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Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
The statement “The police search for her concentrated on places their only suspect had been. The Center organized search found her far from where police had focused.”, has been replaced with “and was one of the largest volunteer search efforts in California history, with hundreds of volunteers searching deserts, highways and remote areas for weeks. A volunteer party organized by the Center, searching along a route they thought the arrested suspect might have taken, was successful in finding her body” (the relevant portions have been highlighted),
with the reason given as “correct information, with references”.
This implies that the previous version is incorrect: it isn’t, as can be seen from one of the references given (but now removed), the Union-Tribune article: “volunteer searchers combing the Dehesa area, far from where police had focused, found Danielle's badly decomposed remains.” This is supported by the fact that, at the time the body was found, the police were in the desert.
The source for the newly-added information was Bill Garcia. In contrast to his statement, the Danielle Recovery Center stated that they were conducting a grid search, within a radius of 25+ miles. And Dehesa is within that radius. Garcia wasn’t mentioned at all in trial testimony: the Recovery Center was. In particular, the volunteers who found her were instructed by the Center, and the police lieutenant was informed of the discovery by their team leader, who was not Garcia. And the Center was mentioned far more often than Garcia in media reports. In fact the earliest mention I found of him was only the 23rd, whereas the Center was involved almost from the start. Prior to Danielle’s body being found, Garcia was talking about the Cleveland National Forest area, which is further to the east; after she was found, he extended that to the west to include Dehesa. In view of all this, I can’t regard his statements as authoritative.TheTruth-2009 (talk) 06:05, 13 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
OK, I have deleted that one phrase. The main point as far as this article is concerned is that her body was found by a party organized by the Laura Recovery Center. --MelanieN (talk) 15:56, 14 July 2014 (UTC)Reply
It can be argued that “the police looking in the wrong place” belongs rather in the main article about Westerfield, as it casts doubt on the police theory of what happened, in other words on Westerfield’s guilt (and so will be opposed by some). On the other hand, kudos to the Laura Recovery Center for not restricting themselves to the police theory (and consequent popular sentiment) as to what had happened, so this is worth mention in their article. Furthermore, this is a valuable lesson for future searches, giving it added importance, and making it worth mention in other articles as well, articles relevant to searches for missing persons.TheTruth-2009 (talk) 04:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
