In 1986, a 15 year old girl, Tracy Gilpin was murdered. She attended a friends party, and then left with some friends to walk home. The last place she was seen, was in a convinence store buying cigarettes. Three weeks later, a women found the body of a dead teenage girl about 14 miles away from the last place she was seen. The authorities determined that Tracy had been brutally murdered by a blow to the head, and was murdered on the same night she dissappeared. In an attemp to find the killer, authorities searched for clues and questioned many people, but the murderer wasn't found until 31 years later. Tracy's murderer was identified as 61 year old, Michael Hand, who will be seen in court on Monday. Investigators have not said how they cam to the conclusion that Hand was the murderer.
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Questions:
1.) Why do you think it took investigators 31 years to find the man who murdered Tracy?
2.) How do you think the authorities eventually found Michael Hand.
My Answers:
I think that the investigators were searching for Tracy's murderer for a long time, but other cases came up, so the murder was pushed off and placed on the backburner. I think that even though the authorities weren't constantly seaching for the murderer, they kept coming back to the case and eventually found enough evidence and information to locate Micheal Hand.
Replies
Well done Abby! -5 late
1) I think that they didn't have enough evidence and they wanted to be sure that they were getting the right guy.
2) I think that they finllay found enough evidence and then just took him away.
I agree, I think that the authorities tried to find all of the clues they could before they accused Michael Hand of being Tracy's murderer.
I think they either weren't looking very hard, or he left and then returned recently thinking the investigation was over. I think they found him because he was either not the actual murderer and they just want to frame him or he was careless thinking the investigation was over.
It is also a possibility that Michael Hand was one of the only suspects and they could have just decided to determine him guilty, I agree with you.
Maybe the technology wasn't as good back then. Also they might hav jsut tried harder to find clues and asking questions. Im not sure how they found mchael Hand as the person who killed her.
I agree, the authorities might have just gone back and really evaluated the case and started asking questions that they hadn't thought of before to get some answers out of anyone who might have seen something.
I think it took them so long for one main reason: They didn't have many leads on anything to do with her murder, she was found 3 weeks after she was dead and the killer could have been on the otherside of the world by then. I think it was just a matter of time before someone stumbled over her and when they did they would report it. It was also 14 miles from where she disappeared, which was probably far away from where investigatiors were looking.
That is a really good point. In three weeks, the killer could have ended up anywhere, making him harder to find. And the authorities also didn't have many leads on the suspect.
1.) Either Hand made every single hint that could have led to him disappear or the police might haave not paid attention to something that could have helped to find the murderer earlier.
2.) There's a lot of possibilities for that and I'm excited to hear how they found him. Maybe they had the opportunity to finally talk to witnesses or perhaps they found an old recorded video or something like that.
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