Unanswered Text Message Heightens Brother's Anxiety

Missing D.C. Woman Always Checked In

Until she vanished with no trace, Pamela J. Butler had a stable, predictable life.

A program analyst for the federal government who has supplemented her income with real estate investments, Butler, 47, owns a shiny gray Mercedes-Benz, a gold-colored Jaguar and a house in Northwest Washington that she is meticulous about keeping clean and secure, with surveillance cameras over the outside doors and every room orderly, family members said.

And normally she stays in touch with relatives and friends.

Yesterday, police detectives and evidence technicians continued poring over the house, in the 5800 block of Fourth Street, looking for clues to what has become of Butler, who disappeared more than a week ago.

Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, meanwhile, appealed to the public for help, saying that Butler, who keeps to a daily routine, "is not a person who should just go missing." Saying "no detail is too small," Lanier asked for tips from people who "may have seen her in the company of anybody else, traveling anywhere, in a store or anywhere else, anytime after" Feb. 12, when she was last known to be at her house.

Although "we have nothing to indicate a crime at this time," the chief said, investigators are doing "an exhaustive amount of work" to determine Butler's whereabouts.

Butler's brother, Derrick Butler, said her family began to worry last weekend when they could not reach her by phone. On Tuesday, after sending several text messages asking her to get in touch with him, Butler said he sent a text message falsely telling her that their mother was so worried that she was about to be hospitalized.

"When she didn't respond to that," said Butler, 46, "I knew something was wrong."

Pamela Butler, an analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency, bought her house in 2000, records show.

She equipped it with security cameras not out of any specific fear, her brother said, but because she lives there alone and is cautious by nature. He said digital video from the front-door camera shows her entering the house with her boyfriend, a 46-year-old Alexandria man, shortly after 9:30 p.m. Feb. 12 and the boyfriend leaving about an hour later. No one has reported seeing her since.

Derrick Butler, who filed a missing-person report with D.C. police Tuesday, said he saw no blood or other signs of a crime when he walked through the house. But some things were amiss, he said. The sheets from her bed were missing, he noted, and the bed's comforter was heaped on a settee in the room.

"That's very unlike her," he said. "She's meticulous. Everything in her house is in its place. If you walk in, you'd almost be afraid to sit down."