Missing Escort Mom: Personal Items Found
A renewed search turned up new evidence connected to Colorado woman.
July 16, 2007 — -- Searchers in Colorado this weekend discovered various personal items belonging to Paige Birgfeld, the missing 34-year-old mother of three, who police say lived a secret double life as an escort.
"They did find several items that belonged to Paige," Heather Gierhart, a spokesman for the Mesa County Sheriff's Office, told ABC News. "The sheriff was pretty clear about personal items that we know belong to Paige, and some other items we're fairly certain belong to her."
Investigators, with the help of a volunteer search group, found the items along a roughly 13-mile stretch of highway south of Grand Junction, the mountain town where Birgfield lived with her three children before disappearing June 28.
The items, which Gierhart would not specifically name, are being processed as evidence in Birgfeld's disappearance, which investigators now believe is likely a case of foul play.
The search continued this weekend, with volunteers from the Abby & Jennifer Recovery Foundation fanning out on the shoulders and along the median strip of Route 50, according to Connie Flukey, the foundation's director.
"We're going mile marker to mile marker," Flukey said from the search site, adding that temperatures topping 100 degrees and thick sagebrush have posed challenges to the volunteers.
"We actually found many, many things with her name on it," Flukey said. "I am seeing 13 miles where we're finding stuff with Paige's name on it."
Joining in the search is Frank Birgfeld, Paige's father, as well as Craig Birgfeld, the missing woman's brother.
"Boy are we humbled by the effort these searchers have made," Frank Birgfeld told ABC News as he searched the highway's shoulder. "They don't know me, they're out here and man, it's hot."
Birgfeld, the retired director of the National Association of Securities Dealers, speculated that his daughter may have been the victim of a spontaneous crime and that the perpetrator may have panicked after harming his daughter.
"It occurs to me that whoever is out there, I guess I think it's a man, but it could be a woman, here's someone who very well may be a decent person, might have been considered a solid member of the community," Frank Birgfeld said. "Something happened, we don't know what. He's trying to get away, trying to pretend it didn't happen."
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