Tiffany Daniels

Several theories have been put forth to account for Daniels's disappearance, ranging from foul play to an accidental drowning. Based on an anonymous tip and several reported sightings further west along Interstate 10, her family believes she was a victim of human trafficking and may still be alive. The case was the subject of a 2016 episode of Investigation Discovery's Disappeared.

The second anniversary of Daniels' disappearance, in 2015, led to two developments in the case. The Investigation Discovery cable network decided to revive its series Disappeared, which profiles missing-persons cases, and her case was one of those chosen. A crew from the network went to Pensacola, filmed locations associated with the case and re-enactments, and interviewed Detective Harnett, Tiffany's parents, sister, and some of her friends who had helped with the investigation. The episode aired in April 2016.

Before the episode aired, the first new evidence in the case since the original investigation surfaced. In December 2015, the Daniels family and the police disclosed that in the wake of coverage of the case's second anniversary four months earlier, a citizen had come forward and told the police that on the day Tiffany's car was discovered, they had seen a man in his thirties wearing red shorts and no shirt opening up the car's tailgate, a report consistent with the two witnesses who said they saw a man leave the car after it was parked there. The witness remembered this because the car had been parked unusually, facing oncoming traffic, in an area reserved for wildlife.

Several months after Daniels' disappearance, in January 2014, the Facebook page yielded what her parents considered a more credible report of a later sighting. A woman who worked as a waitress at a restaurant in Metairie, Louisiana, outside New Orleans, reported that shortly after the disappearance she had seen a woman matching Tiffany's description come in with two other women, one roughly the same age and the other older, possibly Latina, and more nicely dressed. The younger women behaved strangely, both wearing long-sleeved shirts despite the warm weather, with the cuffs pulled over their hands, and never looking the waitress in the eye. Mostly they seemed to let the older woman do the talking for the group. When the waitress told one of the younger women she looked like that woman who had been reported missing in Florida, the group got up and left. Unfortunately the restaurant's security cameras had been taped over since the date of the encounter and thus it was impossible to find any documentary confirmation of the waitress' story.

The Daniels family began to fear that Tiffany had not been found because she had somehow left Pensacola during that week between the last sighting and the beginning of the search—and not voluntarily. They began researching human trafficking as a possible explanation. They saw possible similarities between Tiffany's unsolved case and that of another woman who had recently been drugged and abducted from nearby Panama City and taken to New Orleans by two men who told her she was to work as a prostitute.

At 4:43 p.m. on August 12, 2013, Tiffany Daniels (born March 11, 1988) left her job as a theater technician at Pensacola State College in Pensacola, Florida. She told her supervisor that she would not be returning for a few days, but did not say why. Although she returned home briefly afterwards, her housemate was busy with a telephone conversation and did not see her. She has not been seen since.

Despite her apparent satisfaction with her life, she had financial problems. Her parents said that by summer of 2013 they had noticed she had a pattern of paying the rent for a series of housemates who were either disinclined or unable to pay their share. In July of that year, after another one had moved out, she advertised on Craigslist for a new roommate.

Harnett also considered that perhaps Daniels had been depressed over his departure. Her sister later told Disappeared that she had seemed a little less vivacious than usual earlier in 2013. But she had plans for the immediate future: besides the trip to Austin she had planned a dance in two weeks time. It did not seem like she had taken her own life, or started a new one elsewhere.

When Harnett learned that Tiffany's boyfriend had left Pensacola the day before, he began exploring that angle. He had called Tiffany upon his arrival in Austin on the 11th, but not at all on the 12th. He was cooperative and provided fingerprints and DNA samples, and his cell-phone records showed he had indeed been in the Austin area all weekend, suggesting he had not secretly returned to Pensacola.