CANADA Canada - Jeff Surtel, 17, Mission, BC, 29 Apr 2007

‘A nightmare’: B.C. family struggles for answers after son Jeff Surtel vanished 10 years ago

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For an entire year, Dawn Surtel thought about ending her life following the disappearance of her son from their home in Mission, B.C.

Seventeen-year-old Jeff Surtel vanished just after midnight on April 29, 2007. He was last seen by neighbours riding a blue CCM mountain bike, with a yellow fork.

Despite weeks of searching in the heavily wooded areas of Mission and Hatzic, just over an hour’s drive from Vancouver, neither he or the bike have ever been found.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Dawn Surtel told Global News. “I didn’t eat for a week. Not one drop of food, I couldn’t sleep.
“I tried different things to find out what happened like psychics and what not, but nothing ever [amounted] to anything.”

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Gary remembers sitting and quietly talking with his teenage son in the front room of their home in Mission the night before he vanished. Jeff had been upset after being grounded from the computer for a week after receiving poor grades on his report card.

“I said ‘Goodnight,’ and I went up to bed and that was the last time I ever saw him,” he said. “It was absolute dread. Just in the pit of your stomach

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With the 10-year anniversary of his disappearance on Saturday, the Surtel family and police are hoping someone will come forward with new information.

Dawn says she’s convinced something happened that night in April of 2007, and that he didn’t just run away.
“He got hit by a car, something happened and somebody covered it up,” Dawn said. “I think those people that know what happened, need to come forward and just tell somebody. Tell the police.”

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But with so few answers in their son’s disappearance, the Surtel family is wondering if Jeff could be among the hundreds of unidentified remains lying in morgues and cemeteries across Canada.

“If my son is somewhere in an unmarked grave, laying there because there is no DNA to match his, that is just a terrible thing,” Gary said. “[The federal government] needs to get this done now.

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The RCMP said in a statement there are currently 588 sets of unidentified remains in Canada. The Ontario Coroner’s Office said in an email the province currently has 245 unidentified remains, while the BC Coroners Service says it has 182 unidentified cases.
Victims’ families say the DNA databank could be instrumental in helping coroners and police solve cases by comparing the DNA of missing persons with samples taken from unidentified human remains across the country.

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Jeff Surtel, missing from Mission BC since April 28, 2007

Jeff Surtel left the family home in Mission BC after being grounded from the computer for a week, a consequence of his grades falling on his last report card. He took with him his distinctive CCM blue mountain bike with yellow forks.

“I dream about him all the time,” says Dawn Surtel. “He is always around the age of 12. I think I dream about him young, because I can’t move forward….I can only look back.”

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At the time of his disappearance his father described him as a quiet boy, who spent a lot of time at home – and was interested in programming computers. But his mother adds that Jeff also loved camping and fishing, and said for the most part things seemed to come easily for Jeff, such as baseball and skiing.

She confesses that Jeff’s disappearance has “pretty much ruined our lives.” After he went missing one of the first dreams she had of Jeff was him coming to their bedroom with a big grin on his face, and telling her and her husband how much he missed them, and that he even missed his brother Rob.

“We miss you Jeff and love you and we are still waiting for you to come home…”

Police have followed up on several leads and possible sightings, but despite this work Jeff remains missing. Jeff Surtel is Caucasian, and at the time of his disappearance was 17, 6’1” tall, and weighed 150 pounds with medium length brown hair, brown eyes, and with glasses. He was last seen wearing dark coloured jeans, a navy coloured t-shirt and a blue hooded sweater.

A photo of Jeff at age 17, as well as an age-enhanced photo, is attached.

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The search for Jeffrey Surtel
The night before Jeffrey disappeared, he had helped his father pick a movie from the video store around 6 p.m. The family had planned to watch the movie after Gary and his wife returned from a birthday party. But when they returned home, at about 9 p.m., Jeff had changed his mind.

“Something happened between six and nine when, all of a sudden, he didn’t want to watch it. I don’t know what happened, Gary Surtel said.” [Mission City Record, April 24, 2008]

Gary said Jeffrey instead stayed up late watching television, and when the family checked his bedroom the next morning, Jeffrey's bed hadn’t been slept in.

The family does not think Jeff ran away or was contemplating suicide. He left behind $200 in cash, his bank cards, and didn't take any clothes.

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One strange occurrence has caught the family's attention. In 2008, The Record reported on the theft of a valuable cross from Westminster Abbey. The report also mentioned that the thief left behind a missing person's poster, as well as some other items. Gary Surtel told the paper that he learned from someone at the monastery that the poster left behind was of his missing son.

Police did not confirm whether the report was accurate and it was Jeff Surtel's missing poster, but the idea that it might be true has haunted the Surtel family.

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