Abducted Great Falls woman talked to husband, daughter before death

Trapped in the trunk of her car on a terrifying trip from Montana to Washington, a kidnapped Rita Maze was able to make contact with her husband and daughter before she died. 

The Great Falls woman told her family at 10:25 p.m. Tuesday that “a large man in a black hoodie” hit her on the head and put her into a trunk of a car at a rest stop near Wolf Creek on Tuesday morning. She wasn’t even sure if she was in her car or not.

Husband, Bob Maze, and daughter, Rochelle Maze, had police on the other line as they spoke to Maze in what would be her final hours. They relayed what she told them to police, but the information came too late. 

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The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office discovered the 47-year-old’s body Wednesday in the trunk of her vehicle near the Spokane International Airport, 325 miles west of Wolf Creek, Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said.

Bob and Rochelle called Helena police about 8:20 p.m. Tuesday, saying that Maze was missing and that they suspected foul play. Bob had spoken to his wife at 11:25 a.m., and the family believes she was abducted a short time later. 

By 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, police had located her body. The cause of death has not been released. 

“She traveled with a gun, and she knew he had her gun, and she was terrified,” Rochelle said. “He kept her in the trunk for 12 hours.” 

Rochelle said her mom was hysterical, and she was hard to understand. She didn’t even know if there was more than one kidnapper. 

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The conversation was only 10 minutes long. 

“I told her that I loved her,” Rochelle said fighting for every word through her tears. “That’s the last thing she heard.”

The phone went dead or they lost a signal and were unable to reach each other again. 

“We do know that Rita was in Helena visiting her relatives earlier that day,” Dutton said. “She fueled up and was headed back to Great Falls and stopped at a rest area, which she thought was south of Craig some place,” Dutton said.

Investigators believe the abduction occurred at a rest stop near Wolf Creek, which is south of Craig, Dutton said. Authorities searched for clues at two rest stops on Interstate 15 Wednesday, one on either side of Wolf Creek.

Based on what Maze was able to relay to police, they believe the crime occurred at the more rustic rest stop, south of Wolf Creek, Dutton said. 

Wolf Creek is about 50 miles south of Great Falls on I-15.

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Helena police put out an attempt to locate the vehicle nationwide, and a license plate reader spotted the vehicle in Post Falls, Idaho, east of Spokane, Dutton said. 

Authorities were able to find the car by locating Maze’s cell phone. 

Dutton said there is a person of interest in the case and that authorities are looking at a surveillance video from a convenience store.

Because of the interstate travel involved, the FBI is assisting in the investigation.

FBI media spokesperson Sandra Barker said the federal law enforcement agency was working in conjunction with the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Office but would not confirm FBI agents were investigating a specific person of interest connected to the murder.

Maze’s body was in her car found in a parking lot in an industrial area in the 7600 block of West Geiger Boulevard, which is west of Spokane.

“We had received some information that the car may be over here in our area,” said Deputy Mark Gregory of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office. “So basically one of the agencies started pinging the cell phone, which helped us get an area to search and locate the vehicle.”

Spokane County Sheriff’s Office major crimes detectives and Spokane County Forensics personnel were called to the scene to continue the investigative process, Gregory said.

Maze worked for years as an aide, a crosswalk attendant and a head cook in Great Falls Public Schools. She was the “lunch lady” at Morningside from 2005 to 2009. 

“My mom touched every person she made contact with,” said Rochelle. “She considered herself a lifetime member of PTA with Bill Salonen.” 

“She, one, had such a positive presence,” said Bill Salonen, former principal at Morningside.

Salonen said he had an expectation that if you served food or cleaned classrooms that you’d do more than that — you would also make connections with kids.

“And really, Rita was the epitome of that,” Salonen said. “I could really trust that she was really going to take care of kids and build that trust.” 

After leaving Morningside, Maze worked at Peres Food Basket, then later worked for two years at B/E Aerospace. She decided to take some time off to spend time with family. 

“She loved her grandkids so much,” Rochelle said.

Her granddaughters, Addyson, 4, and Carly, 1, are her son Michael’s children. Michael, a sergeant in the Air Force, is stationed in Germany. 

“Growing up, my mom was an amazing mom,” Rochelle said. 

She was the mom in the pool with the kids, taking them to picnics at parks.

“She was fun loving and had an infectious smile and was goofy and a child at heart,” she said. “And she had fun all the time.”