As Wikipedia is not the proper venue for speculation, I will confine my speculation to this message board.
It's important to note that what we (think we) know now, almost 14 years after the crime, is in many ways markedly different than what we knew during the few early years the case was constantly in the headlines. And even things we are sure we know about can lose their relevance if put in another light.
While for sure DNA is always the most important piece of evidence one can have in a murder case, it is not always the most insightful. In the Jovin case, IMO that belongs to the Fresca bottle. The Fresca bottle, which Jovin clearly did not have on her when she was seen about to drop off the keys to the car she had borrowed, could only have been purchased at that hour at the Krauszers convenience store back towards her apartment. Perhaps she was thirsty. Perhaps she was meeting someone there. Barring the palm print belonging to a Krauszers employee or perhaps another customer, it could point directly to her killer.
Most intriguing is the fact Jovin still had the Fresca bottle with her where she was found stabbed. To me, that implies one of two extremes: excessive force where one is too overwhelmed to act, or total lack of fear of the person inviting you into their car. If we assume the former, then it's likely she was killed in a vehicle and tossed out near the side of the road along with her soda bottle. If we assume the latter, then this lack of fear even extended to her exiting the vehicle as it is hard to comprehend a single person killing in a car (given the location of the wounds and the lack of any defensive wounds).
Given the reported sighting of the van near the crime scene, and given how hard it was to imagine someone Jovin trusted to get into his car turning into a homicidal maniac only 10 minutes later, the overwhelming force scenario seemed to me to be by far the most probable scenario. But just because the odds of running across a Jeckyll/Hyde murderer are slim, doesn't mean you discount that it's possible. Rather, some may argue the improvised nature of the killing (i.e. the flimsy knife where the point broke off) does indeed make it probable. And what if you ran across such a person who not only had an admitted obsession with the murder, but also resembled the police sketch of the guy seen running from the scene?
In other words, regardless of where we are placing our chips, we need to be mindful that other scenarios are possible, even minority ones. That's why no insight is too trivial to pass on, no item too insignificant to one day be considered evidence. I truly believe that if the public were given all the available evidence this case would be solved once and for all. I wish I could say I had confidence that will ever voluntarily happen, but of course I don't. No matter who appears to have control of this case, some things seem to never change.
- Jeff |
