I agree. Some times I wonder whether having such large social groups (and people we hear about online) makes us much colder to each other than when humans lived in little bands with 100 people whom they all knew very well. It would take a lot for you to accuse one of the 100 people you rely on for your survival of murder. Now it’s easy for thousands of people you’ve never met to bully you and ruin your life from a distance.
Thank you for the follow up. Tragedy follows tragedy. How can people behave this way and sleep at night? Curiosity and wanting closure for the family, feeling empathy for them, that's a natural response. Wanting to assist, sure. But this? Dehumanization, plain, simple and very sad
Your description of those roads reminds me of driving through Wisconsin's back woods on fishing excursions. You're right. Very unlikely it could be done accidentally. It's challenging even intentionally, especially at night. That's for the experts to figure out. Ruining lives for sport, what a shameful exercise. Calling them narcissistic insults narcissists. Sounds like a good bar fight might be in order
Amen. I admire the way you treat subjects. Situations like this require special care because of the collateral damage speculation brings. You treated this exactly as it deserves. I've been haunted by this after reading part 1. If there are worse things in this world than losing a child, with such potential and love, they escape me
I’m now hearing rumors that the local LE are planning to consider this an accident even though it doesn’t convincingly add up. Two sources for that — Kiely’s family’s PI who seems perhaps slightly unstable and not 100% reliable/credible, who says he’s had that straight from LE but doesn’t name names; and a random person online whose credibility or identity I know nothing about, who said she’s married to someone in one of the sheriffs’ offices (Placer or Nevada?) and says the whole thing is being swept under the rug because [vague reason implying an LE teen son was involved somehow].
No idea of whether any of that is credible, but it did seem odd that the diver who found Kiely’s laptop and other personal items yesterday was totally blown off by local LE who weren’t interested at all in the items’ recovery, and either said or implied that the investigation was all but over with. Why would they not want her laptop unless they were writing this off? But why _wouldn’t_ they want her laptop and to recover all the items for the family, even if it was just an accident?
The whole thing is seeming sloppy and cavalier. I hope I’m wrong. The family deserve accurate answers.
Nature abhors a vacuum, they say. LE, of course, has not helped - claiming to have a video of Kiely wearing the Odd Future hoodie, but giving us a library image, rather than a still, for example.
But there are questions unanswered... The timeline from 0025-0040H makes no sense, because it requires Kiely to drive Sanctuary-Lake-Sanctuary, in 6' from Elsa Pekarek's sighting at 0030H in order for Kiely's phone to ping at the Lake at 0033H, and then be back in time to call Sami at 0036H.
That isn't possible without using the TARDIS. So, either Elsa and/or Sami is lying, or Kiely wasn't at the Lake at 0033H, but her phone was... I don't like to be a conspiracist, but I didn't construct that timeline!
In my experience, one should allow a few minutes in either direction to allow for delays, infrequent pings, or phones whose times don’t quite match.
My understanding was that Elsa saw Kiely at midnight ish. I saw that info on a network affiliate news website, but I haven’t confirmed any of the other details I’ve heard about Elsa (for example, that Kiely supposedly told her she wanted to go home). All I’ve been able to confirm about Elsa is that she says she saw Kiely at the party at midnight ish.
Kiely’s phone’s last ping was at the reservoir at 12:33 ish. After that, we can supposed the phone was permanently off or destroyed.
At about that same time, Sami claims to have received a call from that phone, and that the call was from Kiely asking her about whether she needed a ride (even though also according to Sami, they’d had this conversation in person, 10 minutes before). She claims to have heard party noise in the background, which wouldn’t fit if Kiely’s phone went permanently off or was destroyed at the reservoir at about the same time.
So while I wouldn’t put too much stock in the times to-the-minute, I agree there might be an issue here with the reliability of Sami’s narrative or memory.
Love your TCCC analogy. Kind of perfect. They really do not think they are causing harm and if they know they are they do not care. They take a theory then arrange facts afterward. Problem is the will deny and argue with scientific facts about cases and still hound people they think are guilty. I will say 1 thing that is fact and one that is my read of a person. If 1 window was half way down and the other either rolled down or broken out (might not be anything suspicious, could be from when car rolled over and hit rock on bottom) she could have floated to back. Either with or without current she could have floated to back. Now that is really the only fact besides her car was found upside down, in 14 feet of water and she was in the back. Really everything else is speculation. Fights, kids acting strange, or coverups, come on all high schools are dramavilles. Someone hears the word cops and watch kids flee. Her friend not riding with her for whatever reason, happens all the time and as long as she was not involved in anything sneaky will carry that pain with her the rest of her life. Any speculation is just people guessing and causing problems. Anything besides car found, she was in it, and it was upside down 14 days after she was at a party is just guessing and people should leave this poor town and people alone. Then if more facts are released half these TCCC's are going to scream coverup and still cyber attack who they think did it. Without facts its all guessing. My next comment is a speculation from my experience with people. That Nick guy is FOS. He wanted to be in front of camera and name said.
Yeah... I agree we know very few facts... including a few facts (like the location of her body) that maybe no one should know yet until the investigation is complete.
And totally agree-- this town and these people have been through so much. Even if there was foul play, the majority of people accused and dragged have had nothing to do with it -- they have to deal with accusations and hate on top of their grief. I can’t imagine. Being a mother, I feel a lot for Kiely’s mother. Just unimaginable.
Also, watching that AWP video interview with the roadside assistance guy...I don't know. He really reads as sincere/straightforward to me. I wouldn't rule out him being mistaken, by any means, but I really think he's telling the truth as he understands it. Maybe they don't have dashcams and the timeline was never updated because they couldn't confirm it?
[Edit: Never mind, he said they do have dashcams, so I don't know. It's weird, for sure.]
Yes I felt like he is telling the truth as he sees it too.
I think he has no reason not to, because the receipts will be there either way: my understanding is, before he ever ran into AWP and told them what he told them, law enforcement had already received all the records —the paper trail and the videos.
So my only question is, if this was Kiely and she’d been seen, why did law enforcement not update the public when the search was still active? Instead of last being seen on video the night before at 6pm, they’d need to update the public and say “she was seen Saturday morning at 11.”
The most likely answer is, because they looked at the evidence and they could see it wasn’t Kiely. (?) Just my guess.
Now, the investigators are not going to get back to every person who gave them a tip and said “you were mistaken sir.”
But if they ruled that out as a Kiely sighting, despite this guy’s best intentions and honesty in coming forward (and really, why would someone bother to lie, knowing that the records exist about what car it was and who the people were?) we would hear nothing about it from the authorities, and indeed we haven’t.
That’s why my money’s on “it wasn’t a Kiely sighting” — but who knows!
That makes sense. The only other thing I could think of would be the police specifically choosing to withhold the information, as is sometimes done when they don't want a suspect to know all of the evidence/witnesses/whatever. But given that she was still missing at the time, that seems much less likely, because it could have hindered her being found, which I don't think they would have done.
You know ... now that you mention it though... suppose law enforcement were told about the video and road service records Aug 14, as Nick said, but they didn’t get the records right away. Maybe, say, they had to wait till Monday to request the records, and then hadn’t yet received them by the end of the week (not completely out of the question?) Or suppose they received the records quickly but they were going through so many other tips and searching so many other places that no one reviewed the records right away.
It’s possible, you’ve just made me realize, that Kiely could have been found (Aug 21) before those records were reviewed. Then the investigators wouldn’t reveal what they learned (yet) since it wouldn’t help find her. She’d been found.
In that case, maybe there is something to Nick’s story. Maybe there’s something about that road service call that pertains to the case.But... I guess we won’t know for a while.
I’m so sad for Kiely and her family. I don’t know how “knowing what happened” can possibly make it any better. But I just want to know.
Hmm, that's a good point. I have a few thoughts, but I don't want to share them publicly. If I get a chance later today or tomorrow, maybe I'll email you. Is there a way to DM a Substack author? Like, if I responded to the email for this post, does that go to you?
Hmmm -so does this lead to Nick the Road Assistance guy becoming the focus? Is he telling the truth? Or is he just trying to get attention? It is human nature to try to unravel puzzles. But be careful not to fall into the same trap the article describes.
I think he’s being honest, and he knew LE’s next move was to get the records. Whether he was correct or not, we don’t know. Even if was only “I wonder if that was her” it was worth letting the police know so they could pull the records and verify. It’ll either be valuable info or something to rule out.
While attention-seeking could certainly be a plausible *potential* motive for this guy, that doesn't necessarily mean it *is* his motive. Further, even if he is attention-seeking, that doesn't automatically mean he's lying. In this case, the guy's demeanor and bearing, the particular details in what he says, and the fact that his story can be easily discredited if he's lying would all suggest to me that he's more credible.
In particular, though, my internal "lie detector" has been given ample exercise over the years and proven to be extremely reliable, relative to most people I've ever known. That isn't meant as a boast but rather to explain why I put a lot of trust in my instincts about people's truthfulness (or lack thereof). And I think *he* believes what he's saying, which leads me to suspect he's either being honest or is honestly mistaken.
That said, I will absolutely cop to this just being my take on it, and although I, myself, have very good reason to trust my intuition, you don't know me and have no reason to do the same. So, make of it what you will, which probably is (and probably should be) nothing.
I didn't take the article to mean that we shouldn't ever be thinking about these things or evaluating ideas about them. Rather, I read it as an admonition for people to be more responsible if and when they do discuss these things. For example, commentators should be sticking to facts and avoiding egregiously unsupported speculation, should absolutely not be harassing people (and especially not the immediate loved ones, for Pete's sake!), and should likewise not be leading their followers in ways that encourage such harassment or internet vigilantism. But again, that's simply my interpretation of the piece, and it's perfectly valid for you to have come away with a different one.
"Yes, the new hypothesis in some TCCC circles is that Kiely never existed, or had a different name, or was her grandfather’s daughter."
I think once the postulations being put forward hit a certain level of outlandishness (the ones in the above quote would qualify, in my opinion), the people doing the postulation are, most likely, conspiracy theorists. And to be overly blunt, I suspect a lot of conspiracy theorists are mentally unwell. And I say this as a person with a close family member to whom this characterization would apply. I watched the journey as they descended deeper into their obsessions, becoming increasingly out of touch with reality, over a long period of time.
If we were looking at a single mentally unstable individual making wild claims, we'd probably view that as sad, but something to be expected, in a way. The claims are still weird, but in context, it's *not* weird that this person is making them. But that's not how we encounter this phenomenon anymore. On the Internet, a case of this nature is going to disproportionately attract a certain kind of (unstable) personality, prone to making and believing wild, irresponsible, and downright irrational claims. The staggering number of people who will engage in this way can make the behavior seem more widespread or normal than it really is. In reality, we're looking at hundreds (or even thousands) of accreted mentally unstable people making accordingly unstable claims. And, in theory, we should view it the same way we would view an unstable individual making such claims (sad but expected, given the relevant context), but our brains aren't really built to intuit this. As is likewise true of the Internet in so many other domains, the sheer quantity of people involved can skew our perceptions of the dynamics at play.
To be clear, this comment is not a criticism of your analysis, just me trying to offer my two cents on a particular aspect of the phenomenon. Also, none of what I've said is meant to excuse the kind of behavior you describe. (Particularly given that many or even most of these people are not true-blue conspiracy theorists in the first place, but rather just sensationalistic trauma tourists or opportunists cashing in on people's morbid curiosity.) It also doesn't make all of this stuff any less distressing to the people impacted, and that's worth emphasizing. But I think it does go a long way toward explaining why it occurs and maybe toward placing *some* of it more in the category of unfortunate and pitiable, rather than willfully negligent or malevolent. It doesn't make the consequences any better, but it is just the tiniest bit easier for me to accept people being ill than being evil. I never want that to blind me to genuine malignancy, but I'll take the mitigation when it occurs honestly, if that makes sense.
Many of the TCCCs making fake claims (like accusing some kid with no evidence and getting their followers to say hey you might be right, and then the kid is harassed because a subset of their followers believe it) I think are just trying to make a buck regardless of the cost to other people and the fact that it hurts the accused. I view that behavior very … negatively. It hurts people for one’s own gain.
But yes, there are also people who are mentally unwell: one in particular in this case has had an outsized influence. He has made some of the claims like Kiely’s not real or that another TCCC is a pedophile who had something to do with it. He does True Crime almost as a side gig and is more famous for something else.
I definitely, as you wisely point out, view him more as unwell than evil. I think he really doesn’t have enough of a grip on reality to be blamed for the things he says.
He’s more of a TCCC dabbler. But my big beef is more with the people, the TCCC “professionals,” who have taken every single wacky thing he says, and amplified it for their own clicks, instead
of saying, “well that’s off the wall, I hope his loved ones get him some help” and then go back to responsibly discussing the facts (which would leave them little to talk about).
So many of the TCCCs take the wacky claims of a sick person, and cynically (I think) create their own videos focused on the claims and examining whether they might be true. They’ll even have this guy on their own livestreams.
That this has an effect is evidenced (in my mind) by looking at the comments section of any of these people, even the somewhat more responsible ones, and seeing comments like “SHE’s NOT REAL!”
So…the one guy who makes the _most_ outlandish claims is unwell, I agree. The unfortunate people who roam the internet typing “SHE’S NOT REAL,” those who harass these kids and the family, are unwell I agree.
And I think we have this problem (as I alluded to in another comment) because we live in these huge electronic networks where every person who thinks in conspiratorial or paranoid ways can link up with all the others for validation.
When we all lived in bands of 100-150, if there was one person in the group who thought like this, all the others would keep them grounded in reality (or try), and if such a person did lash out, they were viewed as one sick voice among 149 sane ones. They just couldn’t do the damage these folks can today, when they _all_ start saying “Jagger is the killer!” and ruining this vulnerable kid’s life.
I mean, there is the tiniest chance that Jagger was involved in something terrible but this is what we have investigators for. Not every kid who’s been hounded and harassed and accused and who feels they have a permanent cloud over their name has done anything other than live through a tragedy.
So it’s sick people who are doing the terrible things. But it’s the TCCCs who are feeding this and encouraging it and that’s where my anger is directed.
Even in times when we lived in large groups but weren’t electronically hyper connected, say the 1950s, you could have some wacky ideas like rabid anti-communism, but it was still connected somewhat to reality (there was such a thing as communists).
But now, we’ve got unwell voices hyper connected in a digital world, amplified and validated by each other and reaching their targets, and you can get something completely divorced from reality, like the Q Anon crowd.
I don’t blame the believers so much — although they can do a lot of damage especially in their own families — but I do blame whoever is promoting the Q Anon stuff for clicks (or other purposes) who doesn’t care about the damage they do.
So my beef is with people who should know better (the content creators who don’t seem mentally unwell), but who do things that result in viciousness and destruction and harm anyway. I guess they have the plausible deniability of “I said these were just ideas! I didn’t tell anyone to hound Jagger off the internet and to the brink of an emotional breakdown.” But that’s the effect of what they’re doing. No one hold them accountable because this problem didn’t even exist in a pre-digital world.
It’s kinda like… when cars were a new thing, no one foresaw the consequence of air pollution and the effect on asthma sufferers, because there were just a few cars, driven once in a while. There was no air pollution with this new invention, not at first.
Now, with the internet, we didn’t foresee the consequence 30 years on (from the time when email was gee-whiz the latest thing and there wasn’t much of anything on the internet but dry college professors) of what happens when formerly isolated conspiratorial thinkers all have the means to find their tribe for validation, and then there’s a bad effect on all of us.
What do we do about that? How do we regulate it? Can it be regulated without stomping on the first Amendment? If not, how do the 149/150ths of the rational people protect people like Jagger from the 1/150ths of the unwell people who now have the means to band together and attack him in a way that no doubt feels overwhelming? There’s got to be some way.
That makes perfect sense. When you say, "my beef is with people who should know better", that sums it up for me too. Also, the dynamic you mention, in which conspiritorial thinkers gather and reinforce each other, had a major and negative impact on the family member I mentioned. So, anyone who really *does* know better and stokes the unwell by sanewashing ridiculous claims -- particularly for personal/financial gain -- is not on my good side, and I have nothing positive to say about that behavior.
There was a subreddit a while back (and I can’t remember why I ever came across it) all about providing support for people whose families had been disrupted or even destroyed by a family member who truly believed all the Q Anon stuff.
Some of the stories were so outrageous— and it was heartbreaking to hear about the real world effects of these beliefs and what some people had suffered because some weird troll had started Q Anon no doubt as a big joke. Some joke right?
No. It’s so disastrous to encourage people whose minds tend this way, and it doesn’t affect only them but their families too.
Dolly, I’m not sure there is a way to stop it. To me the real problem is that there is a market/audience for it. There are so many nasty, ugly things in our culture today that get way too much attention- movies, TV shows, video games, music all have popular subsets that are truly vile. But apparently fairly large numbers of people find them to be just fine. Ugliness has always existed, and efforts have always been made to eliminate it. Those efforts never succeed- remember Tipper Gore’s crusade?
A healthy society has only a few people who latch onto these things, as in your 149-1 example. Our problem is that the ratio has skewed far beyond safe levels. Is that a surprise when antidepressants and other mental health drugs are the biggest sellers (and this in a society where there are so many people on heart or diabetes medication)?
I think it isn’t that there are more sick people than in earlier times (maybe?), but that they can band together in ways they couldn’t when we were all isolated in little villages. To use the “1 in 150” example again: Suppose that in every village of 150 people there’s one sick person. Everyone else can keep them in check (or prevent the damage they do from being too great). They’re easy to control or ignore.
But in a nation of 335,000,000, that means more than 2 million sick people, all connected on the internet, all encouraging each other in their disordered thinking, all piling on some teenager whom they suspect of murder.
The one unstable village troublemaker can falsely accuse you of murder and you have the support of everyone else in the village. But on a bigger scale, of even a small portion of the 2 million sick people in your country come at you, it can be overwhelming.
Unwell people have such a big effect now.
I do agree that people are looking to medications to help them (which probably don’t always help them). That’s definitely increased.
Chip and Dan Heath wrote an interesting book called, "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" It studies what makes ideas attractive and memorable against the backdrop of human nature. One example- humans love secrets. A secret gives the possessor social currency. And we're terrible at keeping them
A bar in NYC took advantage of this irresistible human impulse by going stealth. They "hid" their location. There was no apparent door. No marketing. No business cards. No signs. Only those 'in the know" knew how to get in. Milwaukee has a similar place. They brought in some social influencers. That's all it took. People wanting to be in the know (another human trait carrying social currency) clambered to get in. Social currency climbed further by offering exclusivity. It became a raging success in short order
Social currency carries enormous weight in today's society. It forms the basis for personal brands. It's why we see so much virtue signaling. Virtue's social currency strengthens personal brand. When politicians lack good ideas, they target their opponent's social currency. As his/ her currency drops, people are less likely to associate with the candidate. Social currency, however, is subjective and fickle. An action might be viewed as a negative in one group while positive in another. Rules change quickly
Is not absolute, but it is a very powerful force. In a way, I believe many among us value social currency more than anything else, certainly above the act itself. My theory- what drives wild conspiracies is that it brings social currency (standing) from within the TC community. People on these podcasts talk of revered names in the community as if they are the second coming. They care more about their personal brand than the lives of the victims and their families
Really interesting stuff— and I wish I understood it better! In our city we have a similar bar (I’ve not bothered to find out the details though haha). That book will have to go on my very long “To Read” list!
Thank you for the update. Appalling internet/social media behavior, which has become commonplace from what I understand.
I can’t imagine what her family, friends, and her community are going through. My sincere condolences to all.
It’s well past time for us to examine our conscience as a society.
I agree. Some times I wonder whether having such large social groups (and people we hear about online) makes us much colder to each other than when humans lived in little bands with 100 people whom they all knew very well. It would take a lot for you to accuse one of the 100 people you rely on for your survival of murder. Now it’s easy for thousands of people you’ve never met to bully you and ruin your life from a distance.
It seems people have lost sight of the fact that these are real people with real lives that they so easily trash.
I’m not religious, but “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” and the Golden Rule come to mind.
Thank you for the follow up. Tragedy follows tragedy. How can people behave this way and sleep at night? Curiosity and wanting closure for the family, feeling empathy for them, that's a natural response. Wanting to assist, sure. But this? Dehumanization, plain, simple and very sad
Your description of those roads reminds me of driving through Wisconsin's back woods on fishing excursions. You're right. Very unlikely it could be done accidentally. It's challenging even intentionally, especially at night. That's for the experts to figure out. Ruining lives for sport, what a shameful exercise. Calling them narcissistic insults narcissists. Sounds like a good bar fight might be in order
I hope the experts do figure it out, so this craziness will stop and the family will have answers and some peace.
Amen. I admire the way you treat subjects. Situations like this require special care because of the collateral damage speculation brings. You treated this exactly as it deserves. I've been haunted by this after reading part 1. If there are worse things in this world than losing a child, with such potential and love, they escape me
Thank you JD. I can’t imagine anything worse.
I’m now hearing rumors that the local LE are planning to consider this an accident even though it doesn’t convincingly add up. Two sources for that — Kiely’s family’s PI who seems perhaps slightly unstable and not 100% reliable/credible, who says he’s had that straight from LE but doesn’t name names; and a random person online whose credibility or identity I know nothing about, who said she’s married to someone in one of the sheriffs’ offices (Placer or Nevada?) and says the whole thing is being swept under the rug because [vague reason implying an LE teen son was involved somehow].
No idea of whether any of that is credible, but it did seem odd that the diver who found Kiely’s laptop and other personal items yesterday was totally blown off by local LE who weren’t interested at all in the items’ recovery, and either said or implied that the investigation was all but over with. Why would they not want her laptop unless they were writing this off? But why _wouldn’t_ they want her laptop and to recover all the items for the family, even if it was just an accident?
The whole thing is seeming sloppy and cavalier. I hope I’m wrong. The family deserve accurate answers.
Nature abhors a vacuum, they say. LE, of course, has not helped - claiming to have a video of Kiely wearing the Odd Future hoodie, but giving us a library image, rather than a still, for example.
But there are questions unanswered... The timeline from 0025-0040H makes no sense, because it requires Kiely to drive Sanctuary-Lake-Sanctuary, in 6' from Elsa Pekarek's sighting at 0030H in order for Kiely's phone to ping at the Lake at 0033H, and then be back in time to call Sami at 0036H.
That isn't possible without using the TARDIS. So, either Elsa and/or Sami is lying, or Kiely wasn't at the Lake at 0033H, but her phone was... I don't like to be a conspiracist, but I didn't construct that timeline!
In my experience, one should allow a few minutes in either direction to allow for delays, infrequent pings, or phones whose times don’t quite match.
My understanding was that Elsa saw Kiely at midnight ish. I saw that info on a network affiliate news website, but I haven’t confirmed any of the other details I’ve heard about Elsa (for example, that Kiely supposedly told her she wanted to go home). All I’ve been able to confirm about Elsa is that she says she saw Kiely at the party at midnight ish.
Kiely’s phone’s last ping was at the reservoir at 12:33 ish. After that, we can supposed the phone was permanently off or destroyed.
At about that same time, Sami claims to have received a call from that phone, and that the call was from Kiely asking her about whether she needed a ride (even though also according to Sami, they’d had this conversation in person, 10 minutes before). She claims to have heard party noise in the background, which wouldn’t fit if Kiely’s phone went permanently off or was destroyed at the reservoir at about the same time.
So while I wouldn’t put too much stock in the times to-the-minute, I agree there might be an issue here with the reliability of Sami’s narrative or memory.
Love your TCCC analogy. Kind of perfect. They really do not think they are causing harm and if they know they are they do not care. They take a theory then arrange facts afterward. Problem is the will deny and argue with scientific facts about cases and still hound people they think are guilty. I will say 1 thing that is fact and one that is my read of a person. If 1 window was half way down and the other either rolled down or broken out (might not be anything suspicious, could be from when car rolled over and hit rock on bottom) she could have floated to back. Either with or without current she could have floated to back. Now that is really the only fact besides her car was found upside down, in 14 feet of water and she was in the back. Really everything else is speculation. Fights, kids acting strange, or coverups, come on all high schools are dramavilles. Someone hears the word cops and watch kids flee. Her friend not riding with her for whatever reason, happens all the time and as long as she was not involved in anything sneaky will carry that pain with her the rest of her life. Any speculation is just people guessing and causing problems. Anything besides car found, she was in it, and it was upside down 14 days after she was at a party is just guessing and people should leave this poor town and people alone. Then if more facts are released half these TCCC's are going to scream coverup and still cyber attack who they think did it. Without facts its all guessing. My next comment is a speculation from my experience with people. That Nick guy is FOS. He wanted to be in front of camera and name said.
Yeah... I agree we know very few facts... including a few facts (like the location of her body) that maybe no one should know yet until the investigation is complete.
And totally agree-- this town and these people have been through so much. Even if there was foul play, the majority of people accused and dragged have had nothing to do with it -- they have to deal with accusations and hate on top of their grief. I can’t imagine. Being a mother, I feel a lot for Kiely’s mother. Just unimaginable.
Also, watching that AWP video interview with the roadside assistance guy...I don't know. He really reads as sincere/straightforward to me. I wouldn't rule out him being mistaken, by any means, but I really think he's telling the truth as he understands it. Maybe they don't have dashcams and the timeline was never updated because they couldn't confirm it?
[Edit: Never mind, he said they do have dashcams, so I don't know. It's weird, for sure.]
Yes I felt like he is telling the truth as he sees it too.
I think he has no reason not to, because the receipts will be there either way: my understanding is, before he ever ran into AWP and told them what he told them, law enforcement had already received all the records —the paper trail and the videos.
So my only question is, if this was Kiely and she’d been seen, why did law enforcement not update the public when the search was still active? Instead of last being seen on video the night before at 6pm, they’d need to update the public and say “she was seen Saturday morning at 11.”
The most likely answer is, because they looked at the evidence and they could see it wasn’t Kiely. (?) Just my guess.
Now, the investigators are not going to get back to every person who gave them a tip and said “you were mistaken sir.”
But if they ruled that out as a Kiely sighting, despite this guy’s best intentions and honesty in coming forward (and really, why would someone bother to lie, knowing that the records exist about what car it was and who the people were?) we would hear nothing about it from the authorities, and indeed we haven’t.
That’s why my money’s on “it wasn’t a Kiely sighting” — but who knows!
That makes sense. The only other thing I could think of would be the police specifically choosing to withhold the information, as is sometimes done when they don't want a suspect to know all of the evidence/witnesses/whatever. But given that she was still missing at the time, that seems much less likely, because it could have hindered her being found, which I don't think they would have done.
You know ... now that you mention it though... suppose law enforcement were told about the video and road service records Aug 14, as Nick said, but they didn’t get the records right away. Maybe, say, they had to wait till Monday to request the records, and then hadn’t yet received them by the end of the week (not completely out of the question?) Or suppose they received the records quickly but they were going through so many other tips and searching so many other places that no one reviewed the records right away.
It’s possible, you’ve just made me realize, that Kiely could have been found (Aug 21) before those records were reviewed. Then the investigators wouldn’t reveal what they learned (yet) since it wouldn’t help find her. She’d been found.
In that case, maybe there is something to Nick’s story. Maybe there’s something about that road service call that pertains to the case.But... I guess we won’t know for a while.
I’m so sad for Kiely and her family. I don’t know how “knowing what happened” can possibly make it any better. But I just want to know.
Hmm, that's a good point. I have a few thoughts, but I don't want to share them publicly. If I get a chance later today or tomorrow, maybe I'll email you. Is there a way to DM a Substack author? Like, if I responded to the email for this post, does that go to you?
I think it would? I’ve gotten a few random emails which I assume came to me that way.
thesalonniere@protonmail.com is a good email address! :)
Hmmm -so does this lead to Nick the Road Assistance guy becoming the focus? Is he telling the truth? Or is he just trying to get attention? It is human nature to try to unravel puzzles. But be careful not to fall into the same trap the article describes.
I think he’s being honest, and he knew LE’s next move was to get the records. Whether he was correct or not, we don’t know. Even if was only “I wonder if that was her” it was worth letting the police know so they could pull the records and verify. It’ll either be valuable info or something to rule out.
While attention-seeking could certainly be a plausible *potential* motive for this guy, that doesn't necessarily mean it *is* his motive. Further, even if he is attention-seeking, that doesn't automatically mean he's lying. In this case, the guy's demeanor and bearing, the particular details in what he says, and the fact that his story can be easily discredited if he's lying would all suggest to me that he's more credible.
In particular, though, my internal "lie detector" has been given ample exercise over the years and proven to be extremely reliable, relative to most people I've ever known. That isn't meant as a boast but rather to explain why I put a lot of trust in my instincts about people's truthfulness (or lack thereof). And I think *he* believes what he's saying, which leads me to suspect he's either being honest or is honestly mistaken.
That said, I will absolutely cop to this just being my take on it, and although I, myself, have very good reason to trust my intuition, you don't know me and have no reason to do the same. So, make of it what you will, which probably is (and probably should be) nothing.
I didn't take the article to mean that we shouldn't ever be thinking about these things or evaluating ideas about them. Rather, I read it as an admonition for people to be more responsible if and when they do discuss these things. For example, commentators should be sticking to facts and avoiding egregiously unsupported speculation, should absolutely not be harassing people (and especially not the immediate loved ones, for Pete's sake!), and should likewise not be leading their followers in ways that encourage such harassment or internet vigilantism. But again, that's simply my interpretation of the piece, and it's perfectly valid for you to have come away with a different one.
"Yes, the new hypothesis in some TCCC circles is that Kiely never existed, or had a different name, or was her grandfather’s daughter."
I think once the postulations being put forward hit a certain level of outlandishness (the ones in the above quote would qualify, in my opinion), the people doing the postulation are, most likely, conspiracy theorists. And to be overly blunt, I suspect a lot of conspiracy theorists are mentally unwell. And I say this as a person with a close family member to whom this characterization would apply. I watched the journey as they descended deeper into their obsessions, becoming increasingly out of touch with reality, over a long period of time.
If we were looking at a single mentally unstable individual making wild claims, we'd probably view that as sad, but something to be expected, in a way. The claims are still weird, but in context, it's *not* weird that this person is making them. But that's not how we encounter this phenomenon anymore. On the Internet, a case of this nature is going to disproportionately attract a certain kind of (unstable) personality, prone to making and believing wild, irresponsible, and downright irrational claims. The staggering number of people who will engage in this way can make the behavior seem more widespread or normal than it really is. In reality, we're looking at hundreds (or even thousands) of accreted mentally unstable people making accordingly unstable claims. And, in theory, we should view it the same way we would view an unstable individual making such claims (sad but expected, given the relevant context), but our brains aren't really built to intuit this. As is likewise true of the Internet in so many other domains, the sheer quantity of people involved can skew our perceptions of the dynamics at play.
To be clear, this comment is not a criticism of your analysis, just me trying to offer my two cents on a particular aspect of the phenomenon. Also, none of what I've said is meant to excuse the kind of behavior you describe. (Particularly given that many or even most of these people are not true-blue conspiracy theorists in the first place, but rather just sensationalistic trauma tourists or opportunists cashing in on people's morbid curiosity.) It also doesn't make all of this stuff any less distressing to the people impacted, and that's worth emphasizing. But I think it does go a long way toward explaining why it occurs and maybe toward placing *some* of it more in the category of unfortunate and pitiable, rather than willfully negligent or malevolent. It doesn't make the consequences any better, but it is just the tiniest bit easier for me to accept people being ill than being evil. I never want that to blind me to genuine malignancy, but I'll take the mitigation when it occurs honestly, if that makes sense.
Yes. I agree with a lot of this.
Many of the TCCCs making fake claims (like accusing some kid with no evidence and getting their followers to say hey you might be right, and then the kid is harassed because a subset of their followers believe it) I think are just trying to make a buck regardless of the cost to other people and the fact that it hurts the accused. I view that behavior very … negatively. It hurts people for one’s own gain.
But yes, there are also people who are mentally unwell: one in particular in this case has had an outsized influence. He has made some of the claims like Kiely’s not real or that another TCCC is a pedophile who had something to do with it. He does True Crime almost as a side gig and is more famous for something else.
I definitely, as you wisely point out, view him more as unwell than evil. I think he really doesn’t have enough of a grip on reality to be blamed for the things he says.
He’s more of a TCCC dabbler. But my big beef is more with the people, the TCCC “professionals,” who have taken every single wacky thing he says, and amplified it for their own clicks, instead
of saying, “well that’s off the wall, I hope his loved ones get him some help” and then go back to responsibly discussing the facts (which would leave them little to talk about).
So many of the TCCCs take the wacky claims of a sick person, and cynically (I think) create their own videos focused on the claims and examining whether they might be true. They’ll even have this guy on their own livestreams.
That this has an effect is evidenced (in my mind) by looking at the comments section of any of these people, even the somewhat more responsible ones, and seeing comments like “SHE’s NOT REAL!”
So…the one guy who makes the _most_ outlandish claims is unwell, I agree. The unfortunate people who roam the internet typing “SHE’S NOT REAL,” those who harass these kids and the family, are unwell I agree.
And I think we have this problem (as I alluded to in another comment) because we live in these huge electronic networks where every person who thinks in conspiratorial or paranoid ways can link up with all the others for validation.
When we all lived in bands of 100-150, if there was one person in the group who thought like this, all the others would keep them grounded in reality (or try), and if such a person did lash out, they were viewed as one sick voice among 149 sane ones. They just couldn’t do the damage these folks can today, when they _all_ start saying “Jagger is the killer!” and ruining this vulnerable kid’s life.
I mean, there is the tiniest chance that Jagger was involved in something terrible but this is what we have investigators for. Not every kid who’s been hounded and harassed and accused and who feels they have a permanent cloud over their name has done anything other than live through a tragedy.
So it’s sick people who are doing the terrible things. But it’s the TCCCs who are feeding this and encouraging it and that’s where my anger is directed.
Even in times when we lived in large groups but weren’t electronically hyper connected, say the 1950s, you could have some wacky ideas like rabid anti-communism, but it was still connected somewhat to reality (there was such a thing as communists).
But now, we’ve got unwell voices hyper connected in a digital world, amplified and validated by each other and reaching their targets, and you can get something completely divorced from reality, like the Q Anon crowd.
I don’t blame the believers so much — although they can do a lot of damage especially in their own families — but I do blame whoever is promoting the Q Anon stuff for clicks (or other purposes) who doesn’t care about the damage they do.
So my beef is with people who should know better (the content creators who don’t seem mentally unwell), but who do things that result in viciousness and destruction and harm anyway. I guess they have the plausible deniability of “I said these were just ideas! I didn’t tell anyone to hound Jagger off the internet and to the brink of an emotional breakdown.” But that’s the effect of what they’re doing. No one hold them accountable because this problem didn’t even exist in a pre-digital world.
It’s kinda like… when cars were a new thing, no one foresaw the consequence of air pollution and the effect on asthma sufferers, because there were just a few cars, driven once in a while. There was no air pollution with this new invention, not at first.
Now, with the internet, we didn’t foresee the consequence 30 years on (from the time when email was gee-whiz the latest thing and there wasn’t much of anything on the internet but dry college professors) of what happens when formerly isolated conspiratorial thinkers all have the means to find their tribe for validation, and then there’s a bad effect on all of us.
What do we do about that? How do we regulate it? Can it be regulated without stomping on the first Amendment? If not, how do the 149/150ths of the rational people protect people like Jagger from the 1/150ths of the unwell people who now have the means to band together and attack him in a way that no doubt feels overwhelming? There’s got to be some way.
That makes perfect sense. When you say, "my beef is with people who should know better", that sums it up for me too. Also, the dynamic you mention, in which conspiritorial thinkers gather and reinforce each other, had a major and negative impact on the family member I mentioned. So, anyone who really *does* know better and stokes the unwell by sanewashing ridiculous claims -- particularly for personal/financial gain -- is not on my good side, and I have nothing positive to say about that behavior.
💯
There was a subreddit a while back (and I can’t remember why I ever came across it) all about providing support for people whose families had been disrupted or even destroyed by a family member who truly believed all the Q Anon stuff.
Some of the stories were so outrageous— and it was heartbreaking to hear about the real world effects of these beliefs and what some people had suffered because some weird troll had started Q Anon no doubt as a big joke. Some joke right?
No. It’s so disastrous to encourage people whose minds tend this way, and it doesn’t affect only them but their families too.
Dolly, I’m not sure there is a way to stop it. To me the real problem is that there is a market/audience for it. There are so many nasty, ugly things in our culture today that get way too much attention- movies, TV shows, video games, music all have popular subsets that are truly vile. But apparently fairly large numbers of people find them to be just fine. Ugliness has always existed, and efforts have always been made to eliminate it. Those efforts never succeed- remember Tipper Gore’s crusade?
A healthy society has only a few people who latch onto these things, as in your 149-1 example. Our problem is that the ratio has skewed far beyond safe levels. Is that a surprise when antidepressants and other mental health drugs are the biggest sellers (and this in a society where there are so many people on heart or diabetes medication)?
I think it isn’t that there are more sick people than in earlier times (maybe?), but that they can band together in ways they couldn’t when we were all isolated in little villages. To use the “1 in 150” example again: Suppose that in every village of 150 people there’s one sick person. Everyone else can keep them in check (or prevent the damage they do from being too great). They’re easy to control or ignore.
But in a nation of 335,000,000, that means more than 2 million sick people, all connected on the internet, all encouraging each other in their disordered thinking, all piling on some teenager whom they suspect of murder.
The one unstable village troublemaker can falsely accuse you of murder and you have the support of everyone else in the village. But on a bigger scale, of even a small portion of the 2 million sick people in your country come at you, it can be overwhelming.
Unwell people have such a big effect now.
I do agree that people are looking to medications to help them (which probably don’t always help them). That’s definitely increased.
Chip and Dan Heath wrote an interesting book called, "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" It studies what makes ideas attractive and memorable against the backdrop of human nature. One example- humans love secrets. A secret gives the possessor social currency. And we're terrible at keeping them
A bar in NYC took advantage of this irresistible human impulse by going stealth. They "hid" their location. There was no apparent door. No marketing. No business cards. No signs. Only those 'in the know" knew how to get in. Milwaukee has a similar place. They brought in some social influencers. That's all it took. People wanting to be in the know (another human trait carrying social currency) clambered to get in. Social currency climbed further by offering exclusivity. It became a raging success in short order
Social currency carries enormous weight in today's society. It forms the basis for personal brands. It's why we see so much virtue signaling. Virtue's social currency strengthens personal brand. When politicians lack good ideas, they target their opponent's social currency. As his/ her currency drops, people are less likely to associate with the candidate. Social currency, however, is subjective and fickle. An action might be viewed as a negative in one group while positive in another. Rules change quickly
Is not absolute, but it is a very powerful force. In a way, I believe many among us value social currency more than anything else, certainly above the act itself. My theory- what drives wild conspiracies is that it brings social currency (standing) from within the TC community. People on these podcasts talk of revered names in the community as if they are the second coming. They care more about their personal brand than the lives of the victims and their families
Really interesting stuff— and I wish I understood it better! In our city we have a similar bar (I’ve not bothered to find out the details though haha). That book will have to go on my very long “To Read” list!