Mr. Ballin

An hour later, Jerry ran into the campus police station with Barbara's roommates following right behind him.

After finding the note inside of Barbara's car, Jerry had gone back to Barbara's house to show it to her roommates and ask if they had seen her, because now he was worried that this note was some kind of suicide note.

The note was a goodbye letter that Barbara apparently had written.

And it said that she was leaving to be with her people.

And the tone of it was just kind of alarming.

Now, Jerry could tell her roommates thought that he was overreacting to this note.

But they had ultimately agreed to come with him to the police to just make sure everything was okay.

And so as soon as the officer on duty came out, Jerry explained to him that he had had plans with Barbara that day and she had not shown up, which was very uncharacteristic.

And then he explained how he found her car and then also this letter and his concerns about this letter.

And the officer on duty said, okay, you know, we'll look into it.

And so over the next few hours, the campus police did look into it.

They reached out to some other kids on campus and also to Barbara's family.

but nobody had seen or heard from Barbara since that morning.

And so the police continued to look into this, realizing this could be a missing persons case, but technically not enough time had passed to officially call it that.

So in this first day, it was all just kind of preliminary.

The next day, almost 50 miles north of the BYU campus, a worker for a Utah utility company hiked up a trail in Big Cottonwood Canyon, a hilly nature preserve on the outskirts of Salt Lake City.

Officially, he was there to check on some water lines.

But he was also, you know, taking his time and enjoying himself.

I mean, this area was beautiful.

It was high up in the mountains and very remote and peaceful.