JAMAICA - Claudia Ann Kirshhoch, 29, Negril, 27 May 2000

i really thought that there was a thread for claudia ppreviously, but i am unable to find it.

in light of natalee holloway's disappearance i was planning on bumping it so instead i guess i will start my own.

claudia disappeared from negril, jamaica in may of 2000. like natalee, there is an obvious suspect of someone who caused her harm - even more so with hard evidence - but justice has never been brought to this individual. and claudia has never been found.

claudia is special for me bc although i never knew her we grew up in the same neighborhood most likely knew a lot of the same people. even though she is several years older than i am. i am also going to negril next month for my honeymoon.

here are some links detailing claudia as a person, her disapperance and her parents' search.

http://findclaudia.homestead.com/

this is the most detailed explaining the circumstances under which she went missing.

http://findclaudia.homestead.com/files/Jamaica_Scotsman.htmhttp://findclaudia.homestead.com/files/Jamaica_Scotsman.htm

What a beautiful girl.

What made them first suspect Anthony Grant, do you know what connection he had to her?

He arrives in the story after having missed 4 days of work after the day she was last seen, and then subsequently his car and other items were found to contain clues related to her.

But what first made them look at him? Did he know her?

Prayers for her safe return. It doesn't sound like there's much hope.

they had been hanging out while she was there and she told the lady she was traveling with that they went on a date. they had gone out to a band, gone skinny dipping and got high together.

he asked her again but she refused him.

thanks Carolina.

I guess then there's some reason that a hair of hers was found, kind of odd about the gloves, odd about the trunk of the car, and VERY odd he missed the next four days of work.

It seems unlikely though that any more evidence will surface after 5 years.

So sad for her family.

the knife with blood on it was odd too...i wonder if it was ever tested? you would think that that right there would be evidence.

so sad.

the fact that anthony grant asked a docor for sleeping pills and stomach medicine makes me hope he has some type of conscience and guilt will eventually bring out the truth.

here is her page at unsolved mysteries.

http://www.unsolved.com/0140-Kirschhoch.html

my thoughts and prayers are with everyone in jamaica during hurricane dennis.

i hope something good will come out of it though and its affects will uncover something leading to the location of claudia.

True. A lot of people believe the winter storms led to the recovery of Laci and Conner's bodies.

The anguished family of a Queens travel writer who mysteriously vanished in the Caribbean five years ago says there are chilling similarities between her case and that of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway, missing on Aruba.
"There are so many similarities — it's terribly stressful. We haven't slept much," said Fred Kirschhoch, the father of talented Frommer's Travel Guides editor Claudia Kirschhoch, 29. Claudia, who lived in Astoria, disappeared while on her way to a Sandals beach resort in Cuba for an assignment in May 2000.
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/50680.htm

That is so sad about Claudia. I don't even recall this making the news 5 years ago. The family is suing Sandals resorts and has had Claudia declared legally dead

i just recently got back from spending a little over a week in negril. if the bartender did in fact kill claudia, i am not suprised she has not been found. besides the fact that he had the ocean available to him to dispose of her the areas surrounding negril are undeveloped, poor, mountainous, and jungley. there also seems to be no government officials of any type in the area. i would be amazed if they had a police force that was not corrupt and in any way efficient in analyzing a crime.

bumping for Claudia.

Her disappearence got a lot of publicity when it happened but has diminished over the years. With evidence supporting a cover-up I wonder if there has been any connections made between staff at the resort and the bartender. Would the resort employees go so far as to destroy log-books and tapes to cover their negligence for not looking after her closely? Doing those things just makes them look more negligent. I really think someone at the resort had something to do with her disappearence and destroyed that evidence so it could not connected to him.

There are some great articles out there about Claudia's disappearence:

http://findclaudia.homestead.com/files/Jamaica_Scotsman.htm (especially this one. Very in-depth article about the social/political climate in Jamaica at that time and an in-depth look at Claudia's disappearence.)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/02/earlyshow/main713376.shtml

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/k/kirschhoch_claudia.html

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/jamaica/claudia.htm

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20131967,00.html

This case is so sad, and so eerie. With all the publicity about Natalee Holloway, I don't understand why there's not more about Claudia, or Amy Bradley.

It does seem like Grant is the most likely suspect. Is it possible this could have been just a random abduction?

This is exactly why I get so nervous about traveling.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...nvestigation
May 22, 2002
Queens Travel Writer Who Vanished in Jamaica Is Declared Dead
By SARAH KERSHAW
A travel writer who lived in Queens before she vanished during a trip to Jamaica two years ago has been declared dead by a New Jersey judge who concluded that ''some kind of foul play occurred.''

The writer, Claudia Kirschhoch, an assistant editor for Frommer's travel guides who lived in Astoria, was last seen on May 27, 2000, at a resort in Negril.

Ms. Kirschhoch's parents, who live in New Jersey, asked a court in Morristown to declare their daughter dead, after an intense two-year search. They hired a private investigator and made several trips to Jamaica, where they distributed thousands of posters and asked hundreds of questions. They also posted a $50,000 reward, and set up a telephone line and a Web site seeking information. On Monday, Judge Reginald Stanton of Superior Court in Morristown ruled that Ms. Kirschhoch had died as a result of foul play.

The ruling paves the way for the Kirschhochs to file a lawsuit against Sandals Resorts Inc., which owns the Negril resort where Ms. Kirschhoch was staying in Negril, and they said they planned to do so by next Monday. That is the deadline for filing a lawsuit against anyone they believe is responsible for their daughter's disappearance and possible murder.

Sandals Resorts has also posted a reward, of 1 million Jamaican dollars -- about $21,000 United States dollars. In a statement, the company said: ''We as a company and as hundreds of employees send our sympathy to Claudia's family at this extremely sad news. We had all remained hopeful for a very different outcome.''

The Kirschhochs said that the death certificate was a way to continue looking for clues to what happened. Now that their daughter has been declared dead, they can gain access to police and F.B.I. information about the case, they said. They also said they hoped a lawsuit would yield more information, possibly from employees of the resort.

''We want our daughter back,'' said Ms. Kirschhoch's father, Frederick, who like his wife quit his job to undertake the search full time. ''We have to know what happened.''

He added, ''We feel that there's been enough of a cover-up to keep us from knowing the truth, which we're going to get to sooner or later.''

The Kirschhochs said they believed that employees of the resort -- Beaches Negril, part of a 15-hotel chain run by Sandals -- may have withheld information during the investigation into their daughter's disappearance. Various leads, including an anonymous letter the Kirschhochs received saying that their daughter had gone to a concert with a local bartender and possibly overdosed on a date-rape drug, have led nowhere, Mr. Kirschhoch said.

a photo of one of the original articles can be found here on Oceania
http://z10.invisionfree.com/PorchlightOceania/index.php?showtopic=88&st=0&

I'm just now coming across Claudia's case. It is eerily similar to Natalee Holloway and Amy Bradley (and others as well).

Regarding her parents having her declared legally dead so soon, here is an explanation (ETA: FYI, many of the original links to online articles are no longer working, but the forum at the link below has most of texts from those articles and is a good resource):

The ruling paves the way for the Kirschhochs to file a lawsuit against Sandals Resorts Inc., which owns the Negril resort where Ms. Kirschhoch was staying in Negril, and they said they planned to do so by next Monday. That is the deadline for filing a lawsuit against anyone they believe is responsible for their daughter's disappearance and possible murder.

(snip)

The Kirschhochs said that the death certificate was a way to continue looking for clues to what happened. Now that their daughter has been declared dead, they can gain access to police and F.B.I. information about the case, they said. They also said they hoped a lawsuit would yield more information, possibly from employees of the resort.

http://z10.invisionfree.com/PorchlightOceania/index.php?showtopic=88&st=0&

Click to expand...

I found another article quoting her parents that said it was the only way to force anyone from Beaches to talk to authorities - in a courtroom. I haven't found anything yet about the outcome of the lawsuit.

Here's more --- according to this article, getting the FBI involved was unheard of. Their congressman had to step in and make it happen. Wow.

bbm

The family began calling their local political representatives in Washington for help. Claudia’s publishing company got involved and the following Wednesday flew her parents by charted plane to Kingston. A reward of $25,000 was established. Posters were distributed to local press and various establishments. The family made radio appeals. Butch Stewart gave the family accommodation and covered some expenses. Crucially the family also spoke to the FBI – they were already worrying about the Jamaican police force’s abilities in solving the crime and wanted the bureau’s help. Their Congressman in Washington threw his weight behind the case and attached a rider to a bill giving funds to Jamaica which stated that these would be withheld if the FBI weren’t allowed on the ground. By early July 2000, for the first time in Jamaican police history, six FBI agents were investigating the disappearance in their country of an American citizen: Claudia Kirschhoch.

http://z10.invisionfree.com/PorchlightOceania/index.php?showtopic=88&st=0&
(scroll down to the homestead.com article -- it's very informative but the original link to homestead.com isn't working - this is the only text of the article I've seen)

Click to expand...

Some things I learned from reading some of the background articles:

- the resort recovered her camera, cellphone, passport, wallet, and plane ticket from her room
- the resort then developed the film and destroyed it, saying there were no pictures (!)
- her cellphone disappeared while her things were still in the possession of hotel security after her disappearance
- Anthony Grant (bartender she had gone to a Reggae concert with two nights before disappearing) called in sick and took 4 days off work after Claudia disappeared, requesting sleeping pills and 'stomach' medicine
- another hotel employee lied to the press, trashing Claudia's reputation, saying a fellow journalist acquaintance of Claudia's told him that Claudia had slept with Anthony Grant on their 'date', a claim vehemently denied by the fellow journalist (she was also stuck at the hotel with Claudia when their other trip was cancelled)
- this employee has since admitted that he lied to protect the resort and to protect his job (?)
- this same hotel employee also took 4 days off following Claudia's disappearance
- not only was one of Claudia's hairstrands found in the back seat of Anthony Grant's vehicle, but her scent was found on a pair of his gloves and a pair of his boots (how does someone's scent get on your boots unless your boots were in contact with them? this makes me think she was on the floor/ground at his feet, which is not good... )
- Anthony Granted 'failed' some lie detector questions about Claudia but 'passed' the ones asking if he had harmed her
- also missing from the resort: video surveillance of her hallway and the logbook for that time period which logs all the license plates of vehicles coming/going
- two men reportedly showed up looking for Claudia; one was a jet-ski instructor at the resort
- Tania (the other journalist who left before Claudia did) said that Claudia was interested in going to Kingston to look for original vinyl Reggae records and to visit the Bob Marley museum

I think Claudia left the resort for what she thought may be a brief lunch/snack that last day with Anthony Grant and/or the other hotel employee mentioned above. However, I think they never returned. I think they took her somewhere and raped and killed her. Perhaps they hadn't wanted to kill her, but maybe she fought back or threatened to tell authorities. I thought maybe they had promised to take her to Kingston, but I think she would have gotten her camera, wallet, and cellphone from her room for a trip like that.

So tragic -- another life lost, another person missing in 'paradise'...

What a tragic case. I read where they had been awaiting DNA testing on the gloves but did not find the results? Maybe I just missed it.

This article by investigative journalist Eamonn O'Neill sounds pretty much the same as the others but there are a few photos:

http://www.eamonnoneill.com/wp-content/uploads/CLAUDIA-KIRSCHHOCH-DISAPPEARANCE.pdf

And this one has a copy of Claudia's Missing poster.

http://sabrinaerdely.com/docs/MurderInParadise.pdf

I just read that the FBI has closed their case so the DNA must have been either negative or inconclusive? Still, how can they close a case when there has been no resolution? :waitasec:

neesaki said:

I just read that the FBI has closed their case so the DNA must have been either negative or inconclusive? Still, how can they close a case when there has been no resolution? :waitasec:

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how much the FBI can do if it were not on US soil. They were also in a country where they had never previously been allowed to investigate a crime involving a US citizen - this was the first time they had been allowed to assist in Jamaica. Then local LE kept saying that the bartender was innocent. I think basically there was nothing the FBI could do outside of their jurisdiction, especially once she was declared legally dead. Other than that, I'm not sure why it was closed.