Something’s not right? 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway was last seen walking to Chelsea Park at around 8:30 AM last Friday morning (in Westminister, Colorado). The implication here, is that Jessica must have been abducted right around this time and in this place.
Last night HLN shows us a new sketch of suspicious man who had been trying to lure children at Witt Elementary School (which is Jessica’s school) into his car a few weeks with the usual candy. So why did Trevor Matterasso (Westminister Police Department spokesman) ‘there was no indication that a random child abductor is on the loose?’
These two items couldn’t be any more contradictory! That is, release a sketch of a very generic random abductor, who lures kids with the promise of candy, then say well, there is no random child abductor on the prowl. Isn’t that exactly what we have? Many kids saw this character about three weeks ago in front of Witt Elementary. They provided police with the description for the sketch. But now something else is bothering me.
When I got up this morning, dragging my groggy carcass outta the sleepy sack, I immediately scoured the Google search (for Jessica Ridgeway), looking for new stories (especially The Denver Post) on the release of this police sketch, and what looks like a credible lead, a cluster of evidence that forms a backbone for Jessica’s apparent abduction last Friday. And yet, no cigar! HLN is the only one running with this police sketch connection to Jessica Ridgeway’s mysterious disappearance?
Then couple that with Matterasso’s comment and we’re getting a very bizarre disjunction. This pushes me in the direction of thinking that the police don’t believe this connection is credible. Furthermore, if they don’t believe a ‘random child abductor’ is on the loose, then perhaps they think it’s someone who knew Jessica. And yet confusion boats toss us about like thrill seekers on a scary roller coaster ride from hell! Up is down and front is back. The promulgation of available evidence is horribly conflicted!
Two other pieces of this disjointed puzzle are not particularly helpful either. The father, Jeremiah Bryant who lives in Missouri, has a bad record for domestic assault. You’ll need to pick up the details of Jessica’s father in newly published news stories, and yet, it must be said, Colorado authorities are not seeing any kind of connection between Jeremiah Bryant and what may have happened to Jessica Ridgeway last Friday morning.
Well, this doesn’t mean there’s not one, but perhaps it’s just another one of those unsettling coincidences that seem to occur so often in cases of missing children. The parents often don’t come off as role models; on the contrary, they’re frequently broken and conflicted, shattered by the hardships of life in our tough contemporary environment. I don’t know what’s up with Sarah Rideway, Jessica’s mother, but she didn’t find out her daughter was missing until 8 hours after her school reported she never showed up to school.
Sarah had to sleep, since she works the night shift, so she didn’t hear the message. But a lot of time was lost. The other item that doesn’t jive too well with me, is the situation or incongruous provenance with the backpack of Jessica’s found in Superior, 6 and a half miles from Jessica’s residence. That looks like a plant to me by her abductor, and yet we’re told not to worry about some nut with candy running around abducting children. The cracks in the sidewalk ’bout to swallow us up!
SOURCE: The Denver Post
