The Mysterious Disappearance of April Beth Pitzer
In this week's edition of "The Missing," we revisit the mysterious disappearance of April Beth Pitzer, a 30-year-old mother of two who disappeared from Newberry Springs, CA, in June 2004.
In the months leading up to her disappearance, April and Chase, her husband of eight years, divorced and April took a job at a local convenience store in Fort Worth, Texas. While working at the store, April was befriended by a group of transients who convinced her to travel to California with them.
"April had been out there a couple of months when she called me and told me that she had actually been dumped by these people and that she was living on the street and in shelters," April's mother, Gloria Denton, said in an interview with Investigation Discovery. "She said that she had literally been eating whatever she could, wherever she could."
After having a heart-to-heart with her mom, April was determined to get back on her feet, so she began working as a caregiver near Newberry Springs. Unfortunately, she soon found herself again befriended by the same group of transients with whom she had traveled to California.
"She called me and told me about them, and I told her they were crazy," Gloria said. "I told her she needed to come home because she could end up dead. My husband and I were in the process of moving to Arkansas, so I asked her to either come with us or go back to Texas. She agreed and said that she would find someone to take her to the bus station."
Chuck, an elderly man who April was staying with, agreed to give her a ride. That day, the 22 or 23 of June 2004, April called her mom and relayed the good news.
"She was so excited that she was leaving," Gloria said. "She told me that she loved me and said that she couldn't wait to see her children again. She and her ex-husband were speaking again and they were trying to work things out. The separation and the distance had made them have a change of heart."
When April failed to contact her mother the following week, Gloria tried to get in touch with her again.
"I knew from the minute I couldn't get her on that cell phone that something was wrong," Gloria said. "When I finally got a hold of Chuck, he said that he had been in Oregon helping a friend move and that he did not realize there was anything wrong. He told me that when he went to work on the morning of June 28, 2004, April was asleep in her bedroom, but that when he returned later that day, she was gone. He said it was his understanding that she had gone to see her transient friends. He also said that all of her belongings, minus a few changes of clothes, were still there."
In the weeks that followed, rumors began to surface that April had been murdered and thrown into a mine shaft. As a result, police searched some 25 mines, but were unable to locate any evidence.
HowStuffWorks: What happens to abandoned mines?
Approximately eight months later, investigators learned that someone had attempted to get a cell phone in April's name in Albuquerque, NM. The individual had attempted to open the account over the phone. As a result, it remains unclear who placed the call.
April's mother, Gloria, was unwilling to give up. She traveled to California on several occasions and went into many of the mines herself, sometimes descending as much as 400 feet into the earth. Eventually, her hard work paid off; roughly one year later, an intriguing discovery was made.
HowStuffWorks: Gold Rushes
"I found clothing of hers in a few different mining areas, located about 30 miles from where she had been living," Gloria said. "They are very remote areas that have been deserted since the California gold rush. One item, her nightgown, was in a horribly decrepit mine shack. There were pieces of duct tape in there and her gown had been tied in a hangman's noose. All the clothes were scattered across a 3-mile area, from one mine to another."
Unfortunately, the items of clothing had been exposed to the weather for some time and contained little evidentiary value.
The next break in the case came when a deputy in Roseberg, OR, found a cryptic message that someone had written in a truck stop restroom. "Want to find missing girl from Arkansas? I-15 3 miles east of Barstow," the message read.
Investigators checked the restroom for prints and investigators in California followed up on the lead, but nothing was found. Interestingly, though, the compound where the transients lived is located roughly 3.5 miles from I-15. It is also located near where Chuck and another man, nicknamed "Dan Dan," were known to mine. It is also of interest that the message was found in Oregon.
Gloria says she has always believed that Chuck knew more than he told her or investigators, but she also believes him to be innocent of any involvement in her daughter's disappearance.
"Chuck gave investigators a couple of different stories about the date my daughter went missing," Gloria said. "I've always felt that he was too afraid to talk, but would try to insert bits of the truth into his statements so that he could point us in the right direction."
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