toward the 'fallen into a crevice" notion that Myth suggested. I was reading yesterday about the JTNP father and son who got separated while hiking, and how four days later SAR found the dad--somehow, amazingly, still alive--wedged inside a crevice. Weird stuff happens. Once, while washing dishes--one of our safer activities, you'd think!--my slippery hands dropped a big chopping knife, and it just happens to fall into the garbage disposal, which I'd just turned on, and the garbage disposal forcefully shot the knife back out at me. It landed on the edge of the counter, with the very tip of the blade pushing directly into the skin of my abdomen. If I'd happened to be leaning forward a few inches more or the spin on the disposal been a little different, it would have come to rest somewhere inside my gut.

My point is, stuff happens. Add to that a few poor decisions--hiking in JT in summer, maybe while stoned--and it's quite believable some freakish event befell them. Granted-- I'm still troubled by the trip the week before to the town of Joshua Tree, the girl's six a.m. phone call to the new boyfriend, the location of the ping, and, of course, by the failure to find two people who should have been very findable. But in the absence of any startling new info, I think I'm more inclined now toward the natural-event explanation.

Whatever the explanation, I hope the authorities are vigorously seeking it. This silence troubles me--bureaucratic inertia could take over.

[Wildhorse]

Hi Cynthia, did that flying knife incident happen during the solar eclipse? Just wondering.

[Sean]

Sean and Myth, if it becomes known for sure that the cell phone was near Smith Water, would your opinions change?

No. My opinion is that they got lost doing a hike on either side of the road and perished in the heat under a rock. Tracks apparently put them on one side of the road. But perhaps they took a look around and decided to cross it. It's not a stretch to assume this couple made a spontaneous route selection, as they left no detailed plan with anyone, not even the boyfriend that Nguyen called at 6am the day of the hike.

[Ed]

I've imagined the knife and garbage disposal scenario before, Cynthia's is the first actual occurrence I know of. My blessed mother-in-law died last May, at the age of 97. She lived with us the last several years, and had some dementia. Leave her alone for a few hours, and we would come back to find her in the kitchen, doing all manner of potentially scary things, and very pleased with herself.

A problem with criminal explanations is that most crimes are dumb, and fairly easily solved. We have many explanations here, but none that I have a high comfort level with, given that two people disappeared, not one.

[bretpct]

No. My opinion is that they got lost doing a hike on either side of the road and perished in the heat under a rock. Tracks apparently put them on one side of the road. But perhaps they took a look around and decided to cross it. It's not a stretch to assume this couple made a spontaneous route selection, as they left no detailed plan with anyone, not even the boyfriend that Nguyen called at 6am the day of the hike.

Do you have a source for Nguyen's phone call? I missed that.