Switzerland - Catherine Dugger, 25, Geneva, 12 July 1990

This case is about as cold as it gets.

Catherine Ann Dugger, a newsroom intern at the Orlando Sentinel newspaper, age 25, took off for Europe on a whim in the summer of 1990. She was joined by about a dozen others on a group tour to the Montreux Jazz Festival that was organized and promoted by Orlando's prominent jazz station, WLOQ.

Tragically, she never made it to the festival. She was last seen at the New Morning nightclub in Geneva on July 12, 1990. She stepped outside to the sidewalk at 2 a.m. That was the last her friends saw of her.

Her body was found on July 22, 1990 in the icy waters of the Rhone River just outside of Geneva. If I'm remembering correctly, I believe the Swiss authorities said she was found nude from the waist down, and it was believed that she had been raped and strangled.

Either one or both of her parents (can't remember) had to fly to Switzerland to make a positive identification of their daughter's body. A search this evening of the Sentinel's online archives shows that her parents' names were Atwell and Rosann Dugger, and at that time they lived in Raleigh, NC.

Police were seeking a man who was seen flirting with her in the nightclub just prior to her disappearance. In September of 1990, the Sentinel published a follow-up story indicating that the parents were frustrated with Swiss red tape, and they didn't have much hope that their daughter's case would ever be solved.

Seventeen years have come and gone. It is as if this girl has vanished into the mists of time. I was touched by this story when it came out because I was about the same age as this girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. But the Sentinel only ran a few stories at the time, and there wasn't much follow-up.

To this day, if you Google the name "Catherine Dugger" you will get nothing on her.

I realize that because this happened in Geneva, it may be difficult to follow up. But I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how more information could be obtained. Much moreso, I would love to see justice delivered to the monster who committed this crime against her, and stole her life and future away from her when she was so young. Thanks.

Hi, I found this old post by chance. I ran a search in geneva area newspaper archive. I found this:

Scriptorium
and
Scriptorium

So, it seems that she was given a dose of heroin by an afghan dealer that she met in the nightclub and overdosed. The dealer was never apprehended, but relatives of him were sentenced for drug dealing.

Sad story, heroïn was popular at that time.

Hello. I have not been here in well over 10 years so I had to create a new account to respond, as I have long since cancelled my previous email etc. Thank you for that information. I agree, it is very sad. I was able to use Google Translate to read the news accounts. I wish they had named the primary suspect -- I wonder if he was ever caught. It's possible that other area newspapers had more detailed information and I may attempt to look that up sometime. Thank you again for sharing that.

I am wondering if she took the heroin voluntarily or if she was forced to take it. I suspect she was forced. Perhaps the man was trying to sedate her and/or kidnap her into a prostitution ring, for example. Sex traffickers are known for using drugs as weapons to incapacitate victims, make them compliant. News accounts said that when she stepped out of the nightclub, she left her purse and jacket at the table with her friends and told them she would be back in a few minutes. Something happened outside that nightclub on the sidewalk. Was a car waiting? Was she pushed in and taken away?

I have a somewhat related experience with being targeted by these types of men -- fortunately I was extremely lucky and did not get hurt. When I was a young woman travelling through Lucerne in 1989 I was chased by a Middle Eastern man in broad daylight. It started in a gift shop -- he kept trying to corner me and the more I tried to keep my distance the more aggressively he came after me. After going around a few times in the gift shop I went out into the street where, surrounded by hundreds of people, he began to literally chase me, running, through the street. I didn't speak the language and was in a panic so didn't know how to ask for help. I just kept running. I have no idea what he planned to do if he caught me but I shudder to think. After running a couple of blocks, I was fortunate to find several of my traveling companions who were sitting outside at a cafe. I took shelter with them and the man immediately stopped running, slowed down to a walk and acted like nothing had happened, and disappeared into the crowd. It's possible that he was just mentally ill but I don't think so -- everything about him was hostile and predatory. I have always felt that this was an attempted kidnapping. Perhaps he planned to get close enough to drug me and then overpower me. The fact that he did this in open daylight also makes me wonder if he had accomplices nearby. The whole thing was so brazen.

I have searched news archives for stories on female tourists being kidnapped in Switzerland in the late '80s and have found some random articles referring to it, but nothing specific. For example this New York Times article from 1986 refers to a series of "highly publicized sexual attacks and murders of women near Zurich and Lucerne"... it must have been highly publicized in the Swiss media because I'm not finding much from U.S. news archives.


DISAPPEARANCE OF A CHILD FUELS SWISS FEAR OF CRIME (Published 1986)

FlaGirl1961 said:

I didn't speak the language and was in a panic so didn't know how to ask for help.

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Ask for help in English. Nearly all Swiss speak English. They will understand.

I'm sure the Swiss don't appreciate middle-eastern men living in their country and running crime syndicates.

As for finding these stories of women being attacked or trafficked in the press, I'm afraid you won't mind many. The Swiss like to keep a control of what's reported in their press, and any bad news usually doesn't make it.
I have a friend who lives near Geneva, and one day most of the trains were cancelled for a few hours, she suspected due to a suicide in the tracks. I said to her she'd probably read about it in the news later. Oh no, she replied, they wouldn't print those kinds of stories, thjngs like that are be kept quiet.

annpats said:

Ask for help in English. Nearly all Swiss speak English. They will understand.

I'm sure the Swiss don't appreciate middle-eastern men living in their country and running crime syndicates.

As for finding these stories of women being attacked or trafficked in the press, I'm afraid you won't mind many. The Swiss like to keep a control of what's reported in their press, and any bad news usually doesn't make it.
I have a friend who lives near Geneva, and one day most of the trains were cancelled for a few hours, she suspected due to a suicide in the tracks. I said to her she'd probably read about it in the news later. Oh no, she replied, they wouldn't print those kinds of stories, thjngs like that are be kept quiet.

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Yes, I definitely should have asked for help. I was young and confused. Today if something like this happened to me, I would make a spectacle and yell, draw attention to myself and the man.

That's awful that the Swiss tend to prevent these types of stories being published. I noticed that when I used the Scriptorium links that were posted above, they led to Swiss newspaper archives written in French. I used Google Translate to copy the articles and read them in English. The thing I noticed over and over again is that the Afghan accomplices who were sentenced (to trafficking the heroin) were never named. In dozens of articles they were simply called "the Afghans" or the "cousins." The actual perpetrator who is believed to have given Dugger the heroin overdose was never named either. He fled at the time... without having his name there's no way to look him up or find out whatever happened to him.

Here in the United States their names would have been blasted all over the headlines, lol.


I will say also that I'm disappointed that the Orlando Sentinel did not follow up correctly on this story at the time. They posted an erroneous follow up article a couple 0f months after her disappearance saying that there were no leads, and that simply was not true. At the time the Swiss newspapers were publishing numerous articles about the Afghans and the heroin overdose.

annpats said:

Ask for help in English. Nearly all Swiss speak English. They will understand.

I'm sure the Swiss don't appreciate middle-eastern men living in their country and running crime syndicates.

As for finding these stories of women being attacked or trafficked in the press, I'm afraid you won't mind many. The Swiss like to keep a control of what's reported in their press, and any bad news usually doesn't make it.
I have a friend who lives near Geneva, and one day most of the trains were cancelled for a few hours, she suspected due to a suicide in the tracks. I said to her she'd probably read about it in the news later. Oh no, she replied, they wouldn't print those kinds of stories, thjngs like that are be kept quiet.

Click to expand...

The crime syndicates you are talking about are usually ran by locals, especially heroin trafficking where a big part of the job is being outsourced to foreigners who can not work in their usual fields because of the lack of working permits. As a half Swiss, half middle-eastern citizen I find your comment a little offending ; but moving on : I can translate the scriptorium articles if needed. I spend a lot of time on that platform.
I am deeply sorry bout FlaGirl's experience in Luzern but I think it's a dangerous way of picturing things. As I said, I am mixed-race and I have been chased/harrassed mostly by locals, at parties or pubs when I was younger. Switzerland can be super racist, you should watch out when you read articles related to crimes induced by foreigners. When a murder is committed by a swiss person, it's almost never reported that the person is Swiss. They won't miss a chance mention a foreign criminal though.