In May 2000, this young woman in my town went missing, obviously the victim of an abduction. It’s a heart-wrenching case, and I almost hesitate to post this for fear of implying that it is somehow undeserving of the attention and involvement it garnered. However, I am curious–is the FBI often involved in a missing persons case to this extent? Some of my family members speculate that the investigation may be influenced by the fact that Jill’s family is wealthy, although they don’t strike me as enormously rich–just quite well-off. Perhaps all the local publicity has an effect? I really don’t know, just curious.
For example, they–local and federal officials–drained over 200 million gallons of water from a section of creek that was over (IIRC) 1 mile long, an operation that took over a week and heaven knows how many man hours. (Although the equipment, I believe, was donated, and I’m sure many of the men volunteered as well.) I am looking for more concise info, but I do remember that the amount of money spent for the creek draining was enormous, as you can imagine.
I’ve posted a couple of links. As an update, the police have identified three suspects, at least one of whom seems to be singing like a canary and implicating another. In short, if the suspect’s story is true, three buddies were out after a night of partying, hit Jill as she either rode or stood beside her bike (I don’t know if this was accidental or not), abducted her to the creek, murdered her there, and threw her body into the water. Her bike was found some 10 miles away, just down the road from my house. http://www.theindychannel.com/ind/news/stories/news-165680020020909-110901.html
What do you think? Is the extent of involvement by the FBI extraordinary? It seems to me that it is, but perhaps that is just because this is so local to me, and I’m more aware of all the behind-the-scenes work that I don’t hear about with other cases.
Most likely the poor girl was tangled up in a serial killers web. And the Feds already had several other murders with the same M.O. and they figured the best place for evidence was in the creek where she was murdered. Down the road from your house as it were.
The F.B.I does not get involved (usually) in purely local crimes (or the local agent may have had a slow day, been a friend - agents sometimes act on their own). If the agency sent in outside resources, then they probably had a suspect they wanted to nail - in which case they will take the lead in otherwise local cases.
First, the FBI rarely gets involved in missing person cases unless asked to by people with clout. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. In a missing person case, the authorities have no idea what happened to person, whether they are alive and well or whatever. This is a suspected homocide. (vehicular homocide)
Still, this does seem like purely a state matter. I’m thinking that the suspect here is also a suspect in another federal investigation.
I thought the reason for FBI involvement in abduction cases was that when a person is abducted, it is generally within reason that the abductor could have taken or did take the abductee across state lines, thus putting the crime into the federal light.
Perhaps I have been wrong and someone with more knowledge of law enforcement could enlighten?
