Page 11 - PPIAC Newsletter Mar-Apr 2022

Professional Private Investigators Association of Colorado

ment. However, as local (to the US) law enforce- a retired FBI Special Agent and a retired DEA
ment was unable to assist in the case, and the fami- Special Agent, both of whom had spent multiple
ly was concerned about the NNP’s lack of commu- decades in Mexico, Central, and South America,
nication regarding their investigation, I recom- and after discussing the case with them, I decid-
mended these additional steps without approval ed to take them with me to assist with the case.
from the NNP.
Family Interview
1. Review the missing person’s social media pro- It’s important to interview the family to try to
files for clues as to what may have happened. obtain any evidence or leads they can provide, as
In this case, the sister had actually accessed her well as a timeframe for the disappearance. We
missing brother’s Facebook account prior to scheduled an interview with the family and ob-
contacting me, and had attempted to contact tained a full profile of Abiodun’s life from them.
people he’d recently been in contact with, with He had graduated with a computer science de-
no success.
gree, he had a job offer, he was a very responsible
2. Review the missing person’s personal belong- student, brother, and son. He’d been traveling in
ings for clues as to what happened. Costa Rica and Nicaragua for approximately a
month before disappearing. He had been experi-
3. Post on social media and other online commu-
nities regarding the missing person’s disap- menting with ayahuasca under supervision from
pearance. local shamans in Costa Rica. He was very good at
communicating with the family while he was
4. Create and disseminate a missing person post- gone. He was a strong swimmer and had been on
er (in this case this had already been done). swim teams. Then one day, he just stopped re-
5. Contact local media (this had also already been sponding. Shortly after that they found out that
done). the people he’d been spending time with had also
reported him missing.
6. Notify the National Missing and Unidentified
Persons System. Evidence Review
We were fortunate that the family had traveled to
These are basically the same things as can be found
in CBI’s missing person’s checklist, which I review Nicaragua to obtain his belongings, which had
when I get these cases. By the time the family con- been found in a locker in the hostel where he was
tacted me, they had retrieved some of Abiodun’s staying. The family provided a backpack which
belongings that had been found in a hostel locker. contained the aforementioned cellphone and lap-
Included in the locker were his journal, a backpack, top, his journal, as well as a pipe, a burned bro-
some drug paraphernalia, his cellphone, and his ken glass bottle, a small container of a brown
laptop. After the family did the above, they decided liquid substance, and steel wool. The family
to hire me to attempt to locate and extract Abiodun elected not to have the items analyzed for drug
from Nicaragua. residue. However, based upon the retired DEA
Special Agent’s knowledge, we believed that the
CASE PREPARATION AND RESEARCH broken bottle, steel wool, and pipe were likely
used for cocaine, and the small container to be
Local Knowledge
DMT-containing ayahuasca, which Abiodun had
Whenever your investigation takes you to anoth- referenced repeatedly in his journal.
er geographic location, especially to another
country, it’s important to consider your level of The family also reported that in the locker there
familiarity and connection in that area. While I had been a half-empty bottle of rum, but they
speak Spanish fluently, I had never been to Nica- threw it away before returning to the US. They
ragua and had no connections there. I contacted also provided a one-page report that had been
jointly written by the NNP and the Nicaraguan

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March—April 2022 Issue The Informant