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48 Hours

The Secret Life of Paige Birgfeld

25 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What happened to Paige Birgfeld on June 28, 2007?

10.375 - 42.661 Frank Bergfeld

Grand Junction is situated on the western slope of Colorado, and it's very mountainous and beautiful. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but one thing is apparent. It is very tough terrain to search in. There are hundreds of thousands of places where you could hide a body and we might never find it. I'm Frank Bergfeld. I'm the father of Paige Meredith Bergfeld.

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42.961 - 66.623 Frank Bergfeld

She's the mother of three children. My sister did not return from a meeting she had with a previous husband of hers. Paige was within five miles of the house here in Grand Junction and disappeared. My sister was missing. You start asking, missing? What do you mean, missing? My name is Pete Hautzinger. I'm the district attorney for Mesa County, Colorado.

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69.573 - 93.858 Frank Bergfeld

We're looking at somebody who has disappeared. We don't know why. I said you're in the midst of a crime. This is not someone who had run off. Paige would have never, never abandoned her children. Loves her kids. Appears to be a typical divorced mom. Lives in a nice house in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Grand Junction.

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95.699 - 120.847 Frank Bergfeld

They found her car abandoned in a parking lot and lit on fire a couple days after she went missing. This led investigators to believe that there was foul play involved. We search fields, national parks, mountains. And I am committed to search for her until we find her and bring her home. Then we started finding out some things that really pretty much changed everything.

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121.688 - 141.632 Frank Bergfeld

First, you find out Paige is missing. And then within a couple of days, we started finding out about this other life that we didn't know about. You start hearing things about your own daughter that you didn't know about. We got more details about the extent of Paige's business and the type of person she was and the type of lifestyle she led.

141.832 - 145.016 Tina Seelig

After Jess was born, she told me that she wasn't doing it anymore.

145.036 - 178.268 Frank Bergfeld

She kept all these secrets from her friends and family. She said she had been making $400,000 a year doing it, and she didn't need to do it anymore. She had a couple of things on her computer. I said, OK, well, that certainly puts a different twist on this investigation. Where is my girl? She may be a 34-year-old woman, a mother of three children, but to me, she's just my little girl.

186.061 - 209.858 Erin Moriarty

We first brought you the story of Paige Bergfeld in 2008. Shortly after the young Colorado mother of three disappeared, police discovered that she was leading a secret life, a life that may have led to her disappearance. We've tracked her story ever since. And tonight, at long last, the mystery of what happened to Paige Bergfeld may finally be solved.

218.95 - 221.257 Frank Bergfeld

And Paige was always the one that was family first.

Chapter 2: How did Paige's secret life as an escort come to light?

631.401 - 636.306

He said that I would come home and find him all murdered.

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653.026 - 655.829 Erin Moriarty

They might not have known exactly where to begin.

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655.849 - 657.851 Frank Bergfeld

It's going to be a good morning.

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657.871 - 664.719 Erin Moriarty

But Paige's family knew they'd have to start somewhere if they were ever going to find her.

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667.241 - 670.024 Frank Bergfeld

You want to get out and start looking and try and figure out where she is.

670.405 - 679.474 Erin Moriarty

So Craig and Callie Bergfeld set off in one direction. Good luck today. Thank you. Hopefully we'll find her today. And Frank Bergfeld headed off in another.

680.035 - 684.36 Frank Bergfeld

My daughter's the one who's missing. It's when you're out there, keep your eyes open.

685.943 - 715.23 Erin Moriarty

While the Bergfeld family searched for Paige, the sheriff's department continued its own investigation. Deputies brought in specialty divers to search the river. And they got one of their first big leads in the case when someone called 911 after seeing a car in flames parked in an empty lot. It turned out to be Paige's car, the car she was driving when she disappeared.

715.379 - 724.25 Erin Moriarty

The next morning, authorities discovered that the fire was started from inside the car on the passenger side. DA Pete Houtsinger.

Chapter 3: What role did Paige's ex-husbands play in the investigation?

2265.061 - 2288.352 Erin Moriarty

The call, along with all the other evidence, did the trick. In November 2014, just before Thanksgiving, more than seven years since Paige Bergfeld disappeared, Lester Ralph Jones was arrested and charged with her murder and kidnapping. He appeared notably unsurprised.

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2288.804 - 2297.293 Frank Bergfeld

Lester did not react at all. When he was told that there was an arrest warrant for him, he didn't ask what it was for. He just turned around and put his hands behind his back.

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2297.973 - 2307.723 Erin Moriarty

Jones went to jail. His bail set at $2 million. But for the prosecutor and Page's family, the case was far from over.

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2308.224 - 2314.45 Frank Bergfeld

We certainly believe we had enough to bring it to a jury. But remember, at this stage in the process, these are just allegations.

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2315.271 - 2325.276 Erin Moriarty

And they must be proven in court. Did Jones kill Paige Bergfeld? If so, how did he do it?

2325.777 - 2329.043 Frank Bergfeld

It's certainly our intention to have a front row seat.

2331.407 - 2339.12 Erin Moriarty

And like his commitment to search for his daughter, Frank Bergfeld is committed to attend the trial every single day.

2339.18 - 2343.027 Frank Bergfeld

I'd like to say goodbye to her. I think I owe it to her.

2343.833 - 2361.11 Erin Moriarty

With all that the family has endured, the years of uncertainty, the discovery of their daughter's secret life, and the painful proof of her death, they prefer to remember Paige as she was, and for them, will always be.

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