DAYS AFTER THE MURDER

....data dump only.No discussions please....

it just dawned on me that maybe sam called the cops to check out the basement sound as a sort of experiment. cause, if this is true that the cops could only enter the basement away from where the bodies were at, then no smell could be detected. just a thought,,, i could be way off in my thinking too....

Originally Posted by AndresEscobar I think we're reading too much into the sharpies. I'm thinking they either had, ahem, matter on them or they were taken from the house to determine whether they were used in writing the note the Mel.

Andres, I am having a terrible time trying to keep up. I get overly busy with my startup and end up needing to stay away for a few days. When I return, there are 20 more pages of messages :-) So I hope you'll forgive me asking: how do we know that the letter/note was to Mel? I know there was speculation that her father might have left a note for her with Sam, but has that been established beyond mere speculation? Maybe we are thinking of different notes, though I admit it is very likely that I missed a followup message after the first post mentioning the note/letter. On the other hand, there is certainly nothing wrong with speculation!

I ask because I was speculating otherwise :-D One possible explanation for (one of?) the handwritten note(s) was that Sam wrote it as part of a bumbling attempt at alibi. He mentioned to some driver or another that he waited for his girlfriend to fall asleep and left before she awoke. Perhaps that conversation combined with a phony goodbye note, ala "Sorry Emma, I love you but it's not working out. I had to leave thx for the hospitality <333333333" was meant to introduce reasonable doubt regarding his involvement in her murder.

Some have already speculated that his call to the police about spooky sounds in the basement might have been an attempt at misdirection as well. To be clear, I am not insinuating that this would be a sensible move; rather, it seems a pretty hopeless act. But he was almost certainly desperate at one point or another, and he might have become convinced that "it's just like I told that driver" + "scary sounds in the basement, after all if I murdered them OF COURSE I wouldn't call the cops" + "see, I even left a bittersweet goodbye note" was better than nothing.

If the police wanted to show that the note (and, perhaps by implication, his other attempts at establishing doubt) should be not given credence, they might want to link the note to the sharpies that were found, especially if said sharpies might be linked to trace blood evidence. Should they be able to establish such a link, it would evidence the theory that he wrote the note only after the poor victims had been murdered.

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All, a side note regarding the opiates found on the scene:

People often forget that oxycodone is a very, very common opiate that is found in many different strengths and configurations. The street term "oxies" almost always refers to either 30mg immediate release oxycodone (often called "blues" because of the color and/or "roxies" after the most common brand name) or 80mg time-released oxycodone (aka "oxycontin", also a brand eponym.) The pills mentioned in the report are less likely to result in a "extreme" addiction and/or abuse because they were: 1) <= 10mg methinks, and -- more importantly -- 2) mixed with large amounts of tylenol. The tylenol (err acetaminophen, damn these brand eponyms!) frustrates abuse in several ways, among the most effective of which are: 1) they make it far more difficult to ingest the substance using a more short-acting and potent (ergo, more addictive) delivery system (eg, smoking or injecting; even snorting a pile of tylenol should be far more difficult than snorting a few mg of oxycodone), and 2) when taken orally in sufficiently high quantity and over large periods of time they can do significant damage to the liver and kidneys, and even cause organ pain shortly after intake, which of course serves to disincentivize significant overuse.

All that said, people do sometimes abuse and develop dependency and/or addiction to 10mg and even 5mg percocets (another brand eponym; ie, oxycodone + acetaminophen.) But that is not what most people mean when they use the term "oxies", and, eg, it should definitely not be surprising to learn that a patient was driving while using percocet (or even 30mg oxycodone for that matter, depending on circumstances). Their use should not suggest the presence of addiction or a "drug problem", per se.


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All, thanks for all of the interesting hypothesizing and speculation. I feel like I am reading a (great, sad, thrilling) novel when I visit this site. I just hope that the truth is soon uncovered and that those responsible suffer the proper and just punishment for their crimes.

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p.s. Let me go ahead and ruin an otherwise perfectly fine post by mentioning that I've never seen that acronym "IANAL" before. I looked it up and now know its meaning, so thanks for that, but am I the only person above the age of 12 that chortles when I see it because I can't help but to imagine an Apple ad for a new and interesting mac peripheral?

Originally Posted by Angels_Not_Forgotten I was curious to the scent as well...maybe it may play more into ritualistic than I originally gave credence to. Or maybe he was trying to burn down the house. Maybe the smell just plain sucked even to him. ah who knows by now. For all we know, he was trying to seduce emma and had the candles out before hand and when that didn't work he snapped. We just don't know much and that SUCKS! calling the in laws this afternoon, I need some VA insight!! Tapu, i'll ask about all of the questions above, my MIL is a court junkie as well, so she should be up on the case!

Leilah Wendell, the necromantic author mentioned by SickTanick in his O.T.O. interview, mentions the use of scents in the form of incense in her Necromantic Ritual Book.

Rose - for the spirit of a departed loved one
Sandalwood - for the ministering elementals/guardian spirits
Musk - for the protective spirit
Jasmine - for the Angel of Death

There is also a ritual in this book that calls for "easy access to at least one corpse" and use of a "hollyberry" scented candle.

FWIW.

Originally Posted by Jessi It's strange to introduce myself - I have been reading this thread since the very beginning. I check it at least once a day, even when I work 18 hour days (which is often!) My imagination was first captured by this case by a local rumor, one that I don't actually think is true as I've not seen mention of it anywhere official. I was at a winery not too far from Farmville for a work function and the dinner discussion turned to this case - someone said that the killer had asked some neighborhood teens to come in to the house at some point after clearly the murders had been committed - I've not seen this anywhere but from a local that night, so I assume it is not true. Has anyone else heard this? Anyway, after that night I started researching this case and immediately stumbled upon this thread. I look forward to contributing in the future but I guess mostly right now it is a waiting game. Pleased to meet all of you officially though!

I live in Farmville, work with college students, and live near the murder house and I've never heard that rumor.

I read so much trying to catch up with the threads this week-end, I don't remember whether or not the subject of Sam videoing the crime was bought up....After reading, someone (sick) had called police , giving the info from another person,,,I immediately thought he had sent live pics to this person....Now, after reading the resignation of syniister, with WIR, I feel more than ever syniister actually saw the crime scene live and maybe Sam even peppered the scene up by walking syniister through and doing even more stuff, if that is possible.....I don't believe syniisater would have believed Sam, if this had not happened.......What say you???? Also, I would like to tell everyone who puts up links ,,,,thank you for the warnings...Although, way back when,,I learned my lessen and do NOT open those links...Thanks just the same.

Originally Posted by DoctorZ I don't remember what animals they had, but I think they had dogs. If so, what kind of dogs were they? Were they normally locked in the basement? If they were normally allowed to roam the house and Sam locked them down there, why? Was he afraid of them, or had they developed an interest in the bodies? If they had large dogs maybe Sam locked them up before the murders. He may have been afraid that the dogs would try to protect the girls, or make noise to wake up the other(s). If he did, would that show premeditation?

They had two dogs and two cats. A girl friend of Em's took the dogs and the PEC animal warden had the cats. The cats were traumatized according to the web site of the animal warren. They wanted to place them in two different homes. I do not know if they were able to do that or if they put them to sleep.

Regarding whether Sam might have "spooked" himself...

Here's a few academic papers I have recently come across vaguely related to this idea. Found these while researching something unrelated to this case BTW. Some may find this interesting.

http://pgabor.com/p/s/2004fall/soc4_grq.pdf
http://m0134.fmg.uva.nl/psi/PAPROCS/...S.pdf#page=289
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~daplab/p...otti_PCN01.pdf

Summary: He is priming himself by surrounding himself and immersing himself in occult and horror related media and images. Further, he is associating with people that have higher social status that believe in the occult and paranormal experiences. Therefore he may be predisposed to accepting these beliefs himself. This might influence how he perceives subsequent real events such as hearing a noise in the basement. In other words, he very well could end up "spooking himself".

Originally Posted by claudicici http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/ne...02/296385/P20/ I'm sure this article was posted before but it gives us a pretty good timeline on the Well's angle of the story.No voice mail messages are mentioned however. ...so according to the article: SEPT 15th 01:23AM Mrs.Wells talks to her daughter for the last time SEPT 16th Mr.Wells waits in front of the Niederbrock house for 7 hours after driving 200 miles and returns back home. SEPT 17th Mrs.Wells calls police to do welfarecheck/they check right before midnight/Sam states the girls are at movies.

I never understood why he waited til he got back to WV to call the police. If I drove 200 miles and waited for hours and couldn't find or get a hold of my daughter, I'd be driving a few more miles to the local police station before heading back home.

Well Happy New Year everyone - Happy Belated Birthday Heroine!

Midterms are over, holidays are over (I hate the holidays) and it was not without its share of emotional turmoil and getting completely off schedule and out of control! Glad to be back and see y'all again.

Waiting for news, waiting and checking for any new details. Soon.

Somehow it's always been weird to me too that Mel's Dad would drive all that way and wait for 7 hours! That's a long wait. I guess he didn't have Mark's number? Then how did Mrs. Wells get it? The details are so thin to this point it's quite frustrating.

Farmville, you tight - lipped little cute community, you...

I also think he killed the pastor so Mark would not see what he had done to his family, Too true, Mark probably came in using a spare key and would have searched every room. If he realized he needed to fight he probably would have been a formidable opponent.

why didn't he bring the bodies?\
Hm great question. How about he had been watching and waiting for a time when nobody would see him load them into the car (no garage I believe), but that all changes upon the arrival of the pastor?

He realizes then that people aren't going to give up looking for Mel based on the story of the movies and the checking of the basement, so he decides to abandon the house. He leaves the bodies because he feels he doesn't know when another person will show up, and getting the bodies out would take time, both in physically getting them to the car as well as waiting and watching for a moment when the neighbors are asleep or away. He might have then staged the house and pastor's car so that they made sense for some kind of narrative (home invasion/ kidnapping?).

I don't know when he contacts his horrorcore buddies but after or during the staging of the pastor's car might be a good time-- he is feeling confident and clever after having slipped from the cops grasp 3 times-- but he does need help because he is also clearly implicated. Maybe he asks them for a place to stay, leveraging his imagined status as one who 'kills for real'. Based on how they respond to him, confusion- horror- disbelief- rejection, it may affect his thinking. Now he is a murderer with no home and no friends. Who is he, where should he go? A stretch, but this could also explain why the neighbor calls the police instead of going to help him get the car out of the ditch: maybe he's yakking on the phone and his cel phone voice is transmitting the random word like bodies and satan?

So when he doesn't like the response his friends give his news, he loses steam. Instead of going to the airport straitaway, he putters around Farmville, chatting up the tow truck driver, the diner waitstaff, the cabbie. He's confused and trying to figure out what to do next. Should he use the Niederbrock's bank cards or cheques if he took them? Should he steal a car? Or maybe he should just commit suicide? After some human contact, his confidence goes up and a sense of self preservation kicks in, and he goes to the airport. If he hasn't been caught yet maybe he could still get away with it-- and if he took the cheques or bank cards, he'll be able to use them somewhere that the real owner is not known.
Last edited by Sally Trueheart; 02-01-2010 at 09:08 AM.

Originally Posted by Woe.be.gone
I'm a newbie to this case and want to comment that, I wondered why a guy like Sam, a proclaimed follower of satan (right?), would be afraid of basement noises. My thoughts were "so the satanists a wimp - strange". You addressed that and it makes sense.

The factor that Sam's dad told him not to come back if he went to VA (I hadn't read that) probably plays an important role in this nightmare. It reminds me of Casey A's 'maybe I'm a spiteful *****' comment to her brother when he was trying to find out where Caylee was. If Sam knew his dad meant business, things had not worked out for him with Emma and he now had nowhere to go - did these combined circumstances cause him to snap?

Has it been explored if Sam's father had any foreknowledge of a plan Sam had to do harm? That he knew his son was up to no good on his way out to VA? Sam is twenty years old so what's with the father placing those restrictions on him? Could Sam be a spiteful ______? He found himself a home in the Big House.
According to PIXY who posts here and was at the concert with Sam and the others, she spoke to Sam before he left Cali for VA and he told her he had saved all summer for this trip and both mom and dad refused to take him to the airport and dad told him not to bother coming back to Cali if he went to VA.

This tells me its a kid who 'went all in' and was looking for and EXPECTING a new life with Emma. Sams sister tells us he had a history of bad hygiene and didnt regularly shower etc. Likely when he met Emma he wasnt what she pictured him to be and immediately began to reject him with her and Mel probably being quite cruel and talking to eachother laughing at him etc and he picked up on it. We also know Emma was texting another horrorcore rapper from the show on their way home as Sam sat next to her and Mel in the car for 13 hours while the girls giggled and read msgs from other guys flirting the whole time. All this time Sam is seething inside and when he finally gets home we know he took her cell phone and checked her msgs and likely saw people he knew and who he thought were his friends and horrocore associates flirting with Emma and making fun of him, calling him a nerd and a loser etc.

The boy snapped. There is no evidence to suggest Sam is a sociopath. Sociopaths tend to be very smart, well spoken and calculated, Sam was the opposite of all of this, he was a bumbling kid in a 20 year olds body who was rejected by a girl he really wanted and made fun of by those in the horrorcore community whom he respected.

Its really a simple case of passion and a momentary psychological break. The fact that he killed the father perhaps a few days later doesnt indicate a momentary psychological break but that was simply to hide what he had done, the father had to go to buy Sam more time.
Last edited by PAXIMUS; 02-01-2010 at 04:12 PM.

Originally Posted by ziggy
Wait a ticky: has it been confirmed what Sam's demeanor was when he called whatshisname? I can't recall that we know for sure he was upset or freaked out.

I just can't wrap my head around a normal yet reclusive kid who "snaps" and starts wielding a fricking wood maulm, mutilating the bodies of three women.

THEN: what comes next is even more out of character for the poor little kiddo that Pax describes.
* calmly tells the cop that they are at the movies (when their bloody remains are right inside where he killed them)
* leaves phone messages for Mrs. Wells
* CALLS more cops to the house with 4 dead bodies therein
* Makes a few trips to Kroger and wherever
* It is rumored he bought some scented candles to hide the smell
* It is rumored he hung out with some college kids and smoked with them
* Calmly encounters the police two more times while reeking of death
* Has casual conversations with cab driver about Emma as if she were still alive
* Has a meal at Huddle House
* Sleeps at the airport
* Doesn't seem too surprised to be arrested
* Smirks and smiles when the cameras catch him being led into custody
* Jokes that "Jesus told me to do it" for the camera

All of this does not add up to a regular soul who acted under the heat of passion and was unable to control his actions for a very short period of provocation...remember - he had plenty of cooling off time prior to killing Mark and all he had to do was LEAVE the house to avoid Mark, not kill him.

This doesn't pass the smell test for a poor, neglected, socially underdeveloped "kid". I think the horrocore also ate away at any conscience he may have had.
Well certainly food for thought. I do like to play Devil's advocate you know but in all seriously I really am not convinced he is a sociopath. He is sick and emotionally ****ed up yes but for some reason I just cant see sociopath in Sam but then again none of us know a damn thing about Sam so this is all speculation at best no matter what side youre on.

Originally Posted by ziggy
And you say you watch horror films??? I don't and even I can get this scenario..."hey, I heard noises in the basement"; "don't worry son, I'll go check it out"...halfway down the stairs BAM in the head from behind..or ar least that is enough of a fantasy for Sam's brain. I'm not saying it's a great plan, but neither was smashing them with a wood maul and ball peen hammer and leaving evidence all over the place and living with dead bodies and...on and on. Sam was not an organized killer. See?
Yes, I watch horror films. I also know that killers in horror films and people who commit violent crimes are nothing alike. Here are my questions for you, dangrs, and everyone else that buys into this "lone, skinny cop murder fantasy" theory:

1. Who told us that the first cop to show up was a "lone, skinny cop"? Or rather, is this something we know for a fact or something that we were told might be true from local rumor? Because, if it's simply local rumor, the theory is already on shaky ground to begin with.

2. You both point to instances where he made obvious mistakes or lacked "organization" as a killer and use these to draw inferences that perhaps he was trying to kill this "lone, skinny cop". You argue in the face of the logical aspects of killing a cop that he may have been too illogical and not have realized them, but suddenly when two cops show up he's logical enough not to try to kill two cops?

I'm sorry, but you both argue that he was not a dumb criminal. I am going to agree that he wasn't a violent criminal mastermind, and that is exactly why I will refuse to give him credit for concocting some diabolical trap for a "lone skinny cop".