as easy to still a car as movies depict? >> certainly not 1999 mercedes. it's hard to hot wire or steal it. you almost need a key to gain access to it. >> reporter: if your car doesn't have a key, the next stop is a car dealership to have a new one made. but, first, gates and his crew searched the house looking for dee dee's spare mercedes key, without success. and gates quickly became convinced of one thing. you thought finding dee dee's car was going to be the key to this? >> reporter: that was going to be extremely important. >> reporter: dee dee's friends and family printed up posters and along with law enforcement, launched a massive search. >> an army of people band together to trial to help find her and we broke up into teams and we mapped everything out in one mile increments to start to search every parking lot looking for her car. >> we would ask people, have you seen this woman? have you seen this car?