We really have no idea what happened, but if they really took off for Mexico while intentionally leaving their pets unattended for days or more, I have less sympathy for whatever happened to them.
What, you’ve never played an FPS where you spawned to find your own gruesome corpse lying where you left it?
Littering.
Not these days. Some police activity exists for the sole purpose of generating revenue.
Maybe they’re in the witness protection program.
Here is my hypothesis: The family gets a wild hair up their butts to go eat at their favorite restaraunt in Mexico. The go down there for dinner. This is how the waiter in post#35 knows about the boy’s birthmark. On their way back, they are waylaid by criminals who force the family to drive them across the border into US in the back of the Isuzu Trooper, where they kill and bury the family and abandon the truck 4 days later. That’s my working hypothesis,
Would you normally expect to drive nearly 200 miles just for dinner? It wasn’t like it was 15 mins down the road, it’s getting on for a 3hr drive.
edit My mistake… the distance from their house to Mexico is less than 80 miles. Sill a trip but more like 90 mins.
If its ok, I’m gonna go ahead and steal this for my sig.
Or the witless protection program.
loitering.
Back when was safer, or seemed safer (80s/90s), I would do just such a thing. Not often, and I would usually make an afternoon of it with shopping and stuff before dinner.
Now? No way
In a loose sense, this is almost certainly what happened. But try and make that fit with the known timeline and contacts on the day they disappeared. They didn’t tell anyone, even casually? Didn’t answer the phone while driving, eating or driving to the rendezvous with the bad guys? Left for dinner 80+ miles away at a rather late hour?
I don’t think they care how much sympathy you have for them anymore.
As you say.
About a decade ago a couple 20ish college students “disappeared” and were found two weeks later hanging out a Disney World. They went off the grid because they knew their parents wouldn’t approve of them taking the trip together. They weren’t charged with anything after they were found.
I remember taking part in a very heated discussion in a Boston area forum (one of the students was from Lowell) with many posters being furious they weren’t being charged with a crime and others arguing that they should at least pay for the search. While “disappearing” isn’t a crime it’s clear that lots of people think it should be.
I doubt we’ll ever get any answers, but from what I can conclude:
The family left the house, in a strange state, but not under any obvious physical duress at that point. Something made the family make a deliberate decision to leave the house rapidly. I say that because, as articles have revealed, eggs were left on the counter (and found rotten), and bowls of popcorn had just been popped and set out to eat, but not eaten. I don’t know about everyone else’s house, but if I’m popping popcorn at home I’m planning to stretch out, sit down for awhile, and eat it. Not immediately leave my house.
So the fact their house was found that way, suggests they left suddenly without it being prior planned. Now, I don’t believe they were victims of a home invasion where the invaders forced them out of the house at gunpoint. The only support I have for that is the surveillance video from a neighbor shows their vehicle leaving in the 7pm hour (but can’t identify who is driving or who is in the vehicle) but the father’s cell phone is pinged on the Fallbrook cell tower during the 8pm hour. During this time (after they have left their house, as per neighbor’s surveillance video), he makes a phone call to an employee. The employee reports nothing is wrong.
I guess it is possible that someone had them at gunpoint, forced them out of the house, and then put a gun to the father and told him to “call someone” and make it seem like everything was alright, to maybe establish some timeline that the family wasn’t in duress so it would push back the time when people would be looking for them. However, that just seems convoluted and unlikely. If a home invader was forcing them into their own car and driving them away from the home, I see no reason he’d let the dad make any calls at all for any reason.
That’s what makes this such a strange story…what made the family leave so quickly? If it wasn’t someone in the house with a gun on them, I wonder what it could be.
It’d be one thing if the family had just gone out for the evening to grab a bite to eat, and someone jumped them and took them captive, but they clearly left in the first place in a hurry. Leaving perishable food out on the counter, dogs unattended in the back yard, and popcorn sitting out to eat.
Someone suggested in the comments section of the San Diego paper that the husband and wife were avid Craigslist shoppers and that perhaps they left the house to grab some really good deal from Craigslist.
I couldn’t help but associate this with Breaking Bad, particularly the episode where Walt knows Tuco is coming for him and Jesse and he’s preparing to flee town.
Instead, Tuco gets to him first and him and Jesse spend a few days as his captives.
I wonder if maybe something like that happened? The dad got word somehow that associates of his in his illegal activities were coming down on him, and he and his family needed to get out now. They obviously got out, but then perhaps wherever they went they were followed or they went somewhere that wasn’t as safe as he would have hoped and were captured and killed.
If they were true shopping/deal fiends I could see that. I know a woman who is like that and has been her whole life. She’d definitely rush out of the house with her kids to buy something she thought she could get on the cheap. Even leaving food out etc. But to her it would make sense because she’d assume she would be back in no more than 10-20 minutes so all that wouldn’t matter.
It’d be quite strange if true, but I know at least one person where it wouldn’t surprise me if she left her house with perishable food out / freshly made popcorn etc because of the possibility of a deal on something that was of a limited time nature.
Is there any evidence that the McStays were involved in anything illegal? Because I assume that their entire existence has been closely scrutinized since they disappeared and any illegal activity would have come to light.