Clues Left Behind May Help Gauge When Huber Died : Probe: Medical analysis and items at suspect’s home may yield answers to mystery surrounding her death.

When Denise Huber vanished on a gray stretch of the Corona del Mar Freeway, left behind was a smudged whiskey shot glass, an abandoned blue Honda and a baffling riddle of life and brutish death.

What happened to the vivacious 23-year-old waitress in the frantic hours and days after her disappearance on June 3, 1991?

Investigators are focusing on the critical period surrounding the time the Newport Beach woman was abducted and a bespectacled painter named John J. Famalaro purchased a Montgomery Ward freezer chest that eventually became Huber’s grim, electric-powered coffin.

If, as authorities allege in an indictment, Famalaro killed Huber, then where was she slain? Famalaro bought the freezer seven days after her disappearance, and it was delivered on July 12. So the question nags: How long was she kept prisoner before her skull was crushed and her body frozen?

Part of the mystery will be resolved when the medical examiner issues a report next week. Other riddles may be answered by a high-tech search for clues in a Laguna Hills storage unit that Famalaro rented several months before Huber vanished and where he was apparently living for much of 1991.

“We don’t have anything conclusive on that yet,” said Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Jerry Holloway, who is coordinating the Orange County portion of the murder probe.

Since Huber disappeared, police detectives, private investigators, psychics and even--in desperation--Huber’s black Labrador, have tried to solve the mystery.

“I will never ever forget her,” said Andrea Kramer, one of the psychics whom local police called in when leads were cold. To envision the last moments of Huber’s life, she sat in Huber’s blue Honda and fingered a silver and amethyst earring that belonged to the woman.

“I remember feeling her last moments,” recalled Kramer, who was so chilled by her visions that she started to cry. “I got a little fever and I felt like I was choking.”

When Huber disappeared, she was dressed in black--heels and tank top--the basic party dress for a Morrissey rock concert in Inglewood.

She and a friend, Robert Calvert, later closed out a Mexican bar in Long Beach and talked about Huber’s ambitious plans to head for England. They never discussed the anonymous calls she received three weeks earlier, the whispered messages from a crank professing love.

“I had heard about a crank call, but it was nothing she talked to me about. We just had a great time,” said Calvert, who was the last friend to see her when she dropped him off at his Huntington Beach home about 2 a.m.

It was another friend, Tammy Brown, who late on June 3 would spot Huber’s blue 1988 Honda Accord on the shoulder of the Corona del Mar Freeway, south of Bear Street, with a flat tire.

Friends and family have long speculated about what would have prompted the savvy waitress and part-time cashier to have left with someone else. There were no signs of a struggle.

The car doors were unlocked, the trunk undisturbed. There was a shot glass under the seat and a pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes with two removed. The car keys were missing and so was Huber’s purse.

“I have always truly believed that it was someone she knew or someone pretending to be a police officer, someone with access to a uniform. If you’re pretending to be a cop then you’ve got time to handcuff someone and take them off their guard,” said Logan Clarke of Clarke International Investigations, whose Lake Arrowhead agency was hired by Huber’s parents to help in the search.

Clarke speculates that Huber was feisty enough to have survived after she was abducted. He recalls that when Huber’s parents took her 6-year-old black Labrador, Sam, to the scene of her abandoned car, the dog appeared to trail a scent up an embankment along the highway, past a chain fence and down the aisles of a storage facility to Room 213 at the Marriott Residence Inn.

Other investigators have refused to discuss publicly whether Huber was a prisoner for some time after the kidnaping or was killed immediately in Orange County.

“That’s what we’re trying to determine for the jurisdictional question,” said Thomas Lindberg, deputy Yavapai County attorney. “Circumstantially, there are a number of things that seem to put the events” in Orange County.

Forensic experts said there may be no way to determine for certain when Huber died, but they describe clues that may date the death.

Last week, Huber’s body was found cramped in a fetal position in a Montgomery Ward freezer stored in a stolen rental truck next to Famalaro’s home in Prescott, Ariz. Huber’s hands were handcuffed behind her back, her eyes and mouth wadded with cotton and sealed with duct tape.

A search of the home uncovered a bloodied crowbar and Huber’s purse, including clothing and the silver dolphin ring and gold heart she was wearing when she disappeared. Also found was a homemade Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy uniform.

If Huber had been dead even for a few days before being placed in the freezer, her corpse would likely have developed an offensive stench, said Pittsburgh pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht.

“The smell would be tremendous . . . a neighbor would notice unless the room was well sealed off,” he said. And yet almost three years after Huber disappeared, Famalaro hired workers who helped him unload the rental truck and measured the freezer, which was hooked to a generator, to see if it could fit in his Prescott home.

Other experts agreed that a body decomposes fairly quickly even at room temperature, let alone in the heat of the Southern California summer. But they cautioned that the deterioration varies with humidity, exposure to outdoors and the wrapping around the body.

Investigators noted a strong odor when they discovered Huber’s corpse, but said the body was fairly well preserved. They obtained fingerprints to identify Huber although that does not mean the body was in good condition.

More telling evidence would come from analyzing the contents of Huber’s stomach, said Cullen Ellingburgh, supervising deputy coroner in Orange County.

If food from Huber’s snack at El Paso Cantina are undigested that would indicate she died close to the time she disappeared. According to Huber’s companion, Calvert, the two of them shared a last drink together at a restaurant, where Huber munched on pretzels.

Authorities are trying to figure out what Famalaro was doing at the time Huber was sharing rock music and a drink with Calvert.

Costa Mesa investigators have been examining receipts, job work orders and interviewing people who encountered the paint contractor during that week in June three years ago.

At that time, Famalaro was apparently living in a Spartan, makeshift home in a huge warehouse on Verdugo Drive in Laguna Hills. Several months earlier in March, 1991, he had been evicted from a Lake Forest house after he failed to pay the rent.

And so by June of that year--the month of the abduction--Famalaro was camping out in a small office of the warehouse, according to one of his former workers, Ygnacio Santos Cruz.

Each morning, Famalaro’s crew of mostly Mexican nationals would gather outside the warehouse where they would greet their tousle-haired boss, who looked like he had just risen from his bed.

“I knew him well,” said Cruz, who had worked almost three years for Famalaro. “He could be tranquil most of the time except when he got nervous or angry about something.”

Cruz remembers working for Famalaro through that June, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary, except his boss’s bleak home, which lacked a shower and a kitchen.

Cruz never noticed the freezer that Famalaro purchased on July 10. There were parts of the warehouse they were allowed to enter, he said, adding that one section was off-limits.

Then almost a year to the day after the abduction, Cruz said, the boss himself vanished. Famalaro and his crew had been painting the arches of a sprawling Buick dealership in Laguna Hills, a difficult job that should have earned them all money.

Frequently, Famalaro would tell his workers that he could not make his payroll because his clients had not paid them or he was waiting for a check. But this time, the exasperated workers were so desperate that they went to the warehouse to confront Famalaro.

Famalaro met them with a pistol instead of a paintbrush, Cruz said.

“He still owes me $300,” Cruz said. “Others he owed $2,000 and $1,500. I guess that’s why, when we heard the news about him and the killing, we really thought he deserved to be caught.”

On the Trail of Famalaro and Huber

1991:

February: John J. Famalaro, a house painter, rents a storage unit in Laguna Hills at 23192 Verdugo Drive. Authorities suspect this may be the murder site.

March 3: Famalaro is evicted from residence at 22246 Perth Way in Lake Forest.

March: Famalaro apparently moves into the Verdugo Drive storage unit and is living there in September, 1992, when he is evicted.

June 2: Denise Huber, 23, and her friend, Robert Calvert, have drinks with friends at El Paso Cantina in Long Beach after attending a Morrissey concert at the Forum in Inglewood.

June 3, between 1:30 and 2 a.m.: Huber and Calvert leave El Paso Cantina and take Pacific Coast Highway to Calvert’s Huntington Beach home. They stop in Seal Beach to buy cigarettes. Calvert tells officials he was dropped off at 2:05 a.m.

June 3, about 5:30 a.m.: Residents near the Corona del Mar Freeway in Costa Mesa see Huber’s abandoned 1988 Honda Accord parked just south of the Bear Street off-ramp, two miles from her home. Its lights are on and doors unlocked.

June 10: Famalaro buys a chest freezer at a Montgomery Ward & Co. store in Orange County. It is delivered two days later.

July 2: Costa Mesa police and Huber’s family unfurl a large banner about her disappearance on the roof of an apartment building overlooking the location where her car was abandoned.

1992:

June 13: Investigators begin looking for a young man who might have seen Huber just before her disappearance. The man told a vendor at the Orange Swap Meet 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. He described one of the men as a tall “beachy” type with long blond hair and said the shorter one had dark hair.

July 11: Famalaro rents seven units at Allsize Self Storage in San Clemente. He contracts for 24-hour power supply to the locker, where he keeps personal belongings, including a freezer.

1993:

January: Famalaro, who grew up in Santa Ana, moves to house owned by his brother-in-law, Duane Thobe, in Dewey, Ariz. It is next door to his parents’ house at the Prescott Country Club.

1994:

January: Famalaro rents 24-foot truck from Ryder Truck Rental in San Clemente for half a day. The next day, he leaves a note at the company saying he needs a bigger truck than he thought and does not return it.

Feb. 5: Famalaro moves the last of his belongings from Allsize Self Storage in a truck. He hauls away thousands of gallons of paint and a freezer, which he plugs into a generator on the truck.

July 13: Yavapai County sheriff’s deputies search a 24-foot truck at Famalaro’s home and find Denise Huber’s body. He is arrested.

Source: Times reports; Researched by ALICIA DI RADO / Los Angeles Times