Dana then voiced irritation about the repeated police attention. "Does he have to be found if he doesn't want to be?" she asked. "If he doesn't want to call his family, does he have to, or am I going to continually be talked to by the police until he does?" At nearly the same time, the detective received the message he had been waiting for from the team at the house.
The text said officers had found a human body buried beneath the concrete. The remains had been decomposing for a considerable period. The detective did not immediately tell Dana what had been discovered. Instead, with the investigation suddenly far more serious, the detectives decided to increase the pressure while watching closely for changes in her story.
They told Dana they had checked the places William was supposedly visiting and that some of her explanations no longer held up. Investigators said they knew he had not gone to Arizona. When Dana mentioned a woman named Martha and an old friend in California, detectives told her they had spoken with those people as well. Martha, they said, had not seen William since early December, and the California explanation did not fit what police had learned.
The detectives also confronted Dana with the inconsistent stories she had told William's relatives and friends about his phone and whereabouts. Dana admitted that she had given people different explanations, but she insisted she was only protecting her father's privacy. She said she wanted people to leave him alone and had assumed a few harmless lies would end the questions rather than trigger a major police investigation.
Police reminded Dana that the inconsistencies were not limited to family members. She had also given different accounts to officers. For example, she had once said William did not live at the house, then later described him as someone who came and went, collected mail, and maintained access. Dana tried to reconcile the statements by saying they had discussed him effectively moving out around Thanksgiving, so when she said he did not live there she meant he no longer lived there full-time.
The detectives went point by point through Dana's travel explanations. She named Martha in Arizona and mentioned a high-school friend connected to California, but officers said their checks did not support either destination. They told her Martha had not seen William since around December 2nd. Dana briefly seemed confused about the calendar and then corrected herself, realizing they were already into January, which made the absence much longer than the casual "couple of weeks" she had repeatedly emphasized.
When investigators asked why family and friends all described William as someone who usually responded within hours or a few days, Dana admitted she had intentionally misled people. She said she had told different stories because William wanted privacy and because she believed his personal life was nobody else's business. Detectives reminded her that she had also altered her account with police, not just with nosy relatives. Dana answered that she had been medicated or "jerked up" during some earlier contacts and did not remember exactly what she had said.
At that stage, detectives still did not know exactly how the person under the concrete had died. They considered the possibility that William might have died from natural causes and that Dana could have hidden his death out of fear of losing the home or the income connected to him. Until the remains were identified and an autopsy was completed, investigators could not honestly say whether they were dealing with a murder. What they already believed, however, was that Dana knew much more about the basement than she was admitting.
The questioning returned to William's alleged communications with Dana. Detectives pointed out a contradiction: she had described William telling her many things, yet she also claimed he had left his phone behind and she had not seen him. When they asked how those conversations were happening, Dana said the statements she had described occurred earlier. The detectives watched her closely, commenting that her mouth appeared dry and asking whether she was nervous.
Dana said she did not think she was nervous exactly, but acknowledged that the entire situation felt strange because everything she said or did was being examined. The detective answered plainly that she was correct. At this point, police were no longer simply asking a daughter where her missing father might be. They were comparing every statement with physical evidence, phone records, financial activity, and what the search team was finding beneath the house.
Investigators had also examined William's banking activity. They discovered that Dana had been cashing his checks and withdrawing money from his account after he disappeared. A detective confronted her with one check in particular and said the signature did not appear to match William's known handwriting.
"I'm kind of worried now," the detective told her.
"Why?" Dana asked.
The detective explained that the signature on the check had already been compared with William's handwriting and did not appear genuine. If William was supposedly returning to the house and leaving money behind, the financial evidence now suggested someone else might be creating that appearance. Dana said William had sometimes left signed checks for her and admitted that she had filled in the dollar amount on at least one $500 check.