Here’s a scenario to think about:
Ok, guys. We’ve all been there. As a teenager, long before you knew how to say ‘NO’, you know you’ve done it. It is called ‘Placation’.
A girl says ‘cmon…pleeeeeze!’, but you really don’t want to agree, so you just pacify, or ‘placate’, her, and say ‘ok, we’ll see’.
Later she follows up and says ‘so? Are you ready?’. And you, remembering you said ‘we’ll see’, now have to push it off again. ‘Okay, whatever, maybe, we’ll see’ you say again. But you know you are not going to go along with this, whatever it is.
Finally, the moment of truth comes. Now she is expecting you to do whatever it is she was expecting you to do. Finally you have to say ‘you know. This really isn’t a good idea’.
BUT YOU SAID!!! She says. ‘Come on! Let’s go! It’ll be fuunnn!’ Oh boy, you have to put your foot down. ‘No, I said’. The phone call ends.
But then, she calls back. You know what she is going to say. She is going to put the squeeze on you. The guilt trip. ‘I am all dressed and ready to go! You said you would. Come on.’ Maybe…
Maybe you just won’t answer the phone. Yeah, that’s it.
In fact, if she calls again, maybe you will just turn your phone off all together.
…and there it is. Now you know what happened that night. It is not such a far-fetched story after all.
What really happened…
She wanted to go hiking. She came by to visit Robert over at Cristin’s house, and asked them to go on a hike. ‘Enh, we’ll see’ was the response. As she drove away, Robert turned to Cristin and said “There is no way we are going hiking”
The next evening, came the squeeze. Becky: Let’s go hiking! Come on! I’m all dressed! Then the reluctant capitulation. Then, in another call, Robert tries to communicate that ‘maybe it’s not such a good idea’. Becky continues the pursuit – then the boys stop answering her calls and turn off their phones. (remember, in 2006 it wasn’t so easy to mute a phone)
Sunday, September 17, 2006
| 06:14 PM | Becky calls Robert 166 seconds – Presumably Robert says no to the hike |
| 06:53 PM | Becky calls Robert 28 seconds – No answer? |
| 06:59 PM | Becky calls Robert 33 seconds – No answer? |
| 06:59 PM | Becky calls Robert 25 seconds – No answer? |
| 07:13 PM | Becky calls Robert 27 seconds – No answer? |
| 07:13 PM | Becky calls Robert 31 seconds – No answer? |
| 07:27 PM | Becky calls Robert 44 seconds – No answer? She left Voice Mail? |
The sun had already set. It was a half-hour drive to get there. To go hiking? Not practical. Robert had a girlfriend already, and they were very much in love. They eventually got married. Why would he go up there? And where would the motive to kill her come from?
More likely: Robert and Cristin just went off to test their newly-repaired paintball gun, as they told detectives. That is in keeping with them calling Sam, to see if he wanted to come along. Since Sam was out of town, shutting their phones off had no downside, and provided some peace.
The prosecution’s case is a stretch, at best. An attempt to cover up their incompetence is more like it. While protecting connected individuals that may or may not have had anything to do with it. Kind of like the pen.
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