A (6:14)
Anyways, he does not work nights, he works days. So he goes to bed after the fight and a couple of hours later she tries waking him up to go to work. He's too tired, you know, from all that, like staying up and stewing. So he called in sick. He says that Linda drove Patty to school that morning like she always did, since he usually was at work by then, she would do drop offs. And then Linda was sleeping when he got up in the early afternoon and he woke her up, but she had drifted off again by the time that he went to pick Patty up from school. He says that he then dropped off Patty at his mother's house before going to an hour long counseling session with this woman who I'm going to call Dr. Wife. She's basically the therapist that he and Linda have been seeing both individually and as a couple. Now when he got home Monday evening around 6, he says that Linda was there and she's agitated, that she'd overslept. She had actually missed her own counseling appointment and was running late for work. So she's hustling out the door at around 6:45pm and he says that is the last time he saw her. She's wearing blue jeans, tennis shoes and a blue jersey with the number 76. She also had a necklace with the same number, which was her graduation year. He says she drove off in her yellow 71 Volkswagen Beetle, presumably to start her shift. But weirdly, that wasn't the last time he claims he saw her, kind of. So Don says that he went outside to talk to a neighbor at around 8pm and while they're standing there chatting, Linda's car pulled onto the street and then just like left. And after that, Don says that he went to get something to eat. And then later that night, he called Linda at work, but then was told she never came in. So that's when he drove to her job and checked the parking lot for her car that wasn't there. And when he got back and looked around the house, he noticed that some of her things were missing, like a suitcase and some toiletries and clothes and shoes. Hence why he thought that she maybe just like, left him on Monday. Now, the timeline gets murky here because the information that's available is limited. But we pulled what we could through records requests from like multiple police agencies. And our reporter Nina interviewed everyone she could get to. But still, what we don't know could fill a book. And I'll get more into that later, but I'm not sure how seriously the agency, the Veneta Park Police Department, took this at first. But according to Riverfront Times reporter Laura Higgins, Linda's family begins their own search right away. And two more days pass where they just get nothing. So by Friday, April 26, Linda's sister and her brother in law. So this is Fran and Sam Miller. They're starting to grow desperate. They feel like they've searched everywhere. And that's when Don suggests that they check this hotel near the St. Louis Lambert International Airport. He's saying that sometimes Linda stays there with her boyfriend. So, I mean, again, they'll do anything at this point. They go there. Her car's not in the hotel parking lot, but when they come up empty there, they figure, like, we're already out this way, we might as well have a look at the airport too. And lo and behold, they pull into the airport's short term parking. And there it is, Linda's yellow beetle. Now, nothing appears disturbed, but they don't want to go poking around, so they call airport police to take over. Officers arrive and check the doors, which are locked, but the trunk isn't. And as they lift it open, Fran and Sam brace themselves because as they told Unsolved Mysteries, there is this sinking feeling in their stomachs that Linda's body is going to be inside the trunk pops open and they breathe this sigh of relief, even if it's just momentarily, because she's not in there. But now they're also no closer to figuring out where she actually is. And here's where things get weird. While all of this is happening at the airport, Don is over at a local 711 talking with a cop, and he's asking if maybe police at the airport can check there for Linda's car. An idea that he says Sam gave him, not the other way around. Yeah, and literally, as they're discussing this, dispatch radios the officer that they found the missing woman's car at the airport.
