Benjamin Anderson was last seen on New Year's Eve in central Phoenix. After friends found his Lexus with three strangers around it, it was burned.
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Around 6 p.m., Stahoviak received a call from Anderson's aunt, Suzanne, saying she hadn't heard from him. He said that he would go over to his apartment. Stahoviak tried texting his friend, but the messages were not being shown as delivered, indicating Anderson's phone was off. As he was leaving, Anderson's other friend, Susan, called Stahoviak saying that Anderson was not responding to her calls and that they went straight to voicemail.
When Stahoviak arrived at Anderson's apartment, much was amiss.
His lights were on, his car was gone, there was money strewn on the counter, and his credit cards were in a little bowl next to the front door. Anderson was not there.
The normally tidy Anderson had a wet towel on his bed, which was unmade, and there were some clothes on the floor in the kitchen.
Stahoviak started making phone calls but no one had heard from him.
Another sign something was awry: Stahoviak guessed Anderson's password to his 'Find My Phone' app on Apple, and the last time it showed a location was at Anderson's apartment before 9 a.m. on December 31.
"He never turned his phone off so the fact that his phone hasn’t been pinged since and isn’t broadcasting any signals since then is highly unusual," Stahoviak told The Arizona Republic.
Anderson's other friends came to the house and started to call Lexus. Anderson drove a 2020 White Lexus UX, which had GPS tracking on it. When they contacted Lexus, Stahoviak said that the company triggered its active tracking measure, but would not disclose the car's location, allegedly saying that they would only disclose that information to the police.
A friend of the group's called the police. Stahoviak said that the group of friends tried to get the Phoenix Police Department to call Lexus, but the police would not do it.
Stahoviak said that they started putting more pressure on Lexus and at, some point, got somebody to disclose that the vehicle was near Interstate 17 Black Canyon Highway. The group headed over to the hotels in the area.
At around 10 p.m. December 31, the friends called the Phoenix Police Department, which confirmed, according to Stahoviak, that Lexus called them around 35 minutes prior and would dispatch someone to the location that Lexus had given.
They received a phone call from an officer, who was at Super 8 by Wyndham off the I-17 and Northern Avenue, the car's last recorded place, and said, according to Stahoviak, that the car was not there and that there was nothing further the police could do. Stahoviak also said that the officer informed them that the spot was a known drug location.
According to Stahoviak, Anderson did not do drugs and rarely drank.
The friends decided to keep looking at hotels in the area and drove to the Sheraton on the other side of I-17. They went to the fourth level of the parking garage, where Stahoviak said he saw three people sitting at Anderson's car, none of whom were Anderson.
He described seeing a woman, approximately 5 feet, 11 inches tall, with blonde hair and a bright pink beanie, standing on the passenger's side. There was a male of average height, with dark curly hair and light skin, either Latino or white, standing outside on the driver's side.
Stahoviak was unable to get a good look at the third person in the car.
It was around 12:25 a.m. Saturday morning and the friends went around the corner to call 911 and get a nearby security guard to help.
The three people drove off promptly in Anderson's car and the friends chased after them, going north through a dirt lot and over curbs. At one point, Stahoviak says that they thought the car was going to purposely back into them and that the three individuals in Anderson's car turned back down the frontage road going the wrong way with their lights off.
"That’s when we thought, 'This is getting way too dangerous,'" he said.
Stahoviak says it took around 20 minutes for police to show up, and that when the officer did arrive, he was unable to find anything.
The friends returned to Anderson's condo in the hope of finding clues to their friend's whereabouts. Stahoviak says that they were able to get Lexus to reset Anderson's account, giving Stahoviak access to the Lexus app so that he could look for the missing car. The car was off, and when Stahoviak asked Lexus what that meant, the company allegedly replied that somebody perhaps had tampered with the tracking device.
They said it was in 85021 near a park north of the Sheraton, Stahoviak said.
Around 4 a.m. January 1, they found Anderson's car in the UEI College parking lot, badly burnt and destroyed.
"His Louis Vuitton bag was in the trunk. He had purchased some vanity lamps that were left burned, but he was nowhere to be seen," Stahoviak said.
"That car isn’t something you can just hotwire, it is a sophisticated vehicle and they have the keys to it," Stahoviak said.
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