Zug, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Police in Zug are beginning to shed more light on the disappearance Monday and recovery Wednesday 9 February of a Zug father and his two sons, but the episode remains riddled with puzzles Wednesday evening.
The trio, who were reported missing by the mother of the boys, ages 7 and 10, after they and their father failed to return home from a late afternoon shopping trip. Police searched a nearby lake and the Swiss military were called in to search at night using an infrared system in a Puma helicopter, to no avail.
They were discovered by Italian police thanks to the Schengen alarm system for missing persons. They were at a roadside autostrada stop in Italy, south of Milan, where they had been stranded for some hours without fuel for their car or money or food.
The father is reported by police to have been in a somewhat “confused” state, but all three were healthy. The father’s motives in driving off remain unclear, but police earlier said the family had no known problems.
Zug police were en route to pick up the three late Wednesday.
Italian news reports say no child seats, no clothing for girls found in car
Update 15:35 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A new aspect in the investigation into the disappearance of twins Livia and Alessia Schepp has surfaced Tuesday 8 February: the father mailed some €5,000 to the mother, in bills of €50, the money he took out of several bank machines in Marseille, France 31 January.
“There wasn’t any letter with the money. This has us worried because the theory that he might have paid someone to take care of the children no longer holds,” Valerio Lucidi, the girls’ uncle, told journalists in front of the mother’s home in Saint Sulpice.
Lucidi is the brother of the girls’ mother.
The money was mailed in several packages from Cerignola, Italy, the town where Matthias Schepp died 3 February, throwing himself in front of a train.
The six-year-old twins were last seen 30 January in Saint Sulpice, with their father.
No clothes, no child seats
Italian news agency Ansa reports police in southern Italy as saying Monday that they found no child seats, no clothes for the girls in the car. There is media speculation as a result that either the girls never left Switzerland or the father erased evidence they were with him.
European law calls for child seats up to the age of 12.
Paris, France (GenevaLunch) – An area 5km by 5km has been pinpointed, say French authorities, where the black box from the Rio to Paris Air France flight AF447 disappeared inexplicably 1 June 2009. New technology has made it possible to get a more precise location, and the French government has requested that the search continue. One of the more unusual details to come out of French coverage of the missing plane is that an American victim had a payout “value” for his of her family, according to Le Monde, 16 times higher than the value of a European victim. All 228 on board the plane were killed.
Links to other sites: Business Week, Le Monde (Fre)
Myles Robinson and his sister Cara
Update 2 21:37 Wengen, canton Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “We think he must be here somewhere, maybe in a house,” Sarah Robinson, mother of missing British 23-year-old tourist Myles Robinson, told GenevaLunch Saturday evening 26 December. Her son disappeared in the early hours of Tuesday 22 December from the small Alpine resort of Wengen, not far from Interlaken, without a trace. The young man was at the Blue Monkey bar in the car-free resort above Lauterbrunnen, then walked an old family friend home and chatted with her for a while before heading back to his family’s place at 02:00, a 200-metre walk. It was a clear night.
Myles Robinson has not been seen or heard from since.
He was expecting his girlfriend to join the family for New Year’s and he had just been hired for a job he was looking forward to, with a financial firm in London.
Police and the family have appealed to villagers to look everywhere for the missing man. His mother says that she takes hope from a tall, dark-haired cousin of Myles being asked on the streets if his name is Myles. “People are looking out.”
A police spokesperson told GenevaLunch Saturday, “We have no clues. Nothing. We called for witnesses and several people phoned, but they were mostly sightings from other villages and turned out to be false alarms.” He noted that the police can’t even say they suspect foul play because there are no clues on which to make judgements. The police investigation continues, focusing now on interviewing people around him.
Sarah Robinson says police have done a thorough job of contacting people who know her son well.
A search of the mountainside is unrealistic, given the rugged terrain – the area is famous for its cliffs, forests and some of the toughest skiing in Switzerland, including the Lauberhorn race. The police spokesperson told GenevaLunch that the Swiss Army loaned a helicopter for a flyover search of the area around the town, which turned up nothing.
But Myles Robinson was not lost while skiing: he was walking a short distance home from a bar in the centre of town at an hour when pre-Christmas revellers were still out. There is no evidence that he ever left the village, intentionally, accidentally, or through foul play.
“He doesn’t take drugs, he doesn’t smoke – he’d had a few drinks and might have been a bit tipsy but [the friend he walked home] says they talked for a while and he was fine,” Sarah Robinson says.
She is quick to say that the police “have been very good” and the family is getting help from a Swiss judge, but launching a search, for example a house to house hunt, in the town when there are no clues poses legal problems. Villagers are being asked to check every possible place, such as cellars and buildings they don’t use often.
“We know that his cell phone was still active at least at lunchtime Tuesday,” says his mother. But initial reports that it emitted a signal from the south end of Wengen have been put in perspective, given the realities of cell phones in the mountains. “We are unsure about the transmitters for Wengen and we’ve been told that, with the mountains, signals could bounce off of Murren or some other area.” Murren, Wengen and Grindelwald are three villages in the area that have long been favourites of the British, who helped develop the modern sport of downhill skiing in this area.
The Robinson family (father, mother, Myles and his sister Cara) whom the mother describes as “close”, has been coming to the resort for 15 years and Myles knows the area well. He is fit and an avid skier.
“He can’t just have disappeared without a trace!” Sarah Robinson insists. Several kinds of sniffer dogs have been used and they have not picked up any trail. Asked if they suspect he might have been pulled into a vehicle, which could explain the disappearance of his scent, she says, “It’s a car-free resort – I can’t imagine what kind of vehicle it would have been.” There are few roads down from the resort, and a vehicle leaving would most likely have been remarked by someone.
“We’re being as pro-active as we can. We’re talking to everyone we can. We want to keep this in front of the public. We’ve got to try to achieve something.”
The family is not discussing the case of Daniel Baptista, she says, “but we’re all aware of it.” Battista disappeared in 2006 from Wengen after taking mescaline, and there has been no sign of him since.
“At the end of the day, we just want to make sure we get him back. Alive, we hope.
“I’m living on hope at the moment.”
Ed. note: the disappearance of Myles has been followed closely by the UK media. Links: BBC, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Times, UK
A cargo boat that disappeared in European waters in recent days is causing worry in the maritime industry, with speculation that it might be the first case of piracy in the busy international waters around Europe. The Arctic Sea was last heard from 28 July when it made a routine report to British authorities as it passed through the English Channel. Four days earlier the crew had reported they were attacked off a Swedish island and beaten up by a group of men who said they were Swedish police, and they later reported that the group had left in a speedboat. The cargo ship, which carries a Maltese flag and is registered in Russia, was expected to make port in Algeria 4 August, but never showed up. It is carrying timber worth $2 million, according to Russian reports, but media are speculating that it could also be carrying a secret cargo of drugs, which could perhaps explain its mysterious disappearance. Russia Today, The Globe & Mail/AP,
A pit filled with an estimated 10,000 human bones is being excavated in La Plata, south of Buenos Aires, Argentina, near a former detention centre, possibly giving the first solid proof that many of the country’s “disappeared” population really were killed by the military dictatorship during the late 1970s and early 1980s. BBC
