Steve, nothing in the first part of your post in any way proves that Jeremy "couldn't wait to get away from the farm" MOST young men drive to fast because MOST young men like to show off. For the second part, I wonder just how many of us would have ignored a 3 am phone call. The timing itself suggests emergency to me, especially back then when cold calls weren't the accepted norm.
A lot of people would ignore a 3am phone call.
A lot of people 'sleeping like a log' would not hear it.
A lot of people with answering machines would let it do it's job.
A lot of people would not get to the phone before the answering machine clicked in.