Mystery deepens on Southfield mom missing from northern Michigan cabin

Christina Hall | Detroit Free Press

Adrienne Quintal's boots and cellphone were on the roof of her family's cabin in northern Michigan.

Her empty, 9mm handgun was on the ground below. The car she was using was parked nearby.

A mixed-breed dog the Southfield woman and her boyfriend adopted 10 days earlier from the Benzie County animal shelter was unharmed inside the locked cabin near Honor, a tiny village about 21 miles southwest of Traverse City.

At the cabin, police — responding to a middle-of-the-night call — found multiple bullet holes in the windows and ceiling inside.

But Adrienne Quintal was nowhere to be found.

It's been five weeks since the 47-year-old mother — known as Ada — was last heard from. Her disappearance has become a baffling mystery that has spawned multiple theories about what happened to her. They range from the bizarre (she was abducted by aliens) to the skeptical (she staged the event so she could disappear).

It started when Quintal used her cellphone to make a 4-minute, 27-second-long phone call to a family friend in Warren at 2:34 a.m. Oct. 17 saying she heard noises at the cabin, according to Jenny Bryson, Quintal's older sister.

Bryson said the conversation escalated with Quintal telling the friend there were people outside, that she had shot one of them in the face and to call police. The friend tried to get Quintal's address and called her back after calling police, Quintal's sister said, but the call went right to voice mail.

Quintal hasn't been seen or heard from since.

"It is gut-wrenching. I lay awake every night wondering where she is," said Bryson, who lives in Macomb County.

Benzie County sheriff's investigators are trying to figure out what happened to Quintal.

With firearm deer hunting season underway, they're asking hunters to keep a lookout in the rural area — nearly 250 miles from metro Detroit — for any clues.

Quintal's family, including her ex-husband, had doubled the reward for information in the case to $20,000 through Nov. 30 with the hope that someone will come forward, Bryson said.

On Friday, Bryson told the Free Press the family raised the reward to $100,000 for information on Quintal's whereabouts until Nov. 30 — a lot of money that they hope will entice someone to look around and see what they can find.

"It's a total mystery how she vanished," Bryson told the Free Press on Thursday. "And our family desperately wants some answers."

Unusual scene

About eight minutes after Quintal called the family friend Oct. 17, Benzie County Central Dispatch received a 911 transfer from Michigan State Police Metro Dispatch from the friend.

The friend told Benzie dispatchers that Quintal was involved in a shootout with two men. She said that Quintal told her that she shot one of the men in the face, that the other man was shooting at her and that she was shooting back at them, the Benzie County Sheriff's Office said in a news release earlier this month.

More: Missing Southfield woman involved in shootout Up North before disappearance

It stated that Quintal told the friend to call police for her and provided an address that turned out to be an incorrect house number. At 3:08 a.m. Oct. 17, Benzie dispatch got the correct address from one of Quintal's relatives and seven minutes later authorities approached the cabin.

They found multiple bullet holes in a window and searched for an injured person or evidence of an injured person. They forced entry into the cabin, but found no one inside.

They found no blood or evidence of someone who had been hurt in or around the cabin. But they found evidence suggesting multiple shots were fired from inside the cabin to the outside.

There were about a half-dozen bullet holes, including one in the ceiling, Sheriff's Detective Lt. Troy Lamerson told the Free Press. He said a portion of the ceiling rafter was cut out to retrieve a spent bullet. A driver's side window of the vehicle Quintal was driving also was struck, he said.

Lamerson said there were casings around the outside of the cabin from what appeared to be multiple guns, with some casings older and rusty and others newer. He said authorities are awaiting results of ballistics tests.

Lamerson said the vehicle was registered to Quintal's boyfriend, who has been at the cabin with Quintal but left in another vehicle that he owned two days earlier to return to metro Detroit.

Lamerson said Quintal tried to call two other people, who he declined to identify, prior to calling the family friend. He said the family friend told police she heard multiple gunshots in the background while on the phone with Quintal.

Lamerson said the house was secured from the inside but authorities found some windows at the cabin open — including one with bullet holes in it. He said Quintal most likely got out of the cabin through a small window on the west end of the house.

From there, she may have climbed onto the roof, where police later found her boots and cellphone. It's unclear how her gun ended up on the ground.

No notes were left behind, Lamerson said, and there is no video footage that authorities have found.

Neighbors are pretty spread out, Lamerson said, but one living in the area thought they heard gunshots about 2:30 a.m. Oct. 17. He said a neighbor spoke with Quintal on Oct. 16 and it appeared that everything was all right.

Lamerson said authorities had a couple of call-in tips in widely different locations about people who look like Quintal. Nothing has materialized.

"We've not ruled anyone out as a suspect or ruled out any possible theories on what could have occurred," he said, adding that everyone is a person of interest and no one is in custody or charged.

Several theories

Lamerson said authorities have several theories about what may have happened.

He said those theories include: Quintal was abducted; Quintal had some type of medical or other problem that caused her to believe some people were after her and she fled into the woods and swamp area; and the incident was staged because Quintal wanted to get away from her life or was in fear for her safety and wanted to get away.

Lamerson said authorities haven't located any evidence consistent with people being at the cabin, and they checked hospitals to see whether there were any gunshot victims who might fit what Quintal told the family friend that morning on the phone.

More: Police suspect foul play in disappearance of Southfield woman in northern Michigan

Bryson said she discounts a lot of the theories, including some of the "wild suppositions" posted on Facebook, such as alien abduction, because of what she knows about her sister.

She called Quintal "a beautiful girl," who is the youngest of four siblings. She said Quintal graduated from Warren Fitzgerald High School and has been a concealed pistol license holder for at least 10 years and never went anywhere without her 9mm handgun. She said her sister was a good shot.

Bryson said her sister had worked in the auto industry as a contractor for an engineering firm as a database analyst, but had some health issues and was laid off.

Bryson said Quintal hadn't been working full-time for about two years, but was doing odd jobs and that their uncle paid her $500 to make repairs on the old cabin because he is getting older and is unable to do all the work.

Bryson said she doesn't buy the theory that Quintal would stage her disappearance, saying Quintal loves her adult son too much to put him and other relatives "through that heartache and pain."

If her sister wanted to leave, Bryson said, she would have left a note and taken her purse, her vaping devices and vehicle — all of which were at the cabin.

Bryson said her sister was involved in an altercation in metro Detroit in July in which Quintal was "seriously hurt" and hospitalized. Bryson declined to go into too many details so as not to impede the investigation into her sister's disappearance.

Quintal's nose was broken in the altercation and she had a concussion, which Bryson said might be considered a traumatic brain injury.

In a lengthy online interview with John Lordan, who has a true crime program called "BrainScratch" on YouTube, Bryson talked about the possibility that her sister suffered a mental breakdown that night.

"We thought possibly she had like a mental break because of the head injury. Possibly, she could have gone running off into the woods. It’s very densely wooded up there. It’s very marshy and swampy in the area. And that was our first fear is that she had suffered some kind of medical or mental break and that she was in the surrounding woods."

Bryson told the Free Press the person who hurt her sister hasn't been caught, and she's "not going to write that off until that person is found and cleared by the police."

She said her sister had been drinking when she was attacked in the summer, but according to the medical records that Bryson said she saw, there were no drugs in her sister's system. She said she wasn't aware of any problems her sister has with drugs or alcohol.

Lamerson said Quintal has no criminal history.

While Bryson said she won't discount a medical condition or something like that involving her sister's disappearance, she is leaning toward Quintal being abducted.

Perhaps, Bryson said, someone followed her likable sister home after Quintal took the dog around or was out buying supplies to do work on the cabin — the reason Quintal was planning to spend a month or so there.

Bryson has a message for her sister — if she's reading or listening.

"I want to know where you are," she said. "I want to know you are OK."

Anyone with information is asked to call Benzie County Central Dispatch at 231-882-4487 or Michigan State Police Silent Observer at 866-774-2345.

Contact Christina Hall: chall@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @challreporter.