Deborah Deann POE

  General Notes:

Disappeared from a Circle K store in Orlando, FL on 4 Feb 1990. Additional information at http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/p/poe_deborah.html.

The Orlando Sentinel, Orlando, FL, Online Edition, 6 Feb 1990

Deputies Say Clerk Left In Car Copters Search Area Where Woman Vanished

February 6, 1990 By Lauren Ritchie Of The Sentinel Staff

She left in a car.

It's a threadbare clue, but it's the only one detectives have in the disappearance of a clerk from an east Orange County convenience store.

Deborah Poe, 26, could voluntarily have walked through a wood slat fence behind the store and into a waiting car. Or an assailant could have dragged her. Detectives just don't know.

A bloodhound picked up her scent outside the Circle K at Hall Road and Aloma Avenue where she vanished between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Sunday. The trail ends on pavement where detectives believe she got into a car.

Customers talked to Poe, who staffed the store alone, between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Deputies are hoping that someone who saw the 100-pound clerk between 3 and 4, when a customer found the store deserted, will come forward.

Nothing was taken from the store. Poe left her purse, containing a paycheck, locked inside her new red Toyota in the store parking lot.

''She would never do that. No way. She's so responsible, she's like a little old lady,'' said Poe's aunt, Judy Johnson of Gainesville.

Poe's boyfriend, her mother and her aunt all begged her to quit the night job after she accepted a permanent daytime position as a clerk in the retail advertising sales department of The Orlando Sentinel in late December.

She persisted, thinking nothing bad would happen to her. She was saving to buy a house.

''I told her I thought it was stupid that she was staying there working that shift. There were too many weirdos, too many guys flirting with her and too many drunks,'' said Poe's boyfriend, Scott Iaggi.

About two weeks ago a naked man chased her around the store.

Poe's mother, Nancy, described the incident: ''She said she saw him coming. He just came over the counter. She ran around and around through the store. He was gaining on her so she ran out around the gas pumps. She was able to beat him back in the door and turn the latch.''

At Christmas, Johnson urged her niece to stop working so much.

''I told her, 'You're too young to work like this. You're not enjoying life.' She said, 'You're starting to sound like Mom, Aunt Judy.' ''

When her boyfriend couldn't win her over with reason, he tried another plan.

''I started working the night shifts with her for the last month,'' Iaggi said. ''Then that one night I listened to her when she said, 'Honey, there's no need for both of us not to get sleep. I don't need you to be my protector all the time.' I could kick myself.''

Iaggi left shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday and returned to check on her minutes after she was reported missing.

''Just walking out is not Deborah. She's too level-headed, conscientious and professional in her job. Even when she's tired, she has it all together,'' he said.

Nancy Poe and her husband, Alvin, are waiting in their Virginia home near Washington for news of their daughter who took 14 years of ballet lessons and wanted to be a professional dancer; who last year braved experimental eye surgery for the sake of better vision; who had a dream of opening a catering business; and who packed up and moved to Florida last year for a new adventure.

Sobbing, Nancy Poe begged neighbors near the convenience store to look for her child.

''Debbie knows I'm a worrier,'' Nancy Poe said. ''I don't think she would ever put another human being through what I've gone through,'' she said. ''Somebody took her. And Debbie probably fought back.''

Detectives are looking for signs of a fight. The department's helicopters are searching a 5-square-mile area with a heat-seeking infrared device.

Investigators have interviewed a man Poe dated at one time and dropped because she was afraid of him. Police are trying to find the naked attacker.

Friends have scheduled a search party for 9 a.m. Wednesday. They will meet behind the McDonald's at Goldenrod Grove Shopping Center at Aloma Avenue and Howell Branch Road.

Her boyfriend, Iaggi, said, ''I've been praying and praying. I'm praying they'll let her go and not harm her. I'm praying she comes back. I'd be lying if I said I didn't love her.''