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July 9, 2007
By Nick Martin
Denver Post Staff Writer
For most of last week, friends and family of a missing Grand Junction mother were surprised on an almost-daily basis as they learned the secrets she had been keeping.
Over the weekend, they found out one more: She went by another name.
Paige Birgfeld, 34, occasionally told people her name was "Carrie," police said, also announcing for the first time that they suspect she is the victim of foul play.
Publication info
This story originally ran July 9, 2007 in the Denver Post.
Birgfeld used the pseudonym with customers of an escort agency before she disappeared June 28, Mesa County sheriff's spokeswoman Heather Gier hart said.
The investigation is focusing on people who were in contact with "Carrie" and the agency, "Models Inc.," around the time she went missing, Gierhart said.
Birgfeld's involvement with the escort service was a surprise to friends and family last week.
"We didn't know any of this," her mother, Suzanne Birgfeld, said Sunday.
But, she said, the new information helps the search for her daughter, whose three children, ages 8, 6 and 3, are beginning to really miss her.
"We added the name 'Carrie' to some of the fliers we're handing out," she said, adding that she did not know where the name came from.
Gierhart said there are "potentially" other names Birgfeld used, but investigators have yet to confirm that.
"Models Inc." does not appear as a corporation in secretary of state records or a general Internet search.
One thing that was not a surprise to those who know Birgfeld was the sheriff's revelation over the weekend that someone else is probably involved in her disappearance.
The picture that friends have painted of Birgfeld is of a beautiful, committed mother who sold Pampered Chef products and taught dance to preschoolers to get by.
Investigators previously said any explanation was possible, including the theory Birgfeld staged the whole thing. They kept an open mind even after her car was found July 1 engulfed in flames in an empty parking lot about 3 miles from her home.
Some theories have since been ruled out, Sheriff Stan Hilkey said Saturday in a statement.
"Nothing during the course of our investigation has led us to believe that Paige walked away from her family or that she left of her own free will," he said.
No one has been named a suspect and no one has been ruled out, but focus is drifting away from Birgfeld's two ex-husbands, Gierhart said.
Friends have said that Birgfeld was afraid of her second husband, Rob Dixon, who was planning to move back to Colorado from Pennsylvania.
She apparently even posted her fears online in March under the name "Paige Dixon" on a forum for people who sell Pampered Chef products.
She and her first husband, Howard Beigler, had recently started seeing each other again, and he was one of the first to report her missing, a friend, Andrea Land, said last week.
But now, Gierhart said, "some people are of less interest than others. ... Both of them (the ex-husbands) are of less interest."