Jim, your theory is my #1 possible scenario. Yes, many other scenarios make lots of sense, but they each have, IMO, serious "gotchas".
For example, the secret meeting scenario with "someone she knew" does "work" but only in retrospect. I mean, certainly Suzanne may have verbally agreed (person to person or over the phone) to meet someone in secret that night and then verbally called from her apartment to confirm a time and place. Sure they could have met somewhere where no one saw them and sure they could have argued where no one heard them (in a car or on a street corner) and sure that person could have killed her and left her for dead in a neighborhood where even though people have houses close to the road and are out that night walking their dogs, again, no one heard or saw anything conclusive. So, here we have just described the so-called "perfect crime": no evidence at all. Since we are talking about a friend, said person obviously must have planned this carefully to keep everything a total secret.
But, wait a second. How can the killer be assured the victim kept their meeting secret? Even if the victim says they didn't tell anyone, maybe she wrote his name down on a scrap of paper, wrote it in a diary, or just plain lied to him. How can he be sure no one saw his car parked where she might have last been seen, or perhaps saw her get into it, or perhaps saw her riding in it or arguing, etc.? How can the killer be sure when he stops the car in a residential neighborhood no one is looking out the window or walking in the shadows, or about to drive by, etc.? Heaven forbid they themselves actually live in the area making an ID even more of a worry! These are all big "gotchas".
The point is, if all of us here wrote down our idea of how we'd commit the perfect crime I think none of us would concoct a scenario even remotely close to the above. Top on my list of things to do would be to make sure the body wasn't found, at least right away, so that I could establish an alibi. Next would be to minimize the risk of being seen with the victim by "meeting" her somewhere where the likelihood of someone knowing me or her was at least improbable. And so on...
Essentially what I've described is what you've just postulated. The people that got Suzanne did not know her and thus had little fear of being traced to her. They did not live in the neighborhood and thus had little fear of being identified by someone. Perhaps they also stole the car so they had no fear of someone copying down their license plate number. They didn't set out to commit the perfect crime and most likely did not. It's just that if you're not looking in their direction then in order for the others on the suspect list to "fit" the crime (since, by definition, there would be no evidence against them to establish a real link), you'd have to assume they all committed the perfect crime! If you accuse someone of committing the perfect crime, how can they disprove it?! At least if there's evidence they have something to dispute.
Think about it.
- Jeff
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