Paul La Rosa

Erin spent all her time at the stables, you know, in Tennessee. I mean, you know, her mother famously said she would sleep there if she could.

So we go there, and the horses are everywhere, right off the public road. And the ranch itself is absolutely not fancy. I mean, it's very rugged. It's, you know, in a desert community. It's out in the open. And, you know, you just see horses running back and forth. There's a few structures that look like they're down on their luck.

It's sort of a ragtag bunch of young children and young people and this older woman. And I said, are you Isabel Megley? I said, we're from CBS News, blah, blah, blah. I sent you an email. I called you. And she said, oh, yeah, I meant to call you back. I just never got around to it. And I said, well, we're here now and we want to talk to you.

So once we were face to face, she was happy to talk to us. Isabel is a very weathered person. I mean, she's been outside a lot during her life, you can tell.

He started wondering, where is Erin? And tried to get in touch with her, but could not by phone. He knows there is not good service in the desert. So he didn't worry too much, but then by nightfall, he was worried.

But he didn't do anything. He didn't call police. He didn't really tell anybody on his base anything.

The sheriff's deputies and the sheriff's office had a lot of questions for him. They were like, tell us where she went. You know, what did she have with her? Why did you wait 24 hours to report her missing? His version of the story is that I thought from watching television shows that you have to wait 24 hours before you can report an adult missing.

But that makes you seem suspicious in the eyes of the investigators. Also, he had no alibi, per se. I mean, he was in his apartment playing video games, and he's an unemotional guy. I mean, he's not the kind of guy to say, my wife is missing. You know, he's like unemotional and very flat affect.

The sheriff's department can't just go there and start talking to people. They have to go through protocol, right? They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved.

NCIS, never heard of it. That's embarrassing.

They are stationed at the base and they get involved, holding the sheriff's department hand to let them know how the military operates.

If you're driving through 29 Palms and you make a left somewhere and you just drive for about 30 minutes or less, you'll come to the Marine base, which is huge. But there's a big gate. There's a big gate at the base because there's a lot of security. And we were not allowed out there physically.

You know, they fire artillery shells there all the time and they have, you know, people out in the desert and doing all sorts of things.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, if you don't know anything about it, was an atomic city. Oak Ridge, Tennessee did not exist before World War II. And the military built Oak Ridge, Tennessee for people to develop the atomic bomb.

You couldn't just leave Oak Ridge, Tennessee and go for a drive out into the country. Everything, there was a gate, everything was controlled. It was sort of a sheltered, closed town.

It was the family, and it was the church, and it was the horse ranch. And that's it.