Denise was raised by her oil man father, who was fifty-three when she was born. He took Denise with him almost everywhere he went. Instead of cheerleading camp and home economics class, she grew up in her father’s office and in the oilfields, a world away from the nearest charm school. After graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in geology, she went to work in her father’s business. While Denise was one of the few professional women working on drilling sites in the Texas oil fields in the 1980s, the company attorney reminded her that moving over to the land department meant working in air-conditioned courthouses and sleeping in motels instead of trudging around rattlesnake-infested drilling locations and sleeping in her car. It wasn’t a hard decision. As a landman, Denise bought and sold oil and gas real estate and examined land titles across West Texas and the Gulf Coast. But mostly…she found missing landowners. Finding people and evidence and hidden information were Denise’s one true professional love. In 1995, she got her private investigator’s license. As a private investigator and forensic genealogist, she specialized in the location of missing heirs and mineral owners for oil companies and law firms across the country. Now retired, Denise brings her investigative experience to historical true crime and writes novels inspired by cases and experiences from her colorful career. Decades of discovering hidden secrets and unraveling complex family histories has left her with a lot of stories to write.
