"The wife claimed to have come home at 2:30am from a night of partying. The alarm was then 'on' and the back door was open. They did not think anything of that, they shut the back door, and the daughter's door. Then they ordered pizza. What pizza place either delivers, or is open at 3am?
One of the people the mother was at the bar with was a neighbor. The neighbor also accompanied the mother back to her house.
After everyone left, the neighbor loaded up in a motor home and spent the weekend driving first out to the desert, then to the beach, then back to the desert.
The neighbor's house was searched shortly after he arrived back home, and unspecified amounts of child pornography were removed.
The police have taken his motor home to search for DNA evidence that the girl may have been inside it, and have searched areas of the desert and beach where he claims to have spent the weekend.
Now, I'm not saying it's not plausible, because obviously this guy did it, but I find it strange that a guy who says he needed to get away for the weekend and be alone would spend the whole night before he left, drinking in a bar and following his neighbor home for continued partying after the bar closed. It seems strange.
The mother has taken and passed a polygraph. The police will not comment on the father or the neighbor taking one, which makes me think that they probably haven't, or the results weren't squeaky clean. Applying Occam's Razor makes me tend to believe the father and this neighbor are somehow involved.
Also, when I was fighting for custody of my grandchild, I found out the mother had used the child as collateral for her drug buys. She would take my grandchild to the home of the drug dealer and he would hold her until the mother came up with the money for the drugs. I never have found out exactly what happened to my grandchild, but my son and his wife who are her guardians told me, "you don't want to know, because you will kill the mother". It's funny, but the first time I heard the report about the mom and the neighbor being at the same bar and dancing together, that was the first thing I thought about - did the mom use the girl as barter for drugs?? She doesn't appear to be a druggie, but appearances can be deceiving and some druggies are hard to spot because they don't look haggard and thin.
I'm just throwing this out there.
We have a pizza place open til after 4am, actually we have a couple. In fact, at one point one of the places was open 24 hours a day on thurs-sat.
Lots of 'em, in Phoenix.
You've never lived in NYC, have you?