They filed the missing person report after she allegedly called them from the trunk of her auto, claiming to have been abducted by “a large man in a black hoodie”, reports The Washington Post.
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Deputies found the keys in the ignition and her purse in the front seat.
She was reported missing around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.
A woman who was abducted in the USA state of Montana spoke to her family by telephone several times before she died.
Maze had gone to Helena, Montana, Monday to visit her ailing mother.
She said her mother was hysterical when she spoke to her on the phone. She managed to use a cellphone from inside her own vehicle, reaching her family and a few investigators.
Using mobile phone towers, investigators were able to pinpoint the car’s location to a auto park near Spokane International Airport, where the vehicle and Ms Maze’s body were discovered.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Rita Maze was accosted at a rest stop on Interstate 10 in Montana.
“I believe she was abducted”, her daughter, Rochelle Maze, told the Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane Thursday.
Maze worked for years as a cook at Morningside Elementary in Great Falls. She had been shot, but the medical examiner listed the cause of death as pending.
Was Rita Maze murdered or did she take her own life?
Dutton said Maze contacted police and family members with a cellphone, but was unable to give specifics on her location or abduction.
Law enforcement officials say during the course of the investigation into the death of Great Falls woman Rita Maze, they have determined that preliminary reports of a possible person of interest are inaccurate.
As investigators try to piece together how a Montana woman ended up dead in her auto near Spokane International Airport, they’re running into more questions than answers. Maze had told her family that her abductor was 6-foot-5, maybe black or Native American, and that he wearing a black hoodie, but she didn’t get a good enough look at him to say much more. “We don’t know if she hung up or what”. Her last phone call was to her husband and daughter Rochelle (right).
Bill Salonen, a former school principal, described her as having “a positive presence” and being great with kids.
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A GoFundMe campaign to support Maze’s family had raised almost $10,000 by Thursday morning.
