Diane Augat:
On Wednesday - April 15th, 1998 - 59-year-old Mildred Young heard a woman's voice over her answering machine. "Help, help, help - let me out," the woman's voice said, clearly tense and alarmed by what was going on around her. This was followed by a scuffling sound, which made it clear that someone on the other end of the phone was attempting to pull it away from the woman speaking. The woman on the other end could be heard saying "Hey, gimme that!" before the call came to a quick and unceremonious end.
While most people wouldn't think twice of such a call, thinking it to be a malicious prank or a misdial of some sort - or, at the very least, a bizarre misunderstanding - Mildred Young knew better. After all, her daughter - a woman with diagnosed mental illness and a number of troubling personal relationships - had already been missing for several days. And the woman's voice from the other end of the phone was unmistakable her.
In 1988, Diane was alleged to have committed child abuse by the state; alleged to have sought an excessive amount of unneeded treatment for one of her children (a mental illness we now know as Munchausen-by-proxy). While she would ultimately be acquitted of these charges, the state would continue to pursue a case against her, believing the charges to have had merit. Elaine Fulton-Jones, a spokeswoman for Children and Families, would later state about Diane and her three kids: "The children were removed from her custody." In 1991, after a period of turbulent behavior, Diane and her longtime husband, Frederic, would divorce. He would retain custody of their children, and this would become the nail in the coffin (so to speak) for Diane's mental health.
Over the next several years, Diane would begin to unravel (for lack of a better word), with her being in and out of not only local jails but mental health facilities.
Diane would begin to develop a drinking problem during this period, and would also begin to dabble in drug use; both of which did nothing but exacerbate her already-existing mental issues. She would be involuntarily committed to mental health facilities at least 32 times under the Baker Act.
On April 10th, 1998 - Good Friday - Diane Augat was seen alive by her family for the very last time.
Diane had been released from a mental health facility roughly two weeks prior - after being sent there for an involuntary evaluation - and had been staying with her sister in Hudson. While Diane had previously been living in Odessa (where she still had a home) her family thought it best for her to be with family for the time being.
On the morning of April 10th, Diane was last seen by her sister, who ended up leaving for a doctor's appointment that morning. When she returned later that day, she found Diane missing from her home, and it would be reported that Diane left her sister's home - along Cobble Stone Drive in Hudson - at around 11:00 AM.
Later that same day, Diane would be seen at the Hay Loft Tavern, located along Little Road and State Road 52. There, Diane stayed until she was kicked out, with Diane's mother, Mildred Young, later recounting to the Tampa Bay Times:
"[The bartender] cut her off because she was walking in circles. To my knowledge, that was the last anyone saw her, except for the one who took her." Diane's family would report her missing the next day (April 11th). While Diane had been known to disappear in the past, she generally only did so for a day or two. This was usually when she lapsed on her medication, or just simply stopped taking them. But in this case, Diane would go missing for several days, leading to the mysterious voicemail received by her mother on April 15th (five days later).
While publications tend to vary on when, exactly, this call came in, it's most reputably reported to have been heard by Diane's mother on Wednesday, April 15th - five days after Diane's last known sighting. In this call, Diane could be heard asking for help on the other end of the phone, but struggles to keep control of the phone from a mysterious individual taking it away from her. When Mildred would attempt to call back the number Diane had dialed her from, the name "Starlight" would appear on her caller ID (indicating that it had been a business with that name), but attempts to redial would go unanswered. In my digging, I've only found one business in the Tampa area with that name, a strip club named the Starlight Lounge (which is now known as Teasers). But it's unknown if there was any connection between the two.
On Wednesday, April 15th - five days after Diane Augat left her sister's home in Hudson, Florida - a human finger was found along U.S. Route 19, near New York Avenue. This discovery was made at around 4:00 PM by a woman walking to work, who thought that the finger was just a toy or a prop of some sort. However, the woman would tell her boyfriend about it, and the following day he ventured out to the location, where he discovered that the finger - which was painted with red nail polish - was real.
In an attempt to figure out who this finger belonged to, authorities would match it up with their own records, and quickly discover that the finger belonged to the missing Diane Augat. Because Diane had been arrested in the past, she had been fingerprinted and was unfortunately a match. While investigators would theorize that the finger might have been accidentally severed - perhaps slammed in a car door, or something similar - the likelihood of that was believed to be quite low.
When asked for her own thoughts on what might have happened to her missing daughter, Diane's mother Mildred Young hoped for the best, but clearly seemed to be preparing herself for the worst, stating: "She is in trouble. Big trouble. They're probably torturing her... I'm hoping that she's still alive, that they haven't killed her yet."
On the same day that the story of Diane's disappearance began to break in the Tampa area, a discovery would be made at a convenience store that Diane often frequented. This occured in Odessa, Florida, about 25 miles north of Tampa. On Saturday, April 18th, 1998, convenience store manager Patricia Sblendorio discovered a pile of neatly-folded clothing inside of an outdoor freezer. Immediately recognizing the clothing as Diane Augat's, Patricia would reach out to Deborah, Diane's sister, who confirmed the clothing was in fact Diane's.
Unfortunately, it would be almost impossible to determine when the clothing had been put into the outdoor freezer, since the staff at the convenience store had not checked it in approximately three weeks. Diane had been missing for about eight days at the time of this discovery, making this an unknown variable in an extremely concerning case.
Despite the circumstances pointing to harm having befallen 40-year-old Diane Augat, she would be ruled a missing person following her disappearance, and her case would remain in virtual stasis for the better part of the next few years.
On November 25th, 2000 - one day after this article was published about Diane's case in the Tampa Bay Times - another bizarre discovery would be made at a convenience store frequented by Diane and her loved ones.
That Saturday, Terry Wilson (girlfriend of Diane's brother) walked into a Circle K convenience store along Highway 19, just north of Hudson; near Viva Villas, a neighborhood that Diane was often in. There, inside the convenience store, on top of the lottery ticket counter, Terry would find a bag of random knickknacks which had the name "Diane" written in black marker. Believing that this might have something to do with the case of her boyfriend's missing sister, Terry took this bag back to Diane's family, who then informed police about the discovery.
This clear plastic bag contained items that Diane would have been using at the time of her disappearance: black eyeliner, Taboo perfume, bright pink lipstick, as well as a generic brand of toothpaste. Coincidentally, this was the same type of toothpaste issued by the mental health facility that Diane had been in just a couple of weeks before her disappearance, and this bag appeared to have been similar to one kept by those in the mental health facility - leading Diane's family to assume that it had been hers. The question of how or why it had been left at the convenience store - seemingly abandoned - intrigued Diane's loved ones and investigators.
A group of women - matching the same general description as Diane - went missing in the area between 1995 and 2002. These women, like Diane, were last seen in bars and restaurants in the Tampa area, and seem to bear an uncanny number of similarities.
37-year-old Kathy A. Struckhoff, a recovering alcoholic suffering from severe depression, was killed in February of 1995. She was last seen in the company of a man named "John" at the Tampa-area Texans Lounge; with staff at the bar claiming that "John" had been a regular that never returned after Kathy's murder. Her body was found the following morning just off of Little Road, in New Port Richey, but "John" - this mysterious man in his 50s or 60s - was never identified, and Kathy's murder remains unsolved today.
As does the murder of 36-year-old Kimberly Langlois Wilson, another woman that had long struggled with substance abuse and alcoholism. Kimberly was found dead in a shallow ditch along Hudson's Delmar Drive and Flicker Lane, and had last been seen alive on June 5th, 1999. Police pegged her date of death as June 9th or 10th.
34-year-old Rhonda Ann Brown was another struggling alcoholic that had previously worked as a bartender, who went missing in January of 2000. She was last seen walking away from her home in Hudson, heading out to a bar named Sullivan's nearby. Sadly, Rhonda was never seen or heard from again, disappearing without any of her belongings.
Then there is 33-year-old Kathleen Marie Wandahsega, who was another struggling alcoholic that disappeared in October of 2002. She was last seen walking away from her home in Port Richey, possibly heading out to a bar in the area to celebrate her birthday. She would never return home and wasn't seen alive again, and would fail to cash a $500 check mailed to her days after last being seen.
While it is indeed very possible that these are all unrelated incidents - I'll be the first to admit that I've been wrong in the past - the similarities in these five cases (including Diane Augat's) are pretty uncanny. These were all women that ranged in age from 33 to 40 years old, who were around the same height and weight, who had all previously suffered from alcoholism and substance abuse, and had varying degrees of distance with their loved ones. These five women would all be murdered or go missing from the same general area while heading out to bars in the Tampa area, over a roughly seven-year period.
