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"I think the main reason Freedox goes on and on about the neighbors beating the bushes, is that s/he wants to point out the fact that s/he doesn't find the bit about the gun believable. That's a valid point, to me. Sometimes I've doubted whether there was a gun, too."

Which leads us to a hypothetical question........if there was no gun in her back, how would one explain Elizabeth silently leaving with this man? As I said before, this issue goes to the very heart of the case.

Yes, there is a possibility that Elizabeth left voluntarily. If she did, it's possible:

-that the man wheedled and tricked her out of the house by leading her to believe it was just for a moment, or "just get me out the door, I'm afraid of tripping the alarm, and you know the code, don't you?" And, since this person was supposedly familiar (voicewise) to Mary K., no doubt he was also familiar to Elizabeth--less fear, more likelihood of trusting him.

-that the whole thing was prearranged, and it was a friend of Elizabeth's, teenaged or adult. I thought this for a while b/c I thought that when Elizabeth said, "are you kidnapping me," perhaps she was reminding the person of "his lines"--if the whole abduction thing was done for the benefit of fooling Mary K.

But if either of those scenarios happened, WHERE THE HELL IS SHE? Much as some, such as Varina, believe that she could be sheltered to this day by someone, I just don't see how her voluntary exit wouldn't have been figured out by someone. Also, if someone helped her get out of a bad situation, it would have to be someone who knew her--so it would be someone known to people around her. Why is no person from her area missing, or looking like they have a big secret?