By KEVIN NEVERS

Chesterton Police are exploring the possibility that Rylan Cotter may have been moving among us, eating, shopping, fueling her car, almost invisibly, in the hours before her death.

Det. Lt. Dave Cincoski told the Chesterton Tribune today that he is currently collecting and reviewing video surveillance tapes from local businesses to see if a security camera may have caught Cotter before she died, alone or with someone else.

“I’ve already collected some video footage, which I will be reviewing,” Cincoski said.

In particular he is interested in obtaining surveillance tapes from any business in Duneland with a security camera—gas stations, eateries, convenience stores, groceries—shot between the late morning of Monday, Jan. 7, and the early afternoon of Wednesday, Jan. 9, when Cotter’s body was found on the Brassie Golf Course.

Porter County Coroner Vicki Deppe has said that Cotter probably died between 24 and 36 hours before the discovery of her body at the northwest edge of the Brassie, in the area of the fifth and sixth holes, approximately one half mile from where her car, a maroon 1997 Oldsmobile four-door was parked in the lot for the Prairie Duneland Trail off Babcock Road (C.R. 200W).

An autopsy conducted on Thursday, Jan. 10, determined Cotter to have died from massive blunt force trauma to the chest and abdomen, injuries consistent, Deppe has said, with any number of scenarios: a motor vehicle accident, a fall, a jump, physical violence inflicted by an unknown object.

For now Deppe is hoping that the results of a toxicology screen and tissue tests conducted at the autopsy may shed light on Cotter’s injuries. Still, she said, the results of the tox screen, being processed by Great Lakes Labs in Valparaiso, may not be available for six weeks. The results of the tissue tests may not be available for even longer, three months possibly. Those tests are being processed by Dr. Joseph Prahlow, the forensic pathologist based in South Bend who performed the autopsy on Cotter.

Deppe said that the autopsy was one of the most intensive, and extensive, in her experience. It lasted for four hours, “a very unusual” length of time for that procedure. Prahlow, she noted, is a seasoned forensic pathologist who has conducted more than 3,000 autopsies in his career.

Cotter, 20, of Okemos and East Lansing, Mich., was a junior at Michigan State University, where she was majoring in international relations. Only hours before classes were set to resume after the Christmas break, she left her apartment on campus at 1 a.m. (CST), arrived apparently alone at a motel in Benton Harbor, Mich., at 2:30 a.m. (CST), spent a few hours there, and then left at 10:30 a.m. (CST). Cotter was next verifiably seen around 4:30 or 5 p.m. that day both walking along the Prairie Duneland Trail and sitting in her car parked in the lot. The earliest she could have arrived in Chesterton, Cincoski has calculated, would have been 11:30 a.m. that day.

When she was found by a Brassie employee she was wearing a black fleece jacket, brown trousers, tennis shoes, and multicolored gloves.

Anyone with information which might be pertinent to the investigation—or who believes he or she might have seen Cotter or her vehicle on Jan. 10 or anytime after—is urged to contact Cincoski at 926-1136.

Posted 1/18/2008