When Carol Anne Burger called police just before 1 p.m. October 23, 2008, she sounded panicked.
“I… I don’t know if this is an emergency, but it could be,” she told the 911 operator. Carol was breathing heavily. “My girlfriend didn’t come home last night.” She immediately rephrased her statement: “my roommate.”
Carol stammered on: “And… um… I… you know, that’s very unusual — she went to the gym… about 8:30 to 9 or something, and she didn’t come home. I woke up this morning, and she wasn’t here. And I just got a call now from a woman at Pyramid Books… somebody turned in her wallet and her car keys.” Carol’s heels clicked rhythmically in the background as she paced around the house. “I don’t know where she is!”
The operator asked for her address, and Carol gave it, but she sounded hesitant, as though she wasn’t quite prepared for the reality of investigators showing up at the house. “Now… you know… I don’t know what what’s… that’s not… that’s —”
“Hold on, ma’am,” the operator interrupted. “I have to ask you some questions.”
Carol said she wasn’t sure about her roommate’s age. She said she drove a gray BMW but didn’t know the license plate. The cadence of her clicking heels picked up.