AYNOR, S.C. (AP) - The plants and shrubs Alice Donovan once tended in the yard of the dream home she and her husband built by hand don't seem to be thriving like they did last November.

It's been more than a year since she pulled weeds and got her hands dirty, more than a year since she pulled out of her driveway in her blue BMW and drove about 15 miles down U.S. Highway 501 to the Conway Wal-Mart to do some Christmas shopping.

Grainy surveillance camera video shows she never made it inside the discount store on Nov. 14, 2002. Instead, two men blocked her in a parking space and forced her back into her car at gunpoint. She hasn't been seen since.

Authorities say those two men were Chadrick Fulks and Branden Basham. They escaped from a Kentucky jail, and prosecutors say the duo went on a crime spree that included killing Donovan, 44, and Samantha Burns, a college student from West Virginia whose body also has not been found.

Both men now face the death penalty in federal court in South Carolina; their trial is scheduled for the spring. Each defendant has blamed the other for being the leader in the two-week multistate spree that authorities say included at least three carjackings and kidnappings, a couple of high-speed chases and shots fired at a police officer.

The events of last November have left two families hundreds of miles apart struggling for answers. The families of Donovan and Burns say they know they won't find their loved ones alive - Basham and Fulks have told police the women are dead - but relatives still hold out hope the victims will come home somehow.

''I would crawl on my hands and knees to South Carolina if someone said she was alive,'' Donovan's mother, Lorraine Moore, said by phone from her home in Bristol, N.H. ''I wouldn't even take the plane. I think I'd beat the plane I would be running so fast.''

Basham, now 22, accompanied investigators to the woods of southeastern North Carolina last Thanksgiving to search for Donovan's body. That search came up empty, just like another Basham-assisted search in September in the West Virginia woods for Burns.

''We plan on having a memorial later on and getting a headstone. Without her being there, it doesn't seem right, but we've got to do something,'' Burns' father recently told the Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, W.Va.

Burns disappeared on her way home from Marshall University. Her burned out car was found about six hours after she had called her mother for the last time.

Just days after Burns was reported missing, a friend started a Web site. It reads: ''Vanished! Samantha Burns.'' There are several pictures of the 19-year-old student and her family and an offer of a $35,000 reward for the conviction of her abductor or her safe return.

Scroll farther down and a counter keeps track of how many days Burns has been gone. It rolled to 365 last Tuesday.

Basham and Fulks, who's now 26, have been indicted on state and federal charges in West Virginia connected to the carjacking, kidnapping and death of Burns.

Donovan's husband said no matter what happens during the court proceedings, his feelings won't change.

''Quite personally, I don't believe that the death penalty that is imposed by South Carolina - which is lethal injection - I just don't believe that's justice for Alice even if they are convicted,'' Barry Donovan said.

Donovan changed his job and several other things in his life after his wife disappeared, but he had to stay in the house they built.

''There's too much of us in it,'' he said. ''We physically built it ourselves. She hammered as many nails in this thing as I did. It's the place we've been looking for (for) 10 years, and we found it.''

Barry Donovan also is helping his wife's adult daughters cope - again; they lost their father 10 years ago. ''I'm all they have. We're very close,'' he said.

Moore, 67, worries that her poor health will keep her from coming to South Carolina for the trial.

She said she has cried every day since her daughter went missing.

''I haven't had a day yet that I haven't been able to sit down and eat a breakfast or a dinner or a lunch and not burst into tears thinking about my daughter,'' Moore said. ''It's like 'Why am I living? I'm old, she should be here, not me.'''