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Upon closer inspection, the parents notice that one of the car's tires is completely deflated.
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There's a pair of tights on the passenger side, but it's not really a clue because Denise used to take them off to be more comfortable when driving. It's not what's inside the car that intrigues, rather what's missing; her keys and her purse. If she had left with her belongings to seek help after a flat tire, she would have been home long ago. It's hard for the parents to understand what happened; they are completely distraught. There's only one thing left for them to do now: contact the police.
The officers who receive their call share the parents' concern. Upon their arrival, the vehicle is examined, and in addition to the tights and the flat tire, the police too discover that the battery is completely drained as the vehicle's lights must have remained on for a long time. The officers established pretty quickly that Denise must have left the car after getting the puncture, and they imagined that this would be to call for assistance because it was near a pay phone.
Yet, there's no sign of the young woman. Since she's only been missing for a few hours, they believed she could still be in the area. Helicopters are sent to sweep the zone in search of her. Unfortunately, the aerial support yields no results. It's now the turn of the canine teams to come into play. The dogs are more effective as they manage to detect the scent of the young woman, which they track for about a hundred meters, and hope is revived. But it quickly collapses when the trail abruptly stops in the middle of nowhere.
How could she have disappeared like this??
The police took this case very seriously; they're obviously concerned that there might be some malevolence involved, so they have a big search underway for Denise pretty quickly. Denise's parents had an almost immediate reaction to fearing the worst; they knew that their daughter wasn't the kind of person that would ever just get up and leave without explanation. There were no problems at home; she was happy and, as far as they were concerned, wouldn't disappear voluntarily.
So right from the get-go their intuition is something very bad has played out.
The law enforcement searches are called off; if neither the helicopters nor the dogs were able to trace Denise's whereabouts, no one can do so immediately.
However, family, friends, and local people from the area volunteered to maintain the search. They put flyers everywhere in the local area; messages were plastered on billboards. They created bumper stickers bearing messages like, 'Do you know where Denise is?' They even hired a banner plane. The family managed to get together and put up a 10-thousand-dollar reward for information.
Bear in mind, this was in 1991... so, that's quite a lot of money.
The next morning, investigators show up at the Huber family's home to question the parents in an attempt to understand what could have happened that evening. The police try to gather information about the young woman's past: if she's in an open conflict with someone else currently, if there's a jealous ex-boyfriend, or someone who might envy her success. But the parents are unable to provide any such information: Denise is a pleasant young woman who has no enemies. On the contrary, she goes out a lot, enjoys life, and her parents witness it all. She's also open; if she had a problem, she would have talked about it with them.
