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Combing the Beaches for a Missing Daughter; Parents of Queens Travel Editor Find Sympathy and Frustration in Jamaica
In the dying light, the prayers for the missing woman poured out of the hilltop church near Montego Bay, two hours' drive from this beach resort town.
Frederick and Mary Ann Kirschhoch stood up beneath whirring fans. The Moravian congregation was asking God for the safe return of the couple's daughter, Claudia, 29, a travel editor for Frommer's who vanished from Negril around May 27.
Mr. Kirschhoch had grown up with the Moravian church on Staten Island. He knew the hymns by heart. But the Jamaicans sang with an intensity that sounded almost otherworldly to him.
''It was just an outpouring of warmth and comfort and empathy that was overwhelming,'' Mr. Kirschhoch said. ''It's something we'll never forget, no matter what.''
There are few things about Jamaica that these parents from Morristown, N.J., will be able to erase from their memories. This was their second visit in three weeks to help search for their daughter, a resident of Astoria, Queens. They returned to the lush, mountainous island on June 22, even though investigations by the police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a private detective were coming up empty. (The detective had been hired by Gordon Stewart, the owner of the resort where Ms. Kirschhoch had been staying, and the F.B.I. had sent agents at the request of the Jamaican police.)
Since the first week of June, newspapers, radio stations and television programs have been running reports on the disappearance every few days. Several days before the Kirschhochs arrived, they increased their reward offer for information leading to their daughter's whereabouts, to $25,000 from $6,200; the new amount is about 10 times the average annual income in Jamaica.
[On Tuesday, four days after the Kirschhochs returned home, Mr. Stewart added another $25,000 to the pot. The parents plan to fly back to Jamaica on Wednesday.]
''I have never seen anything like this in Jamaica,'' said Daniel Grizzle, owner of the Charela Inn and chairman of the resort board at the Negril Chamber of Commerce. ''There's never been a search of this magnitude.''
Claudia Kirschhoch arrived in Jamaica on May 24 and stayed at Beaches Negril, part of a 15-hotel Caribbean chain run by Sandals Resorts International, after a trip to Cuba sponsored by Sandals was canceled. She was last seen by Tania Grossinger, a freelance travel writer from New York, at breakfast on May 27. When she did not fly back to New York on June 1 as scheduled, her parents called the hotel. In her room, hotel staff found clothes, luggage, her passport and a wallet with cash and credit cards.
The parents said the only things missing were a blue-striped bathing suit, sunglasses, a portable radio and possibly a notepad. Helicopter and boat searches turned up nothing. The local police said they had no leads.
More than 400 people have been reported missing in Jamaica so far this year, the police said. Most were local teenagers who had run away from home, only to turn up after a few days. Despite being pressed by reporters, police officials said they had no statistics on how many foreign visitors were reported missing, but insisted that the number was low.
The Kirschhochs were methodical in their search. Mr. Kirschhoch, 57, a part-time engineer, approached the task the same way he does when finishing buildings: making a checklist, going through the details, marking off the loose ends one by one.
Mr. and Mrs. Kirschhoch were staying at another Sandals resort in Negril in a room paid for by Mr. Stewart, owner of the Sandals chain. The resort was loud, with partying couples, swim-up bars and blaring reggae, not the kind of place where they would have chosen to spend time.
But this was no vacation, and when Mr. Kirschhoch walked into their room, he opened the tourist brochure and tried to think like his daughter. Where would I go? Whom would I speak with?
He considered her an experienced traveler. She had visited Italy and the Canary Islands, and she had lived for seven months in Paris after graduating from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.
''I don't believe that nobody knows anything,'' her father said. Mr. and Mrs. Kirschhoch came because they believed they could describe their daughter to Jamaicans in a way that only parents could. Or maybe people who had information might be more forthcoming with them than with the police.
Mrs. Kirschhoch, 60, a retirement account manager at Honeywell, carried a notebook in which she meticulously recorded their findings. She scribbled questions they wanted to ask hotel workers and other people who had seen their daughter.
Byron Jones was one of those. The young man worked as a lifeguard on a beach that Claudia Kirschhoch might have visited. After her parents tracked him down, he pointed to a far off spot next to a trash bin where he thought he had seen their daughter a month before.
''There was a black lady, a local lady, talking to her,'' he said. ''She told the lady she wanted to go to Westmoreland, maybe to the Black River area.''
''Can you be sure it was her?'' Mr. Kirschhoch asked. His wife held up a flier with two photographs of their daughter and a description: 5 feet 2 inches tall, slim build, long dark brown hair.
Mr. Jones stared ahead, pondering.
''How tall was she?'' Mr. Kirschhoch asked.
''Maybe five-six.''
''Can you remember what day it was?''
''No, mon, I can't remember.''
Most of their mornings, they walked along stretches of the seven-mile white-sand beach and passed out fliers. They believed this did some good. They could not follow up on each of the 377 telephone tips the police had received. Many came from people who called whenever they saw a white woman with a black man. In one instance, a psychic told the police to search caves along the Negril coastline. None of the tips had panned out. (Two toll-free numbers have been set up: (88 967-9300 in the United States and (88 991-4000 in Jamaica.)
Sometimes people whom the Kirschhochs met on the beach held their hands and told them how much they felt for them. But after the parents walked away, some people said that the American woman must be dead, or had somehow made her way to Cuba, and that if the search turned up anything, it would be something horrible.
''Somebody must have kidnapped her,'' said Carmen Purchase, a baby sitter. ''Because she's gone so long, then maybe she's dead.''
