Jeremy Bryan Jones

Patrice Endres

Then, on April 15, 2004, Patrice Endres showed up at her beauty salon like any other day. As usual, she was upbeat and smiling, and joking with the customers. She had left a love note on her husband's car that morning that read, "The best is yet to come." The mother of a sixteen-year-old boy by a previous relationship, Patrice was totally devoted to her husband and son.

When a customer arrived for her noon appointment, Patrice's salon, Tamber's Trim-N-Tan, was empty. The front door was unlocked, her purse and keys were on her desk, her lunch was in the microwave, and her car was out in front, parked at an odd angle. But the cash drawer was empty. Patrice had disappeared without a trace.

The Endres' Salon

Endres' past had been a tough one, including a substantial drug history. According to the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, she had worked long and hard to quit messing with drugs and turn her life around. She'd gone back to school to learn the beauty trade, opened her own hair and tanning salon, married Rob Endres, and the two had plans to buy a bed and breakfast in Flagler, Florida. Life was good.

Over the protests of her family and friends, who say she was happier than she had ever been, police could find no motive for anyone to do anything to Patrice. They became convinced she had run off.

But Patrice's husband Rob knew better.

Rob held a series of car washes to fund a reward for her safe return, which eventually netted $17,000. He plastered town with posters with Patrice's photo, and the police station was flooded with over seven hundred leads. Air and ground searches revealed nothing. Rob worked tirelessly for months, searching for his bride.

Sketch of suspect in Endres case

A witness said she saw a man in a white cargo van blocking the entrance to Patrice's salon on the morning she disappeared. Community-wide searches went on from Coal Mountain to all the way to Matt.  But community energy like that is hard to sustain, and around Christmas, the posters began to come down, along with the reward fund collection boxes. There still were no clues. Not a single lead had panned out.

This was not the first time a woman had gone missing in a grisly trail of terror. Rob Endres had no idea that his wife's disappearance was just the latest in a long line of murders, which had begun a decade earlier.