From: Jasper
Date: 10/24/01
Time: 4:29:28 PM
Haven't you found something useful in most of these mental exercises? I have.
Even when I learn that I was flat out wrong about something big (the year of the baseball bat incident/where Heidstra was when he heard the "Hey! Hey! Hey!), something bigger usually comes out of it. I was mistaken in thinking that the second dog on Bundy started barking because it saw someone going into Nicole's front gate, but if I hadn't made that mistake, I never would have gotten on the right track with the second set of shoeprints and the flow of Nicole's blood that would have covered any of them that were clearly visible.
It's not "proving" that you are right that counts; it's LEARNING whether you are right or wrong. Sometimes a great theory (easy to grasp/solves big questions) goes down the tubes. That's good because now you know where NOT to go for the answers and which corollaries you can avoid.
I had some great "one man acting alone" theories. But sometimes the weakest theory I could come up with (Fuhrman did it with four accomplices) gets stronger with each new revelation….-- Jasper.