Outlook for missing daughter is 'grimmer and grimmer,' dad says

By Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 16, 2008 at 11 p.m.

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Leann Emry packed up her car with camping gear in January 2003, telling her dad she was off to explore caves in Mexico with her spelunking club.

He was happy for her. After getting out of an abusive marriage, the 24-year-old was living with her parents again, trying to get back on her feet. She'd met some friends through the club and she seemed happy.

Then two weeks later, a strange call came: A sheriff near Moab, Utah, had found Leann's car abandoned. All her gear and her purse were still inside, though her credit cards were missing.

"That floored me," Howard Emry said Friday from his home in Idaho, where he and his wife moved after living in Centennial. "I thought, 'What in the world is going on here?' "

Local police told him she was likely a runaway, that there was nothing they could do.

Emry knew that couldn't be true. He spent years investigating what might have happened to his daughter.

Using credit card records, he tracked her trail during those few weeks from Denver to Vancouver to Reno, back to Denver, then Grand Junction and finally the Canyonlands near Moab - where the trail ends.

It wasn't until about six months ago that the FBI got involved in the case.

When Emry and his wife moved to Idaho, they kept Leann listed as living at their address, in hopes some day they'd receive mail that might give them a clue to her whereabouts.

Instead, they got a phone call from a special agent.

The FBI had found Leann's picture as part of a missing persons investigation, the agent told Emry. The FBI wanted to talk to Leann. Emry told them his daughter was missing too.

He soon learned Leann's photo was among nearly 300 images found on computers belonging to Scott Kimball, whom the FBI is investigating in at least four disappearances, including Leann's.

Most of the photos on the computers were sexually graphic, some showing women undressed and being assaulted, according to an affidavit in federal court. Emry said he hasn't seen the photos the FBI found of Leann. He doesn't want to know what's in them, he said.

Kimball has denied committing any violent crimes, and he is not charged in the disappearances.

Emry believes Leann got connected with Kimball through a mutual friend, who was serving time in the U.S. penitentiary in Florence for bank robbery.

Emry isn't quite sure what happened during the two weeks she was missing. But he said Leann wrote an e-mail to her cousin around that time saying she was afraid of some people, and there was only one man she could trust.

Emry believes that person was Kimball, and that he somehow convinced Leann she needed to be scared and trust only him. His daughter was naive and vulnerable, and had been in minor trouble. She would have believed him, Emry said.

"She was the right candidate for him to prey on," he added.

Emry has held out hope that his daughter might be alive somewhere. But with the latest information from the FBI, and the amount of time Leann has been gone, the outlook is "grimmer and grimmer."

"The only other thing I can hope for is to get her body back," he said. "I don't know that that will ever happen."

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