This case has not gotten a lot of attention in several years. Yet, in July of this year, the boys' uncle wrote a short but sad plea in the Honolulu Advertiser still hoping that they might be found after 14 years. I have taken a strong interest in this case, not only for the boys but also their father Victorio. I have begun a blog and I will repost what I have here. I am not interested in promoting my own blog here. I have also created the Doe Network's first entry for this case and it should be online in the next couple weeks according to their Missing Persons coordinator, Donna Zorn. I have omitted the most recent age progression photos since they are already on this thread and I have image limits. I will post the only known picture of the father in another thread.
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Introduction to the Case (10/13)[/FONT]
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[FONT="]It's very difficult to piece together the different pieces of this story. What we know has been left to us in a smattering of newspaper articles and public records. Even those tell us very little than the basics. The story centers around a father and his two young sons. Victorio Santiago was a Navy Chief. Chiefs are senior enlisted members of the Navy. Making Chief is a huge achievement. It is unclear what Victorio's job was. It appears at the time of his disappearance he worked on the US Navy base in Pearl Harbor. Since 2010 this has been a joint forces base with Hickam Air Force Base.
Victorio Santiago was married to his wife Anna Roberta Borje. Some sources identify her as Ruby. In all public records she is identified as Anna Roberta. It is unclear when the couple married. Their first son, Noel (occasionally rendered as Neal) was born in 1991. Public records in Washington State for the couple go back as far as 1993 and include mostly property buys, although the couple's power of attorney paperwork is listed in public record databases as well. Their second son, Daniel, was born in 1995.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]Public records databases are notoriously difficult to track down through Google. Several bogus websites promise access to multiple public records, but these are usually little better than scams in my opinion. It does appear that the Santiago family lived in various Navy towns including San Diego, Port Orchard (Bremerton), Guam, and Lemoore. Most websites have Noel born in Guam and Daniel in Lemoore. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]Anna Roberta also joined the Navy. The details about this are unclear. It appears that at some point in her marriage to Victorio she enlisted as a Navy corpsmen, the Navy's equivalent of a medic or enlisted medical personnel. This isn't stated explicitly, although some of the details point toward Anna being a Navy corpsman. By 2002, the couple was stationed in Hawaii with their two sons. It is not clear how long they had lived there. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]Anna and Victorio appear in the public records in Hawaii June 24, 2002. Anna filed a restraining order against Victorio. A hearing was set for later in the first week of July. The hearing summary referenced a divorce, but no other details were included. The court awarded Anna custody of Noel and Daniel. According to the record, Victorio accepted the terms of the restraining order without much controversy. The court did not file abuse charges against Victorio. A history of abuse would become a common theme in the story.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]Custody aside, the court ordered the couple to split their vehicles. This detail will become interesting momentarily. Anna took the van presumably because she had the boys. Victorio took a "Plymouth." The court set the vehicle exchange date for July 9, 2002 at Anna's workplace, the Navy branch clinic at Makalapa.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]The record stays silent on July 10th. On July 11, 2002, Anna filed for divorce from Victorio. Victorio appears to have been on leave from the Navy at this time, perhaps to sort out personal affairs. He was not due to return to work until Friday, July 19th. This is a typical way of charging military leave in order to avoid to extend one's leave through the weekend by coming back to work on a Friday ever how briefly.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]A pause is warranted here. In the handful of news articles written about the case one article alluded to letters written by Victorio. These letters have been described as disturbing. Victorio expressed suicidal ideation in one. Minna Sugimoto, a former news anchor and writer for KHNL, wrote that Victorio apologized "for what he was about to do." Whether that meant kidnapping or worse was left unclear. [/FONT]
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(Note: I have reached out to Sugimoto and one other reporter. So far no response.)
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[FONT="]Early in the morning on Friday, July 12th, Victorio violated the terms of the restraining order and drove to Anna's house on the Navy base. There is no clear sign where Victorio was staying. Another strange detail from this night is that Victorio was driving a 2000 Daewoo Laganza, a rental car. What happened to his Plymouth? More importantly, what happened to the rental car. The car has never been recovered.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]Two stories appear in tandem on this night. Some accounts, unverifiable, stated that Victorio came to the house to reconcile with his wife. However, Sugimoto's article alludes to other motivations (what he was about to do). Did Victorio intend to reconcile? Was this a ruse of some sort? Whatever the case, Victorio struck his wife and she took refuge in the bathroom. Victorio took the boys and left. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]After fourteen years no one has heard from Victorio, Noel, or Daniel Santiago.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]The event took nearly a week to make the news. It appeared in small blurbs as police tried to locate the father and sons on Oahu. The paucity of news reports early on seemed to indicate that most parties involved believed that Victorio would return. This is a forgivable mistake since, according to some accounts, Victorio regularly took the boys out and returned without incident. However, it seems short-sighted. Victorio would have lost his career from the domestic violence alone, let alone kidnapping his children and violating a restraining order. He stood to lose everything - his career and his sons. That Victorio never returned is not surprising, it's logical and self-preserving.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]By 2003, the family seemed to understand that Victorio was not coming home. News agencies interviewed Victorio's extended family in Hawaii. Two of his brothers, Gilberto and Ariel, were both in Hawaii. Ariel was reported to have been in the Navy as well. Anna, to my knowledge, has never had a published interview.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]In 2007, Minna Sugimoto revisited the story on the five year anniversary. This was the same article in which the cryptic "for what he was about to do" appeared. In 2016, Gilberto Santiago wrote a letter to a local newspaper in which he stated that nothing had changed. His brother and nephews were still missing after fourteen years.[/FONT]
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Investigating agencies have only published three photos of Victorio, Noel, and Daniel. Some agency, probably NCIS or NAMUS, have created three sets of age progression photos over the years. The most recent age progression photos were published in 2012. There are no age progression photos of Victorio. His photo looks like a photo from a military identification card. The background of the boys' original photos is obscured and it looks like it could be two cropped out portions from the same photograph. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]There are several more paragraphs of questions that I could write, but I want to save those for later posts. For now this will suffice. There are still some inescapable questions. Why did Victorio have a rental car? Where did both cars go? Could he have flown out of Hickam Air Force Base on a space-available military flight? Could he have flown out of Honolulu International Airport without much scrutiny in 2002? Investigators have stated there is no evidence that Victorio and the boys flew or boated out of Oahu. Yet there is also no evidence of suicide or homicide. [/FONT]
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My goal here is to re-ignite interest in the Santiago case. There are a finite number of possible outcomes for this case, and I believe that new thinking and ideas may help resolve this case. Victorio may never want to be found because he is, essentially, a fugitive. However, if Noel and Daniel are alive they would now be adults in their early-to-mid twenties. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]I don't think a reconciliation has to be the first step or maybe a step at all. A sign that they're alive and well would be a good first step. Perhaps a dialogue between the parties with no expectations. All that would be necessary at first is to ease the minds of several people who have worried themselves for fourteen years. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The more we can consolidate all the disparate information into a single, indexed the source the more likely this case can resolve. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]I will post a collection of sources in another post.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]Posted below are the photos and age progression photos:[/FONT]
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Age progression 2005
Age progression 2005
These appear to be age progression photos from around 2009
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These appear to be age progression photos from around 2009
This is a stand-alone photo. I don't have a date for it. There is not a corresponding age progression photo of Noel that accompanies this one.