The last time we heard from them was on the Wal-Mart surveillance video in Salem last Friday night. The two purchased a blue Trail 13′ x 10′ domed tent and some soda pop. And get this, they used Tina Smith’s credit card to purchase these items. This means they stole it, or was it just Easley who stole it? And another obvious clue is that Jeff and Brittany fled the scene of the crime in Tina’s 2005 silver Dodge Neon.
So now, along with kidnapping, Jeff Easley is charged with larceny and credit card fraud. What I don’t understand is why aren’t the police and the media accusing Easley of Tina’s murder? He was living with her, then suddenly bails out of Roanoke with her daughter, credit cards and her vehicle. How hard is it to put 2 and 2 together? Cops don’t want to rush to judgment, you may suggest? But I know they’re holding back something.
Yea, puzzling. Not even one mention that Jeff is a suspect or a person of interest in Tina’s homicide. Are the cops holding back some important evidence? This might explain their reluctance in revealing the cause of Tina’s death. What I’m getting at here, is the possibility of involvement by another party. This has been hinted at already by Roanoke County Police Chief Ray Lavinder.
It’s unlikely they would gravitate to any of the states mentioned in the paper. This is too obvious, too stupid. Nor do I think they are hiding out at a camping facility. Probably watching the news and know the cops are all over these camping sites. A better theory is that they bailed out of the country entirely-split for Canada or Mexico. Caught that fake-out yesterday-drug overdose in a Rest-Stop Men’s Room in Florida, not Jeff.
The sensitive area of these multi-faceted relationships has been handled discreetly in the press and by the police. Brittany’s age and the question of her willing participation with Easley has been circumscribed, dodged, if you will, by professionals who know better than swat a hornet’s nest. But many questions come to mind, then you find your thoughts drifting into areas that ring out: FORBIDDEN ZONE! STAY OFF THIS PROPERTY!
Sigmund Freud had a green light to go there, but not us regular folk. Aeschylus could tap into some taboo territory of the subconscious when he penned Oedipus Rex, but we ordinary people, who must function under proscriptive mores, just as soon forget this subterfuge of this sensory impulse. But I still wonder, why was Easley allowed to move in with Tina and Brittany in October? A connection through the internet? Tina must have been lonely, vulnerable to a fault. Did she not grow more cautious after her son’s death? And how evil is this Easley character that he would con his way into Tina’s life, then proceed in seducing her daughter? Was this planned or just an accident of life?
This is the defining moment. I will suggest to you (the reader) that Jeff had already killed Tina when he posted this verbiage of persuasion to a confused, manipulated teen. What’s coming to my mind now, as I sip piping hot Christmas blend from Starbucks, is the 1959 case of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. The question of whether Fugate willingly participated with Starkweather in the crime spree was never properly answered. Frame this analogy and see if the comparison holds water.
