They last saw her seven years ago, unlocking the door to her apartment at four in the morning after Halloween, alone in her Playboy bunny costume.
Now, all that's left of Penn State student Cindy Song are 20 three-inch binders sitting in the Ferguson Township Police Department. She disappeared without a trace that morning, and Det. Brian Sprinkle still doesn't know where she went.
"Unfortunately, there's not much to talk about," he said.
Since the beginning of the investigation in 2001, there never really has been, despite police's best efforts to solve the case through conventional means. They searched the 21-year-old's apartment for evidence of forced entry or signs she was planning to leave -- and found nothing. They tried to follow her trail with bloodhound dogs -- it was cold.
They followed up on leads and claims of responsibility, including that of a man who said he had killed four others -- more of the same.
That was when Sprinkle got a call from Paranormal Research Society (PRS) Director Ryan Buell, asking him to try something new. Buell knew the investigation wasn't turning up leads, and he wanted to bring in a psychic.
"I had every bit of faith that the police were doing all they could do," he recalls. "But sometimes, when you exhaust all the natural resources, why not try something else?"
He expected the police to tell him to stop wasting their time. But to his surprise, Sprinkle agreed.
"We figured it wouldn't hurt to have someone else look at the case," Sprinkle said.
Buell contacted psychic Carla Baron from Los Angeles with assistance from the ABC television network, which filmed portions of the investigation for its news program Primetime. Baron conducted several preliminary readings over the phone with Sprinkle, the detective said, and then came down to help with the investigation personally, free of charge.
"She was very nice, very easy to work with," Sprinkle said. "She had visions and saw places, and we went out to check them out."
Buell, then a relative unknown in paranormal circles, was glad he was able to contribute to the search for Cindy.
"She was a Penn State student. One of our own was missing," he said. "This could be a way we could try to help."
Unfortunately, even Baron's spiritual help couldn't turn up any leads on the missing student. Baron flew back to Los Angeles; she recently said she hasn't talked to Ferguson police for years.
Then again, the psychic's involvement wasn't completely a loss. It was the first major press for PRS, which has since moved on to be featured in the successful A&E program Paranormal State. Baron herself is in the midst of launching her own television series on the truTV network.
They've found their place. Only Cindy Song is still missing.
Despite it all, Sprinkle stands by his decision to accept Baron's help. While some police officers might look down on bringing in a psychic to do police work, he sees it as another tool to finding someone's daughter.
"When someone vanishes off the face of the earth so quickly and without clues -- that's definitely a tool that if you exhaust everything else, you might want to use," he said.
