The Last Place You'd Look

by Carole Moore

  “He was supposed to graduate in 2005, but he postponed his graduation so he could do a study abroad in China,” Judy says.

  Once there, Ryan took on tai chi and other martial arts in addition to his studies in Chinese. Those experiences inspired him to remain in China and teach English. When he announced his plans to his family, they were delighted for him.

  Ryan returned to China and settled into a teaching position about fifty miles west of Beijing. He changed schools and then, at the end of February 2006, his work permit ran out. He had to exit the country to obtain a new one.

  “He had all sorts of plans to travel. He decided to go to Laos for three weeks, then meet us in Hong Kong, and then the three of us—my husband and I and Ryan—would spend a month going around China to the different places he wanted to show us,” she says.

  Ryan Chicovsky. Courtesy of Judy Frane and David Chicovsky.

  Three days before they were to leave for Hong Kong—on March 31, 2006—the U.S. Embassy notified his parents that Ryan was missing. He had not been seen nor heard from for more than two weeks.

  Judy and the rest of Ryan’s family learned that he had entered Laos on March 6. The area, with its raw, unspoiled natural beauty and rural setting, is a magnet for backpackers and trekkers who enjoy wandering through the villages and countryside. Ryan stopped in Xieng Kok and planned to continue his journey down the Mekong River with two other travelers, but he never got the chance. He disappeared the day before they were to leave.

  The last time Ryan was seen, he had left his room at the guesthouse and was said to be carrying his camera. That camera would turn up on April 7 in an area near the Mekong. Members of the Akha tribe, a group of indigenous farmers that live in the surrounding hilly areas of Burma, Laos, and China, found the camera, his key, and the shirt he had been wearing. All were clean and dry, despite heavy monsoon rains that occurred between the time Ryan disappeared and when the items were discovered. The items were located four kilometers from the village where he had stayed. The Chicovskys were able to pull the camera’s memory card, which held the last photos taken of Ryan before his disappearance, including some snapped at a local marketplace. In his photos, Ryan is a gangly, smiling young man, his hair cut close to his head, with a short full beard and eyes filled with warmth, humor, and intelligence.

  Judy says their family has spent many thousands searching for their child. They traveled to Laos for the first time after receiving word that Ryan was missing. At the time this book was written, his family has made twelve trips to Laos, and undoubtedly there will be more, unless Ryan is found.

  Having a family member disappear in a country like Laos is not the same as someone vanishing in France or Spain. Laos is a communist country, and although all governments are mired in bureaucracy, communist regimes do things in a manner much different than the United States. Living conditions and roads in the rural areas also present challenges for Western visitors. In addition, few people in places where Ryan often traveled speak English. Judy says they have had to hire translators every step of the way.

  “You have to do a lot of your own detective work,” Judy says. “You’re pretty much on your own.”

  While the American embassy staff “has been wonderful,” other than our own FBI, she has not had any interaction with Interpol or other international agencies. And the embassy is limited in what it can do—the staff must abide by the laws of the country in which they are serving. However, the embassy was able to provide Judy with a list of attorneys in the area, some of whom have their own private investigators.

  Judy and her family have retraced Ryan’s movements many times. They hired private investigators to work the case, put up flyers, posted a reward in Laos, and maintained a strong publicity campaign. They’ve also made a concerted effort to keep in touch with the embassy staff, which has undergone several personnel changes since Ryan vanished.

  “The file on Ryan is located in the [U.S.] embassy in Laos. New personnel are briefed when they arrive. They do try to make us comfortable, but it is a challenge to talk to new people when we have established previous relationships,” she says, adding, “They always respond to me when I contact them.”

  Judy says she keeps close tabs on what is happening in Laos and Burma and monitors the politics in the region. She stays connected to many of the people who are searching for her son via the Internet and panics whenever she is away from her e-mail. And she reads everything she can about the locale.

  Of particular help are the travelers going in and out of the area. Many who have heard Ryan’s story offer to take flyers and post them in villages along the way. Judy is grateful for the kindness of these strangers.

  “It’s not their son,” she says, explaining her gratitude. “People are good about talking to others for us.”

  She tries to keep her spirits up for the sake of her two other children. She says it’s not easy to shrug aside the constant, nagging worry about Ryan, but she realizes she has to be there for his siblings, too. Ryan is her oldest child—he has a sister two years younger and a brother six years his junior. All have been involved in the search for Ryan; even Ryan’s roommate traveled to Laos with Ryan’s family in hopes of finding him.

  Judy says she has one simple piece of advice for parents whose children are traveling abroad: don’t let them travel alone.

  “If Ryan had been with someone else, he probably would not have disappeared,” she says.

  She agrees that hindsight never fails. Ryan had been on his own in a foreign land and had managed quite well—in fact, he was having the time of his life. How could Judy or anyone else have stopped him from living his dream—or realized the danger that he might have faced as he traveled alone?

  Judy knows the past can’t be changed. All she can do now is work to find Ryan and have faith that one day she will.

  “An intense belief in the strength of the human spirit sustains me; it encourages me to believe that Ryan is there somewhere and alive,” Judy says.

  R

  In Mexico, police fight drug cartels and continue to investigate kidnappings like the well-publicized abduction of Felix Batista, a kidnapping expert who was plucked from the crowd as he stood outside a Saltillo, Coahuila, restaurant. Missing since December 10, 2008, there have been no demands for ransom, nor any sightings of Batista. His family has expressed fears that they will never see him again.

  Four years before Batista vanished, two pretty young women—Brenda Cisneros and Yvette Martinez—slipped over the border from their Laredo, Texas, homes to attend a concert in celebration of a birthday. Afterward, they called a friend to say they were on their way home, but they never arrived nor have they been seen since. The father of one of the women found the car the pair had driven at a police impound. It had been stripped and vandalized. Police say the car was found abandoned. The two women remain missing.

  In 2009, the FBI joined forces with Mexican authorities in an attempt to determine if the unidentified remains of more than one hundred corpses in that country are that of any missing American citizens. The samples will be compared with the DNA of some seventy-five Americans who vanished in Mexico over the last several years. There are about half a million Americans in Mexico at any given time, according to the U.S. Department of State. According to statistics, approximately fifteen out of every one hundred thousand are murdered. It is unknown how many Americans vanish since not all disappearances are reported.

  North Americans like to travel, and many independent spirits enjoy venturing abroad alone. Often these are younger people who thrive on the exotic and who are unafraid to step into new cultures. They are the ones who avoid the guided excursions and all of the usual touristy stuff, opting for experiences that take them on paths less traveled. But those paths can be dangerous—or, at the very least, much less predictable.

  Canadian Matthew Vienneau knows what sparks the curiosity and spirit of someone like Ryan Chicovsky: several years ago his like-minded, beautiful, and beloved sister, Jacqueli
ne “Nicole” Vienneau, vanished on a solo trip through West Africa and the Middle East. Now Matt and his family are passengers on a hellish journey that consumes their lives.

  With her long brown hair and slight, athletic frame, Nicole is an adventurous and experienced traveler who has never considered surrendering her independence. Instead, she has tackled her wanderlust by letting it lead her into some of the most remote places for a Western woman traveling by herself. Never, says Matt, has Nicole been afraid to go it alone.

  “She is very levelheaded; she is not someone who is flighty in any way,” says her brother.

  Nicole was thirty-two when she disappeared on the last day of March in 2007. It was a Saturday and she was in the fifth month of a half-year trip. The day she vanished, Nicole was in Hama, Syria, two hours north of Damascus.

  According to Matt, his sister was staying at the Cairo Hotel at the time of her disappearance. From what the family has managed to piece together, the last morning she was known to be at the hotel, Nicole spoke with the hotel clerk who claims she asked about the beehive houses—homes constructed from brick and shaped like beehives: their unique construction keeps the interiors cool despite searing desert heat and are an area tourist attraction. Matt also says Nicole inquired about the location of Qasr Ibn Wardan, a palace complex built in the sixth century by Byzantine Emperor Justinian, which was designed to help ward off invaders.

  The Vienneau family has been unable to find anyone other than the hotel clerk who saw Nicole leave on Saturday, and there is no record of her visiting either location. There are also no indications that she planned to move on: her backpack, journals, and guidebook were found undisturbed in her room. Matt says that the night before Nicole vanished, she tried to send some e-mails, but couldn’t connect to the Internet because service so far out in the desert is unreliable.

  The Vienneau family has traveled to Syria to look for Nicole. Her fiancé spent weeks crossing the country, but thus far not a single lead has turned up. Her brother acknowledges there is a chance his sister was abducted into the slave trade, but he believes she would never have submitted to such a situation.

  Nicole Vienneau. Courtesy of the Vienneau Family.

  “She is a fighter,” he says of Nicole. He doesn’t want to contemplate what life is like for his sister if that is her fate, but if that’s what happened, Matt and his family want to know the truth. And their present truth is that they don’t have much more information on Nicole’s disappearance now than they had when she first went missing. Looking for her in a country like Syria has also been a bureaucratic nightmare.

  Matt Vienneau puts it this way: “If you don’t know the country, you’re screwed,” he says. “You’re not going to get any help.”

  He adds that being familiar with the local culture is key. “You have to understand the local rules, laws, and culture. It’s very difficult.”

  Although Matt says the people with whom they dealt in Syria promised help, little was forthcoming. “They don’t want to be confronted or made to look bad in public,” he says.

  Matt believes the Syrian government is not alone in its failure to act on Nicole’s behalf. He also does not think the Canadian government has been very forthcoming. Matt says the experience has shattered for his family the long-held belief that government is going to help.

  “The reality is, it just doesn’t happen,” he says.

  Nicole Vienneau is not a novice traveler. She’s been to more than fifty countries and seeks out unusual places on her own. She understands the safety issues confronting a woman traveling by herself, her family says, and she respects local customs and traditions. That is important in Syria, where the social expectations are different for women.

  Her brother admits Nicole would have stood out in that predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern country. Unlike most Syrian women, she wore Western-style clothing. She traveled by public conveyance—buses and cabs—or she walked. She stayed in hotels that reflected the local culture and ate on the economy. Nicole is not the kind of tourist who hotfoots it to the nearest McDonald’s or checks into a room at the Marriott.

  Since the day Nicole was reported missing, Matt and his family have become de facto experts in keeping her case alive in the media. They blog, give interviews, and keep the drums beating loud enough to attract reporters and the occasional book author. The Vienneaus have spent a small fortune shuttling across the Atlantic Ocean, and even though their efforts thus far have been fruitless, Matt says it is not only the right way to search, but also the only way.

  “You’re going to have to do it yourself. If you’re serious about finding the person, give up whatever you’re doing with your life right then and just go wherever they went missing,” he says, adding that support at home while one is searching is both irreplaceable and a must.

  “But make sure you have a presence where they went missing as fast as possible, especially if it’s a third-world country. They won’t know what to do; they won’t be investigating at the level you want. No one cares as much about it as you do,” Matt says.

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  The laws governing missing persons differ from country to country, as does the individual country’s approach. In Japan, for instance, officials are compelled by law to spend three days searching for a missing person. Many investigations go on much longer. The Japanese, known for their intensity and single-mindedness in pursuit of their goals, do not throw in the towel until they find the person or are sure of his or her fate—as exemplified in the case of Craig Arnold.

  When the award-winning American poet disappeared on the Japanese island of Kuchinoerabu-jima in late April 2009, the Japanese launched an intensive search. Investigators traced Arnold’s movements along a trail up a mountain where it is conjectured that he planned to view a volcano. Despite the deployment of police, professional search teams, dogs, and a helicopter for aerial search purposes, no trace of Arnold was located. Evidence found later indicated that Arnold fell, broke his leg, then plunged from a steep cliff into an area with dense forestation. Authorities say there was no possibility Arnold could have survived the fall and, considering the remote location, recovering the body would be dangerous.

  In the United States there is no official time frame required for an agency to search for a missing person. Most searches are based on the feasibility of the victim’s survival, as well as the availability of resources. Some searches are brief and successful.

  When forty-one-year-old Kenneth Knight of Ann Arbor, Michigan, vanished on the Appalachian Trail in 2009, searchers found him by following a brush fire he lit to attract their attention. Knight, who is legally blind, was uninjured in the brief ordeal, but not all searches end so well. When Shannon Joy Schell went missing while hiking the Tanque Verde Ridge trail in Saguaro Monument East near Tucson, Arizona, in 1994, more than 120 searchers using tracking dogs and the most sophisticated equipment of the day failed to find her, despite a prolonged search. She remains missing to this day.

  In countries with fewer resources or unstable governments, the extent of an investigation or search can be disappointing. Officials at the U.S. Department of State say it’s not unusual for the family of the missing person to spring for private search teams out of their own pockets. Some have even paid for police expenses. For others, like Jeff Dunsavage, who searches for his lost brother, Joe Dunsavage Sr., off the coast of the Caribbean island of Roatan, Honduras, the process has proven both frustrating and fruitless.

  Thirty-seven miles long and less than five miles wide, Roatan is known for its beautiful beaches, tropical weather, and water sports. A charming place with postcard prettiness, it is populated by the Caracol, an English-speaking mix of European, African, British, and Caribbean peoples. There is also a large expatriate population in the area, as well as a constant river of tourists.

  At the time he disappeared, Joe Dunsavage Sr. was neither a tourist nor a resident of Roatan. The forty-nine-year-old New Jersey resident worked as a mortgage banker, but he also had a small gl
ass-bottom boat business on the island, so he traveled to and from the Caribbean on a frequent basis. On May 10, 2009, Joe climbed onto a catamaran to spend a couple of hours in the shallow blue-green waters close to shore. Neither he nor his boat has been seen since.

  Joe Dunsavage. Courtesy of the Dunsavage Family.

  The family was told Joe had gone fishing, but Jeff says his brother did not take his fishing gear with him.

  “The first couple of days we figured we’d find him—either him or his body,” says brother Jeff. But as days dragged into weeks and weeks turned into months, no sign of Joe or the boat ever surfaced. What did surface, however, was a curious story: Jeff says “credible rumors” reached them that at about the same time his brother vanished an American was being treated for dehydration in La Ceiba, a port city located on the country’s northern coast.

  “The drift assessments have him making landfall within twenty hours,” Jeff says, pointing out that landing in La Ceiba is in line with those assessments.

  A drift assessment is a tool often used by search-and-rescue operations conducted in large bodies of water. It employs science to estimate where the water would carry an object such as a boat, plane, or, in the worst-case scenario, a person. Based upon those projections, Joe’s family believes it possible that Joe could have been the American described in those rumors. How could Joe end up in a hospital and then vanish without a trace? The idea worries Jeff, who thinks the answer could be something better suited to a Robin Cook or Tess Gerritsen novel: he believes his brother could have fallen into the hands of criminals who traffic in illegally harvested human organs for transplants.

  “I don’t like to think about it, but I can’t rule it out,” he admits. “With no money on him and no ransom request, what other value could he provide?”

  The Dunsavage family has advocated for Joe since the moment they heard he was missing. Jeff says they encountered little assistance from the U.S. Department of State or anyone else from the U.S. government. According to him, no immediate search was launched, but after three days the Dunsavage family managed to secure a little help from the U.S. military. Search aircraft deployed from the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), based in Miami. The Blackhawk helicopters failed to find any sign of the missing man or his boat.