r/DelphiDocs • u/Careful_Cow_2139 🔰Moderator • 3d ago
❓QUESTION Any Questions Thread
Go ahead, let's keep them snappy though, no long discussions please.
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u/Efficient-Donkey-167 2d ago
Did David McCain provide his clothing description from 2/13? Is there confirmation that his brother was also on the trails that day?
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u/Alan_Prickman ✨ Moderator 1d ago
Not at trial, and not in any official record I am aware of. He has traditionally been referred to in Delphi discussions as the "Flannel Shirt Guy" or FSG for short. I believe that this is because Libby's father, DG, told Doug Rice, aka u/bitterbeatpoet, that he saw a guy wearing a flannel shirt and asked him if he saw two girls, and Rice shower him pictures of both the McC brothers, upon which DG identified David as FSG.
More in this old thread https://www.reddit.com/r/DelphiMurders/s/TtZllui5Ju
Note that the trial testimony from both DG and Dave McC describes this encounter, just doesn't mention Dave's clothing.
Dan McC's presence on the trail also isn't confirmed by any official record that we have, but rumours have him at the trail twice that day, at least once on his bike, and allegedly he fell off his bike and injured his leg at some point.
There is a photo of him at a town council meeting a couple of days later, with his leg bandaged, but of course that does not confirm the exact time or the place of the injury.
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u/Efficient-Donkey-167 1d ago
Thank you so much for the detailed response! I find it interesting that the only confirmation re: Dave M is through DG by BBP, and even then it wasn't definitive. McCain testified that he encountered DG in the Mears lot (4:10 pm).
If the information that I read recently is correct, it was DP that described the flannel shirt. However DM couldn't have been the man DP saw coming off the side trail (505, I assume) between 3:10 and 3:20 because McCain was on the High Bridge taking photos until 3:20. Cheyenne's testimony confirms this because she passed McCain coming off the high bridge as she was going onto the High Bridge around 3:20. Even more concerning is Cheyenne testified that DP and SH were on the bridge at the first platform when she got on the bridge. So, did DP see someone else coming off the side trail, confuse his timeline, or provide a false statement? That's my current rabbit hole.
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u/crosbyjaxson Fast Tracked Member 1d ago
Never heard rumor it was McCain on bike. Rumor was also it was Fouts on bike and wrecked. So which is true, no idea as Fouts canceled court that day.
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u/LadyBatman8318 Approved Contributor 2d ago
Has anyone heard anything about how Rick is doing?
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u/Vivaeltejon 2d ago
Andy Baldwin was on caseXcase and he said he spoke with Ricky a couple weeks ago and that he's doing ok. I'm assuming that's all he's comfortable sharing, but I'm glad Ricky and Andy are still in communication.
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u/7ate9out 2d ago
Sorry, still new to the case. 2 things I'm confused on:
-In Libby's video, BG confronted them on the south side of High bridge and told them to go down the hill, yet their bodies were found on the north side? Did they all swim across Deer Creek? or walk back across the bridge?
-The headphone jack, some guy said it was dirt/water getting into the phone. is that possible? Has that happened before on other phones?
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u/Alan_Prickman ✨ Moderator 1d ago
You can see the location of where they were found, and the view from that location (visible at that time of year when there are no leaves, but not when trees are in full leaf) in this comment here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DelphiDocs/s/W2pwzkg23t
So at the point where the BG video was filmed, there is a path ahead of them that leads to the house you see in the comment linked on the left, and another house on the right.
The house on the left is owned by the trial witness BW, the driver of the white van that the State claimed "spooked" Rick at around 2.25, but that has since been proved did not arrive back at the property until 2.50.
The house on the right is owned by trial witness TL, who testified to seeing an unfamiliar person hanging around the mailboxes for the two properties (so not very far from the BG video location) on the morning of the 13th.
This is an important point, because it makes it clear that the girls were not trapped at the end of a path and had to go down the hill If they couldn't or weren't planning to cross the bridge again.
"There's no path going there, so we have to go down hair", said before BG's "Down the hill* shows that the girls had a specific destination in mind even at that point, and the path ahead of them" was not *going there.
To get from the BG video location to the location where the bodies were found, yes, one would have to go down the hill first then cross the creek.
And that, indeed, was the State's contention at trial. They crossed the creek - with Libby nude at this point and Abby wearing Libby's clothes - and were murdered at the location where they were found the next day.
Problem is, creek was uncrossable that day. Saturday was "unseasonably warm" the resulting meltwater made the creek water extremely high and rapid, and the temperature was low enough to cause instant hypothermia.
There is trial testimony from a firefighter that he was unable to cross the creek next day on his own, and footage showing searchers crossing it in a human chain, as that was what was required.
The jury, of course, was not given any of this information.
🔸️The headphone jack - the guy testifying to water and dirt in the jack, State's phone expert Christopher Cecil, came up with this during a 15 minute break, where he frantically Googled for a possible explanation.
He found this on an Apple user forum, where the users reported that the phone would think there were headphones plugged in if water or dirt got into the jack.
Quite aside from the whole insanity of Judge Gull allowing a Google search as "expert testimony", there are two main issues with this.
1) anyone this happened to had to take numerous steps to fix it, from cleaning/drying out the phone to then resetting/restarting it. It never fixes itself, yet the "expert testimony" as given, implied that this is what occurred here
2) the actual phone expert, Stacy Eldridge, was not given a chance to say this at the trial, but has stated since that, when this happens to a phone, it does not come up as that code in the phone logs, as seen in the extraction. That code only appears when headphones or aux cord are inserted into the aux jack.
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u/7ate9out 1d ago
Wow, thanks for the detailed answers. Interesting about the creek being uncrossable, I always thought that was such an important detail that most people gloss over. From the pictures and the aerial photos around that time it looks too deep to cross unless you swim, which with the alleged timeline makes no sense
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u/2stepsfwd59 1d ago
Note that Libby's video does not show a confrontation. There is also no way to confirm that it was BG that said, Down the hill. That was all LE opinion, as was "racking the gun" and "That be a gun".
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u/Negative-Situation27 2d ago
Where can I get up to speed before the oral arguments are heard?