By Seamus McGraw
July 7, 2006
INDEPENDENCE,Calif. (Crime Library) — Investigators probing the disappearance of Renee Fox say they now believe that the 25-year-old divorced mother, student and sometime-drug abuser stumbled out of the high desert near Independence where her abandoned car and cash-filled pocketbook were found 12 days ago, and could be anywhere from Palm Springs to Oregon.
"We have certain reports and we're trying to confirm another report that she made it out to Highway 395," said Inyo County Sheriff's Investigator Paul Bedell. "It sounds like we have a witness who can place her out there that afternoon... and at this point it looks like we've got her out of the canyon and onto the highway."
"If that's the case," Bedell said. "She could be anywhere."
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| Renee Fox |
Authorities believe that Fox, a young woman with a history of drug problems, who was, according to her family, turning her life around after an emotionally draining divorce, may have become disoriented while traveling through the town of Independence and lost her way, ultimately ending up on a hard-packed fire road in the scorching, mine-pocked desert outside of town. The rough terrain proved too severe for her late-model Volkswagen Jetta, and when the car broke down, the apparently disoriented young woman set off on foot. She left her cell phone — its battery dead — in her car.
During her wanderings in the desert, she came across some men who were four-wheeling, and they gave Fox at least two bottles of water. The next day, when the same two men found the young woman's pocketbook with $900 in cash still in it, they became alarmed and asked another traveler they encountered to notify authorities.
By that point, authorities now believe, Fox, who had wandered more than eight miles through the desert, had already made it to the highway.
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