The Disappearance of Laura Depies A Collection of True Crime

By Ruth Conley

The day started with 20-year-old Laurie Depies hanging out with her boyfriend, Marc Truebenbach at his apartment, which he shared with his sister Lisa. The two spent that Sunday morning watching TV until Laurie had to leave for her shift at the Graffiti store at Fox River Mall, in Appleton Wisconsin. She worked through the day, and took a dinner break at around 6 p.m. She then went to another store to pick up a ring that she had bought for Marc. Laurie then headed back to work until the store closed at 9 p.m.The employees at the Graffiti store stayed back to clean and run the day's numbers, after which they closed up and left. Laurie got into her car at 9.45 p.m. and headed to 310 West Wilson Avenue to see her boyfriend and their friends. Her colleague watched her drive off, the sound of her busted muffler reaching his ears way after she was long gone.Laura Depies would never be seen again...What happened to Laura?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jun 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201894207

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THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LAURA DEPIES

RUTH CONLEY

table of contents

LAURA DEPIES

CRYSTAL ROGERS

SHIRLEY WITHERS

LADY CANNIBAL

JANIE LOU GIBBS

JUDY BUENOANO

KRISTIN ROSSUM

Laurie Depies

August 19, 1992

The day started with 20-year-old Laurie Depies hanging out with her boyfriend, Marc Truebenbach at his apartment, which he shared with his sister Lisa. The two spent that Sunday morning watching TV until Laurie had to leave for her shift at the Graffiti store at Fox River Mall, in Appleton Wisconsin. She worked through the day, and took a dinner break at around 6 p.m. She then went to another store to pick up a ring that she had bought for Marc. Laurie then headed back to work until the store closed at 9 p.m.

The employees at the Graffiti store stayed back to clean and run the day’s numbers, after which they closed up and left. Laurie got into her car at 9.45 p.m. and headed to 310 West Wilson Avenue to see her boyfriend and their friends. Her colleague watched her drive off, the sound of her busted muffler reaching his ears way after she was long gone.

Back in the house, Marc, his sister Lisa, and a third friend, Victoria, were waiting for Laurie to get back from work. Marc was looking forward to his gift, as Laurie had called him earlier to tell him that she had gotten him a ring and would be picking it up later. As they were hanging out in the house, the three finally heard Laurie’s car in the parking lot. The 1984 VW Rabbit had a bad muffler, and it was not possible to not hear it drive by. None of the occupants of the house made a move towards the door because Laurie usually walked into the house without knocking, and they all expected her in the door seconds after her car was switched off. They waited for a few seconds, all looking expectantly towards the door.

Laurie didn’t come through the door as was expected, and Marc decided to check out what his girlfriend was up to, expecting to see her by her car in its usual spot. At the time, Laurie was a big fan of Stephen King’s novels, and Marc briefly thought that maybe she had decided to pull a prank on him. When he got to the balcony, he had a clear view of Laurie’s car, but she was nowhere to be seen. He waited a few seconds on the balcony, but after he noticed no movement, he went out the door to check on the situation. Laurie was not in the parking lot. All he saw was the Styrofoam soda cup on top of the car, with ice cubes melting inside. He called out to Lisa and Victoria, and the three started looking for Laurie in the parking lot. They then fanned out through the neighborhood, but there was no sign of Laurie.

After about fifteen minutes of searching and calling out her name with no response, they finally decided to call in the police. Several officers from the Menasha County Police Department came to the scene a few minutes later and started canvassing the area. At one point, Marc saw an officer looking into garbage bins and realized that the police officers were also looking for a dead body. However, this theory wasn’t unanimously accepted by the officers, as others started looking into the runaway theory. At one point in the night, Laurie’s mother was called and told about her daughter’s disappearance. She maintained that Laurie wasn’t the type to just disappear, but the officer didn’t seem to share her conviction.

Mark Depies, Laurie’s father, was supposed to go on a fishing trip on Monday morning when he received a call about his daughter’s disappearance. Unlike Mary, Mark was more involved in Laurie’s life. He had met Marc and Laurie on several occasions, and was also supporting her financially. The call was devastating to Mark, and he immediately cancelled his trip. He opted to stay close to home so that he could be reachable at all times in case there were any new developments in his daughter’s case.

The Crime Scene and Subsequent Investigation

The police had pretty much nothing to go with from the beginning. Laurie’s car was parked in the spot she usually put it in, the doors were locked, and nothing seemed like it was out of place. The Styrofoam cup was above the rear door on the driver’s side, still cold, but the ice had long since melted. Apart from Laurie’s absence, the scene was completely normal, save for police presence. The investigators logged the cup as evidence, and later admitted that it offered few viable leads.

The police transported Laurie’s car on a flatbed in an attemt to preserve any evidence that may have been left behind. They took it to the agency, the only available storage location at the time, where it was dusted for prints. Laurie’s belongings remained untouched in the car, and this immediately ruled out robbery as a motive. They checked the position of the driver’s seat and concluded that its placement was consistent with Laurie’s 5’5 frame. Despite the fact that they thought that Laurie had run away, more police were called in to the scene. They patrolled the neighborhood, checked out every party that was going on, and also spoke to anyone who knew Laurie, hoping to find her whereabouts. Nothing panned out.

Laurie’s mother, Mary Wegner, was frustrated at the police’s initial approach to the investigation. Some officers were still considering Laurie as a runaway case, and not much was done to find her during the first three days after her disappearance. After the third day, it apparently seemed clear that Laurie did not leave on her own accord. A search party was set up and volunteers offered to look for her. Police set up a tip line and asked citizens to come forward with any information they could think of pertaining to Laurie’s disappearance.

Marc was considered as a suspect from the onset, and he and the other two people in the house were called in for questioning. There were some inconsistencies in their stories, and police suspected that they knew more than they were revealing. They set up a lie detector test, but the police never revealed the results of the test. However, the three were quickly eliminated as suspects after their polygraphs.

Laurie’s friends and family set up posters all over the neighborhood, and they made sure that every available space had Laurie’s picture plastered on it. In the station, officers were receiving hundreds of calls on a daily basis during the first week of Laurie’s disappearance. They chased down every lead and always came up empty. The case was quickly getting cold even though it had just started.

They decided to take a deeper look at Laurie’s life. They interviewed her coworkers, who gave them a timeline of Laurie’s last day. They then dug into the lives of the clientele that the store had, and this did not yield any information pertinent to the case. Police then decided to look into Laurie’s finances. She was in debt, and her father was dutifully paying off her credit card debt as a birthday present. She had also talked to her landlady about available payment plans for her rent so that she could be able to keep the place. While her financial information seemed to be far from ideal, Laurie did not seem to have any plans to disappear, commit suicide, or desire to escape her situation. Her journals and diaries only offered information about her life, and nothing was flagged that could give a clue as to where she might have gone. Laurie had no secret life, and soon enough investigators did not uncover any new information.

Search parties checked construction sites, ditches, and vacant lots for any sign of Laurie or her body. Police pulled traffic data from the various stops in the area, with no success. They consulted the FBI and any other agencies that they thought could help. Laurie’s name was also entered into every possible database to see what came up. During interviews, police resorted to carrying out polygraphs to improve their chances of catching someone in a lie. This led to no concrete results. They had no DNA sample from Laurie, so they drew blood from her relatives for comparison just in case new evidence was uncovered.

Days became months, and months quickly turned into a year. After the first year, the search for Laurie started losing momentum. The active search was finally over, but her case remained open.

David Spanbauer

The arrest of David Spanbauer in 1994 gave the investigators who were