Posted on 02/15/2002 1:35:24 PM PST by weegee
This was professional and a hit on a witness to keep her quite.
By whom??????
This was not a simple case of Arkanside and someone definitely wanted this person to stop from telling more. Did she attempt to go for more money from someone she now was black mailing for help out of this mess?
Time to go over her records and life with a vacume cleaner and suck all the leads out before they grow cold. Smaller details have saved many lives and have helped arrest very bad people.
Polyethylene...leaves no trace.
If the container of gasoline were, say, a plastic 1gal. milg jug, it would have melted along with the other plastic in the car. Maybe it would not very be very easily recognizable without lab tests of the melted items?
If she had gasoline on her...would a container under the seat have caused the gasoline to splash/explode/spray from the back seat, or from under the front seat?
Aren't there certain chemicals which, when mixed with gasoline, cause immediate combustion? Like Chlorine? If that is the case, is it probable that such a rigged container could be thrown through an open or blown out window into the car, even at highway speed?
Here is the scenario I envision...
Another vehicle pulls very close alongside her while no cars are nearby to witness the event. They blow out the side window (probably with something other than a gun...hammer, tire iron, whatever, so that a muzzle flash cannot be seen by opther drivers on the road) and throw a burnable container mixed with gasoline and another chemical into the car. When it hits the front seat, or possibly her, the chemicals react and the whole car goes up in flames. This might explain how the gasoline got on her clothes and how she was burnt so badly. The perps accelerate away, as she begins slowing down in panic, trying to douse the flames and control the car. As she is slowing down, other drivers begin passing her car in flames and are so enraptured by the sight, they never notice the perps up ahead. At night, all the perps would need is a gap between cars on the road of about a quarter mile and the following cars wouldn't see the events clearly as they happened and the oncoming cars wouldn't be able to see either, as their speed and perspective would be a hinderance.
just speculation here though, as many facts are missing...
Hopefully they'll put out radio ads for anyone who may have been travelling that road that night and what, or who they may have seen.
On the edge of our seats, I'm sure.
Of course, when I referred to 'a device' earlier I was referring to a remote control device - and there would certainly remain components of that which would be obvious to anyone trained to look for the specific signs of an electrical/electronic device ...
My belief in this case is that the accelerant-containing vessel was tossed into her vehicle at some point - perhaps as she had been flagged down by someone.
I disagree. If someone flagged her down and tossed something into her car she would been driving slower and also would have locked the brakes instantly to exit the vehicle. There were several witnesses and I am sure that would be in the news by now.
It has been a couple of years since I have driven that highway but it was heavily traveled back then.
Yeah yeah yeah - and we ALL think logically and rationally in these situations - ESPECIALLY the women.
Besides - you're assuming she wasn't COLD COCKED or something ...
You do have one, don't you?
That's it? I sat on the edge of my chair for a "perhaps" theory? You trash everyone's thoughts and then you give us a "perhaps?!"
Commas, JimBo. Don't forget your commas.
"Besides - you're assuming she wasn't COLD COCKED or something ..."
I think that post #63 is the best explanation and that whatever caused the fire was placed into her car at the last place she stopped. With a timed device to set the fire as described in that post, the fire and crash would happen just as what has been reported. This is all we know so far and until any new evidence is released that post is a fairly clear explanation.
Images of the burned car owned by Katherine Smith * alternate title: How Arabs Kill Witnesses (yahoo-AP 2/15/02)
It might be good to create a LIST tag for this (I don't know how this is done). I've back searched some articles from Yahoo News and GoMemphis at times to verify if an article has been posted yet, most of the headlines are constent regardless of syndicate.
I've tried to create a good search term to add to the title (Smith Tennessee License Scandal) seems appropriate at this time since most of the headlines neglect these words altogether (making searching for old article difficult).
I'd be interested in seeing a timeline (which day arrested, released Sunday (when), last witness to see her alive (time), time witnesses saw the crash). This doesn't help us to solve much but can help us to damper down some speculation (we know that she was still alive in the car and that the car was moving at the time of the crash - it wasn't just positioned at the pole).
They threw [uh, gasoline] on a tire. Have you tried to extinguish a burning tire? I shoveled a yard or two of sand on it until I thought I'd have a heart attack. After an hour, the volunteer fire department got around to bouncing up the arroyo, and peed on it for a full twenty minutes with water--just, water.
And the funniest thing: they knocked it down. . .and it came right back.
And the bad boy and his friends sat on the front porch across the dirt road drinking beer and laughing.
The photos above show the passenger compartment was the fire: not the engine or gas tank. Well, gee, maybe there was gasoline in the passenger compartment and somebody set it on fire.
Could've happened.
Just a theory.
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