The Last Place You'd Look (16 page)

Ashley says she knows deep in her heart of hearts that her Troy met with foul play. She understands better than anyone that his drug habits often led him to go to dark places where he should not have been. But she also believes that Troy’s bad choices in life shouldn’t result in his marginalization as a human being; nor, says Ashley, should it affect his status as a missing person.

She thinks law enforcement responds faster to missing persons who are mentally ill than to missing addicts and alcoholics—that they are society’s last priority.

“I believe people look at drug addicts as low[lives],” Ashley says. “I want the world to know that regardless of what a person is, an addict or a mental patient, these are people. These are sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands. They do not deserve to be dismissed because they are not perfect members of society.”

Ashley did get someone to listen to her—the police in Baton Rouge, where her missing husband’s truck was found. Ashley believes the detective assigned to her husband’s case (Detective Larry Maples of the Baton Rouge Police Department) wants to find Troy—or find out what happened to him. “He keeps the communication lines open and respects my opinion,” Ashley says of Detective Maples. “I believe that is how we even the playing field: take the defects of character out of the [missing person] and focus on the fact that they are a person who happens to be missing.”

Ashley is not naive enough to believe Troy is going to walk in her door any minute, alive, well, and sober. But she is hopeful that she will someday have answers. She wants her boys to know their father didn’t desert them, that he loved them, wanted them, was proud of them.

“My sons need to know that Daddy did not leave them, because I do not believe he would ever just walk away,” Ashley says.

Lisa Hodanish is another who doesn’t believe a loving father would walk out on his children, even though her dad was approaching seventy when he disappeared and his children were grown.

David Neily, a slight man with a gray beard and piecing green eyes, has a history of mental illness, but his family had years of experience dealing with his disorder and his tendency to go off his medicine. Lisa says her father would cycle off his prescriptions, suffer an episode, get picked up by the local sheriff’s department (Neily lived in Westport, California), and be confined to a mental hospital. “They would put him on lithium until he was stable and then release him to a relative,” Lisa says.

David, diagnosed with bipolar disorder after years of shifting diagnoses, disappeared under circumstances that his children—five of them from two marriages—believe are suspicious. But because their father suffered from mental illness and had a history of disappearing, Lisa says law enforcement has also been slow to investigate their dad’s situation.

“I think this case isn’t important to authorities . . . because of his age,” says Lisa. She adds that, despite his condition, he charmed those who met him. “He was at my wedding and no one could tell he had a mental illness. Everyone loved him and he loved to dance and dance,” Lisa remembers.

Like Susan McDonough, David Neily also traveled through that revolving door of treatment and release that those with more serious psychiatric disorders often experience. After stabilizing as an inpatient, he’d go home. Lisa says, “They simply release the patient after about a week on meds just to be put back into the world and be responsible for taking their meds on their own.”

Lisa says this didn’t work for her father. And she, along with many families with adults who face mental disorders, believes that the current philosophy supported by law and adopted by the mental health system in this country does little but add to the population of missing persons—especially older ones.

“I think . . . not much is done for missing persons who are elderly. The cases that are more highlighted are missing children and pregnant women. I believe all missing persons deserve to be found, no matter what their age or mental stability,” Lisa says.

David Neily. Courtesy of Lisa Hodanish.

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The child snatched from a playground, the young housewife who vanishes leaving her kids behind, the college student who never returns from an evening out with friends—these are the kinds of cases that grab the headlines. When people suffering from mental illness or substance abuse disappear, they often attract little interest, either from the media or officials, although their numbers are thought to be in the hundreds of thousands. Advocates such as Outpost for Hope’s Libba Phillips and Oklahoma politician Fred Perry work to give these missing individuals parity with the rest of the missing, but for now the sidewalks of this nation’s cities are crowded with people someone, somewhere loves and misses but has no way of ever finding.

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance.—Italian writer Cesare Pavese

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n March 13, 2006, a couple of months shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, Ryan Chicovsky disappeared from the guesthouse where he had been staying in rural Xieng Kok, a port on the Mekong River in northwestern Laos, within sight of the Laotian border with Burma (officially the Union of Myanmar).

Ryan grew up on Lopez Island in Washington State, attending a close-knit high school with a graduating class of fewer than twenty. Raised as part of a small, rural community, he led a secure, outdoor-oriented life. He snowboarded, sailed, backpacked, and played soccer. After high school he attended Western Washington University in Bellingham, but his mother, Judy Frane, says it wasn’t until he began studying Chinese that something clicked for him. He had a natural facility for the language and a deep, abiding interest in both the people and their country.

“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.

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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, Jacqueline “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.”