What if the cops, the friend, and the consulate all said, "we do not care about a random mentally ill stranger, on a different continent, sending threats. You said he's been doing this for years and has done nothing yet? Sounds like you're safe. We have real crimes to solve. We have real murders to figure out. Call back if he shows up at your house, but he most certainly never will." Or maybe the FBI is like "oh, okay. Thanks. We'll keep an eye out but now this guy's part of an investigation so we can't talk about him to you." and then they do nothing, the friend doesn't reply, and the consulate is like "we're not obligated to reply." Those seem like super likely conclusions to the husband helping, too. So then would that have no longer been the "actual solution?" It seems that the "actual solution" is only determined after the fact once there is a success, and that's used as a proxy for whether or not the actions were really trying. If she had never replied and then the guy stopped texting after a year, would that have also been Actually Trying? Maybe it would've, because one could come up with a post-hoc explanation as to why that was an Actual Try. It feels sloppy to not distinguish what makes something a form of an Actual Try vs a successful try, because Actually Trying should be able to count failures as part of sincere attempts. Otherwise, Actually Trying collapses into being a synonym for success.