mommy2katrina
New member
I hope that someone can give me some insight from a neutral perspective. My 25 year old brother was living at my home in California with my husband and I and our 2 small children for about 6 months. He left our house in April 2010 after telling us and family and friends that he was going to live with a friend of his who lived near the rest of our family in Kansas. We kept in touch by phone for about a month, after which time he had his cellphone shut off and indicated he would be getting another one, but a few months went by without a word from him. Our mother filed a missing persons report in July 2010 when she discovered he was not actually at his friend's house in April but had stayed in a hotel in a small town about 20 minutes from our house. The whole time he was staying in a hotel during the month of April, he spoke with us and texted us on his cellphone and never indicated that he was still in California, and we assumed he was in Kansas with his friend. The police were uninterested in the case and kept asking if he had drug problems (definite no) because apparently the hotel he was staying in was known to local police to be used for for drug dealing operations. Time went by with no news until in January 2011 the police found his car in a ravine just south of the town he had stayed in, stripped and missing the VIN plate. He left with the car full of his things and it was found completely empty and stripped of parts. Of course foul play was suspected, but nothing else has been found and it has been almost a year now since he disappeared. The only way we discovered where he had been staying the month he disappeared is by looking through phone and credit card records, but at the end of the month the phone was shut off and he had charged up the credit card past limit and made no payment, so there is no way of tracing him. He is off the grid, and none of us including the police know for sure if he intended to disappear and abandoned his car to avoid leaving a trail, or if a third party was responsible for what was done to the car and somehow involved in his disappearance. The police and detectives have spoken with everyone involved, that we know of, and we also hired a private investigator, but nothing came of it. I think if a person wants to disappear and they have access to resources like a computer (which my brother had), then they can find ways to do it. I know my brother was never involved in anything like drugs, he was debt-free and in fact had just finished paying off a large student loan. It makes it all the more confusing that he charged up his credit card past the limit during the month he disappeared, mostly with hotel charges. All I can say is that it is possible my brother's family and friends didn't know him as well as we thought we did. I can only hope that he has disappeared because he chose to and not because someone did him harm. I don't care where he is or what he is doing as long as he is okay, but there's no way to know. I am at a loss, I go back and forth with feelings of anger and betrayal when I think that he deceived us about where he had been, and feelings of despair thinking he may be hurt or even dead, either at his own hand or someone else's. I have two very young children, and I find it very hard sometimes to keep my feelings in check and not let my emotions affect my ability to function on a daily basis. Our oldest is 6 and she asks about my brother sometimes but I give her general answers because I think she is too young for me to discuss anything about it with her. I speak with my mother on the phone almost every day, and inevitably we talk about him, and we both feel guilt for not realizing he may have needed help even if he wasn't asking for it. My husband has been very supportive and understanding and is willing to listen to my concerns, but I feel like I need some kind of closure, to know one way or the other because not knowing is just tearing me up. Can anyone give me suggestions as to what I should do now? Is there anything else I could do to find out what happened to my brother? If we can't find him, how long should we have hope that he isn't gone for good? I feel like I am having a really hard time dealing with all of this.