Missing Blogger Esther Dingley #2

[reCAPTCHA]

What's your theory???

Oh I ain't got one! I am yet to solve the mystery of where all the odd socks go in my own household, so the odds of me cracking this case are pretty slim

 

[glynisb]

I’ve just looked at the Instagram account and some of it is about there relationship and how to deal with it!! Esther goes on about Dan’s moods quite a lot. Poor Esther I don’t think she could do right for doing wrong.

 

[reCAPTCHA]

His behaviour since she went missing has been really odd in my opinion, and he comes across as a right controlling prick. Their relationship also seemed very unhealthy and dysfunctional.

However the more theories I read of how he potentially killed her, the more I'm like "Nah". Whilst in theory they seem possible, in practice I'm not buying it. No offence to any of yous though

 

[Filouette]

My thoughts when I read about this case: Slips and falls are sadly a really common occurrence in the Alps (statistics). People die on a weekly basis. Last month the president of a mountaineering club slipped while hiking and fell to his death.
Going for hikes early in the day is one of the first things we learn here. Nightfall is dangerous in the mountains. Mountains are dangerous in general.

 

[reCAPTCHA]

This whole thread is very‘un-tattle‘ in its tone- very strange but fascinating! It’s usually just light gossip- these posters are like full-time private detectives Fair play to yous all I enjoy reading all the different theories.

I particularly enjoyed @MourningDove who took the time to compile a timeline of where their litter of dogs ended up over the course of several years - top tattling to you Sir/Madam!

 

[The_Investigator]

I actually personally do still think she was driven to suicide as her life had become unbearable but am keeping an open mind. Something is not right for sure. I think DC knew what she had done and where she would be found but kept it to himself for all those months and made up the ridiculous claims that she had been kidnapped for maximum drama possible and to keep himself in the media. How else can it be explained that he sent the SAR in the wrong directions and ‘searched’ himself everywhere but where she was - and then suddenly found her when LE started talking about murder in the media, and he would be the obvious suspect? I do wonder if that was done so he would lead investigators to her.

I agree a couple of posters on WS are over invested in saying this isn’t a crime. I do wonder if DC is on there!

Hi, I don’t know WHO you were over on Websleuths, but you posts here are great. … I suspected a few journalists and Dan is deffo on there, and probably here too,.. he’s not that stupid not to be on all ED related forums to see if we’re getting close to the truth,…. Anyway,… back to what I wanted to say,…that’s a good possible theory,.. I’m trying to keep a log of hem all, … the one thing they all have in common is that Dan has and still is controlling the narrative, you have to look at every single thing he’s written or said,.. and flip it and question it,,.. he’s really playing a psychopaths game,.. I just hope they have good experts in that field in the Spanish and french police, and they are already onto him.

Esther doesn't have the psychological profile of someone who would commit suicide.

Everything she did on the hike was about reclaiming independence. She tells us how much she loves her new self sufficiency. She has purpose. She befriends people en route. She celebrates achievements and shares them.

Hey you are right,.. she was naturally a positive person,.. she didn’t have depression back in the uk,. Despite what people said,.. It was him. She only had cfs from a virus and was working to hard to fully recover physically from it. She was sporty, fit and it looks like was making lots of friends whilst away from him,… she’d just spent a day learning to climb with 2 guys, a day or two hiking with a group, then with one of the group another day,… from the long receipt shown in the ccvt from the shop, she’d bought lots of things,… probably loads of veg to juice, she was taking care of herself, .. buying chai seeds, doing yoga outside the van on the day back waiting for the weather to improve,…, sounds like she was having a good time, even the people in the hostel earlier the week before, said she was on good form, but was on her phone constantly when there? ? So that was probably Dan hassling her. He probably tried to bring her mood down,.. coercive control,.. but that’s a bit more difficult if she wasn’t paying attention to his messages,…

 

[TiaanG]

Hi everyone I'm new here. I was following along on WS, but you cannot discuss D's potential involvement on there, so I have come here. Something is definitely off about the whole thing. I don't think she fell either. I don't think she climbed that mountain. I don't think she committed suicide. I just can't figure out "how" he did it, IF he did it.

 

[AlanB]

You guys understand that it is not realistic that Mr. Colegate did this in a fit of rage, even though that's the most likely way such a thing would happen in real life ?

A fit of rage would mean that it would not be premeditated and so he would take his phone with him, which means it would inevitably ping a mast on the way to her and thus give the Police the evidence that he was not where he said he was. The hire car via cash without ID is out of the question too, those people virtually want blood !

I think it is logistically virtually impossible because his phone/credit card/laptop would alert the Police to where he was and the logistics of going in the night by bike to kill her, drag her body up and drop her over the edge without leaving any clues and getting there and then back unobserved in the very early morning doesn't sound credible to me. I also don't think he would be looking to go there to kill her anyway - it is clear that he likes to have a "disciple" to massage his ego...

A couple of other points :
(1) There is talk of her body being released and then the ashes scattered - I wouldn't think the Police would allow this if they thought the case was still unsolved.
(2) He'd have to be extremely dumb (I don't like the way he acts, but I don't think he's dumb) if he wanted to kill her to do it this way - far wiser to bide his time, propose another final hike together and then push her over a ledge whilst claiming she fell. Try and prove otherwise when him being there is not an indicator of guilt, there would be no witnesses and it would be virtually impossible to get a conviction.

 

[Steve Cree Fan Too]

The theories on here are mad.

I agree.

Also forensic anthrologists are highly qualified. They would be able to tell if she died from anything other than an accident or if the bones had been moved.

Yes, it seems a bit insulting to the French investigators to me all these suggestions about moving bones and staging it, like they'd be too stupid to be able to detect that.

 

[AlanB]

...
This is an interesting article https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/tag/Pic+de+Sauvegarde+esther+dingley
...

Thanks for this Estella, the two quotes I hadn't seen :-

=====================
Dan said “It was around this time that any last traces of romance slipped away from us. We clung on to the belief that we still loved each other, but beneath all the animosity, it was hard.”
=====================

=====================
In 2013 they moved back to the northeast of England where Colegate took an administration job at Newcastle University. Esther became a personal trainer, having been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. At this time the couple had both been diagnosed with clinical depression.
=====================

The following quote from Mr. Colegate is one I had seen but remains quite extraordinary :

=====================
On Christmas 2013 Dan needed an emergency operation on an abscess from a surgery wound which developed into necrotizing fasciitis, known as the “flesh-eating disease” and they decided to get married in February 2014, despite Dan saying in his book that “what was supposed to be a chance to rediscover our love of one another did, at times, seem to have transformed into a festering pit of mutual loathing”.
=====================

I have NO IDEA why Ms. Dingley stayed with someone who would feel this badly about her at ANY time during the relationship, especially as she stuck with him when he was really sick - she comes over as a very nice person but the relationship appears to have been truly dysfunctional.

I also noticed something else, in the video where Mr. Colegate leads the talk about the rescuers and their marvellous work Ms. Dingley joins in whilst not getting much to say, whereas when Ms. Dingley created a video of their exploits Mr. Colegate stayed in the background working on the tent, he didn't engage at all. It seems that if he was not the centre of attention he was not really interested.

 

[colouredlines]

THANKYOU for your posts. I have been on this thread since January and it’s become more and more obvious that this has just been a tragic accident. In my opinion, these batshit theories about her other half murdering her are actually just disrespectful to her memory at this point.
Yes it would make for great reading if Dan had murdered her, but it just isn’t feasible. Let’s just leave her to rest and let her loved ones grieve.

That's it exactly. I also find it really distasteful to see this baseless speculation that Dan was an abusive, controlling monster, which some people seem to take as fact just because other posters have repeated it often enough. No evidence. Zero. None. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the UK tabloids would have done all they can to dig up dirt on the relationship...

I've followed this case from the start - as I said, I live near the Pyrenees and I'm a hiker. The speculation just keeps getting more and more outlandish, and it feels increasingly ghoulish and disrespectful to both Esther's memory and the loved ones she left behind.

 

[Superdude]

I can't see how they could keep seven dogs while living in a camper van. Seems cruel to the dogs. Better to find them new homes.

 

[SummerSky]

Sometimes I get the feeling Dan is on this forum. Just a feeling.

 

[AlanB]

It's been a while since I read the Facebook posts so there may well be things relating to their relationship I haven't remembered but I think some of the comments they made about their relationship have been misinterpreted. They were both quite open about having had difficulties both personally and within the relationship but that doesn't mean they were on the verge of separating.

I've always taken the comment from the witness with a pinch of salt. Mainly because it was reported differently in various different news articles and that along with potential for things to be mixed up in translation it's never really been clear what she actually meant by what was said.

Well, I have NO IDEA why you are taking her opinion with a “pinch of salt”, her statement cannot be misinterpreted - she reported it to the Police as part of a missing person investigation, not a situation where you might make a speculative comment. It has been reported and has NEVER been withdrawn. The Police outside of this also say the relationship was not as described on social media. Yet somehow you come with the view that there was “no evidence” that they were not happy ! You are not Mr. Colegate by any chance?

When you take into account her previous comments and actions in leaving the house-sit and then continually extending her time away most of the evidence on their relationship points towards a dysfunctional one and a soon to be ending scenario.

EDIT: I call him Mr. Colegate because I think that is the correct way to address a man you don’t know personally, I certainly wouldn’t be friends with him given the information that has come out…

 

[colouredlines]

ABSOLUTELY!!

The post above gives the FACTS rather than wild speculation.

Nah, I'm just a paid troll trying to control the narrative.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

Of course it doesn’t make him a murderer.
The point is that when men murder their partners it is extremely likely that it is an escalation (to varying degrees) of behaviour. This is well documented. So posts about his behaviour and how he treated Esther are relevant to speculation about Esther’s death.

And even when deaths are officially explained, people can still have doubts that are later proved correct. Look at Ian Bailey, the guy is on trial for killing his first wife Diane Stewart and at the time it was put down as epilepsy. Her family always had doubts but were dismissed until he went on to kill his wealthy fiancée.

Dan is a bouquet of red flags, has been for a long time it seems, so there’s going to be a higher degree of speculation around someone who behaves like that. The lack of a smoking gun doesn’t make the speculation misplaced

 

[WinterSolstice]

Okay, so let's look at this list.



If you hike regularly, you will see SAR in action sooner or later. It happens. People go missing and have accidents in the mountains a lot.



It is ABSOLUTELY INSANE that people think she meant this literally. She was looking towards France. He was in France. It's not unusual or mysterious, it's normal to say, "teehee I can see you from here!" I've sent similar messages to friends in Mallorca when hiking. This did not lead them to swim to the peninsula and murder me.

This is particularly clear when she did this TWICE - once on social media, once in a Whatsapp message. We can be certain that the first time she was NOT literally able to see him, which indicates that using "I can see you" to mean looking from a distance in your general direction was something she did.



Irrelevant.

In fact, if you were going to hatch a cunning plan to acquire transport from...somewhere, sneak across France under lockdown, speedwalk up a mountain, murder your partner, speedwalk back down and sneak back to your previous location, you'd probably NOT want to draw the attention of the media in advance, right?



Because he thought she was on a 3-day hike.



This is not the smoking gun people think it is. Innocent people fearing the worst also use the past tense.



This is an oxymoron - either he was searching alone or he was leading SAR on a wild goose chase, but both cannot be true.



a) They're a charity, not a PR firm. They're not "controlling the narrative" (this thread's favourite phrase).

b) The claim that they were on a break comes from a single source, Laura Adomaityte. It could be true - or it could have been lost in translation; between English and Spanish, it is easy to mistake "we're [physically] apart, and I don't know when I'm [physically] going back to him" (true at the time) and "we're [emotionally] apart, and I don't know when I'm [emotionally] going back to him".

In contrast to Laura Adomaityte's statement, we have the words of Esther's aunt, speaking on behalf of her father, who said Esther had phoned her dad to tell him she would soon be going home to Dan; we have the words of Esther's long-term close friend Phil Ash, who said she told him the same; we have Esther's own social media posts, thanking Dan for helping her become more confident and imagining him alongside her; we have a selection of Esther's Whatsapp messages to Dan, full of "love you" and "xx". Notably, these were all AFTER her conversation with Laura Adomaityte.

NO OTHER WITNESS has said they had broken up. All witnesses report that she was happy and in good spirits.



Deliberately placed...by an animal or snowmelt. Not remotely unusual in the mountains.



Dan found her body because he was looking for it. The SAR operation happened in winter; realistically, it was not going to involve combing every centimetre of the area, due to weather conditions and the sad fact that if you have an accident alone in the Pyrenees in winter, you will die quickly. SAR focus their efforts on the living.

Dan continued to search the mountains for months. Nobody else was searching at that time.



Maybe she stashed them somewhere, deciding she didn't need them and wanted to lighten her load. Maybe they were dislodged when she fell or after she died. Those tents fold up very small. Could be wedged down the side of a rock, in a crevasse, etc.



...for a charity. In memory of Esther. A charity she had previously raised funds for. How the fuck is this considered a red flag?

Finally, as for the much-discussed quote about hatred and loathing...it was in the context of telling a story that ran, essentially, "we were stressed and miserable, and then we bought a camper van and became happy and fell in love with each other again."

I get that this thread is just endless searching for examples of confirmation bias to support your pet theory, but come on.

OMG sanity

 

[AlanB]

One says that she was happy. Another says she wasn't. What makes one more enlightening than the other?

You can't see the difference ???

In one somebody is drawing a general conclusion based on talking to a stranger, most people put on their best face in such a situation.

In the other just a few days before her death she is being EXTREMELY frank and direct about her relationship that has existed all her adult life. That is on a completely different level.

I am amazed that I am having to explain this to you...

 

[Banquos_Ghost]

Okay, so let's look at this list.



If you hike regularly, you will see SAR in action sooner or later. It happens. People go missing and have accidents in the mountains a lot.



It is ABSOLUTELY INSANE that people think she meant this literally. She was looking towards France. He was in France. It's not unusual or mysterious, it's normal to say, "teehee I can see you from here!" I've sent similar messages to friends in Mallorca when hiking. This did not lead them to swim to the peninsula and murder me.

This is particularly clear when she did this TWICE - once on social media, once in a Whatsapp message. We can be certain that the first time she was NOT literally able to see him, which indicates that using "I can see you" to mean looking from a distance in your general direction was something she did.



Irrelevant.

In fact, if you were going to hatch a cunning plan to acquire transport from...somewhere, sneak across France under lockdown, speedwalk up a mountain, murder your partner, speedwalk back down and sneak back to your previous location, you'd probably NOT want to draw the attention of the media in advance, right?



Because he thought she was on a 3-day hike.



This is not the smoking gun people think it is. Innocent people fearing the worst also use the past tense.



This is an oxymoron - either he was searching alone or he was leading SAR on a wild goose chase, but both cannot be true.



a) They're a charity, not a PR firm. They're not "controlling the narrative" (this thread's favourite phrase).

b) The claim that they were on a break comes from a single source, Laura Adomaityte. It could be true - or it could have been lost in translation; between English and Spanish, it is easy to mistake "we're [physically] apart, and I don't know when I'm [physically] going back to him" (true at the time) and "we're [emotionally] apart, and I don't know when I'm [emotionally] going back to him".

In contrast to Laura Adomaityte's statement, we have the words of Esther's aunt, speaking on behalf of her father, who said Esther had phoned her dad to tell him she would soon be going home to Dan; we have the words of Esther's long-term close friend Phil Ash, who said she told him the same; we have Esther's own social media posts, thanking Dan for helping her become more confident and imagining him alongside her; we have a selection of Esther's Whatsapp messages to Dan, full of "love you" and "xx". Notably, these were all AFTER her conversation with Laura Adomaityte.

NO OTHER WITNESS has said they had broken up. All witnesses report that she was happy and in good spirits.



Deliberately placed...by an animal or snowmelt. Not remotely unusual in the mountains.



Dan found her body because he was looking for it. The SAR operation happened in winter; realistically, it was not going to involve combing every centimetre of the area, due to weather conditions and the sad fact that if you have an accident alone in the Pyrenees in winter, you will die quickly. SAR focus their efforts on the living.

Dan continued to search the mountains for months. Nobody else was searching at that time.



Maybe she stashed them somewhere, deciding she didn't need them and wanted to lighten her load. Maybe they were dislodged when she fell or after she died. Those tents fold up very small. Could be wedged down the side of a rock, in a crevasse, etc.



...for a charity. In memory of Esther. A charity she had previously raised funds for. How the fuck is this considered a red flag?

Finally, as for the much-discussed quote about hatred and loathing...it was in the context of telling a story that ran, essentially, "we were stressed and miserable, and then we bought a camper van and became happy and fell in love with each other again."

I get that this thread is just endless searching for examples of confirmation bias to support your pet theory, but come on.

This is all very rational and well articulated. Some of the speculation on here has been pretty wild.

 

[Savannah_xx]

If it was a legit genuine accident, her tent and other stuff that ARE missing would and should be right there. The fact they aren't is very dodgy and makes it not seem like a genuine accident. Like they are hidden I'm not sure what use they would be to any animals.