The whole thing has an odor to it. She seemed just a little too ready to jump in the limelight after her rescue. If I had to bet, she was in the murder plot all along. And I predict before the year is over she’ll be charged with something.
I really don’t see how it’s possible if you’re very close to the person for a very long time. I could certainly imagine not thinking they would actually torture and murder you, but to trust them so much that you let a grown man take your teenage daughter on trips alone? That had to be a bad decision on the parents’ part, not something that there was absolutely no indication it might not be a good idea. (Actually I’m not saying 100.0000% sure, but like 99.99%.)
Would you let your brother take your kid somewhere? The family thought of him as an uncle to the children.
There are predators out there that appear perfectly normal. How do you think children are abused for years without anyone guessing.
Above all, she is still a child. The age of consent in California is 18. Sex with a 16 year old is a felony if the adult is more than 3 years older.
She has been victimized by someone she trusted.
Don’t have a brother, but yeah I’d let my brother-in-law. I’m not saying it’s always a bad decision to trust a man with a teenager girl, but just that clearly this man could really, REALLY not be trusted, and I think it’s highly likely there was some indication of that.
Usually I think people are in denial, don’t really care, or aren’t paying enough attention in cases of ongoing abuse. Usually! I’m not saying always.
Not a child, a teenager. 16-year-olds are almost never considered children except when they’re crime victims. Still, yes, she was almost certainly victimized by him in some way. She may have also victimized her family, we just don’t know.
(Bolding mine.) Phone calls are not text messages. This makes no sense to me.
Here’s my speculation du jour:
Facts:
[ol]
[li]Hannah and DiMaggio had been on two trips together in recent months. [/li]
[li]Letters SHE had written to HIM a year ago, when she was reportedly having a “difficult” time with her mother, were found in his possessions.[/li]
[li]The two were caught on camera together at the US border into Mexico in San Diego at 12:10am the night prior to the fire. [/li]
[li]The following day, the two exchanged 13 texts a short time before picked her up from her cheerleader camp.[/li]
[li]Around 4pm, both turned off their cell phones. [/li]
[li]Several hours later, at 8pm, his home in Boulevard, CA was engulfed in flames, and the charred bodies of two people were found inside. Hannah’s mother was identified immediately and her brother was identified a day or two later. [/li]
[li]DiMaggio’s hometown is 45 minutes from Anderson’s hometown.[/li]
[li]Hannah reported that DiMaggio tricked the family into coming to his home by inviting them to a farewell party at his home. She reported that he separated them by tying the two family members in the garage, but that she had no knowledge of their deaths until after she was rescued.[/li]
[li]When asked how she didn’t know about the fire, Hannah reported, “He had it set where it would catch on fire at a certain time.”[/li]
[li]Affidavits indicate that the two were tortured, and possibly bludgeoned to death with a crowbar.[/li][/ol]
Some questions aka wild speculation:
a) Assuming DiMaggio did, indeed, trick her mother and brother to his home in Boulevard, CA 45 minutes from their hometown of Lakeside, why would he drive all the way back to Lakeside to pick up Hannah? Why wouldn’t he just have her mother pick Hannah up on the way to Boulevard? (Were the mother and brother already dead?)
b) If his intent was to kidnap and rape Hannah, why would he not just ask permission to take her on another trip and do it then? He’d have an entire day’s head start before they’d call the police on him.
c) If his intent was to kidnap and rape her, why murder her brother and mother? (Wild speculation: To get them out of the picture so that they wouldn’t report Hannah missing.)
d) If his intent was to kidnap and rape Hannah, why torture her mother and brother? (Wild speculation: He was doing it because he thought it would please Hannah, who’d been having a difficult relationship with her mother. I’d speculate that he did it to intimidate Hannah, which would bolster her case, but she said she had no knowledge of their deaths.)
e) If his intent was to kidnap and rape Hannah, why lure her brother and mother to his home and kill them there? Why not kill them in their OWN home and give him that much longer to escape? It would have taken the police much longer to connect their deaths to him if he hadn’t done it at his own home. (Wild speculation: Because his home was in a more remote location, he figured it would take the fire dept longer to get there. He wanted the fire to burn as long as possible because he assumed that the heat would incinerate the bodies, and the authorities would conclude that they ALL died in the fire. And nobody would go looking for either him or Hannah.)
f) What were they doing at the US/Mexico border less than 24 hours before the fire started at his home? (Wild speculation: He or they were planning to go across the border that night, but he didn’t have the necessary paperwork. (If you transport a minor child across the border, you have to bring a notarized statement from both parents giving permission.)
g) If she didn’t know that her family members were killed until after she was rescued, then how did she have knowledge that he’d rigged an explosion to go off at a certain time?
h) Why turn off their cell phones at the same time? (Because he or they didn’t want their whereabouts tracked via cell phone towers. Because he or they knew then that they’d be doing something illegal soon.)
i) Why did he take out a life insurance policy naming her grandmother as beneficiary two years ago? (Because he was obsessed with her and/or he’d made a lover’s pact with her that if their plan didn’t work and they couldn’t be together, he’d make sure she was taken care of.)
Man, this is starting to sound like the Lance Armstrong thread.
Regarding turning cell phones off at the same time, why assume she turned hers off? If she was kidnapped one of the first things the kidnapper would do is take her phone and turn it off.
This wasn’t a Border Patrol crossing point on the international border. It was an interior station.
Before I believe what the family spokesman says, I’d like to see the results of the DNA test.
If her mother were having a secret affair with the guy, why would she tell the family? Once she suspected that the guy was the father, it was time to accidentally meet him and introduce him to the family.
Believing that DiMaggio was her father (whether or not he actually was) is the simplest explanation for all of the access that he was granted to her and her alone.
Do we have any actual evidence that there was any sex going on between Hannah and DiMaggio?
I see. From the map, it appears that the checkpoint was southwest of where they started. So it still could be an indication that he or they intended to cross the border.
“Search warrants released last week indicated Hannah was picked up from a cheerleading practice the afternoon of Aug. 4, but Caldwell said that the practice was the day before.”
Interesting. So that changes the timeline a bit:
[ol]
[li]On Aug 3, the two exchanged 13 text messages. Hannah reported that she was giving him directions to her cheerleading practice.[/li][li]The afternoon of Aug 3, DiMaggio picked her up from cheerleading practice.[/li][li]At 12:10am on Aug 4, the two were filmed together in his Nissan Versa at the Old US Hwy 8 checkpoint in San Diego, which is southwest of his home. [/li][li]At 4pm on Aug 4, both turned off their cell phones.[/li][li]At 8pm, his home in Boulevard, CA was engulfed in flames, and the charred bodies of two people were found inside. [/li][li]On Aug 10th, Hannah was rescued and DiMaggio was killed in Idaho.[/li][/ol]
By this timeline, the murders had to take place between the time he picked her up from cheerleading and ~11pm on Aug 3.
So what made him/them turn around and head north?
P.S. All this wild speculation doesn’t mean that I don’t think that DiMaggio is absolved of ANY responsibility. As the adult in the relationship, even if he was her biological father and even if she expressed a burning desire to see her mother and brother dead, he is still guilty.
Text messages are received on cell phones. I often confuse the two when I speak of them, because I’m over the age of 40.
If one of them committed the murders, that is.
Do we know exactly when they were murdered?
Why couldn’t someone have murdered them earlier and have left the bodies at the house or taken the bodies to his house? When was the last time they were seen alive? Were they seen alive after Hannah arrived at cheerleading practice?
Well, if they wanted to head east, their other choice was I-10 which requires driving through some heavy traffic to reach. Or they could have headed SW with their phones on to leave a trail in that direction, then turned them off and changed directions.
Hannah said that DiMaggio tied up her mother and brother in the garage. She also said that he’d rigged the house with explosives set to go off at a certain time.
So, yes, I think at least one of them committed the murders.
…so how could she not know about their deaths? 
No, I don’t agree. (I consider this to be a minor nitpick.)
Here’s Boulevard, the location of DiMaggio’s residence: Boulevard, California - Wikipedia
Note: It’s right on the border. He wouldn’t need to take Interstate 8 to cross the border.
Here’s the location of Lakeside, the girls hometown: Lakeside, California - Wikipedia
If he was photographed headed west on the I-8 with the girl, it looks, to me, like they were headed from Boulevard to Lakeside, in a relatively north westerly direction.
File:GAO-05-435 Figure 10.gif - Wikipedia (I figure Boulevard, on this third map, is roughly at the circle on the border that says I8 East. He was photographed at the square that says I8 West. Lakeside is just east of the first “bump” in the I8, east of where you see “Old Highway 80” split away from the 8 on this map. Which is, of course, out of date and not to scale.)
To get to Idaho? Better than heading the long way around to the south…
She was told those details by the police and her father.
Who says Hannah doped?
"On her ask.fm social networking site, where she began answering questions from friends and anonymous users on Monday, Hannah, 16, wrote that she and her family initially went to DiMaggio’s house on Saturday, Aug. 3, to have fun, ride go-carts and support DiMaggio, who was losing the property to foreclosure. “He tricked us,” she wrote.
“How did he separate you from your mom and brother?” a user asked.
She said he tied them up in the garage.