Body Discovered; Search Continues at Site : Crime: Authorities believe ex-Northridge resident Denise Huber may be one of many victims at Arizona home.

Authorities were digging for more possible victims Sunday at the country-club home of a house painter charged with murdering a former Northridge woman whose frozen body was found in a rented truck here, three years after she vanished alongside an Orange County freeway.

Investigators said the search of 37-year-old John Joseph Famalaro’s hilltop property in this affluent town was continuing partly because of evidence suggesting the work of a “serial killer.”

Costa Mesa Police Lt. Ron Smith said the discovery of Denise A. Huber’s checkbook, purse, identification cards and near-flawlessly preserved corpse is consistent with people who keep personal mementos or bodies as “trophies of their killings.”

Huber’s body was found Wednesday in the stolen truck, inside a freezer chest, naked and wrapped in layers of plastic trash bags. The freezer was plugged into an extension cord that ran from the Ryder rental truck to Famalaro’s house.

A special canine unit from Utah discovered “two points of interest” inside the house late Sunday, said Yavapai County Sheriff’s Lt. Kathleen McLaughlin. The two cadaver-sniffing dogs began pawing at two places downstairs, prompting authorities to consider an excavation, she said.

“We could probably start digging (there) tomorrow,” McLaughlin said Sunday. “You never know what might be there.”

Law enforcement officials are also concerned about a partial excavation they found in a lower cellar area in the Famalaros’ split-level home, where authorities, some in surgical masks, were digging Sunday.

Meanwhile, an autopsy found that Huber, who was 23 when she disappeared in June, 1991, died from blunt force trauma to the head, according to the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s office.

Huber appeared to have suffered at least a half-dozen blows to the head from an object with “sharpened” edges, police said. No murder weapon had been recovered Sunday night. Smith said it could not be immediately determined whether Huber had been sexually assaulted. But the body was so well preserved, Smith said, that authorities had little trouble lifting fingerprints to make a positive identification.

Because the corpse was frozen, Yavapai County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Laurie Berra said, experts are having a difficult time determining exactly when Huber died. It is possible they may never know, she said.

Famalaro was being held on $250,000 bond on suspicion of murder and felony theft related to the stolen Ryder rental truck. The case has been referred to the Yavapai County grand jury for investigation, and a preliminary hearing has been tentatively set for Friday.

The grim discovery last week marked the end of Orange County’s most baffling missing persons case, which began three years ago when Huber disappeared after attending a rock concert at the Forum in Inglewood. Her blue 1988 Honda Accord was found the next morning on a shoulder of the Corona del Mar Freeway in Costa Mesa.

Huber’s parents, who spearheaded a massive, enduring search effort, appeared shaken Sunday. The family recently announced their intention to leave the state where they had raised their daughter to move to North Dakota.

“We’re glad we finally have an answer,” Ione Huber said at the family’s Newport Beach home. “We were praying for an answer for a very long time. But this is not the kind of answer we were praying for.”

The Hubers said they had never heard of Famalaro until this week, and have no plans to travel to Arizona. Rather, the family has found some comfort in reports from authorities, who believe that the victim died quickly after her abduction June 3, 1991.

“There’s no sign of torture and she did not appear to be malnourished,” Smith said. “That would mean to me that she died very soon after she was picked up.”

As the Hubers were finally free to grieve for their long-lost daughter, another family--the Famalaros--was in the Yavapai County jail waiting room wrapped in a different kind of grief.

“Our hearts are breaking over this,” said Anne Famalaro, the suspect’s mother. “We are the kind of people who keep to ourselves. We’re conservative Christian people. I believe in Jesus, and he will pull us through this.”

The woman, who lives next door to her son in a fashionable golf course community and reportedly owns the split-level house now surrounded by crime scene tape, described her son simply as “wonderful.”

“Please, you must understand,” she said at the jail. “I shouldn’t say anything more.”

Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Jerry Holloway said John Famalaro had not been a suspect in the case. Nor was there was there any indication that Huber knew Famalaro, a house painter who left Orange County to care for his aging father in Arizona.

There was no sign of a struggle at Huber’s car, and police were never able to determine exactly what happened at the scene.

Denise Huber grew up in Northridge, where her family moved in 1973.

The Hubers were active in the Presbyterian church, first in North Hills, then in Calabasas, establishing a large network of friends.

Claudia Moreland, a close family friend who was Denise Huber’s teacher at Valley Presbyterian School in North Hills, said ever since Huber’s disappearance in 1991, people have asked her for updates on her case.

“The Valley Christian community is a very tight community,” said Moreland. “Probably every church in the Valley had her on its prayer chain.

“She was an excellent student. She had a vivacious and adorable personality,” she added.

Andrea Ludden, 27, who described herself as Huber’s best friend, attended Los Angeles Baptist High School in North Hills with her, where they played on the basketball team.

Ludden said she and Huber attended Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet concerts and professional hockey games. After graduating in 1985, they took a monthlong trip to England. They were planning to go again after Ludden’s graduation from Cal State Northridge next year.

“We were like sisters,” Ludden said. “Denise was really popular and outgoing and fun-loving. Everybody loved her.”

Huber’s parents moved to Texas before her senior year in high school when her father, a mortgage banker, was transferred. She decided to stay in the Valley so she wouldn’t miss her final year of high school, staying with the Morelands.

After finishing high school, she joined her parents in Texas and later attended a Georgia Bible college for about a year and a half. She later transferred to the UC Irvine after her parents moved to Newport Beach in 1987.

For Costa Mesa’s Lt. Smith, the dark details of Huber’s disappearance have been compelling -- his life’s work over the past three years.

“The end here ranks as kind of weird any way you put it,” he said. “This was the biggest case of my career. I lived this case. I became close to the family. I’m glad she has been found but I’m not happy about the circumstances.

“Every anniversary of her disappearance has been emotional for me. You think of what you could have done differently. But I don’t think we could have done anything more.”