In the middle of March, just weeks after filing for divorce from her husband, 51-year-old Gretchen Anthony disappeared. Soon, Gretchen’s friends and acquaintances began receiving odd text messages from her claiming she had the coronavirus.
CBS 12 reported that on March 25, a witness called the Jupiter Police Department in Florida to say she received a “suspicious text message” from Gretchen claiming to have COVID-19 and being held by the “CDC” after she was released from Jupiter Medical Center. The witness said she had received the text two days earlier and that she hadn’t made contact since.
An officer went to Gretchen’s home, but nobody answered the door. The officer also contacted Jupiter Medical Center and was told no one named Gretchen Anthony had been a patient. Officers would later Gretchen’s car with a purse inside in the hospital parking lot.
Another witness also reported receiving a strange text from Gretchen on March 24. This witness said the text claimed Gretchen had an “acute” case of COVID-19 and was “sedated” at a CDC-approved task force in Belle Glade. Notably, there is no CDC office in Belle Glade, Florida.
Jupiter Medical Center also told police that it wasn’t protocol to send someone elsewhere and sedate them.
This second witness was a friend of Gretchen’s husband David and had access to the couple’s home. He entered the home with police but didn’t find Gretchen. The friend also told police that Gretchen stopped sharing her location on March 21, which was unlike her. He also said the texts he received from “Gretchen” didn’t sound like things she would write – they sounded more like things David would write. He showed police officers some of David’s text to prove his point.
Two other witnesses told police they also received strange text messages from Gretchen and were concerned about her. One said David had “issues” and worried he had done something to Gretchen. Police couldn’t reach David by phone and he wasn’t home. A neighbor told them she hadn’t seen David since March 24 when he picked up his dog and said he was moving to Costa Rica.
Police then listed Gretchen as an “endangered missing adult.” Using cellphone tracking data, they found that Gretchen’s phone had pinged near Pensacola, Florida. A clerk told police David tried to sell a bag of jewelry there on March 25, but they wouldn’t buy it. The clerk believed one of the rings must have belonged to Gretchen. The clerk also gave police video footage of a man matching David’s description as well as his truck from that day.
On March 26, one of the previous witnesses called police to say her mother received a text from “Gretchen” saying she was on a ventilator at Palms West Hospital. Police were told by that hospital that Gretchen was not a patient.
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When police went to Gretchen Anthony’s home March 26 to investigate further, a neighbor asked them if they were here investigating “the attack that occurred Saturday morning,” according to the arrest report. The neighbor told them between 6 and 6:20 a.m., she heard a woman’s voice let out “a blood-curdling scream.” She said she hears a woman yelling, “No! No it hurts,” from either the patio or garage area of Gretchen Anthony’s home.
Police say another neighbor said he also heard the screams and saw David Anthony’s truck parked on the road, with the bed loaded up and covered with a tarp. He also noticed that on Monday morning (March 23), someone was cleaning something inside Gretchen Anthony’s closed garage, as there was water “mixed with an unknown chemical” coming out of the garage door and into the alley. A third neighbor gave police surveillance video, showing what appears to be David Anthony’s truck driving to and from the home around that time.
Police later found cleaners and a rag in the kitchen as well as towels with a “reddish substance” on them in the washing machine. “There was a broken glass frame upstairs on the landing and what looked like small droplets of blood on the wall in the master bedroom,” the outlet reported.
The garage had been locked with a key broken off inside the lock, so police knocked in the door and found the garage floor was wet with large bleach stains leading out to the driveway.
One of the previous witnesses said David had answered her question about if he had heard from Gretchen by saying he “”ran into her randomly Sat am. She mentioned something about going to the beach to ground herself bc she wasn’t feeling well. Then she proceeded to tell me I should ‘plead insanity’ on some bogus police charges I’ve been dealing with.”
David was arrested in Las Cruces, New Mexico and charged with second-degree murder and kidnapping. Gretchen still has not been found.