Ever since Laura Douglass and Sharon Wolfe were charged with the murder of Raychel Taurus, one thing has bothered me about the crime: If this case was so simple to solve, why weren't they caught by the police in the first place?
Maybe my questioning of this case doesn't make any sense to you. It doesn't to me, either. I was partially responsible for the police eventually charging them, but this whole thing keeps bothering me. The case against Laura and Sharon seems to come down to one thing the police apparently did not know when they "concluded" their investigation: The police could not contradict their previous statements that they were both at Safehaven during the time of the murder. Geoffrey MacIntyre's intoxication gave both Laura Douglass and Sharon Wolfe the apparent alibi they needed to murder Raychel and get away with it. Laura waited until after the police investigation cooled to confess that she had lied to the police about her whereabouts. Sharon changed her story the following week.
Of course, by this time, Laura Douglass had hired me to further investigate Raychel's murder. And this is part of what bothers me about this case. Why would Laura hire me if she did it? Did she want something more substantial than an open-ended police investigation? Did she think I would conclude and prove that someone else actually killed Raychel? Maybe she thought I would somehow discover Sharon's guilt, but then what would stop Sharon from implicating Laura in return? And this is what really doesn't make any sense to me: If they really did murder Raychel, why the Hell did they ever confess they lied to the police? They had a perfect alibi.
Does this case, which baffled the police for so long, boil down to a simple case of opportunity covered by a single lie? I cannot accept that as fact any longer.
On Monday, I discussed my dilemma with my benefactor, Lance Wagner. He listened to me but he wasn't receptive to my request to draw deeper into the investigation. He told me that he wanted me to concentrate on proving the guilt of Laura and Sharon, and anything else was a waste of time. He said that if I proceeded in my direction, I would find myself working pro bono. He said that he did not want to spend his money extending an open investigation into Raychel's murder. He also said that he wanted the matter to be put to rest so that he could freely continue his web site as a tribute to Raychel. If I didn't have anything furthering the guilt of Laura or Sharon, my services would no longer be required.
"I am not going to have the investigation upstaged by the suspects spinning their own versions of the truth. That has gone on long enough." |
In response, I reminded him that he had no verifiable alibi. That got his attention. I told him that a decision like that could be considered a reason for me to investigate further. After all, Laura was my first client, and she was sitting in jail now because of my services. If he did not want me to continue, perhaps it meant that he had something to hide. Then the damndest thing happened. He asked me how I wanted to proceed.
This is my site now.
So this is how it's going to be, folks.
Lance will be posting the updates as he did before, but with extreme limitations. First, there will be no more Memories until I say so. I am not going to have the investigation upstaged by the suspects spinning their own versions of the truth. That has gone on long enough.
Second, suspects will only be allowed to post to this site by responding to questions asked through the Questions and Answers Form. Their answers will be posted in the Q&A Responses portion of the Question section. Suspects can only speak when spoken to. I will not allow suspects to pull a Ken Kincaid and ask their own loaded questions to further their own agendas.
Third, and most important, we are going to have a single-minded focus on the crime itself. My first objective is to find out why the police were unable to discover who killed Raychel. This means we are going to have to go back to the real beginning of the crime. I have already provided enough preliminary data on the crime scene, so we will instead focus on the questioning of suspects. Starting April 21st, I will begin posting the police transcripts of the Q&A sessions between the police and the suspects. I will post them in the order that they were questioned, so we will start with Sharon Wolfe, who was the first person to be officially questioned by the police.
As before, I will continue to update The Blackboard and the "In Theory" section as necessary. If you have more general questions (or off the record comments), you can contact me via e-mail.
I have been the nice guy for too long now. If I am being paid to run an investigation, I am going to run it. I am not going to be a once-a-month feature. This is my show.
