A lengthy article that is full of good information:
By Mardi Link mlink@record-eagle.com
12 hrs ago
“TRAVERSE CITY — Ten years have passed since Jacob ‘Jake’ Cabinaw disappeared.
Family and friends say life without him feels wrong.
They miss him, miss his goofy sense of humor and his helpful nature.
‘It doesn’t get easier,’ Jake Cabinaw’s sister, Sandra Cabinaw Cranson, said in a phone interview Monday. ‘There is a part of me that thinks, if he could be home right now, he would be.’
Cabinaw, 31 at the time of his disappearance, was last seen in Traverse City on March 31, 2010.
He and a friend — Gary Wittig of Traverse City — played disc golf at Hickory Hills and Wittig told law enforcement Cabinaw dropped him off near the volleyball courts at the Open Space about 7:30 p.m.
Wittig said he’d invited Cabinaw to go with him to some downtown bars, but Cabinaw declined, saying he needed to go home and study for class.
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Paul Gomez was the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s detective assigned in 2010 to find out what happened to Cabinaw. He said he still thinks about the investigation and about the Cabinaw family.
It’s one of the cases that haunt him.
‘He was a great father, he enjoyed being in the military and serving in the (National) Guard, and as an investigator you do form some kind of bond,’ Gomez said in a phone interview Tuesday. ‘You want to bring closure to the family.’
On Oct. 5, 2012, Gomez arranged for a polygraph in relation to the case, but declined to say of who. The police report contains the date, but the identity of the subject is redacted.
Records show Gomez met with then-Prosecutor Robert Cooney to discuss issuing investigative subpoenas. Cooney told him Grand Traverse County no longer had jurisdiction since some believe Cabinaw was last recorded, alive and well, in Texas.
Gomez left the Grand Traverse County Sheriff Department in 2016 and works as a police officer in Washtenaw County.
When asked his theory on where Cabinaw is, or what happened to him, Gomez referred the question to Jason Polzien, the Grand Traverse County detective assigned to the case.
‘It’s puzzling,’ Polzien said in a phone interview Friday. ‘The guy had a job, he was in school, he had kids. You don’t see people like that just go off the grid.’
Polzien’s supplemental police reports dated Feb. 21 record new information, adding more inconclusive details to the mystery.
At Polzien’s direction, Carfax data on Cabinaw’s vehicle was forwarded to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, resulting in a hit in Mexico, likely from an impound yard though no additional information was forthcoming.
‘The current status of the vehicle is unknown,’ the report states. ‘It is believed the car was crushed or destroyed.’
Police reports also show Cranson and [Ken] Barringer each told Polzien in separate interviews they recalled Wittig being out of town about the time Cabinaw went missing.
They remembered this because Wittig’s mother, Marcia, now deceased, had repeatedly called them looking for her son.
Wittig did not respond to a message seeking comment.
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Online sleuths
The mystery has captured the attention of online sleuths, sometimes called ‘bedroom detectives,’ who try to solve crimes and missing persons’ cases from their home computers.
They log into sites like
Websleuths,
NamUs, or
Reddit’s communities called ‘subreddits’ and parse well-worn details like these:
When Cabinaw disappeared, it was a Thursday night, he was wearing his work uniform — gray jacket, white T-shirt, blue pants — and driving a 2002 silver Chevy Malibu, license plate number BKQ 4107.
The car had existing damage to the front end on the passenger side.
Cabinaw’s bank card was used at the Buckley General Store March 31, 2010 about 9 p.m. — an hour and a half after Wittig said he was dropped off in Traverse City.
At 1 a.m. April 1, 2010, Cabinaw made his required monthly call to the Army National Guard’s automated phone system, to report he was still a student at Northwestern Michigan College.
At 2 a.m. his bank card was used at a Speedway in Mattawan, a four corners off I-94, 10 miles west of Kalamazoo. There’s video of this transaction and Cabinaw’s family confirmed it was Jake.
He’s alone in the vehicle and no other vehicles appear to be following.
Later that day, Cabinaw again paid for gas, first at an Exxon station in Fort Worth, Texas, and a few hours later at Skinny’s 7-Eleven in Sweetwater, Texas.
Video of the 7-Eleven transaction is Cabinaw, Barringer said, though Polzien and Cranson both said they’re less certain.
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Much more at the link:
Jacob Cabinaw: A decade missing
