Serial Killer Scott Lee Kimball

On October 30, 2007, Grusing contacted the Emrys after they relocated to Idaho and asked to speak to LeAnn about a possible suspect in an ongoing homicide investigation. Howard Emry explained that LeAnn had been missing for nearly five years.

"He didn't say anything for a while," Emry said. "I think it was just a shock to him that there was another person to add to the list."

Howard Emry explained to Grusing that through his own investigation he learned that LeAnn had been introduced to a man who called himself "Hannibal." According to what he had learned, "Hannibal" had befriended LeAnn and had assisted her in writing a series of bad checks and misusing her credit cards, and that the activity had continued until the time her car was found abandoned near Moab, Utah.

The following day, Grusing and Detective Thatcher followed up on some of the information obtained from Howard Emry, including the fact that LeAnn's boyfriend at the time of her death was an inmate who had been housed on the same cellblock as Kimball in late 2002. Kimball apparently had concocted a plan to help LeAnn's boyfriend escape from prison so they could unite in Mexico. Kimball instructed the inmate to refer to him as "Hannibal" in his dealings with LeAnn so that she would not be privy to his real name.

Within days of the planned escape, LeAnn's boyfriend had been placed in solitary confinement for poor behavior and had been unable to speak to LeAnn. Later, after learning the circumstances of LeAnn's disappearance, the boyfriend told Grusing that he knew that Kimball had taken her and probably killed her. Grusing showed LeAnn's boyfriend a photo of a young girl with long, brown hair, dated January 18, 2003, obtained during a search of Kimball's laptop computer. By the time of his interview with LeAnn's boyfriend, Kimball had been arrested for a violation of the conditions of his release and was back in jail on a variety of charges, and Grusing took advantage of the situation to gain access to Kimball's computer. The inmate confirmed that the photo was of LeAnn, but said that her hair was blond the last time he saw her.