Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

LUGOFF, S.C. - The man had become a night creature – hiding, digging, scheming.

He was on the run. And he could see, when the sun went down, those who could not see him.

Who was he, this dungeon-builder, predator, this sneaking conniver in the dark?

When did his obsession for revenge begin to contemplate murder?

And why did he choose her, the innocent one, for his sick and unnatural scheme?

It happened on a warm September day.

The place, you might never have heard of, save for what was waiting to occur in the rough bush just off an isolated country road.

Madeline Shoaf was at work. She was the first to sense something was wrong when she called home.

Madeline Shoaf: My son answered the phone and I asked, "Is your sister home yet?”

Elizabeth, 14, and Donnie, 12, were under strict orders to ride the bus from school and walk the 200 yards from the bus stop straight to their country home here at the edge of the wood.

Locking the door was the rule. Do homework until parents come home from work.

Madeline always called home to make sure all was well.

Which is why, when her son answered the phone, she felt that strange dread creep down her veins.

Madeline Shoaf: He said she wasn't home yet, so I asked him to run up to the top of the driveway to see if he had seen her. And he did not come back to the phone and so then I started getting worried.

Madeline is a pharmacy technician. She is practical, not easily rattled. Perhaps it was school bus trouble. Detention, possibly.

An unexpected detour, some childish forgetfulness? Well no.

Elizabeth had important plans at home she would not have have forgotten.

Madeline Shoaf: That day she knew when she got home from school her aunt was coming to cut her hair. We were supposed to celebrate her cousin’s birthday the next day so we had plans pretty much that whole weekend.

So Madeline called Elizabeth’s friends, the ones she rode with on the bus.

Amanda Lampert: She was really happy because her aunt was coming down.

Elizabeth’s friend Amanda Lampert said she talked to Elizabeth on the bus, saw her get off, and saw her walk up the road toward her house.

Her friend Scott saw her, too.

Scott Crosby: We walked about halfway up the road and a friend of mine's brother comes with his car and picks us up. She didn't want a ride so we left and went to a different neighborhood, and came back and she was gone.

It just didn't make any sense. How was it even possible that Elizabeth could simply vanish right here in her own driveway in the 200 feet or so between the road and her house?

By the time darkness was falling some serious panic set in.

Elizabeth's father Don Shoaf rushed home and, with Madeline, searched their daughter's room for clues.

Madeline Shoaf: She had her lunch money there for school all her favorite clothes were there. Her music, everything.

Don Shoaf: Nothing missing out of the house.

By now night was coming on.

They called in their large extended family, they fanned out over the neighborhood.

Madeline Shoaf: Everybody came over, they picked their spot and they started searching. They were in the woods looking everywhere.

Keith Morrison: At nighttime?

Madeline Shoaf: Did not matter. We knocked on every door everywhere we could think of to go. We looked everywhere.

Keith Morrison: And feeling what?

Madeline Shoaf: Hopeless. My daughter was missing.

Don Shoaf: It's one of the most hopeless feelings you ever get in your life, it is.

Kershaw County sent a deputy sheriff out the country road to the Shoafs' house.

Keith Morrison: What did the police first tell you?

Madeline Shoaf: They thought that she was a runaway. They started placing bulletins around, I guess to different counties letting them know that she was missing.

Keith Morrison: And but-- but as a runaway.

Madeline Shoaf: Yes. As a r-- endanger runaway.

Keith Morrison: What did you tell them when they said that?

Madeline Shoaf: She's not a runaway.

Keith Morrison: This is not a wild child.

Madeline Shoaf: No, no.

Not Elizabeth. Not their shy, sweet, 14-year-old.

Madeline Shoaf: She just started ninth grade, first year in high school. She was excited about it.

Especially not now.

Not at the blushing beginnings of her very first tenuous relationship...with a boy.

Madeline Shoaf: She's never been out on a date. She's never been out on her own. Everywhere she goes she goes out with us or her sister or her family member.

Watch the broadcast 'Into the Woods' videos   Part 1: Into the woods   2: A murder plot, right on schedule   3: Not the suspect’s first time   4: An unforgettable sound   5: Missing girl has to save herself   6: Kidnapper targets another victim   7: Face to face with a predator   8: Kidnapper’s bombshell before trial   9: Showdown with abuser   10: A portrait in courage

But how many times had Sheriff Steve McCaskill discovered that some frantic parent was not so well aware of a child's secret activities or plans?

Sheriff Steve McCaskill: Keith, we may get a hundred a year in a year's time.

Keith Morrison: It's a pretty common occurrence then.

McCaskill: Well, you know, any time a young person is missing a lot of times they just run away. You know, they just get mad about something. But you know -- you've got to cover all bases.

So runaway or not, a search was launched.

That first night, "Kate," one of the sheriff's best tracking dogs, was hurried to the scene.

Around the house Kate sniffed, and up the driveway, along the road from the bus stop -- and found no scent to follow.

Deputies patrolled the neighborhood looking for a clue Elizabeth may have left behind but found nothing.

At morning light, there were more dogs and a helicopter.

Don Shoaf: That's really when hit me, when I saw the helicopter and they were looking around.

Madeline Shoaf: He just fell to his knees.

Don Shoaf: I dropped to my knees and that was it. I don't wish this on nobody.

Local TV stations picked up the story, broadcasting Elizabeth’s picture, and then people just materialized. Friends, strangers, all were ready to help find Elizabeth.

Don Shoaf: I mean these are people I didn't even know. I mean they just come up we got people bringing us coolers and stuff and food.

Madeline Shoaf: I had a neighbor that made a flier and then my sisters would go and make copies of that and then I work with Wal-Mart, so they were ready to bring out 200 people in the first notice.

And now, it was day three. Dozens of trained searchers mounted horses to search places difficult to reach on foot.

They worked under a cloud of unspoken knowledge.

By now, if a runaway hadn't made contact, well, it might well be something much worse.

But there must have been something to make her want to run -- a dispute? A family squabble?

Video   Into the woods A soft-spoken teenager heading home from school meets a stranger with plans of his own. Dateline NBC

Maybe Madeline could remember some hint from the last moment she spent with her daughter?

Madeline Shoaf: We woke up late. She had forgotten to set the alarm clock from the night before. Everybody was rushing to get out of the house.

Elizabeth was upset, but only, Madeline told police, because of the rush that morning.

Madeline Shoaf: She said, "Mom, take me back up to the bus” and I said "No, your bus is going to be here and we do not have enough time.” And she's like "I don't have my makeup” and I said you will survive without your make-up for one day.

By now, as their minutes blurred through harrowing days, makeup was the last thing anyone cared about.

But of course her parents could not have imagined, even in their long slow terror, that their Elizabeth was in fact the centerpiece of a murder plot that was right on schedule.

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