Authorities Probe Secret Escort Service

July 9, 2007 — -- Since she disappeared June 28, friends and family have described 34-year-old Paige Birgfeld as a busy entrepreneur and dedicated mother of three.

But investigators in Colorado are now also describing Birgfeld as the owner of an unlicensed escort service who used the pseudonym "Carrie" and kept a list of escort clients.

"It is looking like she's the owner of Models Incorporated," Heather Gierhart, a spokeswoman for the Mesa County Sheriff's Office, told ABC News. "It's looking more like she was running it and had her own clients."

Police are probing Birgfeld's client list and say that a number of her former customers could be considered possible suspects in what they're now calling a likely case of foul play.

Until Saturday, authorities in Colorado were treating Birgfeld as a missing person, even suggesting that the woman may have staged her own disappearance.

But new information about her escort agency, combined with a lack of any evidence indicating she voluntarily went missing, altered the investigative track over the weekend.

"We so far haven't found a single piece of evidence that indicated she left on her own free will," Gierhart said. "She hasn't surfaced anywhere or used money or cell phone or anything like that."

Confirmation by investigators that Birgfeld oversaw an escort agency, which is not registered with the Colorado Secretary of State's office, has stunned family and friends.

"We didn't know any of this," Suzanne Birgfeld, Paige's mother, told the Rocky Mountain News Sunday, saying that the family has added the name "Carrie" to some of the missing person fliers.

Frank Birgfeld, Paige's father, told the Grand Junction Sentinel that he was taken aback when an investigator told him his daughter worked in the adult entertainment business.

"Based on the way this thing is unwinding, this isn't the sort of thing she would want me to know," Frank Birgfeld said. "I haven't heard of anything illegal. I'm getting the feeling she knew where the line was."