Key facts
- Name: Laurie Jean Depies
- Age at disappearance: 20
- Last seen: August 19, 1992
- Location: Boyfriend’s apartment complex, 310 West Wilson Avenue, Appleton/Menasha, Wisconsin
- Height / build: 5’5″, 115 lbs, brown hair, green eyes; squid-like tattoo on right ankle
- Status: Still missing — foul play suspected; FBI ViCAP case, NamUs MP9076
- Case numbers: Agency case 92002912; NamUs MP9076
- Investigating agency: Menasha Police Department, (920) 720-7109; WI DOJ Special Agent Kyra Schallhorn, (920) 946-0487
The cup on the car
They heard her arrive. That is the detail that has haunted everyone for thirty-four years.
On the night of August 19, 1992, Laurie Depies closed up the Graffiti store at the Fox River Mall in Appleton, where she worked, and a co-worker walked her to her car in the lot around 9:50 p.m. She’d had a good day: earlier she’d picked up a ring she’d bought for her boyfriend at the mall jewelry store. She drove east on College Avenue — the last confirmed sighting, around 10:00 p.m. — toward her boyfriend Marc Truebenbach’s apartment complex at 310 West Wilson Avenue.
Truebenbach, his sister, and a friend heard her gray Volkswagen Rabbit pull into the lot around 10:15. Then nothing. A couple of minutes passed. Then the wondering started.
“I had seen her earlier in the day and she had gone that day and bought a present for me that she was all excited to give to me,” Truebenbach later said. “We heard her car pull up and after a couple of minutes, we were like, where is she. It went from one minute thinking maybe she’s goofing around to okay, something is not right.”
They went outside. The Rabbit was locked. Her purse was inside. Her overnight bag was inside. And on top of the car sat a Styrofoam cup of soda.
Laurie was gone. Nobody in the lot had seen or heard anything unusual. No struggle, no scream, no car peeling away. A twenty-year-old woman vanished in the few steps between her car door and the apartment building, in a parking lot full of people who heard her arrive.
Her family described her to ABC News as “lighthearted and never grumpy.” Truebenbach has carried it ever since: “You still never forget that person … we talked a little bit about marriage. I often wonder if this had never happened, would we be married, would we still be together.”
The thumbprint and the confession
Detectives found an unidentified thumbprint on the cup. Its size suggested it belonged to a man. It has never been matched to anyone, and it has never led anywhere.
Friends — including Truebenbach — took polygraphs. They were cleared. Police worked the theory that Laurie left with someone she knew; she likely wouldn’t have gone willingly with a stranger, and nobody saw her walk away or get into another car. Then the leads ran out, and for nearly two decades the case sat cold.
In 2010, it jolted back to life. Larry DeWayne Hall — already a suspect back in 1995, when police found a notebook in his car with Laurie’s name and workplace written in it — confessed to Menasha police that he had kidnapped and murdered her. He said he’d buried her body in a remote part of southern Wisconsin.
Hall was serving life in federal prison for a 1993 kidnapping — he had abducted teenager Jessica Roach the year after Laurie disappeared and was convicted of kidnapping (not murder), though he remains a suspect in several killings. He had a history of confessing to crimes, some true, some not. Investigators searched where he said the body was. They found nothing. No physical evidence ever corroborated his story, and law enforcement eventually set the confession aside. Hall was never charged in Laurie’s case.
Truebenbach’s verdict on Hall was blunt: “If [Hall] lives to be extremely old man and has to suffer in prison his whole life, I have no problem with that.”
In 2022, the case got a new kind of attention: Jordan Karsten, a UW–Oshkosh anthropology professor, and his Cold Case: Frozen Tundra podcast took on Laurie’s disappearance with permission from both her family and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, re-examining the evidence for a new generation. The FBI’s ViCAP unit issued a formal alert in 2018, and her DNA is on file with the national database.
Thirty-four years later, the cup is still the whole case in miniature: a soda, a thumbprint, a locked car, and a young woman who was heard arriving and never seen again.
Theories: what might have happened
She was abducted by someone she knew. The police’s long-standing theory. Laurie wouldn’t willingly get into a stranger’s car in her boyfriend’s lot, and nobody witnessed a struggle — suggesting whoever took her didn’t need force to get her close. The unidentified thumbprint on the cup could belong to that person. What undercuts it: after polygraphs cleared her circle, no “someone she knew” was ever identified, and the thumbprint matched no one.
Larry Hall killed her. He confessed, he was an early suspect, and he had her name in his notebook. His confessions have solved other cases. What undercuts it: the burial site he described yielded nothing, no physical evidence supports it, investigators discarded the confession, and Hall is a documented unreliable confessor. A confession without corroboration is a story, not a solution.
A stranger snatched her in the lot. Possible — the lot was dark, and the window between the car’s arrival and the search was only minutes. But a stranger abduction with no witnesses, no scream, and no sign of struggle in a populated apartment complex is difficult to square with the scene. The locked car and the neatly placed cup suggest something quieter than a blitz attack.
What remains is the narrowness of it: between 10:15, when three people heard her car, and a few minutes later, when they went looking, Laurie Depies crossed from the known world into an unsolved case. The FBI still lists her. Her family still waits. And somewhere there is a thumbprint on a cup that has never found its owner.
Have information?
Contact the Menasha Police Department at (920) 720-7109, WI DOJ Special Agent Kyra Schallhorn at (920) 946-0487, or FBI ViCAP at (800) 634-4097 (NamUs MP9076). In an emergency, dial 911.
Timeline
- August 19, 1992, 7:00 p.m. — Laurie picks up a ring she bought for her boyfriend at the Fox River Mall.
- August 19, 1992, ~9:50 p.m. — Closes the Graffiti store; a co-worker walks her to her car.
- August 19, 1992, ~10:00 p.m. — Last confirmed sighting: driving east on College Avenue.
- August 19, 1992, ~10:15 p.m. — Her Rabbit is heard arriving at 310 West Wilson Ave.; she never enters the apartment. The locked car is found with a Styrofoam cup on top; purse and overnight bag inside.
- 1995 — Larry DeWayne Hall becomes a suspect after a notebook with Laurie’s name is found in his car.
- 2010 — Hall confesses to kidnapping and murdering Laurie; the described burial site yields nothing.
- 2018 — FBI ViCAP issues a formal alert (NamUs MP9076; agency case 92002912).
- 2022 — UW–Oshkosh’s Cold Case: Frozen Tundra podcast re-examines the case with family and WI DOJ cooperation.
- Today — Still missing.
FAQ
Is Laurie Depies still missing?
Yes. As of October 2026, Laurie Depies has been missing for 34 years. The case remains open with an FBI ViCAP alert, and her DNA is on file with NamUs (MP9076).
Was Laurie Depies ever found?
No. Despite searches, a confession from a convicted killer, and decades of investigation, no trace of Laurie has ever been found.
Who was the last person to see Laurie Depies?
A co-worker walked her to her car at the Fox River Mall around 9:50 p.m. on August 19, 1992. Her boyfriend, his sister, and a friend heard her car arrive at the apartment complex around 10:15 p.m. but never saw her.
What was the cup on Laurie Depies’ car?
A Styrofoam cup of soda was found sitting on top of her locked Volkswagen Rabbit. Detectives recovered an unidentified thumbprint from it — sized like a man’s — that has never been matched.
Did Larry Hall kill Laurie Depies?
Larry DeWayne Hall confessed in 2010 to kidnapping and murdering Laurie, but investigators found no body at the location he described and no physical evidence supporting his confession. He was never charged in her case. Hall is serving life in federal prison for the 1993 kidnapping of Jessica Roach — he was convicted of kidnapping, not murder.
How can I help?
Share this case file. If you have any information, contact the Menasha Police Department at (920) 720-7109 or FBI ViCAP at (800) 634-4097.
Sources
- Official / law enforcement: FBI ViCAP alert, “LAURIE JEAN DEPIES — MENASHA, WISCONSIN” (NamUs MP9076; agency case 92002912; contact SA Kyra Schallhorn, WI DOJ, (920) 946-0487).
- News: ABC News (family and Truebenbach interviews); The Advance-Titan, “Professor takes on new cold case” (Feb 23, 2022).
- Reference: The Charley Project; NamUs MP9076; Grunge, “The Unsolved 1992 Disappearance of Laurie Depies.”
- Media: The Trail Went Cold podcast, ep. 259 (Jan 2022); Cold Case: Frozen Tundra podcast (UW–Oshkosh).
Found an error? Tell us via the About page and we will fix it promptly and note the change here. Last verified October 2026.
Correction (October 2026): Clarified Larry Hall’s conviction — he is serving life in federal prison for the 1993 kidnapping of Jessica Roach; he was not convicted of murder. Earlier wording implied a murder conviction.