by  Seamus McGraw

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July 5, 2006

INDEPENDENCE,Calif. (Crime Library) — It had been a hard year for 25-year-old Renee Fox, what with the ordeal of her divorce, the pressure of completing school, the nerve damage she had suffered in her hands, not to mention the stress that her periodic use of meth had placed on her body and her mind.

But things seemed to be turning around. The pretty young mother of a 5-year-old had a new boyfriend and a new direction in life, and was, according to her brother, Reese Somes, looking forward to starting school in the fall at California State University in Northridge, where she planned to become a teacher. By all accounts she had given up the drugs, and was, by late June, in that emotional twilight between what was and what was to come.

Still, it seemed, Fox, a young woman who had grown up in comfort in Simi Valley and who had a taste for the finer things in life, needed a little time to clear her head. That was why she headed up into the remote high desert of California, with $900 in cash in her purse.

And that is where she vanished.

Police are considering Fox's disappearance a missing person's case, but after days of fruitless searching, and despite the fact that tips continue to trickle in, authorities have reportedly suspended their hunt for Fox.  So far, their search has taken them across miles of arid desert and led them to an abandoned mine shaft, one of several that dot the sun-baked landscape. But a search of that mine shaft turned up nothing, Somes told Crime Library.

The way Somes understands it, authorities have found no sign of foul play, nor have they been able to pick up any leads that give them any sense of where in the nearly trackless California desert she might have wandered. And so, the trail at least for the moment, has gone cold.

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Contact Seamus McGraw at seamusm@ptd.net

Seamus McGraw

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