A Call From the Desert, Then Silence : Family Mysteriously Disappears

First, Floyd Braun, 41, a computer consultant working for Rockwell International, did not appear for work last Friday.

Then on Saturday he and his wife, Linda, also 41, telephoned a relative in Orange County to say they were lost near some California desert town and would be several hours late arriving for their visit.

Then on Sunday, when the couple failed to keep a string of other appointments, relatives went to the Brauns’ home in an upper-middle-class section of Placentia to see what might be wrong.

The Brauns and their three children--Eric, 14, Michelle, 10, and Scott, 3 months--were not there. Instead, the relatives saw the normally tidy house strewn with household possessions as if the family had been packing hurriedly and had left some behind, said Placentia Police Lt. Daryll Thomann.

Clothing had been taken out of closets and left lying about. An overnight case had been stuffed full of cosmetics, then left behind. Some clothing and cosmetics had been stuffed into a paper shopping bag, then left by the door. Things had been knocked over and broken in the apparent haste, Thomann said.

“It looked like someone just said, ‘Let’s go, let’s go now, ‘ “ Thomann said. It did not look like burglary, he said, because items typically stolen had not been touched.

Early Monday, Placentia police issued a Southern California alert for police agencies to watch for the Brauns’ blue, four-door 1983 Mercury Marquis, license number 1FZP326. They said the car was not at the Brauns’ home.

“We have no crime, as far as we’re concerned, right now,” Thomann said. “Our concern right now is for the children. We’re hoping to hear from them or someone who’s seen them to let us know everything’s OK.”

Thomann quoted the Brauns’ relatives as saying it is “totally out of character for any of the family members to be out in that (desert) area and to leave without word to any of the relatives.”

“According to the family, (Floyd Braun) is the kind of guy who never does anything out of the ordinary,” Thomann said.