The point of law here though would be where obstruction ends and accessory after the fact begins; his parents cannot be charged with being an accessory after the fact.
Does living in a van moving from dry camping site to dry camping site count as being homeless person and a drifter? It seems he’s already drawn to that lifestyle and it wouldn’t take much to get another van and hit the road. Just don’t use credit cards tied to him or his parents. Pay in cash for gas and other necessities.
Being a couple of lifestyle bloggers on an extended vacation isn’t being a drifter. They were still using credit cards and bank cards.
TRULY living off the grid is a hell of a jump from that. It would be immensely, immensely hard for a privileged kid to do that. How do you earn money to eat?
His best bet would have been to travel to a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S. Better yet, travel to a country that is openly hostile to the U.S. Problem is, he’s probably of no use to a foreign government, unlike say, Edward Snowden.
If he wanted to hide out, there are places to do that, but he’d really have to know the local landscape pretty well.
He’s gonna be holed up in a Super 8 somewhere until he’s yanked out like William Macy at the end of Fargo.
“Mr. Anderson?”
“Who?”
I think most hotels and motels, including Super 8, expect guests to present a credit card and perhaps a driver’s license on check-in. I think it’s not at all easy to live off the grid now. Easier if you start with a pile of cash but I doubt he has that.
The parents live in a 3 bedroom, not a mansion.
I’m not certain what you mean by truly off the grid. Assuming his parents were helping him disappear giving him $10K in cash and a van would allow him to get off the grid for a while. Even $1,000 and cash could do it just for less time. If he drove south (well, relatively not much south of Florida) and made it into Mexico before they locked the boarder looking for him he could get along in South America for a while on cash and a lockable place to sleep.
How long will $10,000 last him? I’d be genuinely amazed if he could string that out for a year. Getting across any border is immensely risky - that would be the dumbest thing he could do right now. Do his parents know someone good at creating fake passports? If not, that won’t work.
Getting across the border today would be a huge risk. Getting across the borders before he was a person of interest say within 24 hours of his disappearance wouldn’t have been hard.
$10k could last a while. According to this a person will spend $10/ month on a cell phone, $20/month on internet, $350 / month on groceries, $250 on entertainment and let’s just make up a number of say $350/month of fuel and maintenance. So he’s spending a grand a month on the run. If he goes further south it can get less expensive. Without working at all he can most likely make it 10 months. Once he gets to South America it is very possible to get a job without a background check that will enable him to pay his bills.
Laundrie was smart to engage an attorney but dumb to go on the lam after doing so. I’m guessing he didn’t like the likely plea deal his attorney discussed and panicked.
“They’re not watching yachts!”
The psychological pressure of being on the run, knowing he’s the most famous murder suspect in America right now, is going to break him. He’ll probably figure out soon enough that the feds have his parents in their cross hairs. He’s not goin’ anywhere.
I am not at all convinced he was ever home. I think they hid him away long before the heat was turned up.
Hiding yourself away isn’t illegal. He hasn’t been charged with a crime. He could hide out in a motel in some little town in the boondocks without incurring any further legal problems at all.
I think that’s a case of “no fixed address”. However he would not qualify as homeless if he owned a mobile home or something else suitable to live in.
I don’t think he could survive off the grid. Van life isn’t the same thing as undergoing survival training. Getting money from his parents, which would have to be sent electronically somehow, would be too easy to trace. Lots of places need ID, especially now with vaccine passports in some states.
Leave to where, though? Boats are slow if we’re talking long distance. Ocean-going boats are big. Cuba is close, but then not necessarily welcoming of American criminals. If he wants to flee within the US, I should think a greyhound bus would work nicely.
I think Gabby wanted to get income as a influencer on Instagram and YouTube. It can be lucrative if they build a large following.
Gabby and Brian were barely getting started. She told the cop blogging was stressing her out.
Eric Rudolph, the real Olympic Park bomber, successfully lived as a fugitive in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina for about five years. He did have some help, but he was a very experienced outdoorsman. Note that his quality of life by all accounts was extremely low, basically living in holes in the ground, he’d sneak into town and raid dumpsters for trash (if he was spotted most would assume he was a random hobo), it was actually during one of those forays into town that he got caught. He was about as far off the grid as you can get and they still got him. It’s hard to imagine an internet connected van lifer will be able to go that far off grid, experienced in the outdoors or not.
And that was quite a while ago too. Information is so much more proliferated now. Way more people have seen his photo and have cameras in their pockets now. He’d have to be really well hidden for no one to notice.