"Jerry" intended to travel from Fort Lauderdale "to the beach and play guitar". Although Place's mother remained suspicious, "Jerry" assured her his intentions were noble; nonetheless, she noted the number of his 1969 Datsun. Place confirmed her mother's suspicions that she intended to leave home, although she tearfully assured her that she would be gone "just for a little while" and that she would remain in contact. The girls left the Place household with Schaefer at approximately 8:45 p.m. When Place had not returned after four days, Lucille first contacted Jessup's mother, Shirley, only to learn her daughter had "run away" on September 27, and that she likewise had not heard from either girl since. Both girls were subsequently reported missing to the Oakland Park police. Lucille provided investigators with the vehicle registration she had noted, in addition to a physical description of the man the girls had left her home with. The registration was traced to an entirely separate model of vehicle belonging to a St. Petersburg resident who did not resemble "Jerry Shepherd", and who had a firm alibi for the date of the girls' disappearance. The sole Jerry Shepherd registered as living in Fort Lauderdale was also eliminated from police inquiries and by early 1973, the teenagers' disappearance had largely become a cold case. Suspected further murders Mary Alice Briscolina (14) and Elsie Lina Farmer (13) vanished while hitchhiking to a Commercial Boulevard restaurant from a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea motel on October 26, 1972, less than one month after Place and Jessup were last seen alive. Their bodies were separately recovered in undergrowth close to Sunrise Boulevard, not far from the city of Plantation, early the following year—both with legs spread apart. Briscolina had been extensively beaten about the head, with one blow to her skull proving fatal. Several of her fingernails had been torn from her body, indicating a ferocious physical struggle with her killer. Farmer had also been bludgeoned to death. Subsequent questioning of Briscolina's friends revealed she and Farmer frequently visited a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea apartment rented by the older sister of Briscolina's boyfriend, and that an individual these acquaintances recalled as a "Gary Shepherd" had been known to Briscolina. This individual—whom several identified as Schaefer—had also claimed to be an "ex-Wilton Manors police officer." Three months later, on January 11, 1973, hitchhikers Collete Marie Goodenough and Barbara Ann Wilcox (both 19) disappeared while hitchhiking from Sioux City,