The Path to Lauren, Part I

An important issue to the prosecution's case is establishing what paths were followed that day. The path the prosecution claims Lauren and Cam took from the playground to Inspiration Point was instrumental to classifying the death a "homicide." Additionally, the prosecution has made an issue of the path Cam took to get to Lauren after she fell. Craig Hum has stated that "he went somewhere else first." Mr. Hum has thus implied that Cam took a convoluted route to purposely add precious minutes to the time it took to get to Lauren. Has the prosecution established the true paths which were traversed that day? Or are these more misrepresentations by the prosecution?

After spending numerous hours reviewing aerial pictures of the area, I finally realized that the only way for me to really understand what happened on the day Lauren died was to take a trip to the site and do more than look at it from the distance. I had to go to the area and walk the paths, examine the terrain and put myself into the pictures I had been looking at.

I was surprised by how deceiving the aerial photographs are. What looked flat was in fact not flat at all. What looked like easily traveled paths turned out to be paths cut by surface drainage, ambitious hikers or mountain bikers - such as the three impressive bikers who demonstrated their abilities on one such path on the day of my visit. My assumptions about what happened that day were thrown out the window as I walked from the parking lot to Inspiration Point.

The following pictures consist of overhead shots that are marked with coordinating numbers where each subsequent photo was taken. Clicking on the overhead should make it larger so that you can see the numbers more clearly.



I walked along the beach from the playground to the point where surfers were gathered beneath Portuguese Point. From there I followed the road which led up to the point. Along the way I encountered dirt paths cut from one point in the road to another ... steep paths that required far more effort to climb then the road. I also saw other dirt paths which avoided the road altogether ... quite strenuous paths with many sharp inclines and descents (as the prosecution's pediatric consultant had described).

These are the paths that the prosecutor wants us to believe Lauren and Cam followed. He spent a lot of time during the trial demonstrating the difficulty factor of those paths, a point I will readily concede, although I did walk a couple of the paths ... just because. Mr. Hum presented the area as though the road or other such options did not exist, as if the only option Lauren and Cam had available to them was the difficult dirt paths. But with an easy road right there, it's ridiculous to think that they would not have utilized it. (The witnesses who testified they saw Lauren and Cam walking that day all said they saw them on the road.) But even though the witnesses saw Lauren and Cam on the road, Mr. Hum still labored on about the difficult paths!

During the trial, a pediatric consultant testified that she was taken along the entire path the investigators told her Cam and Lauren had traveled. She talked about the difficulty she had as she walked along the steep dirt paths that cut across the area from the parking lot to Inspiration Point. She was not taken on the readily available roadway. She testified that Lauren could not have traveled that path without being exhausted, and this is the opinion that caused the medical examiner to change his conclusion to homicide. Contradictory testimony which brought out the fact that Lauren and Cam walked along the road was minimized by the prosecutor and he continued to drum on the idea that Lauren was taken on the steep, difficult paths which I passed by as I followed the road.

As I walked along I was reminded of the many, many instances during my own life and childhood when I had been on similar treks through nature. I was stunned by the wild beauty and peaceful settings. I talked to several people along the way as we crossed paths and chose the same vantage points to look out upon the scenery. None of the trip was either difficult or what I had imagined. I had thought the path would lead me down the east side of Portuguese Point along the beaten path I saw in the aerial pictures, but in reality it was impassable.



You leave Portuguese Point along a continuation of the same road I had come up from the beach. It is a road that cars drive on, hardly anything which I would consider to be dangerous or difficult. I recalled a discussion I had previously had with someone from the area who laughed when I said I thought there was a path going from PP to IP because I saw it on the aerial. He drew a picture of where I would really go. He turned out to be right. And as I later found out during the trial, it is also the same way Lauren and Cam had gone that day. The road goes from the beach to the big road. From there you are above both points. Not at all what I had expected.

Once back on the main road, there is another path to follow. There is a guard rail and large pipes between hikers and the main road. (The pipes are above ground because this area is so unstable and moves so much, the pipes can not be located underground.)



I walked along the road for a relatively short distance before coming to another path which led me to Inspiration Point. I followed this immediate path to the point. There is not a great distance between the road and the point, and soon I found myself at the crossroad where the choice was made to go to the point, or follow a very steep-looking path down to the beach.

I later learned that if I had continued along the main road I would have come to another path, the one the jurors were led down, which takes you from the road down to the point. A portion of the second path is close to the sloped edge, making it scarier then the first path. A witness places Lauren and Cam on the first path. Yet the jurors were taken on the second, more dangerous and scarier looking path.

I continued on the path to the point. Today there is a fence constructed of wood pillars with what appears to be 2-inch pipe between the pillars. You can see that there is continued erosion in the area, as some is fairly fresh. The path is on a slight incline, and it is easily traversed. Because of recent erosion, at one point the path is close to the sloped edge. I marveled that the dirt bikers zip through this area with ease. (There are several places the paths are closer to the edge today than they were in November 2000. This is demonstrated by pictures taken the investigators days after Lauren's fall.)

I looked down on the archery range below before following the path to the point. I looked for a path going down to the archery range and found none. Instead, I saw that it was a steep drop off on the entire east side of IP. I began to wonder where on earth Cam had gone to find a way to the archery range. I saw no way at that point.