FUN BLOG

1 commentBy ROB WALLACE, LAUREN PUTRINO and
TOM McCARTHY
Aug. 11, 2010

In the summer of 2000, 15-year-old Leah Freeman went missing in Coquille, Ore. For almost a week, the Coquille Police Department, led by Chief Mike Reeves, treated it as a missing person case, believing that the teen had run away.

Caught up in young love, Leah Freeman, 15, disappears on summer night.
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Yet on the night the teen disappeared, an ominous discovery was made. A man picked up a shoe by the side of a town road. He thought it belonged to his daughter. It was not until days later, after the town's search for Leah had grown increasingly anxious, that he turned the shoe over to police.

The police identified the shoe as Leah's. On it they discovered blood.

Six weeks passed before Leah's mother, Cory Courtright, got the call from police that would end her hopes that Leah was still alive. Another discovery had been made.

"I still let the denial take over," Courtright said. "I wanted to... I wanted to go back in time. I didn't want, I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to hear the final news. I didn't want to hear it."

Watch the full story Friday on "20/20" at 10 p.m. ET

A search team had come upon a macabre scene just off an isolated lumber road about five miles outside of town.

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