Terrible Silence

I have Google Alerts that notify when my city, Spanish Fork, comes up in the news. Many of them are related to Kiplyn Davis, a high school girl that was murdered over ten years ago. Recently, we've seen a lot of reports of people testifying that they knew something about the case. This is a case that sat unsolved for over a decade. How could so many people not come forward with what they knew?! Holly Mullen in the Salt Lake Tribune apparently made the same observation. She wrote today:

But how to make sense of the parade of witnesses who have so far testified for the prosecution in Olsen's perjury trial? One after another they offered information that, if given up when they first heard it as far back as 11 years ago, might have led authorities to Kiplyn.

One person's timely tip might have saved years of fruitless searching or prevented detectives' trails from turning ice cold. Not to mention the unspeakable anguish Kiplyn's parents, Richard and Tamara Davis, have lived with since their red-haired daughter with a zest for life disappeared from Spanish Fork High School on May 2, 1995.

Last week, they sat in the front row of the federal courtroom, listening to every detail from witnesses who might have put a halt to this long ago.

More than a dozen of Olsen's Utah County friends testified that, between 1995 and 1999, they had heard either innuendo or detailed boasts from him regarding his part in Kiplyn's disappearance. Some related chilling claims that Olsen blurted out at parties - admissions of beating, raping and killing Kiplyn, then disposing of her body.

How can we convince people to come forward? We've long been able to tip the police anonymously, but even that didn't happen in this case. So strange. It says so many sad things about the culture surrounding the kids that remained silent--a culture that "accepts people as they are" and doesn't try to lift others up or hold them accountable.