Dana's brother came to the police department with text messages he had received from William before his disappearance. In those messages, William described an unsettling incident involving Dana. He said she had brought him a burger, and after eating it he slept for approximately 15 hours. William then told his son that he believed Dana might be poisoning him.
That message placed the welfare check in an entirely different light. Even so, police did not immediately have the authority to tear through the house looking for evidence. According to the source, it took about a month before investigators secured a search warrant for William's home. When the warrant was finally ready to be executed, detectives removed Dana from the house and brought her to the local police department for an interview while another team began searching the property.
Before the search team went to work, the detective transporting Dana told the officers at the residence to text him immediately if they found anything significant. Inside, officers again encountered the odor that had been noticed during the earlier welfare check. One officer remarked that it could be decaying sewage, but the smell seemed much stronger than that explanation suggested. Areas that had previously been covered by clothing were now more exposed, allowing police to examine the house more carefully.
At the police department, Dana appeared calm enough that the detective noted her apparent lack of concern. He began by telling her that several members of the family were upset because they had not heard from William. He said the lieutenant was pushing investigators to find out where "Bill" was, and he asked Dana to tell them everything she knew so they could compare her information with what police had already learned.
Dana launched into a long explanation of her father's recent life. She said William had become angry and quit his job, had been unhappy at home, and came from what she described as a long line of workaholics. With more free time, she said, he started taking on projects, spending time with younger women, and leaving notes saying he might be gone for a few weeks without knowing exactly when he would return.
According to Dana, William was tired of people depending on him for money and labor and had begun trying to enjoy himself. She claimed the places he visited had poor cell service, which helped explain his silence. She also said he had become less interested in maintaining the house and had increasingly told her to handle things herself. In her version of events, William's disappearance was not frightening; it was simply the latest stage in his growing desire to be independent.
Dana also described an unusual arrangement involving the mortgage. She said William depended on her to make the mortgage payment and sometimes asked her to leave rent money in cash so he could collect it. More importantly, she claimed there had been signs that he was still returning to the house while she slept. Things outside would be moved, projects would change, and money she had left behind would disappear by the next morning.
"I've seen evidence that he's been by the house," Dana said. She told detectives that these quiet nighttime visits were why she was not especially worried. She also claimed she and William had discussed changing the living arrangement so she would pay more of the mortgage while he stayed with friends more often. That explanation would later become one of several statements detectives challenged.
The detective asked Dana to explain exactly what she meant when she said William still came by the house. Dana described mornings when she would wake up and notice that cash she had left behind was gone, materials had been moved, or an outdoor project looked different. She treated those changes as proof that William had quietly returned while she slept. Investigators, however, had no independent confirmation that William was the person moving anything or taking the money.
Dana said William had started asking her to take on more of the household expenses because he no longer wanted to feel tied to the property. In her account, the shift was gradual: first he spent more nights away, then longer stretches, then he spoke about essentially letting her take over the house. She said this was why she did not interpret his prolonged absence as a crisis. The detectives kept listening, because if William had truly been returning, there should eventually be some objective sign of those visits.
The interview briefly shifted to Dana's broken foot. She said she had slipped in mud, struck her foot, and injured an area where the muscles had already been weakened by a prior problem. Investigators then returned to William's phone. Dana confirmed that he did not have it with him and said she had been trying to keep it charged in case he came back, although she claimed she no longer remembered exactly where the phone was because belongings had been moved around while she dealt with the basement.
The detective asked whether it was normal for William to travel without a phone. Dana said he had been losing it more often lately and sometimes told her he would be back the next day without taking it. She tried to connect that behavior to the woman he was supposedly seeing, suggesting William had become less attached to his phone because he was enjoying the relationship. Still, Dana admitted that leaving it behind for this long was "a little peculiar."
While Dana continued talking at the station, the search team at the house made a discovery that changed the case completely. In the basement, police found a small hidden room behind what appeared to be a false wall. The floor inside showed signs of relatively fresh concrete. Investigators began breaking through the cement because it looked as though someone might have deliberately covered something beneath it.
The search team, meanwhile, was working through exactly the part of the house Dana had repeatedly blamed for the odor. What had first been presented as a messy basement with a backed-up toilet now contained a concealed area behind a false wall and a floor that looked recently altered. The concrete did not look like an old construction feature investigators could simply ignore. They began breaking it apart methodically, knowing that whatever lay underneath could determine whether they were dealing with an unusual missing-person case or something far more serious.
Back in the interview room, detectives continued asking whether William's long absences truly seemed normal. Dana acknowledged that the current disappearance was somewhat longer than usual, but she again blamed her lack of concern on the gradual way his behavior had supposedly changed. She said William had been growing more distant, staying away longer, and complaining more about people depending on him.