Like Sharon, Walter found marital fidelity hard to commit to but he treated their relationship as only a casual affair and had no plans to leave his wife despite some quarrels the two had. A few weeks after the affair began, Sharon tried to convince him to accompany her on a trip to visit her cousin in Washington but he declined and she reluctantly went with her brother instead. She was back in Independence by May 25 and told Walter she was pregnant with his child. Although this trick had won her a husband the first time around, it didn't work with an already married man and Walter responded to the news by breaking off their relationship. The next day she allegedly called Patricia at the IRS office and told her Walter was having an affair with Sharon's sister, although Sharon didn't actually have any sister. They met that evening to talk it over before dropping her off near the Jones's house.

Patricia didn't come home that evening so Walter reported her as missing and began calling friends and relatives of hers to see if they'd seen her around. Some carpool buddies of hers reported having seen her with a woman they didn't know who wanted to meet her and she asked them to drop her off on a street corner, which they did. The carpool occupants had seen a woman waiting for Patricia in another car but didn't know who she was. They provided a description of the woman anyway. The description of the woman made Walter immediately suspicious so he called Sharon and asked if she knew anything about where his wife could be. She replied that she met with Patricia to tell her about Walter's affair and she was last seen when she dropped her off near the Jones's house and had been talking to an unidentified man in a green '57 Ford.