TFP, I've spent hours debating that exact scenario: Suzanne meets someone she knows, gets in the car, has a violent argument and either gets out of the car and is killed or is killed in the car and dumped where she was found.
Let's break this down:
1. Did she intend to meet this person, or did she run into him somewhere on her journey?
We know she was on foot at least from the time she left her apartment (through several locked gates, across two streets, in and out of the police substation where she dropped off her keys) to the time she was last seen alive somewhere "walking north on college street." Had she intended to meet someone, would she not have told her friends -- many of whom asked her her plans that night -- that she was just going to hang with a friend? Recall she told one group of friends she was going to get some work done on her thesis and another friend she was tired and just wanted to sleep. Also, had she planned to be picked up by someone it is most likely she'd have gotten picked up at home or in front of Phelps Gate (where she dropped off the keys to the car she had borrowed from Yale that night) which is a popular place to meet. So, my conclusion is she hadn't planned to be "picked up" by anyone-- that, if indeed she did know her attacker she ran into him on her journey.
2. If she ran into this person, was he stalking her, or was it serendipity?
Recall she was at a pizza party at a local church, drove someone home, dropped the car off, stopped off at her apartment, and then walked all the way to where she was last seen. If someone were stalking her from the pizza party, they'd have needed a car. Had they continued to stalk her from her apartment, they'd have needed to park their car there and go the rest of the way on foot. So where would the car come in play here? Did the stalker talk her into walking back to his car parked near her apartment? Had he (psychically) parked it somewhere near where he finally confronted her? Both of these possibilities seem quite unlikely and hence I conclude there was no stalking.
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So we are now left with the theory that the person who killed her was driving around in his car, saw her, said something to entice her into his car, talked to her for up to twenty minutes, and then viciously killed her with a knife he just happened to have on him. Say what?
It's not that I say this couldn't have happened. Sure it could have. It just seems given all the other circumstances it is quite an unlikely scenario, IMO. What do you think?
- Jeff |
