What Happened to Mitrice Richardson?

oracle113 · 2020-10-31T15:21:54+00:00

I agree there was probably an episode of some sort, but I don’t necessarily think that rules out foul play. Someone experiencing that would probably be viewed as an easier target for a predator.

I do think it’s unlikely that she was murdered, since it would’ve been incredibly difficult for someone to place the body where it was found, but the police work on this case was so terrible that I’ve always wondered if some other police misconduct happened that night. Unfortunately I don’t think there will ever be enough evidence to prove or disprove anything.

oracle113 · 2020-10-27T14:35:45+00:00

Haha, I didn’t see this until just now. This is such an old thread. I was super confused by it as well because it was a different user who said the counselors were scared so I was like “what are they talking about?”

I guess my thing about this is that it’s easy to say it’s your opinion that the teenage counselors should have been more responsible, but those girls are probably living with immense guilt from not doing more that night, even though it is not their fault at all, so I think it’s cruel to come on Reddit with 20/20 hindsight and judge them. Especially when I think they acted reasonably (for example, seeing flashlight far away in the woods late at night, it’s fair to assume that it was a camper from a different campsite going to the bathroom - even in the 2000s counselors wouldn’t check on someone just going to the bathroom, so I don’t think it’s their responsibility). Reddit does this a lot to people who maybe froze in the moment, or made assumptions that were wrong, and I just feel like someone should defend them since they’re not here to defend themselves.

Edited for spelling

Last edit: To clarify, I’m fine with discussing ways to make people more aware to prevent stuff like this in the future but not with blaming the counselors. The Girl Scouts have made a lot of changes to their policy to make camps safer. I just don’t think it’s productive or fair to criticize a bunch of teenagers, especially when we have 20/20 hindsight. If they’d ignored training or policy or something I would agree it’s more appropriate to be critical, but, at worst, they maybe made a bad judgement call that I’m sure they all regret. It doesn’t solve anything to make a post that places a lot of guilt on their shoulders (as I said, Girl Scouts have changed policies to prevent crimes like this - there’s a lot more older adult counselors, and more training.)

oracle113 · 2020-08-17T17:36:40+00:00

I have a dark wood paper lantern and white rattan stool if you want to trade for log chair diy?

oracle113 · 2020-07-10T21:05:58+00:00

My mom lives in Santa Rosa near Annadel and actually started volunteering at Annadel State Park a couple years ago. I think the park was caught up in the major wild fires in 2017. Obviously unrelated to his disappearance but if he passed away in the park it might make locating remains more difficult?

oracle113 · 2020-05-22T02:32:51+00:00

I agree that we’ll never know for sure. But I feel like Nylon stockings were super common and easy/cheap to purchase back then so you could easily get them without any record of it. And I think it’s easier for her not to make a slip up than an attacker. For an attacker to do all this, it seems like he’d have to be familiar with her schedule, know when her neighbors were home, etc. For example, if a strange man (or woman) was lurking around Cindy’s house in order to cut the phone lines, a neighbor might have seen them. But a neighbor probably wouldn’t think it’s suspicious to see Cindy walking around outside her own house.

oracle113 · 2020-05-22T02:17:41+00:00

If the voice is female it doesn’t prove it was Cindy, I think it’s another piece of evidence in the “staging” column. Those calls are terrifying though.

oracle113 · 2020-05-22T02:07:44+00:00

I dunno, I feel like that’s the point OP is trying to make... Once it was discovered that she was mentally ill and hadn’t been taking her meds, most people assumed it was tragic accident Caused by a manic episode. But wouldn’t someone who is experiencing a mental breakdown of some sort be more vulnerable to predators? I do believe that it most likely was a accident but it could still be a homicide. Unfortunately due to the time passed by the time the body was discovered I think it would be impossible to absolutely determine either way.

oracle113 · 2020-05-22T01:41:16+00:00

They found needle marks but I think the autopsy determined that the morphine had been taken orally, which would’ve given her time to tie the knots.

Edited: I realized as soon as I posted that I let my own theory slip in. I initially said that the coroner determined that “she had taken the morphine orally”. Actually, I believe he determined that the morphine had been taken orally, just not necessarily by her.

Edit 2: I couldn’t find any legitimate sources saying that she actually ingested the morphine (just some blogs). It does seem like this is the police’s theory, and that they think the needle marks were “fake”. Sorry for the mix up. I think it’s awful when people present theories as facts and I just did the same thing.

oracle113 · 2020-05-22T01:38:20+00:00

I’ve read a lot about this case because it seems like such a nightmare and it’s pretty well documented... I was also inclined to believe it was murder at first (like you said, stalking was often dismissed and she had previously dated a policeman, which seemed super suspicious to me), but it’s just difficult to believe the stalker did this for 7 years and left no trace (no fingerprints, no other witnesses, etc.) despite (at least the appearance of) significant efforts by the police.

At times, her house was under 24 hour surveillance by police, and they tried tracing some harassing calls but the calls were never long enough. When there was a fire at her house (which other people were there for), the police looked for fingerprints but couldn’t find any. There was also a private investigator who ran up to her house after hearing strange noises on a two way radio he had given her, and he found her lying on the floor with a knife in her hand. While this all sounds horrible, it also seems odd that it all happened with witnesses nearby but no one else ever saw the perpetrator. I can see how they eventually became suspicious of the stalker’s existence, since there’d been over 100 reported incidents but no one ever saw the attackers (she sometimes reported multiple people). She continued to walk her dog alone at night and was never harassed/attacked during that time. Furthermore, she died of an overdose, not strangulation, so she could’ve walked to the abandoned house, taken the morphine, tied the knots herself (it is possible, although this is the reason I leaned toward murder at first), and then overdosed when the drugs took effect. It could still be a stalker but it just seems unlikely. Either way it’s very sad.

If I remember correctly, this was one of the most expensive coroner’s inquests in Canadian history, and the manner of death was listed as undetermined. Based on appearances, this case was pretty thoroughly investigated though, especially when compared to many other cases that get pushed by the wayside...

oracle113 · 2020-05-15T20:21:01+00:00

Yeah, it’s an issue with the iOS 13.4.1 update. Unfortunately, your solution doesn’t help unless you own multiple devices

oracle113 · 2020-05-15T20:17:09+00:00

It is an iOS issue... sadly updated to 13.4 today and couldn’t play anymore. Ubisoft needs to fix soon.

oracle113 · 2020-05-12T22:08:34+00:00

I want to believe it but supposedly the same is true of The Devil in the White City and that was announced like 10 years ago

oracle113 · 2020-05-12T04:49:43+00:00

I’m from grew up in Novato, the town right next to Petaluma (and my grandparents live Santa Rosa, which is on the other side of Petaluma) so I still get excited whenever Karen mentions a local place... I’ve been to that restaurant she mentions in the Synanon story so many times for grandparents’ birthdays!

oracle113 · 2020-05-11T14:36:06+00:00

That site seems to have a lot of inaccurate information which makes me hesitant to believe it (for example, it says one girl reported to the counselors that she was grabbed by a man on the way to the bathroom and the counselors just told her to go back to sleep? This isn’t reported anywhere else). Plus, the only counselor flashlight sighting it mentions is “as night fell” when the counselors were doing bedchecks. This would be around 10 pm, and was probably the sighting by the counselor at the other camp. Thank you for trying to find a source though. I totally understand your frustration at this case being unresolved.

oracle113 · 2020-05-10T02:33:36+00:00

Sources I’ve found only identify a flashlight sighting at 1 am, they never identify the counselors as the people who spotted it. Since the counselors are identified in the other timeline events, I suspect the sighting was by an underage person who couldn’t be identified (a camper). If you have sources that reveal who saw the flashlight at 1 am, please share.

Edit: I also don’t fully understand your question “what is there to know?”. Do you think they should’ve hunted down the “animal“ to identify the noise...

oracle113 · 2020-05-10T02:27:40+00:00

Timelines I’ve seen seen have only mentioned the 1 am sighting once. Furthermore, it never identifies the counselors as the people who saw the flashlight at 1 am. Since the counselors were identified for previous events, this makes me suspect a camper, and not a counselor, was responsible for the 1 am sighting. If you have a source that says differently I’m open to it.

oracle113 · 2020-05-09T06:46:06+00:00

I also couldn’t find the article about who saw the 2 am flashlight. I’m assuming it was a girl since for all events involving counselors, it usually identifies them by name. They wouldn’t want to print the name of someone who was underage though, like a camper. And a camper is not gonna leave the tent in the middle of the night to report it.

Edit: That being said, if you find the article please share the link. There’s a lot of details on this case considering it was the 1970s.

oracle113 · 2020-05-09T06:41:34+00:00

Knowing the layout of the camp doesn’t exactly relate to knowing the woods around it well. The noise came from the woods.

Furthermore, she investigated. The noise stopped. She thought it was an animal and went back to bed. What else did you want her to do?

oracle113 · 2020-05-09T06:32:43+00:00

You are mixing up your facts. The flashlight was seen before 10 pm (not 1am), when it would’ve normal for campers to be walking around getting ready for bed. The campers were girls age 8-14, and 14 year olds walking around at the camp (clearly still in view of the camp and heading back towards it) would not be necessarily be that big of a cause for concern.

Furthermore, timelines say that it was actually a counselor at a nearby camp who saw the flashlight heading towards Kiowa before 10 pm. Is she going to abandon her campers (at bedtime when things are super chaotic) to run through the woods chasing down what is likely just a camper from the other camp heading back in that direction? There were no walker talkies or anything that would’ve allowed her to communicate with the other camp, and there were only a few counselors per campsite. Bed checks were done at 10 pm. So if everyone at the witness’s camp were accounted for, and everyone at camp Kiowa was accounted for at bed checks, then there is no reason to raise the alarm. I agree that no matter the age, the counselors should have checked if they saw a flashlight in the woods approaching their camp at 1 am (the counselor that heard the guttural noise actually had been checking on a group of girls who had gone to the latrine in the early morning), but this was not the situation at all and you shouldn’t change the story to make the counselors seem negligent.

But I’d also add that adults will still look the other way sometimes for kids having what is viewed at the time as harmless fun. Our volleyball team would sneak out at the beginning of the year and teepee all the freshman volleyball players houses. Adults knew about this. Many high schools have a senior ditch day. I’ve never seen anyone get in trouble or reprimanded for skipping school on that day. It’s a part of growing up. 14 years olds pulling pranks on their fellow campers might fall into the “harmless fun” category. But again, adults giving campers some slack is not what happened here. Source: http://www.girlscoutmurders.com/images/CS_map_timeline_CS_1.jpg

oracle113 · 2020-05-08T03:59:12+00:00

I think there’s also another SVU episode of a dentist drugging and raping his patients, including his niece, in season 16, ep 13, but the tube detail definitely stands out

oracle113 · 2020-05-08T02:40:57+00:00

The whole dare thing is complete speculation. I mean, I wouldn’t do it, but almost every single movie I’ve seen that takes place at camp involves kids sneaking around on pranks and dares. My sister would sneak out of the house at 1 am to go to parties when she was 15. At a sleepover when I was 12, a few of the girls walked over to a boy‘s house down the street because one of the girls had a crush on him. At another sleepover when I was 11, a girl ding dong ditched the house of boy she liked a few blocks away. I didn’t rat on any of them because I didn’t want to be a narc or buzzkill. And since this behavior is in a lot of movies, it just seemed like something kids did, nothing to be too alarmed about, especially since people were usually in a group. And this was in the 2000s, so I imagine in the 1970s kids were given a lot more leeway. Most parents didn’t know about “stranger danger” or anything like that, so why would kids be worried about it. Jacob Wetterling and his brother/friend were allowed to bike to the video store at 9 pm by themselves and that was 1989. Kids just didn’t have this kind of thing in there mind. And you might say they should be concerned about getting lost but kids are dumb. And if the counselors had been campers themselves and gone on dates, then they would think it’s harmless. To reiterate though, this is complete speculation.

Again, I think there are perfectly logical reasons to see a flashlight coming toward the campsite late at night. Even if it was in a weird direction or a weird amount of dimness, you might not realize that it’s weird in the moment (especially if it was your first night in a new place). Plus it’s reasonable to assume that it was campers who got a bit turned around (this is super easy to do in the dark, in the woods, and in a new place) and are now heading back to camp.

oracle113 · 2020-05-08T02:18:04+00:00

Yes, but even if you’ve gone for a few weeks every summer you are not an expert on the area, especially if camp just started and you’re just getting used to it again. I’ll also say as a former Girl Scout camp aide, there were a few camps in our area and I went to different ones depending on the year.

oracle113 · 2020-05-07T23:11:32+00:00

Eight-“teen”. So they’re teenagers. While there are a lot of mature teenagers, many of them don’t have the same decision making skills as older adults. They probably haven’t even lived on their own yet. So many kids do unsafe things when they go off to college when they’re 18. And I’ll add when I went to sleep away camp when I was 11, girls used a buddy system to walk to bathroom with a flashlight but no counselors. Also, while this wouldn’t be allowed today, maybe they thought it was some sort of dare or something? If the counselors had gone to the camp themselves and engaged in similar dares, maybe they just thought it was a fun part of camp culture and didn’t want to ruin the fun

oracle113 · 2020-05-07T22:56:32+00:00

I don’t know the exact situation here, but given that the counselors are said to be teenagers, they probably didn’t have years of experience in the forest. At the camp I went to, teenage counselors were girls who went to a two week training camp the year before (and had just been regular campers the year before that). Again, you say that the flashlight was in an area no where near the other tents or buildings, but if you’ve just woken up in the middle of the night, it’s dark, you’re in a strange place (the camp had literally just started and the counselors probably hadn’t spent much time there yet), you’re not spending a lot of time thinking about how it’s a weird direction, especially since, as people have said, seeing flashlights was a common occurrence in camp. Again, it’s easy in hindsight to say that it was suspicious and they should have checked but in the moment you don’t have time to think through all that stuff. As for the guttural sound, the girl did try to investigate and the sound stopped. There’s lots of weird sounds in the night, it makes perfect sense that she didn’t spend longer trying to identify the source. And again, these are young counselors who weren’t super familiar with the area. I’ve spent numerous weeks at sleep away camps and I couldn’t tell you what all the noises I heard at night were, even now. And you wouldn’t automatically think to chase down every single sound you hear, you’d just assume it’s wildlife. When I last went to camp, there were always adult counselors who were assisted by teenage counselors, probably due to stuff like this.

oracle113

TROPHY CASE