Man Who May Have Seen Missing Woman Sought

Investigators are looking for a young man who may have seen Newport Beach resident Denise Huber just before her disappearance last year.

The man told a vendor at the Orange Swap Meet recently that he saw a tall woman resembling Huber standing near a car on the shoulder of the Corona del Mar Freeway about 2:30 a.m. June 3, 1991, talking to two men. Huber, 23, was on her way home from a concert when she vanished, and her blue Honda Accord was found abandoned on the freeway shoulder with a tire blown out.

The man indicated a reluctance to talk to police and walked away when tire and wheel vendor Dolores Berg asked for his name and telephone number. Huber’s parents, Costa Mesa police and private investigator Chris Melendez of Santa Ana are asking the man to come forward to help with the investigation, which has failed over the last year to yield any solid leads.

Huber’s parents said they are offering a $10,000 reward to the man if his information leads to either a conviction in the case or the return of their daughter.

“I feel it’s very key to the whole case,” said Huber’s father, Dennis. “I believe this man is a family man, and he should look at his kids and say, ‘What if it was my kids?’ All we want is his help and cooperation.”

Melendez, whom the Hubers contacted because of his contacts in the Latino community, stressed that investigators want to talk to the man for information and not for prosecution.

The man is described as a Latino in his late 20s, about 5 feet, 8 inches tall, weighing 155 to 160 pounds, with dark eyes and dark, short hair. He was shopping with a young woman and an apparently newborn baby in a stroller and had stopped to look at wheels at Berg’s swap meet booth about three weeks ago. It was then that he noticed the photograph of Denise Huber that Berg, a neighbor of the Hubers, has posted.

“He said: ‘Is that kid still missing? I remember seeing her on the (Corona del Mar) Freeway,’ ” Berg said.

He told her he was driving home to Costa Mesa from his night job when he saw a woman talking to two men while standing near a car with its trunk open, Berg said. One man was a tall “beachy” type with long blond hair, while the shorter man had dark hair, the man told Berg.

The man said he could distinctly remember the blond man’s face because he had eye contact with him, Berg said.

But when Berg asked the man to report what he saw to police, he replied: “I don’t like cops.” Berg said she then asked him to call the Hubers, but he indicated he did not want to get involved and slipped away into the crowd.

Melendez plans to distribute 10,000 flyers with a composite drawing of the man, and investigators will be searching swap meets. Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Ron Smith said his investigators cannot judge the credibility of the man until they talk to him.

The man is asked to call Melendez at (714) 542-8083, or a hot-line at (714) 541-3206, or Costa Mesa police at (714) 754-5205.