Detective Tries to Come to Terms With ‘Career Case’

When Denise A. Huber’s body was found Wednesday, few could blame Costa Mesa Police Lt. Ron Smith for his emotional reaction.

For the past three years, the Huber case has been an almost constant companion for Smith and half a dozen other members of the Costa Mesa Police Department assigned to it officially--and consumed by it privately.

“I can tell you one thing,” Smith said, standing outside the home of murder suspect John Joseph Famalaro, “this thing, this case, has gnawed at me. We never actually gave up all hope.”

No lead was too crazy to pass up, no investigative method too weird not to try. Investigators hypnotized possible witnesses, hauled in psychics--even held their nose and went on tabloid television.

“You name it--we tried it,” Police Chief David L. Snowden said. “Everyone would say, ‘That’s crazy.’ We tried it anyway.”

Nowhere did the name John Joseph Famalaro turn up as a possible suspect.

Smith was among the first detectives assigned to the case when Huber disappeared in June, 1991. He has followed hundreds of leads--specks of information that have led him to obscure locations throughout California without results.

But last week, the trail of what Smith called his “career case” ended in the back of a rental truck, where Huber’s body was found frozen.

Even at that point, Smith had one more duty to perform: a dreaded telephone call to Huber’s family.

“It was a surprise to them,” Smith said. “It had been a long time between leads and good information. I think they feel that finally justice can be served.

“They’ve gone through a range of emotions. These are very good people,” he said.

Over the years, Smith and others on the department have grown quite close to Huber’s parents, Dennis and Ione. Snowden’s friendship with Dennis Huber grew over two dozen breakfast meetings as the two chatted about the case over coffee.

Costa Mesa police, unused to crimes of this magnitude and moved by the Huber family’s unwavering faith, watched their professional detachment dissolve as the case wore on.

On Monday, the mood at the Police Department was a mix of disbelief and the sense of a loved one lost.

“If you just got a call that a member of your family was found dead in a freezer, how would you feel? That’s how members of the our department felt,” Snowden said. “You just wish you could have done more.”

Snowden has helped arrange a donated casket for Denise Huber and transportation for her burial in South Dakota.

“I feel very close to them, and I feel now they can put Denise to rest. They have suffered terribly,” Smith said.

Standing hundreds of miles from the Costa Mesa abduction site, Smith could not even estimate the hours and the money his department has devoted to their search for Huber. Snowden did not know either. No one ever added them up.

Perhaps a measure of those hours is the fact that during the marathon search, Smith was promoted from sergeant to lieutenant.

“Probably the most difficult time came on the day of the second anniversary of her disappearance,” Smith said. “There were just a lot of loose ends to tie up and not a whole lot of information out there.”

That was long after a monumental effort that began with a briefly promising canine search and continued with a nationwide media blitz that included thousands of bumper stickers and posters, even a sign bearing her likeness near the freeway. Friends and relatives had raised a $10,000 reward; “America’s Most Wanted” and “Inside Edition” had publicized the case. Police treated the most remote leads with care.

As recently as last month, one detective found new signs of hope in fresh leads that followed media coverage of the case.

But as Smith and other authorities continued their search and vigil, the passage of time had simply become too much of an enemy against their hope of finding Huber alive.

“The longer this went on,” Smith said, “we had to come to grips that the worst had probably happened, and it did.”

In the next few days, the 41-year-old lieutenant will begin a new chapter, one that he hopes will end in a conviction. Smith has joined a team of investigators from Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department and other officials in a probe of Famalaro and his alleged connection with Huber.

“We’re going to be out here a while,” Smith said.