The Hammer in the Trunk: What Happened to Wendy Hudakoc

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

February 1, 2023

Wendy Kathleen Claire Hudakoc was born in Toronto, Canada, on August 12, 1984, and by November 1998 she was fourteen years old, a freshman at Naples High School in Naples, Florida, where her family had relocated. She lived with her mother, Shelly, her stepfather, Dan Campbell, and her older sister, Sharlene. People who knew her described Wendy as book smart rather than street smart, full of life and curious about the world, but also rebellious in a way that set her apart from her more cautious older sister, more inclined to test the boundaries her parents set for her. She stood about five foot six, weighed around a hundred thirty pounds, had light brown hair and hazel eyes, a small strawberry birthmark on the back of her neck, a scar on her left hand, braces on her teeth, and her left ear pierced twice.

About a month before she disappeared, Wendy had met a twenty year old man named Ronald DePeppo at a bowling alley. At some point he called the Hudakoc household, and her stepfather Dan Campbell later recalled confronting him directly over the phone, asking him point blank whether he knew how old Wendy actually was, telling him she was fourteen and demanding to know what business he had calling a fourteen year old girl at all. Whatever warning that phone call was meant to send did not stop the relationship, whatever it actually was, from continuing.

Out the Window

On the night of November 15, 1998, Wendy's parents were away at an overnight conference, leaving babysitters watching the house. After nine o'clock that evening, in violation of the household's rules about phone calls that late, Wendy received a call arranging a ride to a party. She tried to talk her sister Sharlene and a friend named Shauna Potts into coming along with her, and when both declined, Wendy took her stepfather's pager, promising she would return quickly if he tried to reach her, and climbed out through her bedroom window sometime around midnight, wearing a red, white, and blue tank top and jeans.

She never came back. The next morning, Sharlene discovered Wendy's bed still made, untouched, the window still open exactly as Wendy had left it. She paged her stepfather's device repeatedly, over and over, with no response, and within hours the family had alerted authorities. Investigators initially treated Wendy as a runaway, the default classification for a teenager who had deliberately snuck out of her own home at night, before reclassifying her case as endangered missing once it became clear something more serious had likely happened.

A Story That Didn't Hold Up

Investigators quickly identified Ronald DePeppo as the man Wendy had gone to meet that night, and his account of what happened became the central, unresolved thread running through the entire investigation. DePeppo told police that he had dropped Wendy off at a gas station, where she reportedly received a page about meeting up with someone named Jeff, and that he had then driven her home and left her in her own front yard around 2:45 in the morning. Investigators looked for any record that could support this account and found none. There were no payphone records showing any call matching the story DePeppo told about Wendy being paged to meet someone else.

DePeppo also claimed that a seventeen year old named Johnny Walker could vouch that he had spent that night at Walker's house. Walker's own account contradicted DePeppo's story rather than confirming it. According to Walker's statements to investigators, DePeppo had actually left his house around ten thirty or eleven that night and did not return until the following morning, at which point he mentioned having gone out with Wendy. Years afterward, Walker gave conflicting accounts of his own relationship with Wendy, at one point telling investigators he had never known her at all, and at a later point telling a television crime program that Wendy was cool, that she was a cool girl, and that the two of them had actually been dating for weeks, statements that directly contradicted both DePeppo's original account and Walker's own earlier statement to police back in 1999.

A Car That Burned and a Hammer in the Trunk

Roughly two weeks after Wendy vanished, the vehicle DePeppo had been driving that night, a light blue 1991 Mazda, was destroyed in a fire. DePeppo and Walker each blamed the other for the blaze, both claiming the other had flicked a lit cigarette that ignited laundry sitting in the back seat, authorities ultimately concluding the fire had been accidental. Inside the burned out trunk, investigators recovered a hammer with what appeared to be a hair or fiber fragment attached to it, evidence that could have been enormously significant, except that the fire had damaged it too badly for any meaningful DNA testing to be performed. Walker took a polygraph test at some point in the investigation and passed it. DePeppo, by contrast, eventually retained an attorney and refused to answer further questions from investigators or submit to any polygraph examination of his own.

In the aftermath of the fire, Wendy's stepfather Dan Campbell confronted DePeppo directly at the site of the burned car, telling him they were searching for Wendy. DePeppo reportedly responded dismissively. When Campbell identified himself as Wendy's father, somewhere between eight and ten people emerged from a nearby trailer and began circling both men in what Campbell experienced as an overtly threatening gesture, an unsettling moment that only deepened the family's suspicion that DePeppo, and the people around him, knew far more than they were willing to say.

An Aging Case, a Named Suspicion

By 2018, twenty years after Wendy disappeared, lead investigator Anna Horowitz spoke publicly about where the case stood, stating plainly that the evidence pointed to both Johnny Walker and Ron DePeppo, and that in her assessment, the two of them knew where Wendy was. That same year, following a review of the case by a retired FBI agent, Walker's status in the investigation was formally elevated from witness to person of interest, alongside DePeppo, though neither man has ever been charged with any crime connected to Wendy's disappearance.

DePeppo's own life in the years since has taken turns that Wendy's family has read as signs of guilt weighing on him. According to accounts from people who encountered him later, he made cryptic, erratic statements at various points, including reportedly claiming that he had received a message from God telling him that Wendy would be coming home soon. Sharlene, Wendy's sister, has said she believes DePeppo's apparent psychological instability in the years since reflects the weight of guilt rather than simple coincidence. More recently, DePeppo has reportedly been homeless, with social media activity placing him in Las Vegas, and he has continued to avoid direct questioning whenever reporters or investigators have managed to track him down.

More than two decades after Wendy Hudakoc climbed out of her bedroom window expecting, by every account, to be back within minutes, her case remains unsolved and her body has never been found. Her family has never stopped believing that Ron DePeppo and Johnny Walker hold the answers investigators have spent a quarter century trying to pry loose from them, answers that, so far, neither man has ever chosen to give.

Anyone with information about Wendy Kathleen Claire Hudakoc's disappearance is asked to contact the Collier County Sheriff's Office at 239-774-4434.

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