A woman who was kidnapped at a rest stop in Montana called her husband, her daughter and a police officer from the trunk of the car in which she was kidnapped and then taken to her death, police say.
Rita Maze, 47, told her husband that her captor hit her in the head and put her in the trunk of a car at a rest stop on her way home from Helena, WHNS reported.
Maze talked to her husband and a police officer briefly while police tracked her cellphone using cell tower signals two hours before police found her dead body in Spokane, Washington, authorities say.
The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office found Maze’s body in the trunk of her car near Spokane International Airport, nearly 350 miles away from her hometown, WHNS reported.
Maze’s husband and daughter reported her missing just hours before the call.
When her daughter, Rochelle, spoke with Maze on the phone she said her mother was hysterical and hard to understand, The Great Falls Tribune reported.
“I told her that I loved her,” Rochelle Maze said to The Great Falls Tribune. “That’s the last thing she heard.”
The phone went dead or lost a signal shortly after the two spoke.
Investigators say she was abducted near Wolf Creek north of Helena.
Authorities were able to find her body by tracking her cellphone and were able to find the car’s license plate through a license plate reader near Post Falls, Idaho, The Tribune reported.
Police did not release the cause of death, but said it would likely be a homicide, WHNS reported.
A motive or information on how the kidnapping occurred wasn’t immediately available, but police say they do have a person of interest.