I can’t find anything saying Dan was ever ruled out? Let alone ‘fully ruled him out’ - that’s quite emphatic. Having an alibi is different. The Times article only says he was never made to feel like a suspect.
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It sounds like he physically used his credit card in stores. Plus, the data use on a mobile would be quite hard to fake. It's one thing turning it off and leaving it. It's quite another having it browsing websites, streaming video and all the other things that would require physical interaction with the device.
I've not seen anything to verify she went up Pic du Sauvegarde twice - where did you see that?
Couple of things on my mind.
The tent could definitely have been discarded because it was too heavy (if she was injured or disoriented) or it could have been lost in a fall.
With regards to the inaccessible location she was found, could it be a concealed deep cravasse she has fallen into due to a covering of snow or undergrowth? Or maybe a little cave she took shelter in after realising she was not as close as she thought to where she was headed or too injured and wanted to be safe away from animals and cold for the night (and didn't have the tent she had hypothetically dumped previously)
It really sounds to me like she has tried to take a short cut. Was the hostel ever confirmed as open that night and was the location of her body on a route (not necessarily a known path) back home or to the hostel or is it completely off any plausible route and in the complete wilderness?
The skull bone should definitely have markings on to say which animal has moved it, so the absence of that would be thought provoking
I was previously thinking the BF had a hand in it until this fresh info has come out and now I'm leaning very much towards an accident or incident where she has ended up lost, injured and/or disorientated and in an inhospitable environment.
Just one other thing I can't get my head around is why are the daily mail moderating comments? Is this usual? I still notice they are letting through the ones pointing the finger at Dan so for what purpose is the moderation?
The tent could definitely have been discarded because it was too heavy (if she was injured or disoriented) or it could have been lost in a fall.
With regards to the inaccessible location she was found, could it be a concealed deep cravasse she has fallen into due to a covering of snow or undergrowth? Or maybe a little cave she took shelter in after realising she was not as close as she thought to where she was headed or too injured and wanted to be safe away from animals and cold for the night (and didn't have the tent she had hypothetically dumped previously)
It really sounds to me like she has tried to take a short cut. Was the hostel ever confirmed as open that night and was the location of her body on a route (not necessarily a known path) back home or to the hostel or is it completely off any plausible route and in the complete wilderness?
The skull bone should definitely have markings on to say which animal has moved it, so the absence of that would be thought provoking
I was previously thinking the BF had a hand in it until this fresh info has come out and now I'm leaning very much towards an accident or incident where she has ended up lost, injured and/or disorientated and in an inhospitable environment.
Just one other thing I can't get my head around is why are the daily mail moderating comments? Is this usual? I still notice they are letting through the ones pointing the finger at Dan so for what purpose is the moderation?
Experienced is an extremely broad term, I agree. I would say I am an "experienced hiker." However I would never in a million years climb a mountain range alone in November in a foreign country. Had she climbed that particular range before? Did she have the appropriate equipment required for such a journey?If I were LB Trust, what would concern me the most in today’s coverage is references to Esther as an ‘experienced’ hiker. Especially in headlines, it speaks volumes. So if it were me, I would spend the next few days, starting this morning, discrediting this. Yes she did a lot of hiking but what about decisions x, y, z. Why didn’t she do this, have that equipment etc. And if news articles were not accepting comments or heavily moderating I would look for other platforms to try to course correct the messaging
Terms are used so broadly in the media. Like the phrase her body was found close to where her skull had been found 2 weeks earlier. What is close? Is it 2 metres away? 50? 100? Saying it was found "close" undoubtedly has led to speculation that it is not an accident as close would imply they should have checked the area previously. Just like, as you state, saying she is experienced leads to more questions than answers.
I do think it is slightly odd that her boyfriend is the one who found her. Especially if she was "close by." Surely the authorities should have found her if she was that close??
It's all public on Facebook. On their page.
She was then spotted summiting the next day by a witness.
Wrt yellow tent questions the tent's a key factor indicating crime.
Nothing that bright vanishes forever in a beige landscape. Searchers & helis would have spotted it.
I think sleepy passiveaggressive lemon got it bang on. It was used to carry the body.
That poses a problem for the killer. Body fluids.
We'll never see that tent surface. My bet.
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One thing that has always bothered me, from the beginning, is the route Esther was meant to have taken. Because we only ever got that info from Dan. I remember sitting down one day and mapping it all out with pen and paper based on Esther's Instagram posts and then the supposed route Dan said she was taking. So from the Pic de Sauvegarde, bearing in mind it was 4pm when she was leaving there on the 22nd so she needed to get shelter quickly, she was meant to go EAST then NORTH to the Refuge de Venasque, and then presumably anticlockwise after that (the next day) around to the Port de la Glere, via the Hospice de France (although we don't know this part for sure and it's not important for the purpose of what I'm saying here). The fact her body was found WEST at the Port de la Glere means she never went this intended route towards Venasque, somehow she went westwards towards the Port and then met her fate. There's no way she took the east/north route because at some point along that entire route she would have switched her phone on. No way she would have gone that long without looking at her phone at least once. So she went west, straight from the Pic de Sauvegarde over to the Port de la Glere. Why didn't Dan know she was doing this? Why would she have intentionally told him the wrong route? They lost days and days searching the east/north route, missing the west route because Dan told them she had gone the other way. Dan even stayed overnight at the Venasque Refuge (east) when she never did go east, not even a little bit east. She carried on West straight after her call with him. Was that deliberate on his part, so the body had time to decompose, or did she intentionally tell him the wrong route so she couldn't be found (meaning suicide, which I personally don't believe). But I very much doubt she would have told him one route at 4pm when it was getting dark, and then off she toddles, immediately, the other way. Makes absolutely no sense. Even if she only went eastwards to the Refuge de Venasque and then the next day back westwards towards the Port de la Glere (1) there was no sign of her having been at the Venasque Refuge, so she never went there, and (2) she didn't travel from ANYWHERE east to west the next day (even if she stayed overnight somewhere else) because she would have had to pass via the Pic de Sauvegarde to get to Port de la Glere, and she would definitely have put her phone on there to check messages, take selfies etc, as that area has fantastic signal. So why did she say she was going east when she immediately went west? Or rather why did HE say she was going east when it's very obvious she went west? The fact there's no more phone signal from her at all, means she never did go east. She went west, immediately, after her chat with Dan. And even if she took the route Dan said (east, then north, then anticlockwise round to Port de la Glere - let's say for argument sake she slept somewhere else that night and then did that planned route the next day), I don't believe for one minute she didn't switched her phone on once during that entire route. So I firmly believe she immediately went west after her call with him and they lost precious search time concentrating their efforts Eastward when they should have been concentrating Westward. I can't help but wonder if the search teams were deliberately thrown off track?
It would be interesting hear the Benasque mayor Ignacio Abadias’ thoughts now, given recent developments. He arguably knows the terrain better than anyone and has seen it all before. (Screengrabs from article published 3 July).
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The hostel 'refuge du venasque' is just a mountain bothy - as such, it's never closed, but it's also unmanned.
The 'short-cut'* to the Glera pass can be taken from the peak of Sauvegarde or there is a trail from the refuge to the peak of Montagenette - map here.
Temptingly, to the south west of this peak, is the la Glera pass. It would be visible from the peak, but a descent here would be very dangerous. The alternative is a very large detour to rejoin the original planned route or retracing route and abandoning the Glera.
(* short-cut in quotes, as it's not a defined path)
I don’t know if the boyfriend had anything to do with it, but his behaviour has just been so strange throughout. From the bbc interview soon after she went missing where he accidentally says he ‘loved’ her rather than ‘loves’ her and then kind of smirked, to the strange dossier he released which contained the one sided text message conversation where only the lovey-dovey texts from Esther were released. He seems to have been tightly trying to control the narrative throughout in a quite calculated way - despite comments from the police and from a fellow hiker who both intimated all was not well between Esther and Dan. Why had he been so adamant throughout that Esther must have been kidnapped rather than had an accident? Was he worried if it was an accident that their ‘brand’ would have been tarnished? So much doesn’t make sense about his behaviour, but I’m not sure if this means he had anything to do with her tragic fate. Or maybe he is just completely misunderstood and doesn’t deserve all this speculation.
Did this route information not come from the hiker she met on the 19th who suggested it?
Thanks for all the info you’ve given re the routes and her kit etc. You’ve made me realise she was making some risky decisions late afternoon in November on an unfamiliar mountainous landscape. I thought there was definitely foul play at foot but now I’m not so sure. I hope her family gets the answers they need to help them come to terms with this tragic event.
I’ve always kind of thought that maybe Dan feels guilty and holds himself to blame because of their relationship struggles, and perhaps if they had been in a better place, Esther would have never been out on that mountain on her own anyway.
I know all the details are weird and there’s a lot of red flags. But if he genuinely wasn’t involved in her death, I can almost half believe that most of his behaviour is him trying to convince himself that he isn’t to blame for her going off piste and ultimately dying. Just my two cents!
I know all the details are weird and there’s a lot of red flags. But if he genuinely wasn’t involved in her death, I can almost half believe that most of his behaviour is him trying to convince himself that he isn’t to blame for her going off piste and ultimately dying. Just my two cents!
Well if there's a good alibi, there's a good alibi. I'd hate to accuse an innocent man. Maybe if we hear him speak more we'll get to know his mannerisms. It's hard to judge when you really don't know the person.
Thanks, I've had a look at the Facebook Page - it's limited what I can see as I'm not on FB, so couldn't see those reports, but there was a good photo of his search GPS tracks.
It's made me realise the map of the partners search routes in The Times article was not showing the whole search area. He has covered far more than the forest on the French side - basically, he's been over the whole area. However, understandably, he hadn't done much searching in that very dangerous spot where I think she's been found.
One further thought which may have made it an accident. StMarysMead went through all of this over on Websleuths and she makes perfect sense. Dan, it seems, was bombarding Esther with messages. She replied from the car-hitch-ride something like "got all your messages, sorry only responding now" or something to that effect. So what if Esther really did go east, then north, and even anticlockwise round to Port de la Glere (or however which way she got there) and did indeed switch her phone on during that journey (because that's the giveaway to me, in this day and age, no way she didn't switch her phone on), BUT what if she kept it in flight mode to keep Dan's obsessive messages away. And what if flight mode ultimately cost her her life? Maybe the reason her phone never pinged anymore (thus disclosing a better "last location" point for her) was because she was having to keep an obsessive boyfriend at bay and therefore had to keep her phone in flight mode. Remember their BBC article had just come out, so maybe she was being bombarded with messages about that. And maybe THAT'S why Dan is acting shifty, because maybe he feels he played a huge part in her death. Just a thought, but doesn't explain the other red flags with him, plus I do still lean towards the foul play scenario. She also said in a post "I think I can see you". Did she mean that literally? Did he plan to come visit her? We don't know the true meaning of that line.
I watched a YouTube true crime last night about a guy who all the police thought was guilty of killing his partner and it turned out it was her best friend who did it, and he had an alibi. He did get 3million in compensation fortunately, but looking at the investigators while knowing the truth, it was so ugly and I hope to try to keep more of an open mind.
There are a lot of red flags but an alibi is an alibi, but there's also a lot of red flags that point to an accident as one of the posters on here previously mentioned. A murder would have had to have been planned really efficiently, and when would he have done that, with her and those 5 dogs all living in a van together, it seems unlikely.
This case is so hard to gauge. If I was in Dan's position I think I would have searched non stop too. But then again, I wouldn't have given up on her being alive so quickly either. Although that whole "she's been abducted" may have been him being hopeful she is still alive knowing it's unlikely on a cold mountain, or it could have been him trying to avoid search parties from finding her before evidence has decayed.
There are a lot of red flags but an alibi is an alibi, but there's also a lot of red flags that point to an accident as one of the posters on here previously mentioned. A murder would have had to have been planned really efficiently, and when would he have done that, with her and those 5 dogs all living in a van together, it seems unlikely.
This case is so hard to gauge. If I was in Dan's position I think I would have searched non stop too. But then again, I wouldn't have given up on her being alive so quickly either. Although that whole "she's been abducted" may have been him being hopeful she is still alive knowing it's unlikely on a cold mountain, or it could have been him trying to avoid search parties from finding her before evidence has decayed.
She said "I think I can see you" twice.
New thought occurred to me now.
What if... considering she made every excuse under the sun to keep extending her time away from him for weeks...
What if she feared him and that phrase publicly posted was to warn him off coming to her? Because it would be too incriminatory if violence occurred to her that week?
I know this is a horrible thought and it creeps me out right now but I've become more aware of victims' instinctive defence tactics even when they aren't consciously aware what they're doing. Because they're stuck inside denial.
Someone wide awake would say f.o and tell her family & get help. But it never works like that.
New thought occurred to me now.
What if... considering she made every excuse under the sun to keep extending her time away from him for weeks...
What if she feared him and that phrase publicly posted was to warn him off coming to her? Because it would be too incriminatory if violence occurred to her that week?
I know this is a horrible thought and it creeps me out right now but I've become more aware of victims' instinctive defence tactics even when they aren't consciously aware what they're doing. Because they're stuck inside denial.
Someone wide awake would say f.o and tell her family & get help. But it never works like that.
Maybe they were due to meet, or maybe he had said something like "one day I will surprise you" and so she was always half expecting to see him.
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