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E010 Diane Augat
2.4k Plays6 years ago
In this episode, Allison and Maggie bring you the story of Diane Augat, a woman who is still missing 22 years after her disappearance. And, listeners, be warned; this case is heart-breaking, bizarre… and chilling.
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Transcript
Celebrating Milestones
00:00:00
Speaker
So, Maggie, our listeners did it. You guys got us to 15 written reviews on iTunes. Which made us super happy. Yeah, we were texting each other each time one would come on. We were like, look, we got a review! We were at 13, we were at 14. So, without further ado, here is your bonus episode.
Approach to Missing Adults
00:00:23
Speaker
When an adult goes missing, the search takes a different approach.
00:00:29
Speaker
We first question not whether something happened to them, but whether the person could have simply chosen to leave of his or her own volition. Could the person have just had enough? Or have they been escaping something? But what makes these adult cases even more difficult is when you add other factors.
00:00:52
Speaker
For example, if the missing person had previously run away. Sometimes in those cases, it's easy to assume that that is what happened again, to come up with excuses and reasons. Additionally, when we add mental illness to the situation, similar assumptions are made. There's a tendency to believe that the person left willingly, perhaps aware or perhaps unaware of what he or she was doing.
00:01:20
Speaker
What we don't immediately believe is that someone has harmed the person.
Introduction to Diane Augett's Case
00:01:26
Speaker
And finally, when we add drugs and alcohol addiction into the mix, well, again, the public tends to blame the missing person for his or her own disappearance. We blame and we blame instead of questioning and questioning. Our case today should lead us to question the details we know.
00:01:50
Speaker
And there are some odd details, dismembered body parts, a disturbing phone call, and curious clues left in curious places. This is the story of Diane Louise Ogott.
00:02:43
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron.
00:02:52
Speaker
We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families with each case. We encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, coffee and cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee and listen to what's brewing this week.
Diane's Background and Struggles
00:03:20
Speaker
April 10th, 1998 was a normal day. Deborah Cronin had left her home in Hudson, Florida, according to a newspaper article by Jeff Doherty for a doctor's appointment, and returned to an empty home.
00:03:36
Speaker
What was odd about this is that Deborah's sister, Diane Augett, had recently moved in with her and should have been home, or at least should have returned home by that evening. When she didn't come home, Deborah spoke with their mother and their mother, Mildred Young, reported her daughter missing on April 11th, 1998.
00:03:59
Speaker
Deborah has told both interviewers and law enforcement that Diane had been happy in the previous few days. There was no sign that anything was wrong. And that statement was a big deal, Maggie, because Diane Augett had been through a lot for the last 10 years. So how old is she? At this moment, she's 40. So since she was in her late 20s, early 30s, she had had some struggles in her life.
00:04:28
Speaker
So Diane, as I just said, now 40, when she was 30, her life as she knew it began crumbling. Previously, she'd been an artist and a pretty talented artist from everything I read who loved camping and fishing. So again, like we keep covering these stories of people who like the things that we're like, no, no.
00:04:51
Speaker
I also cannot draw but kudos to you. Well she was also a loving wife to Frederick and a mother to a son and two daughters but around this time she was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder. Her mood swings according to her family were extreme.
00:05:12
Speaker
According to Diane's mother Mildred in an interview in 2000 with the Tampa Bay Times, quote, she deeply needed institutionalized care.
00:05:24
Speaker
is bipolar disorder, and I don't know a lot about it. Just something that can randomly start all of a sudden, a light switch. I'm not too familiar with it myself, but I think it is. I think it's something where it's not like you're gonna necessarily diagnose it when you're a child, that it's something that can kind of manifest itself later.
00:05:51
Speaker
And if you've ever known anyone who's had bipolar disorder, then you know that one of the hardest parts can be convincing them when they're experiencing a manic high that they need their medication. Oh, okay. Right? So they're feeling like, well, I'm feeling healthy. I'm feeling good. Right. Why do I need to take medication? And I really believe if we're honest with ourselves, we get it.
00:06:15
Speaker
I don't know about you, Maggie, but I know I hate to take notes. Oh, same. I hate it. I mean, well, mine comes from two things. Number one, when I was a kid in church one Sunday, I had like those sweet tarts that are in the long roll, the hard ones. I love those. Yes. Well, I told my mom that I needed to go to the bathroom and I went out into the lobby where there was a water fountain.
00:06:40
Speaker
And my mom had been sick and I had seen her take medicine and I was like, I'm gonna try this. So I took one of those sweet tarts and those aren't little, threw it back in my mouth, took a drink of water and it got stuck in my throat. Oh my God! Like not stuck enough that like somebody had to do like Heimlich maneuver, but I could feel it every swallow that I took.
00:07:02
Speaker
And we had a big dinner at church that night and I remember I couldn't eat. Like I had to just sit there and wait until it dissolved. And so after that I was terrified to take medicine. Oh my gosh! And so my mom would have to like, there used to be like the little pills and you could open it up and then we're like the little... Sprinkle things. Yeah, in it. And my mom would put it on a spoonful of jelly.
00:07:24
Speaker
And I remember my dad didn't know. My mom was like, yeah, you have to put it on a spoonful of jelly. And so my dad made me a jelly sandwich with it. So that kind of led to my like hatred and fear of swallowing medicine. But number two,
00:07:41
Speaker
I guess I just never want to ingest something that I feel like my body doesn't need. And so I'm always like, if I have a headache, it has to be really bad before I even take Advil, because I'm like, my body will fight itself kind of thing. And I feel like, because of those reasons, I think a lot of us have something like that in us, most of us do. And so we kind of understand why, if she's feeling healthy,
00:08:07
Speaker
that she would be like, why would I take medicine? My mom, she'll sometimes, like when I go home, when I go to sleep, she's like, well, do you want an ibuprofen before you go to bed? And I'm like, well, no, I feel fine. And she's like, but if you take that, it might help you sleep better, because sometimes you get sore. And I'm like, no, I'm fine. Right. So I think we all kind of understand where Diane is coming from.
00:08:29
Speaker
After her diagnosis, Diane was known to not take her medication regularly, either by choice or by forgetfulness, which again, I think we've all been there.
Diane's Disappearance
00:08:41
Speaker
As a result, she was arrested several times, her marriage fell apart, and sadly she lost custody of her three children. Worse yet, she turned to drugs and alcohol to self-medicate when she was in the depressive state.
00:09:00
Speaker
In the 10 years between her diagnosis and her disappearance, according to several accounts, Diane had been institutionalized 32 times. Wow. I feel like that's a lot. It is a lot. And she had been initially taken into custody due to an act called the Baker Act.
00:09:18
Speaker
And this act, Maggie, it's one that in Florida allows a doctor, a judge, or a police officer to make the call that a person is ill enough to require an involuntary medical exam. I kind of like that though. I do too. And because of that, Diane had been taken to an institution under that involuntary commitment law.
00:09:41
Speaker
but she had just recently been released from a local mental health institution. And in an attempt to turn her life around, she had moved in with her sister Deborah in Hudson, Florida, about 20 miles from where she had been living in Odessa. Okay. Trying to get it together, you know, live with somebody who can make you accountable, that sort of thing. Move kind of away from all your problems and fresh start. Right.
00:10:07
Speaker
Well, we now know that Diane had left the home they shared around 11 a.m. on April 10th. So this is after her sister had left for that doctor's appointment. But what we don't know is why she left or where she was headed.
00:10:22
Speaker
Fortunately, a few people saw Diane that afternoon and in the days that followed. Diane was seen three miles from her sister's home at a pub called The Halof. So did she just walk away? Yes, she did not have her driver's license or a car, so she would have either hitchhiked or walked. Okay. And it was three miles away. So, I mean, that's a walk, but she could have dragged. But it's not that bad. She could have made it.
00:10:50
Speaker
Even though we don't know the exact time that Diane was there, nor for how long, we do know that the bartender had cut her off because Diane seemed incoherent and was, quote, walking in circles. So the bartender's like, you're done. Yeah, no more for you. The second sighting of Diane was at 4 PM the following day. This sighting was by a driver who saw Diane walking along US-19 near the Coral Sands Motel.
00:11:19
Speaker
We do not believe that Diane had taken her medication at all in those entire two weeks since she had been released from the local mental institution to her sister's care. Okay, so she's not in a good mental state right now. No, right, exactly.
00:11:35
Speaker
So while Diane's family were concerned, many others suspected that, you know, she had fallen into old patterns, right? Like you were saying, Maggie, because she hadn't taken her medication, maybe she had experienced a mental break, maybe had wandered off somewhere, had been picked up and maybe even institutionalized again.
00:11:55
Speaker
Well, I hope that, and I know you'll tell us here in a minute, but I hope that her background didn't affect how long it took for them to do something about it. Well, like I said in the introduction, unfortunately, I feel like a lot of cases that tends to be true, that, you know, if someone's a runaway, if there's a history of drug or alcohol addiction, a prostitute, a history of mental health, that there is that initial assumption that
00:12:25
Speaker
it's not foul play. Right. While Diane's mother does believe that Diane had been released from her previous institutional stay too soon, she also believes that Diane herself did meet with foul play.
00:12:41
Speaker
Keeping Hope Alive on April 14th, a waitress reported that she thought she had seen a woman fitting Diane's description eating lunch at the Inn on the Gulf Hotel. Nothing I saw, however, Maggie said whether the waitress reported that the woman, if it was indeed Diane, was calm or was in distress. Like I didn't read any details about it, just that she thought she saw someone meeting in the description. Who looked like her.
00:13:09
Speaker
But the next clue that came concerning Diane's whereabouts would lead to something far different than hope.
Mysterious Developments
00:13:16
Speaker
Oh no. When Mildred Young, Diane's mother, returned home on April 14th, she checked the messages left on her answering machine and heard one message that stopped her cold. She heard her daughter Diane's voice on the message, tense and clear.
00:13:37
Speaker
Mildred heard the horrifying sounds of a struggle. Oh no. Before she clearly heard Diane say, help, help, let me out. Oh.
00:13:51
Speaker
Then there was the sound of continued struggle. Mildra believes that it was caused by someone trying to wrench the phone from Diane's hand because she then heard, according to the Doe Network, her daughter say, quote, hey, give me that. And then the line went dead and the message ended. I cannot imagine. As a parent? Yeah.
00:14:16
Speaker
getting that, and knowing, let me out? Yeah, that you knowing they need your help. Well, this call has haunted Mildred. This was not an indication of a voluntary runaway. This was instead a clear sign that Diane was held against her will, right? Because why else would you say let me out? Yeah, help, help. Right. At least there was a clue, a single word, starlight.
00:14:46
Speaker
When the call came through, the caller ID said that Diane's call had come from Starlight. Do we know what that is? No. Mildred had tried to call the number back, but there was no response on the other end. I mean, obviously, if you're holding her daughter, right, you're not going to be like, hello? Hey! How's it going? Yeah, and answer it.
00:15:09
Speaker
While there were six businesses with the word starlight within a 45 mile radius of Diane's disappearance, law enforcement have not been able to trace Diane's call to any of them because this call that Mildred had received had originated in Odessa. And as stated, none of the six businesses with that name were located in that town. So how did it have that name? We don't know.
00:15:40
Speaker
The next day, and even more if you can believe it, an even more terrifying clue emerged. I'm not ready. On April 15th, a woman was walking down US-19 and saw something that looked like a stage prop. When she returned home, she told her boyfriend about how she had seen something that looked like a part of a human finger. Why would you think that's a stage prop?
00:16:06
Speaker
I mean, I probably would too. I wouldn't be like, oh, there's somebody's cut off, you know, cut off. I know. Well, on April 16th, her boyfriend got curious, right? Like what if it wasn't fake? What if it really was a clue for something that had happened? So he drove by, he pulled over and he saw that it was part of a finger, that it was not fake. And he called police.
00:16:33
Speaker
According to several reports, the description of the finger between the woman who saw it first and her boyfriend had differed so much that initially police thought that they were looking for two different fingertips. But upon combing the area, they only found one. The top third of a finger.
00:16:53
Speaker
and one that upon testing of the fingerprint turned out to be Diane Augett's right middle finger. Oh my. Well, law enforcement then began searching an even wider perimeter around that area for any additional body parts. Makes sense. But they didn't find any. So then we're questioning Maggie, was this a sign by someone of Diane's fate? Is it a clue to her family that she's in trouble?
00:17:21
Speaker
According to Diane's brother-in-law, Al Finkelstein, law enforcement told him that they believed, and I never read anything about why they thought this, that the finger could have been severed accidentally. Like if a car door slammed on it and cut it off, it being the longest finger. I know, the thought. But to me, I mean, that still wouldn't be an accident. I think we'll see how you accidentally. Slams your door that far. To sever your finger.
00:17:51
Speaker
So in addition to me that seeming like an involuntary action, that door would have had to have been closed with some pretty strong force in order for a finger to be cut off versus like smashed in the door. Yeah, you just chopped the end of your finger off. It's gonna have to be pulled pretty hard. A third of your finger. But the biggest reason I doubt accidental explanation, Maggie, is because of the next clue.
00:18:18
Speaker
found one week later. Oh Lord. About a week after the missing fingertip was found, another discovery was made. In the outside freezer of the Totally Convenience store, a store just a mile away from Diane's house in Odessa where she had previously resided, the manager Patricia found a bag of clothing.
00:18:42
Speaker
OK, somebody is toying with the police. That's what it sounds like to me, Maggie. The clothes in the bag were neatly folded and they had not been there when the manager had last checked the stock in the outside freezer three weeks earlier.
00:18:58
Speaker
According to one report, this was also a store where Diane's sister, Deborah, worked. Oh no. Yes. Yep. So regardless, we do know that it was Deborah who identified the clothing as Diane's, clothing that Deborah had just recently given her sister.
00:19:20
Speaker
And we also know Maggie that sometime between April 10th and April 18th, Diane's home had been burglarized. However, with Diane at our sister Deborah's house, we don't know the exact date.
00:19:35
Speaker
So her old house in Odessa, someone had robbed it, but we don't know when because Diane wasn't living there. Did she still own that home? Yes. So we don't know if, well obviously, and here's the thing, so a lot of people have been like, oh, maybe these were clothes taken from that house, but. Maybe her sister put on there. Yeah, well, I don't doubt her sister in terms of like thinking that she had something to do with it, but here's what's going through my head.
00:20:02
Speaker
Number one is still not public record. The information of what, if anything, was taken from Diane's home.
00:20:09
Speaker
But it doesn't make sense to me if the clothing in the freezer were taken from Diane's home, right? If it were part of that burglary because everything I read made it seem as though she was staying exclusively with her sister. And why would new clothes that her sister had just given her be back at her old home in Odessa? So these weren't the clothes that she had on? No.
00:20:33
Speaker
So this makes me think like it wasn't something that was taken from the burglarized home, that that was a separate incident. So it had to be taken from the sister's house. Right. That's what's going through my head. But then here's the other weird part. I also didn't read anywhere about Deborah noticing that clothes were missing when Diane disappeared.
00:20:55
Speaker
I don't know about you, Maggie, but I would think that the first thing I would do would be to go through to see if Diane had voluntarily left. And so I would look and see if they were missing personal items. To see if she packed up a suitcase or something. Yeah. Yeah. Anything that would indicate that she left of her own free will. And I haven't seen any report stating that Deborah had noticed, you know, items missing that would make her think that. But yet here are clothes. Clothes that she had just given her.
00:21:22
Speaker
My brain is like going 7,000 different ways right now. Right. And so then you're questioning like, how did the person who left the clothes get them? However, because the freezer hadn't been checked in three weeks, remember the manager Patricia said, well, I know they weren't there three weeks ago. We don't know if the clothing had been placed there before or after Diane's disappearance. I guess she could have maybe like put them there thinking, I'm going to come back and get these.
00:21:52
Speaker
And I actually read, there was one theory someone was talking about, and I'd never heard this, so I don't know if it's true. I'm just telling you a theory I read on the internet. But somebody said that that can be a tendency of people with bipolar disorder, that they'll place things in different areas, like, oh, I'm gonna get this later and put it there, which sounds more like dementia to me instead of, so that's why I don't know if I believe it, but that could play into what you just said.
00:22:22
Speaker
or it could have been by the person who took her, right, like. Just trying to tease people, like here's her fingertip. Right. Here's her clothes. Right. And that leads me to this next bit of information. Two and a half years later, on November 25th, 2000, the case got even more bizarre. So nothing since the close until two and a half years later. Two and a half years later. The day before, when I'm getting ready to tell you, on November 24th,
00:22:52
Speaker
The Tampa Bay Times had published a front page article about Diane August's case. They made a plea for additional information about her whereabouts, like let's just keep it, like we try to do, Maggie, in the public consciousness, keep people aware and looking. Refresh the memory. Right. Well, on November 25th to one day after that front page article, they did get a response. Just not the kind of response they were expecting.
00:23:19
Speaker
Terry Wilson, who happened to be Diane August's brother's girlfriend, walked into a Circle K on US-19 to buy a soda and a pack of cigarettes. It was there, lying on the counter by the lottery tickets, that she found another bag.
00:23:42
Speaker
This bag contained black eyeliner, a tube of pink lipstick, a bottle of taboo perfume, and a tube of generic toothpaste identical to the kinds that Diane had been given from that local mental health facility where she had been treated during the weeks before her disappearance. So the brother's girlfriend just walks into a gas station and it just so happens to be lying on the counter and she goes through it? Yes.
00:24:12
Speaker
and most eerily Maggie on the outside of the bag in black Sharpie was scrawled a single name, Diane.
00:24:25
Speaker
It was as though this was left just for Terry. Yeah. Like they saw her coming and they like place it on the counter and then scurried away. Right. Which seems oddly coincidental. Yeah. Right. But then at the same time you think, okay, now the fingertip was found by a random person, but the first bag was in a store where Diane's sister worked.
00:24:47
Speaker
This second bag of Diane's items found in a convenience store that her brother's girlfriend just happens to walk into? It's too coincidental. Well desperate to find out if this were real or some cruel joke, Terry took the bag to Diane's mother Mildred to verify, you know, is this Diane's? And Mildred agreed that the items looked just like ones that belonged to Diane.
00:25:14
Speaker
And while we don't know with 100% confidence that these items did belong to her, the timing of the day after the article was published and that coincidence of who found the items, it seems to me pretty clear that they would have been Diane's. Yeah.
00:25:33
Speaker
Well, after this finding was reported, a new witness came forward who said that she saw Diane near the Coral Sands Motel on US-19 on the same day that her mother had received that chilling message.
Investigation and Suspicions
00:25:47
Speaker
Could the phone being wrestled between Diane and someone on that recording have been one from a hotel room? Wouldn't it have showed up Coral Sands Motel? Well, I don't know.
00:26:00
Speaker
Right, that's a great point, but we know that the phone call came from somewhere in Odessa. That's true, I forgot about that. Well, the police looked into the report, but they were unable to find any conclusive evidence that Diane had been there. Oddly, however, almost a year after the discovery of the second bag, a robbery took place on June 27th, 2001 at the Coral Sands Motel.
00:26:28
Speaker
Two masked robbers had come in and beaten one of the managers, Rose Casper, but had fled when her boyfriend, the other manager, Gary Robert Evers, had burst in toting his own gun. The masked men had gotten away, Maggie, but Evers thought he knew who they were. He thought they were wearing masks because they were someone from the neighborhood, right, and they were afraid that they would be identified.
00:26:55
Speaker
and Evers thought he knew who one of the men was. 26-year-old Todd Kammers, who had a history of burglary and according to Evers, quote, ran the neighborhood. What Evers deceived Kammers into coming over to this building right behind the motel confronted him
00:27:13
Speaker
accusing him of the attempted robbery. Wow. And I know. And when Kammers refused to confess and maintained his innocence, Evers unloaded two clips from his nine millimeter gun into Kammers head and torso. That seems a little extreme to me. Yes. And a witness heard the shots and reported them to the police and Maggie Kammers was in fact innocent.
00:27:40
Speaker
in this burglary, just like he was maintaining. And Evers was convicted of first degree murder in 2004 and sentenced to life without parole. He died in prison in 2012 and many people believe because of that
00:27:55
Speaker
connection with the Coral Sands Motel and because of Diane's last sighting being right there near that motel that ever's now a convicted murderer of someone else was involved in whatever happened to Diane. Well he seems like he can kind of flip a switch on and on. I mean that's true but
00:28:17
Speaker
Here's why I find it hard. Not that he's a good guy. Obviously, he's not, right? Right. But he was never charged with anything related to Diane's case, which tells me that they couldn't find any evidence at all. And I know he committed murder. And I know that it was extreme, right? And my heart grieves for the family of Todd Kammers. But at the same time, even though it was misguided,
00:28:46
Speaker
ever thought he had a reason, right? It was identifiable. He was like, this is a guy who tried to rob us, who beat my girlfriend. Right, he's angry, trying to protect people he loves. Right, and I haven't seen anything that even indicates that he knew Diane, nor that he had ever killed someone else randomly. And Maggie, with no credible clues after 2001, the case has since gone cold.
Case Goes Cold
00:29:15
Speaker
I'm speechless. I know. You'd think with all of these things that were left, there would be fingerprints, something, but no. Blood. No. It has now been 22 years and no more clues. Diane Augett is still missing. Did she simply run away? Did she suffer a psychotic break and is living somewhere potentially with no memory of who she is? Was she kidnapped? If so,
00:29:45
Speaker
Was it by someone she knew, either from the neighborhood, from her group of friends, or perhaps someone with whom she shared time while being institutionalized? Or scarier yet, could she have been kidnapped by a complete stranger? The saddest part is that, just like us, my sleuthounds, her family doesn't know either.
00:30:10
Speaker
According to an article by Tamara Lush entitled, Mother Clings to Hope for Missing Daughter, Mildred Young heart wrenchingly stated the following, quote, A part of me is gone. I never accepted she was dead, end quote.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yet, sometimes, the fear and the dark potential of reality is what grips Mildred's thoughts tighter instead. Because in that same article, she also admits, quote, did someone cut her up piece by piece? That's what I think about, end quote.
00:30:56
Speaker
Diane Augett would now be 62 years old. She had a tattoo on her back and on her right shoulder. She would be missing the tip of her middle finger on her right hand and have a scar on her abdomen. Anyone with information concerning the whereabouts of or circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Diane Augett should contact Sergeant Charles Calhoun at the Pasco County Sheriff's Office.
00:31:25
Speaker
at 800-854-2862. We hope you've enjoyed our bonus episode today. And don't forget to join us Thursday for our regularly scheduled episode.
00:31:40
Speaker
Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode.
Community Call to Action
00:31:49
Speaker
As always, follow us on Twitter, at casescoffee, on Instagram, at coffee cases podcast, or you can always email us suggestions to coffeeandcasespodcastatgmail.com. Please tell your friends about our podcast so more people can be reached to possibly help bring some closure to these families. Don't forget to rate our show and leave us a comment as well. We hope to hear from you soon.
00:32:10
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.