The Silence of the Blogs

The story you are about to read is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely intentional.

In some North Carolina town a person outside the state has probably never heard of, a pretty young sophomore from a university in the next town was found murdered. The local police receive a 911 call from a person on a watercraft. He was jet skiing along the river and found a car and a body. Unfortunately for the local police, the caller was unable to tell them how to get to his location by land. I guess the local police didn't have a boat, or a GPS system to trace the cell phone.

It took them a while to find the place. During the search, police moving along the river found a couple of guys fishing. They told them they were looking for a body, and the two guys told them they were just fishing. The police got their names, addresses, and, who knows?, maybe a DNA sample from them as well, before moving along their way.

After they had finally arrived at the crime scene, and figured out where they were, they were able to call in and report the location of the road the car was on before it came down here.

A mother of a young woman who went missing from that area a month earlier wanted to know if this was her daughter they had found, but it was not. We don't even hear about that case until later. What we do hear is that the victim was a student at the university, which was about 30 miles away, and that this person's name is very well known on the campus, and in another NC town she had come from before attending university.

Very quickly the local police find out this person is very well known and loved. People show up from everywhere to talk about this pretty young sophomore, including her family who want to talk to the police in person. News stations from all around are covering the story, and throughout cyberspace the blogs came rolling in.

The local police figure that they need to solve this murder case, but they don't know how to do it. They never heard of this person before, and it didn't seem to occur to them to ask the hundreds of people who showed up on her behalf. They could have called in the SBI, but perhaps they didn't want to admit they needed help. They tell the press they are making progress, but they can't give any details about it now. It buys them some time.

But the time runs out. Seven months later they still have no clues. The local police are desperate. They need a suspect to arrest. This will make them look like they have made progress. They remember the two guys who were fishing down on the river that day. Why not arrest them?

Now a whole lot of people in that town could have told us that not only are these two guys innocent, but if the local police were to call them and ask them to come on down to the station, they would have willingly complied with the request. But the local police decide they want to be more dramatic than that. They show up at their homes at 4:30 in the morning, with lots of fire power.

At first everyone is excited, thinking this was good news. They are all singing and dancing about how the killers have been caught. But after seeing what these two guys look like, and hearing what they had to say, and what their neighbors had to say. people began to have some doubts about them arresting the right people.

All of the forums and all of the blogs that were involved in discussion of the case were saying the local police had no clue what they were doing. This went on until there was a second hearing, (mistakenly referred to as a trial) and everyone found out a whole lot of details of the investigation that were kept secret until then.

And then, something very mysterious happened. Forums began to close. Websites were no longer accessible. No one was talking about the pretty young sophomore anymore. The news media never mentioned another word about it. The case remains unsolved.

Meanwhile, back in the town she came from, some friends of the pretty young sophomore have some ideas about what happened, but no one listens to them. People figure these kids are too young to know what they're talking about. They are about the same age as the victim. With no one to listen to them, they made their statement by releasing a bunch of balloons.

Anyone out there who can tell the rest of the story, please be my guest.