By the fourth day of her disappearance, Elizabeth’s 14-year-old eyes sparkled from thousands of fliers pasted all over Lugoff, S.C., and as far away as volunteers could take them.

Sheriff's Deputy Kirk Corley was put in charge of special operations in the search for Elizabeth.

Kirk Corley: Well, we started in an area where she was last seen and we actually brought in our tracking dogs and started squaring the area to see if they could pick up a scent and try to track out if she had left on foot.

Elizabeth’s house bordered dense woods, hard to penetrate on foot, an easy place to get lost.

And a big chunk of the land nearby was owned by a mining company where the thicket was virtually impenetrable, and access, in any case, was prohibited.

Kirk Corley: We brought in air support the following day. And from there it also built onto our mounted patrol. And we just kind of cut it up into blocks and started grid searching from the house out.

The good -- and occasionally bad -- news was that hundreds of volunteers kept pouring in to help.

Kirk Corley: Our tracking unit and our mounted patrol picked up several different foot tracks. And once we would track those out and follow them out we were able to link those back to some volunteers that were searching … And the trail just kind of dies out from there. And you start back over again.

The media attention so welcomed by the Shoaf family spurred hundreds of tips. All had to be investigated. Every tip sent Elizabeth’s parents to the brink.

Madeline Shoaf: You hear of reports from people. You know, "oh, they found a body in this county. Or they found a body in that county.” And you're just praying, you know, that it's not her. I hated it for the person that actually passed away. But just thank God it wasn't her.

Keith Morrison: So there goes that rollercoaster again.

Madeline Shoaf: Every day. It was up and down every day.

Sheriff Steve McCaskill was going all out, he said.

Sheriff McCaskill: We sent out during this investigation everything we had in the sheriff's office.  We had our school resource officers out there. We had everything we did, our bloodhounds, our mounted patrol. We used everybody we could get our hands on.

But not every resource.

Not, for example, an Amber Alert.

Oh, the Shoaf family asked for an Amber Alert, they begged the sheriff to call one, as did many people in their town.

And why not? Amber Alerts are been very successful at finding missing children.

But the sheriff said he simply could not call an Amber Alert and refused to do so, no matter how anguished the family's requests..

Madeline Shoaf: It's very very sad because you look at an Amber Alert now and you're just like my God you know they weren't there to help my child and she went missing.

In fact, a lot of people were puzzled by the sheriff's decision.

(Local news report)

"Sheriff McCaskill if this was his daughter what would he do? I mean there'd be national TV coverage five hours after she had left..."

But there was a reason, said McCaskill. He didn't want to say no.

Steve McCaskill: Well the criteria didn't fit it, number one. There was no vehicle, which is required by the Amber Alert. We did not know who she may have been with. There was really nothing to put out there.

Besides, as day five ended, then day six, Sheriff McCaskill's instinct was telling him it was too late for any Amber Alert. It was much worse now.

Sheriff Steve McCaskill: Especially as the days, you know, when on and on. You just get that policeman's feeling, that gut feeling, that you know this really looks like it's going to turn out bad.

He did not tell Elizabeth’s parents about that feeling, though it's unlikely they would have listened to him anyway.

Don Shoaf: I don't know how many miles I put on that 4-wheel. I mean I stayed gone until I couldn't see any more, so I mean, you know and then we would connect here and there in the evenings and cry and do whatever.

Keith Morrison: Where were you looking?

Madeline Shoaf: Within a good five mile radius of our house.

Don Shoaf: Through the woods, every road.

Madeline Shoaf: Every ditch.

Don Shoaf: Every highway.

Madeline Shoaf: Every empty house you could go to.

Keith Morrison: You must have been afraid of what you'd find.

Don Shoaf: Oh yeah. Opened every door.

Keith Morrison: Were you doing to find your daughter or were you going to find a body?

Don Shoaf: You know, you wanted something there but you didn't want something there.

And every night, long after darkness had settled in and stopped the search, Elizabeth’s mother wandered outside, pulled, she could feel, by some inexplicable force out on the road. Up to the rise that looks across at the deepest part of the wood.

Madeline Shoaf: In the middle of the night, I would just get up and walk out of my  driveway and would just walk across the street to this empty lot and just stand there. You know, I could only go so far and I couldn't go no further. And I’d just stand there and just stood in the dark. And just prayed. Prayed that, you know, she would come back.

It was so odd, what happened then.

Some in the family, and some friends, had organized a vigil at the state capitol, Columbia.

Of course Elizabeth’s mother Madeline would go.

Madeline Shoaf: As I left, went by and picked up my cell phone and grabbed my keys. And I was heading out the door and I happened to look at my cell phone...

And there was a message from an unfamiliar number. It’ wasn’t a voice message. A text.

Keith Morrison: What'd it say?

Madeline Shoaf: Said "Hey mom, it's Lizzie." You know, "I’m in a hole."

Here's the phone, Madeline’s phone with the message on it.

Lizzie? It was her! It had to be. That's what her mother called her.

But how did the message get here?  And what was that about a hole?

Keith Morrison: I’m in a hole?

Madeline Shoaf: Yeah, "I’m in a hole down by the road-- or by Charm Hill. The road where the big trucks go in and out."

Charm Hill -- the very place to which Madeline had been drawn night after night.

Map shows relative proximity of the bunker and the Shoaf and Filyaw homes

It was private property owned by a chalk mining company, an area officers had not yet been able to search.

Madeline Shoaf: I just knew it was her. I mean, I knew it was her, just the mannerism of the text. You just sit there and you know how your child talks to you … I was like "my God.” You know, I said, "Don, this is her.”

Video   A murder plot, right on schedule Elizabeth Shoaf’s parents could not have imagined the terror their missing daughter was going through. Dateline NBC

But there was more the message said.

Madeline Shoaf: And there's a bomb. Yeah.

Keith Morrison: And there's a bomb.

Madeline Shoaf: Yeah, there's a bomb. Get the police. Because there's a bomb.

Don Shoaf: She was kind of half-hysterical. And I said, well the first thing is call the police.

Madeline Shoaf: I was hysterical, yeah. I was in shock, too. Because I was just, like, "oh my God, here's what we've been waiting for.” This is what we've been praying for, for all these days. Just to get one answer to where she was. And this was our answer.

Deputies who had barely slept in a week rushed to the site hoping for a big break, but fearing another wild goose chase.

Sheriff McCaskill: When I first heard it, I said I hope nobody's playing a joke on this dear lady to do something like this.

U.S. Marshals started a trace on the phone number that appeared in the message but investigators didn't wait around for those results. In the pitch-black darkness, they searched the area for hours.

Keith Morrison: So they looked all night?

Madeline Shoaf: They looked and they still couldn't find her.

Keith Morrison: They looked there and the next day, also?

Madeline Shoaf: The next day. Over there by that road and searching.

Don Shoaf: But, you know, I remember thinking it could've been some fruitcake somewhere doing something. You know how kids like doing, do jokes and stuff. I mean, that was in my mind.

In seven days, the text message was the only real lead.

And now, apparently, it was a bust.

But Madeline Shoaf couldn't know, of course – and nor could the sheriff -- that the man was watching carefully, waiting for the deputies to solve his little puzzle.

And he knew they would -- just as he planned.

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