Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Some Questions about Wade's Death

Here is a comment from this site:

http://crimeblog.us/?p=328

The comment was made by Laura Linger,

http://lauralinger.blogspot.com/

"...there is a LOT about the story that doesn’t make sense
first of all, they just got back from spring break
when campus is basically deserted"

disappeared during one holiday and reappeared after another.

"...second, they had sniffing cadaver mutts in the entire area, and those mutts can sniff from far distances, and they picked up nothing. now, either the mutts weren’t working hard that day due to some sort of labor dispute, or there wasn’t a body present"

I know that dogs have been less than reliable in some cases, but...

"...third, there would have been a smell immediately identifiable other than a rotting corpse. what does a body do when it is exposed to high voltage? it cooks. we are meat just like any other animal"

I have been unfortunate enough to find a person who had been deceased for several days. The presence of the laundry room and fabric softener dryer sheets is NOT going t be sufficient to mask that odour. NOTHING masks that odour.

"...fourth, Wade’s friends say quite definitively that he was NOT drunk when he left the party"

They could, perhaps, be lying, but until an autopsy report states otherwise, I believe them.

"... fifth, Wade’s friends say quite definitively that he really had a crush on the girl he was going to visit, and didn’t want to seem a sloppy drunk in front of her"

Makes sens to me.

"...sixth, and this is the big one: WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS CELL PHONE?"

Inquiring minds want to know.

"...seventh, couldn’t Wade read? it said “High Voltage”

Apparently, the outside door was not so marked. It was, however, below ground level and surrounded by a railing, according to several articles I've read.

"...eighth, how are they sure that he tripped?"

I believe they are surmising this.

"...ninth, why did it take them so long to identify the body? I would think that a cursory ID could have been made at the scene as to the clothing he was wearing"

Clothing is not a definitive identification. One would hate to be wrong. Of course, common sense would indicate that it was him, as nobody else had been reported missing. Still, officially, a "cursory ID" does not cut the mustard.

"...tenth, and this is the biggest one for me: this is a kid who was at Purdue on a full-ride scholarship for engineering who switched to aviation tech because he found airplanes more interesting. in other words, smart kid and sure as hell would have known the dangers of high voltage. the purdue people “surmise” that Wade felt he could get into the building that way. Okay, we know that he already could access the building…he ate dinner there and used his ATM card (supposedly re: the card)."

Yeah, hello...did getting cold make him totally stupid?

"...eleventh, did he have the fifty dollars’ cash that he supposedly removed from his account right before he “stumbled” into the high voltage room?"

Maybe that got burned when he did.

"...twelfth, why was Wade’s computer left on, logged in, with his slippers nearby, something that his roommate has sworn over and over again that Wade would never, ever do? He was compulsive about turning his computer off if he was going to be gone for any length of time.

I had not heard this. If he truly was "compulsive" about turning it off, it's something that should be looked into. Has his computer history been checked?

"...thirteenth, why did it take TWO MONTHS for the “pinging” noise to happen?"

My first question.

"...fourteenth, have authorities verified the noise?"

My second.

"...fifteenth, have authorities questioned the students who reported this supposed noise?"

I would think they would have, but who knows?

"...sixteenth: How does a person get into a high-voltage room that has two separate doors with two locks each long after any maintenance person would have gone home? (To me, this is the most important unanswered question.)"

That's one that has been answered. The outside door was supposedly unlocked. Incompetent, to say the least.

"...seventeenth: Just who made the call regarding the pinging noise - do we even know who they are, or was it an “anonymous” call.

"For if both doors to this room were left open by a maintenance person that night - highly unlikely, in my opinion, considering the type of room that it is - that would open Purdue up to a big ol’ piece of lawsuit. Furthermore, if the doors were open for him to get in, how did they get re-locked afterwards, as they indicated they were when the initial search was underway? That would imply that someone locked them, right? And if both doors had been left unlocked, you would think that a reasonable maintenance man, discovering this the next day/week, would have gone inside to check it out…
… at which point, as you noted, he should have, well, smelled that something wasn’t right. The dogs may not have been around at that time, but a charred piece of freshman would have produced quite an odor… and no one at all would have noticed this over the course of three months?"

Well, two.

"To me, the explanation of how he got inside there hasn’t been answered at all yet, and it’s the most important question of all. It just seems so highly improbable that the consecutive doors to the most dangerous room in the residence hall was left unlocked and unattended on the exact same night that Wade Steffey would have allegedly stumbled into - drunk or not, it ultimately doesn’t matter, IMHO - and groped around in until he met his untimely demise in the form of a transformer that didn’t short out or hiccup the power or anything."

This, for me, is HUGE. When a squirrel can knock out a whole neighbourhood by landing on a transformer, SOMETHING should have happened to the power in that building.

Hopefully, we will get some answers soon.

4 comments:

  1. No, I love it.

    No toes stepped on, at all :-)

    This poor kid. So many questions and no answers. Well, answers, but not by authorities.

    Wade deserves better.

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  2. Thank you!

    I agree. I never could resist a person with that open face and huge smile.

    He does deserve better!

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  3. If anything untoward happens to me, John has been instructed to hire you as the investigator Ronni.

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  4. I had a lot of help from Laura Linger on this.

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