Katharina Buczek
This led her father, Bob, to suspect his daughter had suffered a second psychotic break.
“I think that she probably had flashbacks. It was like reliving that nightmare. And all of that, I think, just overloaded all the circuits,” Bob said.
“In my mind, the last thing she did, she went through her wallet in total frustration– whether she’s looking at pictures of family and friends, she ripped them up and scattered them around,” he continued.
“Whether she was destroying her past and trying to get away from it, I really don’t know. I know that my daughter went through a really tough time out there for two or three hours.”
Investigators believed that Kristi changed into a gym outfit, one that she always carried, before abandoning her vehicle– since her work clothes were discovered drenched and neatly folded in the backseat of her car.
The following morning, August 10, 1993, authorities also launched a full-scale search. Unfortunately, though, no trace of Kristi was ever uncovered.
In the months after Kristi’s disappearance, however, there were numerous possible sightings reported in Texas, Salt Lake City, and California.
On June 30, 1994, one off-duty highway worker, Mike Case, claimed to have picked up a hitchhiker outside the town of Visalia, California, who resembled Kristi.
Mike recalled how he thought the hitchhiker might have been on drugs at first.
“But talking with her a little bit at the beginning, I knew that possibly she was in a world of her own,” he explained.
“I did happen to notice that there were two slash marks on her wrist. And I asked her directly, ‘Well, what happened there?’ And she said, ‘I had a breakdown.”
