clothes, roaring down the driveway in mark s white chevy station wagon. mark never drove that fast. it didn t look good. the policemen poked around, sniffed, measured. and still no mark stover. the evidence, even without a body, seemed clear. this was homicide. so by now, a couple of days after mark s disappearance, his employees were shifting from puzzled to shocked to grief-stricken. mark took a role in my life like a surrogate father. and i truly loved mark as a parent and a friend and a family member. sometimes the clues in a mystery such as this can be very personal, more about relationships than fingerprints or dna, as detective luvera knew full well. and in the days after mark stover s disappearance, the detective repeatedly encountered a disturbing story.
these former lovers were afraid of each other. what happened to that marriage, the one on the heavenly island? in fact, there was a record, the detective discovered. and it was more hell than heaven. well, mark had issues with linda, and linda had issues with mark. to put it mildly. here s the story mark s fiancee teresa told the detective. the story, she said, mark told her that linda seemed to be doing her level best to destroy mark s dog training business. she had been calling key clients and saying really horrible things about him to damage the business. she called and tried to shut the website down and tried to shut his phones down. which is why again, this is the story teresa said mark told her why he snooped in her garbage one march morning in 2008. this was a three-hour drive from his own house. he went there, said, teresa, to look for a paper trail to prove linda wanted to destroy his
2009, the day after mark stover disappeared. skagit county sheriff s detective dan luvera stood in the dark and looked it was evening, october 29th, the day after mark stover disappeared. there s a little bit of blood here and there. of course, marks protection, dog thing, was clearly injured. that could explain those bits of blood. but in here, earlier that day, just inside the car port door the investigation team had knocked back by an overwhelming order of bleach. and here in the bathroom off the whole, they found clorox bottles. looked like someone tried to wash away evidence. this had to be more than just an injured dog. mark stover s employees told about the strange events the previous morning. the barking dogs, the odd business of the locked carport door, the man wearing mark s
and she was obviously hurt. she was growling. and so i started talking to her nicely thinking, oh, my god, what is she doing here and what s going on? and i backed down the driveway. at about the same time the phone rang in the kennel. it was mark s fiancee, teresa. when they told me ding was out, there was blood. ding is never out, ever. she is either in the house or she s with mark. she s not just out barking at people. no mark. injured dog. teresa, frantic now, called the skagit county sheriff s department. all of those circumstances were very suspicious. this is detective dan luvera. oh, i immediately thought foul play. this is huge. there s more to the story, and there definitely was. more to the story? yes, there apparently was. starting with a secret history, stories of a marriage s ugly
his word against the ladies . the deputy let him go. the deputy just gave him a warning, said, don t go back there, you know, go on your way. it was just a minor trespassing incident, after all. but now, a day later, it didn t seem so minor. time to find both cars. the dog trainer s car was no longer at the grange hall. but an alert detective noticed it here in the parking lot of the northern lights casino, three miles from the place where the ladies had seen it. it looked like blood on the back of the car. and when investigators ordered up the casino s surveillance video, she they saw this. 6:21 p.m. october 28th. perhaps seven hours after the ladies saw the car at the grange. here was someone mark s car onto the casino parking lot. whoever it was abandoned it. and now, dan luvera s investigation was moving very quickly. immediately started trying to find out who this michiel