Audrey Barber

Audrey Barbour is a seventeen-year-old whose disappearance brings the Trawler’s pattern into sharper focus for Bret Ellis. Her unanswered calls, a poster left at her home, and the circumstances of her final night offer clues that initially seem disconnected, while her fate remains unknown in the events described here.

Identity and Last Known Movements

Audrey was with friends at the Promenade mall in Woodland Hills on a Friday night. She told them she was leaving to get home in time for the fifth-season premiere of Dallas, which she wanted to watch as it aired rather than have taped. She was expected at her parents’ home in Calabasas by 9:30, ahead of the 10 p.m. broadcast.

A couple entering Robinson’s, the store at the south end of the mall, saw Audrey leaving around nine. Her friends’ account and the couple’s sighting helped establish the timeline. But Audrey never arrived home, and she did not call to say she would be late or ask her father to record the episode. After her parents contacted her friends without finding her, they drove to the mall and found her white VW Rabbit alone in the parking lot. Audrey had not made it to the car.

The Disappearance and the Emerging Pattern

On Monday morning, Bret read a Los Angeles Times report that Audrey had been missing for three days. The news immediately raised the possibility that she was the Trawler’s next victim, although she had not yet been officially linked to the earlier cases. Bret’s reaction conveys the uncertainty surrounding the evidence: the disappearance suggested danger, but the available information did not establish what had happened to her.

Later that week, two dogs were reported missing in Bell Canyon, near Audrey’s home. Her parents did not recall signs that anyone had entered the house or rearranged its furniture, and the known nearby assault associated with the Trawler’s methods dated to the summer of 1980. The dogs’ disappearance nevertheless echoed the broader pattern Bret was beginning to recognize: pets vanished before attacks, sometimes along with animals from the victim’s neighborhood.

Calls and the Poster

Audrey had told friends about calls to her private telephone line, which her parents did not know about. At first she found the calls irritating: the caller remained silent, with heavy breathing and sighs audible. Over time, Audrey began speaking to the silence, sharing details about her day, boys she found attractive, and sexual fantasies. She told friends that she thought she could hear the caller masturbating and sometimes suspected there were two people on the line. There was no actual conversation; the caller never spoke. Audrey would sometimes wait for the calls so she could talk and tease the unknown listener.

A poster for Gang of Four’s album Entertainment! had been left on the front porch of the Barbour home. Audrey did not particularly like the band and knew only a few of its songs, but she interpreted the poster as a gift from a secret admirer. No one had yet connected it to similar posters delivered to other potential victims. Bret, who knew that Matt Kellner had also received a poster, wondered whether receiving one meant a teenager would die, or whether the Trawler was targeting others without necessarily intending to kill them. At this point, the poster’s meaning remained unresolved.

Narrative Significance and Unresolved Fate

Audrey’s story is conveyed through a newspaper report, information later supplied by her friends, and Bret’s developing interpretation of the clues. The sequence makes the gap between evidence and explanation central: her disappearance, the missing dogs, the calls, and the poster can be read together, but their significance is not yet confirmed. The Trawler’s method of targeting potential victims through animals, silent calls, and posters forms a pattern only retrospectively, as Bret tries to determine whether Audrey’s case belongs to it.

The account establishes that Audrey disappears before reaching her car, but it does not establish her eventual fate. Her absence therefore functions both as a crisis for the people following the cases and as a warning that the investigation’s apparent pattern may still be incomplete.