marriage to work, i did not give up. soon he was gone, vanished without a word or a trace. he left the young daughter behind. he left the house. was this a husband who did not want to be found? or could this be something else. detectives are not an undercover operation. that would lead to a long hard to say ready for that? i know that it has to happen. disappearance in the desert. could it be the perfect crime. i can only imagine what would be like to keep that. welcome to dateline. i m lester holt. for eight years it was a mystery, a husband who had simply vanished. on the surface it didn t make sense. he had a wife, a lucrative job, a daughter he loved. but investigators were told he also had a secret. so was he missing or was he hiding? that question would lead detectives to a dark discovery because someone else had a secret to. here s josh michael it s. there is an old saying, that two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. we never talked about
so he told me in december i needed to let him go but he wanted to wait until after christmas. i actually kept him much longer than i would have because he was a friend. reporter: the first week of january 2010, ellen fired patrick. she could not have known just how life-altering that decision would be. what did he say? he didn t say too much. just loaded up his stuff and left. reporter: of course, ellen didn t know that patrick knew the secret. and he went to the police? and he went to the police. reporter: and now patrick was sitting in a starbucks with detective wilson, letting him in on the 8-year-old secret. reporter: this guy didn t really come forward out of the goodness of his heart or civic duty. this was revenge? yes. reporter: but you ll take it? yes. reporter: patrick told the detective that he knew that mike snyder had been killed, and that his body was buried in the yard
west side of town. that is until detective mark wilson and three of his colleagues from the cold case team showed up. you wouldn t happen to have someplace we could sit down and talk would you, just have a chat with you. reporter: they were there to speak with 25-year-old mechanic michael sheffield, ellen snyder s son. mike snyder s stepson. he didn t seem to be surprised the police showed up in his work and he said sure. we have a break room we can go talk in. so he went to his break room and we conducted an interview with him there.
dave simmons. i mean, the only proof that they had a relationship is the voice mails which don t exist anymore. well, i think people, if they knew mike, would know that he would never send anybody money, ever, unless there was some sort of relationship there. so mike was supporting this guy? i never found enough money that he was supporting him, but he was definitely helping him out. police tell us ellen s information didn t lead anywhere. the detective didn t locate mike in the caribbean. when he tried to contact dave simmons from phoenix, he never got a response. but that same albuquerque journal article, the one that infuriated ellen, also got ellen s former neighbors talking about something they d seen years before. they d seen michael and ellen digging out behind the garage, digging a hole. when was that? around the time that mike went missing.
albuquerque police chief ray shultz. it s not against the law to be a missing person unless there s suspicious circumstances. and chief shultz was right in saying mike was totally within his rights to walk out and cut off ties with everyone in his life, the people he loved, the people he no longer loved. and so the investigation was limited to that of a missing person. winter, 2002, turned to spring. no one heard from mike snyder. his expensive mechanics tools lay unused at work. ellen, now a single mom, filed for divorce. she was awarded the house, the money in their joint account, and sole custody of their daughter elizabeth. when your daughter, mike s daughter, would say to you where s daddy, what would you say? i didn t know. that he had left because he was mad at mommy. a year after mike left her, ellen says she could no longer afford that home they built