Jeff Dunsavage's Blog – May 2010 Archive (18)

Beth Holloway has created the Natalee Holloway Resource Center, named for her daughter who went missing during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, according to this Associated Press article. The center will be based at the National Museum of Crime & Punishment in downtown Washington. The nonprofit…

Mexico does not object to U.S. plans to station troops along the border between the two nations, as long as the soldiers do not arrest Mexicans trying to get into the United States, President Felipe Calderon said on Thursday. U.S. President Barack Obama, reacting to drug violence in northern Mexico, said Tuesday he would send 1,200 more National Guard troops and ask for an additional $500 million to secure the almost 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.…

My heart leapt when I saw this article, sent to me by my brother, Ed Dunsavage. The subject field in Ed's e-mail said, "I wish we'd had this a year ago."

As wonderful an advance as this NASA system is, it would not have helped us find Joe because Joe did not have a personal locator beacon…

The Caribbean's biggest cruise lines including Carnival and Royal Caribbean say they plan to go ahead with calls in Jamaica this week despite growing unrest in the country's…

At least 27 people, almost all civilians, have died in gun battles in Jamaica, police have said, as the hunt continues for a suspected drug lord, the BBC reports. A state of emergency has been in place in parts of Kingston since Friday, when several police stations were attacked. The fighting has intermittently blocked the road to Kingston's airport and forced some flights to be cancelled. The U.S.…

The New York Times reports that President Obama will send up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the Southwest border and increase spending on law enforcement, yielding to demands from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers there that border security be tightened. Calls to send troops to the border mounted after the shooting death of a rancher in southern Arizona on March 27; the police suspect the rancher was killed by…

This just in:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/10157188.stm

A blog post in ArizonaCentral.com: "Arpaio Says No to Mexico Travel. How About Honduras?"

While I know the suggestion is made with tongue firmly planted in cheek as a reference to a junket the sheriff's team apparently made to Roatan on the Arizona taxpayer's dime, Honduras IS being heavily promoted as a tourism destination and precious little media attention is being paid to the tourists and expats (as well as…

Check the Friends of Ben Vaugh blog for updates and ways to help.

I don't know anything more about this case, will look into it. A Facebook group has been created for anyone who wants to know more and help. If you know anything about this case, please post your information as a comment on this post. Thanks.

I don't know how I managed not to stumble upon this page earlier. It's a page (actually, 11 pages) on the…

Here is the link to the story in the Amandala newspaper website. Please read it and, if you can be of assistance, contact the family at the phone numbers provided in the article.

http://www.amandala.com.bz/index.php?id=9840

I will try to keep everyone posted.

Mexican investigators have ended a search in a tiny tourist town for a California family, marking another dead end in an investigation that began three months ago when the family disappeared. Baja California state police said Thursday that seven investigators searched over three days for Joseph and Summer McStay and their two young boys after an FBI alert of a possible sighting in El Rosario, 200 miles south of the border. The McStays were last heard from Feb. 4. They left their dogs hungry…

A-freakin'-mazing! This is the U.S. Embassy's page about safety in Costa Rica. Not a mention of the disappearances and murders over the past year. Here's the kind of thing the Embassy warns about:

• A tire of a rental car went flat, and people who stopped to "help change the tire" stole U.S. passports, bags, cash, and camera.
• A hotel room was broken into during the day, and items the tourist had hidden were…

I didn't know about this when I put up my earlier post:

"Luca Pagliaro: Dive master from Roatan missing!! who has seen him??

Luca, an italian native, has disappeared in Roatan (Honduras) last week, probably on 16th March 2010, with Mauriliuo Mirabella, owner of a diveshop who has also disapperead.

Everybody who has news about him that are useful to find him are invited to contact me and my mother without hesitation.

Please let me know also when is the…

On Mother's Day 2009, my brother disappeared after leaving the beach on the West End of Isla de Roatan, Honduras. I didn't know at the time that a month earlier, almost to the day, Ron Scheepstra had disappeared from Xcalak, Mexico, a remote village on the Yucatan Peninsula close enough to Roatan for Ron and his fishing buddies to be using Roatan tide charts. Over the next few months, more men would disappear in Central America and the Caribbean: Alex Humphrey, in Panama; David Gimelfarb in…