Police: Woman feared Michael Cavallari for weeks

NEW YORK -- Four days before Michael Cavallari went missing on Nov. 27, a woman who knows him said she heard tapping on her door from something that "sounded like a piece of metal." She opened the door to her Dana Point, Calif., apartment slightly, saw no one and shut it, she later told police.

Then she went to a nearby window, looked out, and allegedly "saw Michael with a shotgun pressed to his shoulder and the barrel raised parallel to the ground, aiming down the path" toward her apartment. It's not clear what her relationship to him was.

The woman called police and as they were en route to her house, Cavallari -- the brother of television personality Kristin Cavallari, who is married to NFL quarterback Jay Cutler -- called police dispatch and said he was on the way to Dana Point City Hall. Once there, he surrendered to police, who found a shotgun in his car.

They arrested Cavallari for criminal threats. He was released from jail two days later and it is not clear if he still faces charges in the case.

On Nov. 27, a rancher in Grand County, Utah, about 750 miles from Dana Point, discovered Cavallari's car stuck against a small embankment off a dirt road. It was running, and the air bag was deployed.

In the nearly two weeks since, dozens of deputies have searched the area, along with dogs and drones, but have found no sign of Cavallari.

"Even the sheriff's out there, and has been from the start," a Grand County dispatcher told 48 Hours' Crimesider on Wednesday.

It's not clear if Cavallari is alive, dead or injured, but police in Dana Point say his disappearance is the last in a string of increasingly bizarre incidents that peaked with his arrest on Nov. 27.

The woman in that case told police it all began on Wednesday, Nov. 11, when she and Cavallari had a verbal dispute.

"For several weeks after the incident, Michael kept knocking on her door, but she refused to answer," she told police.

She said she was in fear of him, but did not contact the police "because she didn't want to escalate the situation," according to investigators.

There are no indications that Cavallari has contacted her since his disappearance, according to police.