Victoria Corderi Correspondent • Profile

The story of what happened to 20-year-old Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach earlier this year is heartbreaking and haunting.  And still there are questions about it.  The only one that really matters to Maria's mother is this: Could the ending have been different? 

Mary Lauterbach: There was an assumption from the beginning this was not a legitimate case.

Victoria Corderi, Dateline NBC: You don't think she has the full story?

Megan Grafton: I know she doesn't. Because she can't. Because I'm not legally allowed to tell her the full story.

Maria Lauterbach grew up in Vandalia, Ohio. She was 19 months old -- and had been severely neglected -- when Mary and Victor Lauterbach adopted her. She seemed to thrive in a family that grew to include five children.

Mary Lauterbach: Maria was just a bold, daring person, always looking for a challenge or to push herself. She pushed her sisters and even her little brother to do things that on their own, they never would have done.

She was a girl in motion, passionate about sports, a star of her school's soccer and softball teams.

But as blissful as she was on those playing fields, as Maria grew into a teen and young adult, her mom says that she struggled to find her footing in trickier social situations -- making friends, dating and dances. It seemed at times like she just wasn’t ready to grow up.

Victoria Corderi: Did that concern you? Or it just didn't seem like her personality yet--

Mary Lauterbach: It just wasn't her style yet. 

So Mary was pleased when her daughter told her what she wanted to do after high school graduation.  

Mary's family has been serving in the military for generations. The Marines seemed like a good fit for her daughter.

Mary Lauterbach: I felt she would be much safer in the Marines than she would be loose on the streets or loose in a college environment. And in particular with the Marines -- they have a brotherhood of Marines, where they look out for each other.

For a time, Maria was happy. She wrote long letters from boot camp describing how much  she loved it, and when the Marines sent her to Camp Lejeune, 600 miles away, a steady stream of phone calls kept her mom up to speed on the smallest details of base life.

Mary Lauterbach: She would religiously call me at 11:30 every day. Sometimes she'd call me at 2:30 in the afternoon. And then, she'd call me at 6.  I'd say, "Maria, I have to cook dinner now."  And she'd call back later in the evening.

On Friday, Dec. 14, 2007, at 2:30 p.m., Maria made one of her regular phone calls.  The conversation turned to the Christmas party at the base that day.

Mary Lauterbach: I said, "Maria, I have to get off the phone and work."  But I said, "But make sure and call me when you get back from the party."

Victoria Corderi: So you were expecting a call that night.

Mary Lauterbach: Oh, absolutely.

It never came.

Mary Lauterbach: When I got home from work right when I opened the door my daughter Anne said, "Mom, did you talk to Maria today?"  And I said, "Matter of fact, I did.  She sounded pretty good."

Then Anne told her mother about another call. Maria's housemate, Sgt. Daniel Durham, had just been on the phone to say Maria was gone, taking some clothing, toiletries and her car. She'd left behind a note that said:

"I could not take this Marine Corps life anymore.  So I am going away. Sorry for the inconvenience. Maria"

Mary Lauterbach: I thought "that is weird." Because it just didn't match our conversation that day at all.

Mary and her brother, Pete Steiner, say the note didn't sound like Maria.

Mary Lauterbach: "Sorry for the inconvenience." That particular phrase sounded odd to me.

Pete Steiner: That's not her.

Mary Lauterbach: Yeah, that's not--

Pete Steiner:  Maria wouldn't--

Mary Lauterbach: "Sorry for the inconvenience."

Mary tried to call her daughter repeatedly that night, and all day Saturday and all day Sunday, but to no avail. They'd rarely gone a day without speaking. Now, nothing.  Finally that Sunday, she called Durham, Maria's housemate, and asked him to report her absence to the Marines.

But, she says,  Durham wanted to wait -- he didn't want to get his friend into trouble.

Mary Lauterbach: He said, "If she turns up tonight, you know, I will have gotten her into a lot of trouble for no reason."

At 7:30 the next morning, Maria, a personnel clerk, was due at her duty station at Camp Lejeune.

She never turned up.

And when Durham reported her missing and handed in the note that morning, her supervisors figured she'd done what other marines before her had done -- taken off. Even so, the Marines tried calling Maria and even went off-base to knock on her front door. No luck.  Back in Ohio, Mary wanted more. She says she called a supervisor at Camp Lejeune and asked him what he was going to do.

Mary Lauterbach: He said, you know, "We don't do anything about this."

Pete Steiner: Until she's gone for 30 days.

Mary Lauterbach: For 30 days. 

After 30 days, missing Marines are classified as deserters, and their names are entered into a national criminal database.

Mary Lauterbach: And I said, "What about contacting the police?"  He said, "We can't do that either."

Victoria Corderi: "We can't"?

Mary Lauterbach: "We do not have the authority to contact police."  He said, "Now, if you wanted to, you could."

Mary immediately filed a missing person's report. She soon got a call from an investigator with the County Sheriff's Department in North Carolina. 

Mary Lauterbach: He said, "Can you just tell me anything I might need to know about this."  At that point, I  sent him a three-page e-mail.  I just pounded out anything that I knew about her that I thought might remotely be helpful in finding Maria.

Mary says she poured out her heart in that email and even included some unflattering details about her daughter. That growing up, she was hyperactive and aggressive.  And she added a phrase that would come to haunt her.

Mary Lauterbach: I said she has problems with occasional compulsive lying.

Mary was referring to her daughter's tendency to make up stories when she got into a tight spot. For example, a year earlier when Maria was discovered taking money from the office kitty on base, she made up an outrageous tale about her father accidentally killing her brother.

Mary Lauterbach: I think she was short on money. To cover for herself, she had made up that story, that she needed money to go home for her brother's funeral.  And it was a ridiculous story.

And now Maria was missing. And her mother was doing everything she could think of to try to find her. Then, six days after she disappeared, there was an ominous development. Maria's cell phone had been found on the highway near Camp Lejeune.

Mary Lauterbach: It just took my breath away. At that point, I thought-

Pete Steiner: Right.

Mary Lauterbach: The-- foul play here.  Something's wrong.

Victoria Corderi: Mary knew her daughter would never abandon her phone, especially not now, not in her condition.

Because Maria was pregnant and due within weeks.

That's why Mary Lauterbach was certain her daughter's disappearance was no simple case of desertion.

She also knew this: Her daughter had been living in fear of one Marine in particular.

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