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It’s been more than a year since Danielle Lopez was last seen in the vast wilderness of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens after her car got stuck in the mud.
Lopez’s mother Sue Quackenbush — who has already grieved the deaths of two children — is desperate for answers about what happened to her beautiful daughter.
“That’s my hopes that somebody will recall or remember or go through or know something,” Quackenbush said on the Season 4 premiere of the Dateline: Missing in America podcast, a program that highlights some of the country’s most baffling disappearances.
Lopez, then 37 years old, had been camping in the Pine Barrens — a location once made famous by HBO’s The Sopranos for its remoteness — when she mysteriously vanished on April 13, 2024.
Who is Danielle Lopez?
It’s unlike Lopez to stay out of contact with her mom, who described her middle child as loving, loyal and loud.
“I’m quieter and I would say Danielle, you have to keep it quiet,” Quackenbush remembered. “She’d say, but mom, you didn’t name me Dan Quiet, you named me Dan Yell!”
Lopez, once a popular high school cheerleader and good student, has always been close to her family, even living for years with her grandfather after her grandmother’s death. Their pairing was once highlighted in the local newspaper in 2013 for the unique way they’d bridged the generational gap.
“They were world travelers, Yankees fans, cruises — everything so much so that she had a hat made saying that she was the granddaughter so that people didn’t misinterpret their relationship,” Quackenbush said.
Suffering family tragedies
Lopez was also close to her two brothers, but the family suffered an unimaginable tragedy when her older brother Eric took his own life on Christmas Day in 2015 and her younger brother died in a Florida car accident just 10 months later.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, the family suffered more grief when Lopez lost her beloved grandfather to the disease, followed, just a month later, by her father, who suffered a heart attack.
In the wake of the tragedies, Quackenbush said she and her daughter suffered greatly. Quackenbush found solace in therapy, and hoped to lead Danielle “by example.” Quackenbush helped her daughter get into a recovery program and supported her “through thick and thin.”
What happened to Danielle Lopez?
In a conversation Quackenbush had with her daughter on the day before she disappeared, it seemed as though Lopez was in a good place and “hopeful” about the future.
She was camping in the Pine Barrens with her on-again, off-again boyfriend James Scott Dunn. But when Quackenbush was unable to get through to her daughter and her calls and texts went unanswered, she knew something was wrong.
Quackenbush went to police to report her daughter missing and brought them a tip of her own. She knew that Lopez had used her store rewards card at a Wawa convenience store near the campsite at 9:11 a.m. to purchase coffee on the morning of April 13.
“So that’s where we knew how to start,” she told Correspondent Josh Mankiewicz.
Authorities were able to spot Lopez on surveillance footage making the purchase. Then just a few days later, on May 1, 2024, investigators found her blue two-door Hyundai Accent abandoned on a dirt road in the Pine Barrens known as Lost Lane.
“Multiple items of her personal property were located inside the car,” explained Detective Sgt. Ryan Labriola of the New Jersey State Police’s Major Crimes Unit. “Just clothing, things like that. No cell phone was found. We believe her cell phone is still with her at this time.”
In a strange twist of fate, a blogger and freelance photographer recorded the last known interaction with Lopez around 6 p.m. on April 13, 2024. He spotted her walking down Lost Lane, some time after her vehicle became stuck.
She told the blogger and another person with him that she had been distracted and looking at the trees when she drove into the puddle and was unable to get out.
“I was like sh-t, and it was fine until I put it in drive,” she said, before asking, “What do I do?”
She asked for help pushing her car out of the puddle, but instead the man pointed her in the direction of the main road.
“All right,” Lopez said in a video of the exchange posted online. “I was just gonna wait there.”
It was the last known sighting of Lopez.
Looking at those close to Danielle Lopez
Searches of the area have failed to produce any leads.
Quackenbush believes Lopez’s boyfriend Dunn, a man with convictions for theft and drug-related crimes, may know more than he’s saying about the disappearance.
“I absolutely believe he knows or directly has something to do with it,” she said.
She described him as someone who was “significantly older” than her daughter with a criminal record.
“It wasn’t good from day one,” she said of the relationship.
However, Dunn, who is currently serving time in prison for theft and drug convictions, did eventually report Lopez missing to police and told Dateline: Missing in America via email that he has been devastated by her disappearance.
He claimed he was not at the campsite the night she disappeared and returned the next morning to find her gone. He believes police should be looking into another camper who he says bothered Lopez anytime Dunn wasn’t around.
‘I’m her only voice’
As police continue to search for Lopez, Quackenbush has also turned to help from CUE, a non-profit organization that serves as a liaison between families and law enforcement and aims to increase awareness about missing persons.
“The not knowing is the hardest part,” said Lisa Valentino, the New Jersey state outreach coordinator for CUE.
The organization has offered a $5,000 reward for anyone with information that helps authorities find Lopez. This reward is available through July 31, 2025.
Private Investigator Jimmy Ramsey has also taken on the case pro bono in the hopes of finding Quackenbush some answers. He tracked down that fellow camper who had allegedly been bothering Lopez and the man claimed he left the campsite the day she disappeared.
Although there are still no answers about what happened to Lopez that day, her mom will never stop looking.
“I need answers,” she said. “I will stay well to fight for Danielle. I have a strong faith, and I believe this will be made right, but I’ve got to continue… I’m her only voice.”
Lopez is described as being 5’4” and weighing 135 pounds. She has brown hair and green eyes. Anyone with any information about her case is urged to contact the New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit at (609) 882-2000 or The CUE Center For Missing Persons at (910) 232-1687.
