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Stephanie did have a secret, though, that she had been keeping from her parents. Detectives learned that
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Stephanie had been seeing and actually gotten pretty serious with a 22-year-old serviceman named John. And was she
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keeping it a secret because of his age? >> No, she was keeping it a secret because
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John was black. And while she had met John's family and they seemed to openly accept her, she apparently was afraid of
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her parents' reaction. Sneaking around with John is probably one of the reasons Stephanie had been out of the house more
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recently. So, her dad said that it wasn't unusual that summer for her to spend a few days at a friend's house.
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That's one of the reasons that they hadn't called to report her missing sooner. They'd seen her around the house
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on Sunday, July 6th. Unbeknownst to them, John had dropped her off at home at like 4:00 in the morning that day
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after a party the night before. And when police talked to John, he says that's the last time he saw her. Now, we
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know she left her parents' house sometime on the 6th between 5:15 and 5:30. This is Sunday evening. [music]
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And John was supposed to pick her up from work when her shift ended around 12:30 a.m. But apparently he'd fallen
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[music] asleep. Co-workers said that Stephanie was mad about it. I would have been mad if my
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boyfriend fell asleep and forgot to pick me up. And so, the last they knew is she
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walked out the front door of the restaurant with her brown leather purse slung over her shoulder, maybe headed to
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catch a bus. But that is truly the last anyone saw her.