Serial Killer Scott Lee Kimball

Eleven days after leaving home, LeAnn called her parents for the final time, saying that she would be staying in Mexico a little longer. Based on what he had already learned from putting together a timeline based on her credit card charges, her father knew that her comment about being in Mexico was not the truth. He eventually learned that the call had been placed in Colorado, and that she had mailed a gift certificate to her sister from the same location.

Then a glimmer of hope surfaced. Howard Emry learned that one of LeAnn's credit cards had been used in California a few days after her car had been found abandoned, leaving him with the thought that his daughter was still alive. However, his hopes were dashed when he obtained the credit card receipts and found that the signatures on them were not LeAnn's. It also turned out that the credit card charges in California had been made by a prostitute who told investigators that she had received the credit card in question from a man as payment for sexual services.

A short time later, her parents learned that she had been corresponding with a relative in Idaho via e-mail a few weeks before she disappeared. In one of those e-mails she wrote: "I have to hide...my orders come from Hanable...and he's a dangerous person...." In another e-mail she wrote: "I'm in an underground world." In yet another she wrote: "If Hanable knew I was talking to you, he'd...have me killed in a second. Plus, he'd have you killed too."

It was clear to Howard and Darlene Emry that their daughter was involved in something that was troubling her, but they had no idea what the dark secret was that she was concealing from them. They considered that she may have been trying to protect them from whatever it was that she was involved in. Although the Emrys contacted their local law enforcement and the FBI, no one wanted to open an investigation to the mystery that surrounded LeAnn's disappearance.