Inside the Escondido Police Department there are 12 binders in a locked room. The binders contain the investigative information collected by detectives during the past 3 months that Amber Dubois has been missing.
"Our typical homicide case, even a multiple homicide case might fill one or two binders,"said Lt. Bob Benton. He says more than 20 detectives from Escondido Police have worked on the case, which has consumed countless hours of investigation. "It's very frustrating to put the amount of hours and resources into this case and yet to determine exactly what happened that morning,"said Benton.
On February 13th, Amber Dubois disappeared while walking to Escondido High School. She was last seen with an unknown teenage boy about a hundred yards from the school. Since then, detectives have been collecting information about Amber. "Anything that could help find her,"Benton said.
Inside the 12 binders there are transcripts to more than 500 interviews with people who know Amber or claim to have seen her. There are photocopies of Amber's last emails. There are also pictures of clothing found near Amber's home like a blue sweater that turned out to be nothing. Pictures of shoes, the same type that Amber was wearing, so investigators know what to look for if they find footprints. There are also 900 tips that detectives have spent months tracking down, to see if they led to the missing girl. "One tipster thought they saw Amber in a semi-truck, coming across the Mexico border in Tecate. Our investigators not only found the truck but talked to the driver and the girl who looked similar to Amber, but wasn't her,"said Benton.
The lieutenant says the family of Amber Dubois has criticized the police department for not doing enough. He says that's not true, and the 12 binders prove it. Lt. Benton also says more than a dozen outside agencies have helped out in the case including the F.B.I.
