A kidnapped Montana woman was discovered dead in the trunk of a car by Spokane sheriff’s deputies over 250 miles from where she had been kidnapped. While trapped inside of the trunk, the woman called her husband and daughter, who had the police on the other line, but investigators were not able to locate her in time.
The 47-year-old kidnapped Montana woman was returning to her home in Great Falls from Helena, Montana, where she had visited with relatives. According to Sheriff Leo C. Dutton of Lewis and Clark County, Rita Maze stopped sometime before noon at a rest area near Wolf Creek along Interstate 10 on Tuesday morning. NBC News reports that Maze was assaulted during the stop.
According to Great Falls Tribune, Maze’s husband, Bob, spoke with his wife at 11:25 a.m on Tuesday. He reported her missing at 8:20 p.m. that day, then received a phone call from the kidnapped Montana woman at 10:25 p.m. on Tuesday night. According to Dutton, Rita Maze told her husband that she had been hit on the head by “a large man in a black hoodie.” She was unsure if there had been only one kidnapper or whether she was in the trunk of her own car, identified by KHQ as a Pontiac Grand Prix. Police in Helena issued an alert in hopes of finding the Grand Prix, and the car was later seen east of Spokane in Post Falls, Idaho. The kidnapped woman’s husband was able to reach her again, and Dutton spoke of how his office was notified of the call by the husband and daughter of the victim.
“She’s saying she’s kidnapped.”
NBC News reports that Rita Maze spoke from the trunk of the car with her husband and daughter, Rochelle, who had a police officer from Helena on another line. Although the cell phone signal came and went as the car traveled toward Spokane, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office was able to ping cell towers along the route in order to track the kidnapped woman’s location, which is a frequent tactic in abductions, as in the linked Inquisitr story. Great Falls Tribune spoke with Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy Mark Gregory.
“We had received some information that the car may be over here in our area. So basically one of the agencies started pinging the cell phone, which helped us get an area to search and locate the vehicle.”
Spokane authorities discovered the kidnapped Montana woman’s body in the trunk of a car located in a parking lot at West Geiger Blvd. and South Spotted Road, near the Spokane International Airport. She was found dead on Wednesday morning at around 12:30 a.m.
Rochelle Maze spoke to Great Falls Tribune about her last communications with her mother.
“She traveled with a gun and she knew he had her gun and she was terrified. He kept her in the trunk for 12 hours.”
She described her mother as hysterical, which made it difficult for her to decipher what the kidnapped woman was saying. They spoke for 10 minutes.
“I told her that I loved her. That’s the last thing she heard.”
The phone then went dead, either from a spent battery or a faded signal.
The kidnapped Montana woman’s cause of death has not been released, but Dutton believes it was a homicide. He also said it appears as though Rita Maze was killed in Spokane.
Details on what Dutton described as a “person of interest” were not made available. Investigators from the FBI are working with the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Office on the case. They are currently reviewing security footage from a convenience store. Although Dutton acknowledged that it was very early in the investigation, Spokane authorities believe that the attack and kidnapping of the Montana woman was random.
A former principal of Morningside Elementary School, where Rita Maze was employed from 2005-2009, described her as having a “positive presence” on the students.
In addition to her daughter, Rita Maze is survived by a a son, Michael, an Air Force sergeant stationed in Germany, and his daughters. Her family has set up a GoFundMe page for help with expenses relating to the death of the kidnapped Montana woman.
[Image via Shutterstock]
Kidnapped Montana Woman Calls Family From Trunk Of Car, Spokane Sheriff Finds Her Dead Hours Later is an article from: The Inquisitr News