In the days and weeks after Snider returned to Los Angeles, he found it increasingly difficult to get in touch with Stratten. In late June, just a few weeks after their first wedding anniversary, Snider received another letter from her, this one announcing that they were now physically and financially separated. Snider had several responses to the second letter; he emptied the couples' joint bank account, he had a brief affair with an old girlfriend, and, now convinced that Stratten was having an affair of her own with Bogdanovich, Snider hired a private detective to gather evidence of his wife's infidelity.