By admin 
TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – In her sophomore year at the University of Arizona, 24-year-old Dianne Abbuhl lived the life of a typical college student, enjoying her time by hanging out with friends and checking out the nightlife.
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But everything changed on the morning of Sept. 8, 1988.
Abbuhl and her roommate got back to their dorm around 1:30 a.m. after a night out.
“Later that morning, her roommate overheard Dianne’s alarm clock going off and was not turned off to the point that she got out of bed to go check on Dianne and found that her bed was vacant,” said Pima County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Daniel Sharp. “Law enforcement eventually contacted (and a missing persons report was filed.”
Abbuhl’s belongings were still in the dorm, and there was no sign of forced entry.
For more than a month, panic set in as she was nowhere to be found.
And then came the news that no one wanted to hear.
“Ultimately, a group of hunters on Oct. 13, 1988, eventually came across human remains in a remote part of Pima County in the Avra Valley area. Those were reported to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, where the homicide unit at the time responded. Those remains were determined to be that of Dianne’s,” Sharp said.
To this day, many questions remain. Who killed Dianne? And with no means of transportation, how did she end up out there?
That’s where the public comes in.
The PCSD is encouraging those who knew Dianne to reach out to detectives.
They want to know more about what the days were like leading up to her disappearance.
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“Any small detail that may seem insignificant to one person could be very significant to us,” Sharp said. “With most cold cases that we deal with, unfortunately, 40 years is not outside of the norm for us. There are some hurdles that we deal with, such as people moving away; they’re hard to get ahold of. People pass away; it creates an additional set of difficulties for us to overcome versus a homicide that occurred yesterday..”
No matter how much time passes or how difficult the road becomes, the mission remains unchanged.
“We as law enforcement have a professional obligation in addition to a moral obligation to continue to pursue all leads that we may have in these types of investigations,” Sharp said. “We just want the public to know that we were not going to forget our victims in these cases and we’ll continue to pursue until we get them justice.”
Anyone with information is asked to call 88-CRIME or the PCSD Cold Case Unit at 520-351-3486.
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