Amanda Tusing case: And then it started to rain

On June 14th, 2000, Amanda Tusing left her boyfriend's house in Jonesboro, Arkansas at 11:30 pm to travel home to Dell, Arkansas along Rt. 18. It was about an hour's drive. Sometime along the way it started to rain and she pulled her 1992 Pontiac Grand Am to the side of the road underneath a streetlight in front of a home. What happened next is a complete mystery. At about 1:30am, when she had not phoned her boyfriend to let him know she arrived home safe, he called her parents and her father and boyfriend both went searching for her car. The boyfriend found the car first near Monette, Arkansas with the doors locked and the keys still in the ignition. Amanda Tusing was not with the car. Her body was found a few days later. The prevailing theory has always been that the rain or an officer of the law or someone posing as one caused Amanda Tusing to pull her car to the side of the road. When the car was found, the windshield wipers were in mid-swipe. This aspect of the case for me has always led to an interesting question: When the car was found, was the windshield wiper knob still turned on? According to specs for a 1992 Pontiac Grand Am, the car has power windows. If it was pouring down rain, I think it is safe to suggest she had her windows up when she pulled to the side of the road. I tried this little experiment. If you turn the windshield wiper knob on and off the wiper will always complete its swipe. If the windshield wiper knob had been found in the off position when the car was discovered, there is no way she could have talked to anyone on the side of the road by powering down her window. The reason is that after you turn the windshield knob off, once you turn power back on to power down the windows for example, the wiper will always complete its swipe. And if you turn the knob off while power is on, the wiper will always complete its swipe. The part that I always found odd was that the power to the vehicle has to be on the entire time during which she would have talked to the mystery person on the side of the road. If the car was running I thought a police officer would ask her to turn it off. If she had the windows rolled down in the rain I thought she would have turned off the wipers so they did not push rain water into her car. Even if she turns the windshield wiper knob off while talking to the mystery person on the side of the road, she still has to roll back up the window. I read that Amanda Tusing drove a 1992 Grand Am and I was curious to read about the car online. I found an auto review in the Chicago Tribune that pointed out that the one feature that is annoying on these cars are the power door locks. They will engage when you put the car in a forward gear, but will not disengage when you stop the car. Maybe Amanda Tusing drove a different type of car or her Grand Am was different, but I know this from experience: If you have to constantly push a button to get out of a vehicle, you will be afraid of locking your keys in the car.