To easily “get” Maria versus not so easily (i.e. grab, abduct, etc) get Maria to a place where Laurean and she would be alone...just some jumbled thoughts...
*and I’m totally speculating*
Maria was a pregnant young Marine. She was or felt ostracized and there are not too many accounts of her having a support network of friends at Lejeune. She was raised Catholic.
Perhaps if Laurean planned to use the holiday break period as his best opportunity to have her disappear — Marines would be coming and going and less noticeable that she was missing. I believe that he could have asked Maria to come to his house when the wife went to the party. (Wife still could have been in on this plan). The two could have talked, but mostly Laurean, who suggests that they go away together; he’ll leave his wife. Young and vulnerable, she wants to believe him and they get into their respective vehicles to drive to the ATM for some cash for her bus ticket. We need to do this before my wife returns from the party. He instructs her to leave a note to throw everyone off. Either he writes it or dictates what to write. She drops off the note.
Next they go to the ATM. She withdraws cash. They go buy her ticket and she leaves her car there and gets in his truck. They go back to his place to “pack up” when he kills her. He next goes and takes money out of her account so he can use it to cover his tracks. I think he begins tossing things like the cell and her ID (?) later to make it appear like *she* was throwing her Marine Corps life away, just tossing the things she didn’t need anymore.
I think he was staging her disappearance to make it look like she was running away. Maybe this has been said here a million times already, but I’m just thinking aloud.
Good thoughts, but the bus ticket wasn’t (or allegedly wasn’t) purchased until the next day, the 15th. And the wife said that she went to the party on the 15th. Where was Maria all night?
If he dictated the note to her, that would explain the odd tense in the note: “I couldn’t take this Marine Corps life anymore...” rather than, “I can’t take this Marine Corps life anymore...”
Just to throw this out there....
Christina apparently has a sister and a brother-in-law that live in Jacksonville. That’s the rumor on the comment section of the Daily News. It also says that this sister and BIL are Marines.