So we did.
The exhumation took months.
DNA testing eventually proved what I already knew.
The remains weren’t Rebecca.
Investigators reopened the motel case.
The truth arrived nearly nine months after the hospital call.
The dead woman was Simone Carter.
Thirty-two years old.
The same Simone who had given Rebecca a ride.
Police reconstructed the likely sequence.
After Rebecca fled the truck stop, Simone apparently returned to the motel looking for the bag Rebecca had left behind. Why she did that was never established with certainty.
Maybe she intended to bring it to Rebecca.
Maybe she wanted the cash Rebecca had mentioned leaving inside.
Maybe she simply needed somewhere to sleep.
She had been in Rebecca’s room when an electrical fire started inside the wall.
There was no murder.
No conspiracy.
Just an accident followed by a terrible identification error.
Simone had been estranged from her own family for years.
