Park Predators - The Mountains

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

A solo backpacking trip in Asia turns dark when a 23-year-old woman fails to return to her family in Colorado. The last place she was seen alive in Nepal holds many secrets and discrepancies along with some of the most treacherous terrain in the world.Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit parkpredators.comPark Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today is one that I have a feeling will resonate with many of you listening. I'm talking specifically to those of you who have had the adventurous itch to travel internationally by yourself, to explore some of the most remote or exotic places, completely independent of family or friends, feeling confident that the company of strangers and nature is the only thing you need. Some of us are simply wired this way. Some of you might be like Aubrey Sacco, a 23-year-old woman from Colorado who set out on a journey through the Himalayan mountains in April 2010, never to be seen again. Her disappearance has baffled her family for over a decade, and despite several people at one point being arrested for her abduction and murder, no one is behind bars today, and her family is still no closer to the truth. Where she went, who she may have run into, and why no one has seen her since she left for a week-long hike 13 years ago remains a haunting mystery.

But maybe with your help, that could change. This is Park Predators. On Thursday, April 29th, 2010, Connie Sacco went to check her email expecting to see a message from her 23-year-old daughter, Aubrey, in her inbox. But nothing was there. Connie and her husband Paul hadn't physically seen their daughter for about six months. Aubrey had been backpacking through South Asia since December 2009 and had been stopping in various villages across Sri Lanka and Nepal to teach English, art, and yoga. The last time they'd heard from her was on Tuesday, April 20th. The last time they'd heard from her was on Tuesday, April 20th.

She told them she was planning to take a 7-10 day hike through Langtang National Park in northern Nepal. And her plan was to touch base with them via email on the 29th when she returned. Her plan after that was to catch a flight out of Nepal to Sri Lanka, then spend a week there before coming home to Colorado shortly thereafter. to Sri Lanka, then spend a week there before coming home to Colorado shortly thereafter. But as Connie sat at her computer in the Sacco family home in Greeley, Colorado, staring at her empty inbox, she began to worry. Not hearing from Aubrey was out of character. Usually she touched base over Skype or email every four days. In all the months her daughter had been traveling alone, Aubrey had never ghosted or failed to make contact somehow. Connie and Paul knew that no matter what, if Aubrey

said she was going to connect with them by a certain date, she would. According to an interview the couple did with the hosts of Lost in the Woods podcast, they said when Aubrey spoke to them before leaving for her hike, she told them her phone wasn't working. So the best way for her to contact them would be through email when she found a lodge or shelter that had Wi-Fi. The only explanation Paul and Connie could come up with as to why they hadn't heard from their daughter was that maybe she was in too remote of a location. Everything they'd read about the landscape in the region Aubrey was going to was that the terrain was extremely remote and off the grid. They feared that maybe Aubrey had gotten injured or lost

and was just unable to get in touch. But they were also holding out hope that she would just turn up safe and have a reasonable explanation as to why she'd gone silent for so long. After all, the Lonely Planet hiking guide Aubrey told her mom she was going to follow described the hiking trails that wound through Langtang National Park as intense. The first leg of the trip started in the village of Sayabrubesi at roughly 4,800 feet in elevation, and then from there you'd gain another 7,800 feet in elevation. The trail was said to take hikers past a major river, through bamboo forests,

and over various glaciers and peaks that dotted along the Tibet border. Along the way, there were a few places to stay, but none were top-notch accommodations. Many people opted to make the journey with a group or hire a Sherpa or guide, but Aubrey tackled it alone. Paul, Aubrey's dad, told Denver Post reporter Joey Bunch, quote, She's a courageous little girl. She's fearless and she's very strong. My gut tells me she's fine, but we haven't heard from her and we're very worried.

End quote. But the family's optimism began to wane as the days ticked by and no one heard from Aubrey. According to Jason Hanna's reporting for CNN, eventually Paul and Connie's concerns became too much, and on May 4th, the Sackos got in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Nepal and reported Aubrey missing. Dan Boniface reported for Channel 9 News in Denver that after that, the family was in regular contact with Nepali police officials. But early on, the investigation hit a bit of a snag.

On May 1st, protesters and rebel groups had clashed north of Kathmandu, near the exit of Langtang National Park, and turmoil erupted in the region. All that political activity halted the police's ability to go out and search for Aubrey. It wasn't until May 7th, more than a week after she missed her check-in with her family, that authorities were finally able to get out and physically search for her. During that delay, CNN reported that the only real headway country officials had made was posting flyers about Aubrey in the airport and popular tourism areas.

Another article by the Denver Post reported that some of the protests and rioting that had hindered police had actually started the last week of April, shortly before May 1st, which would have been while Aubrey was still inside the park hiking. May 1st, which would have been while Aubrey was still inside the park hiking. Police and Aubrey's parents theorized that if that were true, Aubrey may have tried to avoid the conflict by taking an alternate route out of the park, or doubling back on trails within the park instead of emerging amid the protesting. When police did finally get teams out to look for her, they threw a good number of resources into the search. According to Channel 9's article, the police chief ordered his officers to visit monasteries and villages all along the trails in Langtang that Aubrey should have taken. The objective was to try and find witnesses who might have seen her. Nepali police also reportedly dispatched scent dogs and had search and rescue teams check up to 300 feet on either side of the trail that Aubrey should have been on.

The first clues police found were records from April 20th that proved Aubrey had taken an estimated 10-hour bus ride from Kathmandu, and then signed her name in what's known as a trekkers register that Nepali military police kept at the entrance of Langtang National Park. The fact that she'd left her signature in that book indicated she'd made it to the park just fine, but the fact that there was no record she'd ever signed out meant only a few things could have happened to her. One, she was still in the park and just overdue from hiking. One, she was still in the park and just overdue from hiking. Two, she'd fallen or become injured. Or three, something else bad had happened to her that prevented her from exiting when she was supposed to.

All of those scenarios were concerning to the Sacco family. Paul was determined to find his daughter. He refused to believe the growing rumor that she might be dead. He told CNN, quote, I have a strong connection to her. Sometimes a family member can feel if a person is dead or in pain, like intuition. I have a very strong feeling that she's alive, end quote. So to prove that, about a week after the police's search got underway, Paul and Aubrey's older brother, Crofton, flew to Nepal with a family friend who lived in Denver and happened to be from Nepal. The Denver Post reported that this man accompanied Paul and his eldest son

to act as a translator and guide. Which, can we just pause here and clap a few times for this guy? I mean, what a huge help he must have been. I mean, I can only imagine being a parent like Paul, trying to find your child and not even knowing where to start because you don't speak the language and you can't even read a street sign. It gives me anxiety just thinking about it. Anyway, when the trio from Denver arrived, they met up with U.S. Embassy officials and members of the Nepali military and immediately went to check a hotel room in Kathmandu Aubrey had last told her family she'd stayed in.

That establishment was named Hotel Elite and their records showed that Aubrey had failed to ever check out. Paul told several news outlets that when the group went inside and looked around, they found Aubrey's laptop, video camera, journals, and guitar sitting undisturbed. Now, these were all items her family knew she would not have taken with her into the National Park, so it made sense that they were there. If she had taken them with her, it would have made her pack extremely heavy. But the items were things she would have planned to return and get.

According to reporting by the Daily Camera, Paul went through Aubrey's laptop and found several pictures of her travels. to return and get. According to reporting by the Daily Camera, Paul went through Aubrey's laptop and found several pictures of her travels. And among them, one stood out. The photo was of a young white man with short light-colored hair wearing a light blue t-shirt. He was sitting at a table

in what looked like the cafe of Hotel Elite. But no one in Aubrey's family recognized him as a person she'd said she'd been traveling with. The man and his identity were a total mystery. The next clue that surfaced was eyewitness testimony from hotel staff and guests at a tea house inside the National Park. This lead kind of put the mystery man from the photo at Hotel Elite on the back burner for a bit. And that's because according to an article by Tracy Ross for Backpacker Magazine, witnesses at a tea house called Namaste Tea House told authorities that they'd remembered

seeing Aubrey on the morning of April 21st. One person in particular at Namaste, a trekking guide named Renzen Dorji Yonzen, told police that he'd spoken with Aubrey for several hours on the 21st, and they discussed how she could get involved volunteering with children in Kathmandu after her hike. Renzen swore that when he'd last seen Aubrey, it was the morning of April 22nd, after they'd both gotten a good night's rest at Namaste, and she was leaving the tea house headed north on the trail, and he remained behind. Staff at a tea room in the village of Lama Hotel, further up the mountain, had also reported seeing Aubrey. These witnesses said

she'd passed through after drinking tea sometime on the afternoon of April 22nd. So, between Renzin's account at Namaste Tea Room and the information from the folks who lived and worked in Lama Hotel, police felt pretty sure Aubrey had been accounted for up until the evening of April 22nd. For those of you who don't know, a tea room is not like a traditional hotel or lodge where you make reservations and they know you're coming ahead of time.

According to one experienced user's article on a website called One Seed Expeditions, tea rooms are more like places that you can show up, and if they have room for you to stay the night, then you can. Otherwise, you gotta keep going until you find one that has room. But there are also places where many people just stop to rest and literally get a cup of tea. The accommodations are often dorm-style rooms with common areas to eat and hang out, or sometimes you eat, sleep, and hang out all in the same big room. If you're lucky, you might come across one that has a hot shower and a western sit-down toilet. But that's if you're lucky.

I think all of those off-the-grid features, though, are why people who trek in Nepal prefer to stay at these tea houses. There's a sense of community among strangers and an appreciation for abandoning the comfortability you're used to. Anyway, investigators in Nepal felt confident they'd have success tracking Aubrey's movements after that last sighting in Lama Hotel, because, as CNN reported, there happened to be a military checkpoint a few miles away from the village of Lama Hotel.

But strangely, when police got to that checkpoint and looked at the logs, the military records didn't reflect that Aubrey had ever passed through, which meant the tea room sighting in Lama Hotel had been the last time anyone had seen her. The article for Backpacker magazine that I mentioned earlier says that this military checkpoint was about two hours walking distance from the village of Lama Hotel, but CNN reported it was less than two miles. So I'm not sure which is correct or if they both might be correct due to the kind of terrain we're talking about. But regardless, the point is that Aubrey vanished somewhere between Lama Hotel

and wherever this military checkpoint was located. To help entice locals to come forward with more information, Paul and Connie put up a reward worth 100,000 rupees, which equated to about 1,320 US dollars. That may not seem like a lot of money, but according to reporting by CNN, that kind of cash to a village resident in that part of Nepal would have been seriously tempting. Not long after posting the reward, the family upped it to 1 million rupees, or roughly 14,000 U.S. dollars in 2010. While they waited for someone to take them up on the offer,

Paul and hundreds of volunteers from the Nepali police and military hiked through Langtang National Park. In a matter of days, the searchers had covered most of the established trails in the park and found no sign of Aubrey. So they turned their focus on covering more rural sections that weren't so traversed. You see, by that time, everyone began to wonder if maybe Aubrey had decided to blaze her own trail back to Kathmandu. Her father theorized that maybe all the conflict that had been going on in late April and early May outside of the park had prompted Aubrey to abandon the idea of trying to catch a bus back to the city, and instead, she decided to walk there herself. Her mom said Aubrey making this kind of decision wouldn't have been a total surprise, since Aubrey typically liked venturing into local villages and getting to know residents.

She liked doing unconventional things, and she jumped at chances to interact with people she'd never met and learn about their lives. Connie told CNN, quote, she embraces the culture wherever she travels. She's the one you'll usually find with the villagers as opposed to the high-end places. She wanted to learn about places where she could volunteer. Her motto is glitter the world, and she just glitters with her love and energy, end quote. But another less exciting theory investigators had to consider, at least for a short time, was whether Aubrey disappeared intentionally. Her father told Nine News that Aubrey was a believer

and follower of Eastern philosophy, and in his interview for Lost in the Woods podcast, he explained that some of the literature Aubrey liked to read promoted a lifestyle of denouncing attachments like family and materialism. But in her family's mind, though, the idea that Aubrey would run away just didn't feel right. They said their Italian family was very close, and it just didn't make any sense for Aubrey to cut them all out of her life without at least a goodbye or an explanation. Morgan, Aubrey's younger brother, told CBS News that he'd been emailing with his sister a lot in early April.

They talked about everything from his success as a soccer player at San Diego State to what her life had been like living overseas. He told ESPN reporter Jamie Reno that on April 19th, he and his sister had discussed plans to travel and bike together once she returned to Colorado that summer. So, to the family at least, those conversations indicated that Aubrey had every intention of coming home. So, based on the source material I gathered, the theory that she ran away seemed to fizzle out after everyone really considered it. The other scenario that had to be addressed was if Aubrey had perhaps succumbed to altitude sickness

and become disoriented, causing her to fall, or worse, die. Paul Sacco told CNN he didn't buy that theory, though. He knew his daughter. He told the network, quote, she's a yoga instructor and in excellent physical shape, so even if she did get altitude sickness, it's not like she's some couch potato trying to do something she shouldn't, end quote. Searchers from Nepal who'd volunteered to comb the part of the trail between the Lama Hotel village tea room and the military checkpoint that Aubrey never made it to, told CNN that that stretch of the hike was extremely easy to traverse.

There were no obvious obstacles or treacherous spots someone would have had to be careful crossing over. One volunteer told reporter Jason Hanna that in order to even fall on that part of the trail, you'd, quote, literally have to jump over the side, end quote. In an interview with CBS News, Paul explained that after having navigated the trail system himself while searching for his daughter, he'd been surprised by how easy the hiking had been. He noted that even though the hike was long,

it wasn't nearly as perilous as many guides had purported it to be. That was the main reason why he was so convinced Aubrey hadn't just tripped and fallen. And I completely see his point. I mean, the fact that no search parties had found a trace of Aubrey's pack or clothing, and no eyewitnesses had come forward saying they saw her on the trail looking ill or like she needed medical attention, indicates that an accident just wasn't likely. But days without answers turned into weeks, and weeks eventually turned into months. By mid-June, Aubrey had been missing for two months, and Paul and Crofton Sacco had been forced to return home from Nepal without her. They told Nine News in Denver that despite their

best efforts, no evidence had turned up while they'd been overseas that pointed to what happened to Aubrey. Their greatest fear was that she was still alive in northern Nepal somewhere, either trying to survive on her own or was being held against her will. CBS News reported that in late June, the FBI's Denver office got involved in the case, and that's when the matter officially became a criminal investigation, at least in terms of how the American government saw it. The Greeley Tribune reported that Aubrey's family greatly appreciated the feds jumping in to help, but as far as what exactly they would have jurisdiction to do in

Nepal would be limited. Paul told the newspaper that agents were going to be on the ground in the country trying to chase down important leads and interview about two dozen people who were in the park the same time as Aubrey. But he emphasized that the FBI getting involved did not mean his daughter was dead or even presumed to be dead. It just meant that more investigative resources were being utilized to try and find her. Unfortunately, the more law enforcement presence that joined the efforts to find Aubrey only made local villagers in Nepal less inclined to help, which made no sense to the Sacco family, but made complete sense to anyone who knew how things worked in northern Nepal.

According to an article by CBS News, while Paul and his eldest son had been in Nepal searching for Aubrey in May and June of 2010, he'd noticed a common theme when it came to trying to get information from the people working inside Langtang National Park, or who were living in villages Aubrey would have passed through. The locals weren't cooperating. After he'd returned, Paul told American news outlets that despite villagers welcoming him and other tourists to the region, their demeanors noticeably changed whenever his daughter's case came up. He said it was like the locals didn't want anything to do with Aubrey. In fact, he began to suspect that villagers knew more information but for some reason decided not to speak with

law enforcement. One reason the residents might have been distrustful of the police was because they feared law enforcement would target them and possibly wrongfully accuse them of a crime. You see, according to Jason Hanna's reporting for CNN, some locals told volunteer searchers who were native to Nepal that even if they did know something about what happened to Aubrey, there's a good chance they wouldn't tell police about it. The villagers said they feared the police's tactics

and thought investigators would use what they knew against them. CNN's article that I just mentioned details how the murder of a British man hiking in Langtang National Park 10 years before Aubrey vanished had reinforced this communal fear of police. That death resulted in the arrest of four Nepali men, who locals all believed were innocent of the crime. But the police and government prosecuted and incarcerated those men anyway. The story of

those guys was that they'd merely found the bloody corpse of the British male hiker and reported it. they'd merely found the bloody corpse of the British male hiker and reported it. But over the course of the investigation, the authorities had pegged the four men as the murderers, despite villagers indicating a larger criminal group was responsible. That case had remained such a notable incident in residents' minds that it deterred them from speaking up when it came to answering questions about Aubrey. them from speaking up when it came to answering questions about Aubrey. The Himalayan Times reported that by the end of June 2010, this lack of progress was frustrating everyone involved who was trying to find Aubrey. Police in Nepal had tracked down and interviewed at least seven people they believed had seen

Aubrey at some point on April 21st and 22nd. But whatever information came out of those interviews didn't help the investigators. The deputy superintendent told the press that despite his department and the military exhausting all their resources, everyone remained, quote, clueless, end quote.

Something that didn't help matters, though, was the fact that when police had gone back to re-interview the original witnesses who claimed they'd seen Aubrey resting and drinking tea in the Village of Lama Hotel on the afternoon of April 22nd, well, those people later recanted their statements and stopped cooperating with police. Again, this is likely because of how much media attention Aubrey's case was getting and the deep tension between Nepali law enforcement and local villagers. Still, Aubrey's family didn't stop pushing.

Back in the U.S., they'd mobilized in a big way and petitioned then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to pay attention to the case. People from all over Colorado and beyond who knew or supported the Sacco family wrote thousands of messages to Clinton on social media, pleading with her to get involved in the investigation, or at a minimum, use her political influence to show the Nepali government

the issue wasn't going to go away. According to what Paul Sacco told USA Today, they didn't get a response from Clinton's office, but other politicians, including senators and congress members from Colorado, did get involved. One who visited Nepal in person prior to Aubrey's disappearance even pressed the country's government for more answers. But a big reason why the Nepali police's investigations seemed disjointed when it came to their efforts to try and find Aubrey was because the country's government was barely getting on its feet

after having a monumental change of guard. According to CNN's reporting, in 2008, so this would have been two years before Aubrey vanished, Nepal officially changed from being a monarchy to being a republic. That transition had sparked years of insurgency and protests, like the violence that had erupted outside of Langtang National Park while Aubrey was inside. So because the government was still trying to establish a right way of doing things, you know, like having an enforceable code of law, establishing a constitution, the entire justice system was in its infancy and not

well formed, which made many locals who were already distrustful of the police even more wary of cooperating with police for fear of being wrongfully prosecuted or imprisoned. So without help from the villagers, police really had a hard time. Aubrey's dad told the Daily Camera the lack of progress in his daughter's case during the first year of the investigation was extremely frustrating. He said, quote, they don't have a very good focus because of their political turmoil and corruption. There's always something that's just in the way of finding poor Aubrey, end quote. During that same interview, Paul also said, quote, you can't just go into a foreign country and investigate suspects. That's against the law. During that same interview, Paul also said, The next major clue that emerged came in July 2010.

Reports surfaced that in the days leading up to her disappearance, Aubrey had been seen traveling in India and parts of Nepal with a man. According to an article by the Himalayan Times, this guy's name was Steve Miller, but a piece by the Daily Camera also referred to him as Mitch Miller, so I'm not sure which is correct. But either way, police determined that this Steve-slash-Mitch guy was an American, and he and Aubrey had entered Nepal together in mid-April through the city of Darjeeling, India. Darjeeling is roughly

14 hours east of Kathmandu. When authorities got a hold of Steve months after Aubrey vanished, he was in Thailand, nearly 2,000 miles away from Nepal, and police had questions for him. When he spoke with investigators, he told them that he and Aubrey had been on the road together from Darjeeling until they'd reached Hotel Elite in Kathmandu. He said he didn't hike into Langtang National Park with her. The last time he'd seen her was when they parted ways at their hotel in Kathmandu.

Authorities checked out Steve's story and travel records and determined that he was not in Nepal when Aubrey vanished. A detail he was able to confirm for the Sacco family was that he recognized the mystery man in the blue t-shirt whose photo had been on Aubrey's laptop. According to an article by the Daily Camera, he said that he'd remembered seeing that guy at Hotel Elite in late April, but he never knew his name. That information struck a chord with Aubrey's dad, Paul. Regarding the importance of figuring out the mystery man's identity, he told the newspaper, quote, I want to emphasize that this guy is not a suspect. We just know that she took the photo of him. So why wouldn't he surface? Why wouldn't he say something? To this day, this man's identity remains unknown and something the Sacco family wants desperately to find out.

wants desperately to find out. Unfortunately, though, after police spoke with Steve Miller, Aubrey's travel companion, the leads dried up and the investigation in Nepal grinded to a halt. Months passed, and then the one-year anniversary of Aubrey's disappearance came and went. The Himalayan Times reported that a few small searches had happened in Langtang National Park on and off during that time, but nothing useful turned up. Instead, what searchers found were empty spaces on poles and bulletin boards where Aubrey's missing person flyers had been. Yeah, apparently locals had gone through the villages in Langtang and taken down the posters with Aubrey's information on them. Her family and the police in Nepal believed this had happened because residents didn't like the negative attention her case had brought to the region's tourism industry. This, plus a year going by without any answers, took a toll on the Sacco family.

Paul told the Himalayan Times that he'd had dreams of Aubrey, that she was still alive and just needed to be found. He and Connie both voiced frustration that they felt like the police in Nepal had given up on their daughter's case. So during the summer of 2011, Paul and Connie returned to the Himalayan mountains once again to conduct their own search and investigation into what happened to Aubrey. They told the Daily Mail that they strongly believed Aubrey was still alive but being held against her will as a captive somewhere in the region. For what reason, though, they didn't know.

After that trip, they once again had to return to Colorado without answers. The grim reality of their situation took an even darker turn when they learned in January 2012 that the U.S. Embassy had posted a bold warning on its website regarding female travelers in Nepal. The message was clear. Do not go alone. Turns out, Aubrey wasn't the only young woman to vanish from the northern region of Nepal. There had been several cases of women, all close to Aubrey's age, that had either disappeared, been killed, or suffered violent attacks while alone in that part of the Himalayan mountains. According to reporting by United Press International News,

the U.S. Embassy's warning for female hikers traveling alone in Nepal was completely rooted in the fact that there had been a bunch of concerning cases of young women going missing, being attacked, or killed in northern Nepal in the mid and late 2000s, specifically in national parks. Kelly Kennedy reported for USA Today that in 2010, the same year Aubrey vanished, two female hikers from the United States had been assaulted while alone on trails. In December 2011, a year and a half after Aubrey disappeared, another U.S. woman, 23-year-old Lena Sessions, had encountered a masked man on a

trail inside Langtang National Park. This man held Lena against her will with a one-and-a-half-foot long knife and then threatened to sexually assault her. Lina was able to get away from her attacker, but other women who'd been hiking in the same region had not been as fortunate. The Taipei Times reported that a week before Lina's attack, a female tourist from South Korea had also been assaulted while in Langtang. A few months after that, in June of 2012, a 23-year-old Belgian tourist named Debbie Maeveau was discovered dead in Langtang National Park. She'd been murdered, and her decapitated body was found stuffed underneath a trail 10 days after she'd been reported missing.

Authorities investigating Debbie's case said that none of her personal belongings or money had been taken and her underwear and clothing seemed to be undisturbed, which indicated a sexual assault or robbery hadn't been the killer's motive for targeting her. And it wasn't just 2010 and 2012 that were bad. These kinds of disturbing reports had been surfacing for years prior to that. According to that Taipei Times article I mentioned, in 2005, a young woman from France named Celine Henry vanished while hiking in a national park in northern Nepal and was never found,

though some source material says her remains were later found. Then in 2006, the remains of a German woman who disappeared shortly after Celine turned up. And yet again in 2006, another female tourist from Germany went missing in the northern region of the Himalayan mountains, and her body was found in a ravine. That woman's family rejected the police's theory that she died as a result of a fall. They firmly believed she'd been murdered. What's wild to me is that despite all these cases involving young

women hikers who vanished near one another and in such quick succession, neither the Nepali government nor the Trekking Agency's Association of Nepal considered the cases connected. The entities told the Taipei Times that there just wasn't enough proof to say the same person or group of people were behind the attacks. But they didn't deny there might be a connection. So basically, they were like, we don't know, and we're not going to work to figure it out. But we're not going to say it's not possible. Which, again, really seems wild to me.

What was also shocking when I looked up the details of these other attacks was that after Lena Sessions was assaulted in December 2011, there had been zero follow-up. She told USA Today that after initially filing a report with police in Nepal, no one from the country's government had called her to find out more information. It took another month before the U.S. State Department even knew to issue a travel warning because of her case. And Lena said that prior to her attack, she'd had no idea so many other women, including Aubrey,

had disappeared or been killed while hiking alone in the region. According to Jamie Reno's reporting for ESPN, there had been whispers that maybe members of the Nepali military had been involved in some of these incidents, which was why the investigations into the crimes were not pursued rigorously. In response to pressure from Aubrey's family to figure out if this was true, the army's second-in-command promised the SACOs he would review his soldiers' activities and conduct an internal investigation. If that ever happened, though, or what the results were, is not in the source material available.

Two people who felt like I do and weren't so willing to dismiss a link between all these cases from before and after Aubrey vanished were Paul and Connie Sacco. They told reporter Kelly Kennedy all the assaults and murders could, quote, absolutely be connected, end quote. And I think they had every right to believe that. I mean, their daughter had vanished under

eerily similar circumstances as all these other women. So it wasn't too much of a stretch to think that maybe something far more sinister was going on in Nepal's national parks. I don't know if this next update came because the Nepali police renewed their efforts due to mounting outside pressure or what. But according to an article by CBS Colorado, Nepali press had reported in early July 2013 that authorities arrested two men believed to be involved in Aubrey's disappearance.

And the news wasn't good. These men claimed she'd been murdered. Now, this update came more than three years after Aubrey vanished, and it was the first time authorities in Nepal had actually detained people in the case for official questioning. Within hours of CBS Colorado's first breaking news report about this coming out, the station released another update that indicated three people had been arrested in relation to the case. of CBS Colorado's first breaking news report about this coming out, the station released another update that indicated three people had been arrested in relation to the case. Unfortunately, Napoli's sources behind some of this early information were shaky, and in the end, whether any of it was even accurate wasn't something the Sacco family was able to figure

out right away. They told CBS Colorado that news coverage by Nepali press was known to often be inaccurate, and until Paul and Connie received confirmation from police officials overseas that someone had confessed to killing their daughter, they couldn't accept anything as truth. But an article I dug up from Republica Media reported that the two men who'd initially been arrested were guys who worked in the tourism business in northern Nepal, and after they were detained, they told police investigators the names of several other people in that industry who reportedly had taken part in Aubrey's abduction and murder. The guys also revealed that the motive for the crime had been to rob her of her money

and camera. During these alleged confessions, the men also provided the name of a man who they claimed orchestrated the entire thing. After all of that information came out, the Nation did a follow-up article and reported that by the end of the first week of August, the number of people alleged to have been involved in Aubrey's murder plot had grown to five. That report also stated that the first two men who'd initially been taken into custody had told police that the group who'd killed Aubrey had made sure to dispose of her body and passport in a river that ran adjacent to the trail she'd

been on in Langtang National Park. Now, that bit of information was interesting because everyone who'd searched the stretch of trail between the Namaste Tea Room and the military checkpoint she never made it to knew that a river flowed nearby. So, at least that much of these self-confessed murderer story could have been plausible. with Tracy Ross for Backpacker magazine, the claims by these men were later determined to be inconsistent and eventually Nepali police released them from custody about a month after arresting them. According to more of Tracy Ross' reporting, but this time for Colorado Public Radio, in April 2014, Paul and Connie once again went back to Nepal with family members of some of the other slain or missing tourists who'd visited. The group held a press conference at the headquarters of the trekking agencies of

Nepal. Paul spoke in front of a crowded room and said, quote, It's horrible to relive this experience, but what we want is for the Nepal government to devote more resources and more time and more people to solving this mystery of our children. devote more resources and more time and more people to solving this mystery of our children. I understand that tourism is a main thing in this country, so why not put all of your resources, all of your understanding, all of your people into search and rescue teams and into the police and organizations that have to go out to look for clues, end quote. After that speech, the president of the trekking agencies explained that over the years, various measures to try and ban solo hiking had been put in place

and then dissolved due to lack of enforcement from the country's government. He said the only way long-lasting change could take effect would be if the families of the missing and murdered victims got their individual country's embassies involved. Beyond that, the trekking agency's efforts wouldn't be enough. One of the Sacco family's last posts on the website they created for Aubrey was on May 14, 2014. They'd just come back to Colorado after being in Nepal for a few weeks and told readers that they'd spent time in the country trying to get to know the new police detectives

who'd been assigned to their daughter's case. As it turned out, the investigation had been getting reassigned to new personnel with the Nepali police department every year since Aubrey had vanished. The family wrote about how polygraph exams would be administered to the men who'd previously been arrested and confessed to killing her. They expressed how they were optimistic that more in-depth investigating would be administered to the men who'd previously been arrested and confessed to killing her. They expressed how they were optimistic that more in-depth investigating would be done and would hopefully one day result in finding the truth about what happened to their daughter. They thanked everyone who supported them and who were invested in finding Aubrey.

And something I took away from this story was just how much time, money, and energy Aubrey's family has dedicated to finding her. Her parents and brothers have taken close to half a dozen international trips to Nepal to search for her over the last decade. And I bet they'd go every month if they could afford to. Reporter Jamie Reno wrote in his article for ESPN that each of those journeys easily lasted 50 hours or more, and that was just to get to the region in northern Nepal that Aubrey vanished from. It doesn't account for all the countless hours the Sacco family members spent hiking in Langtang National Park, or doing outreach to bring attention to the case. The Backpacker magazine article by Tracy Ross I mentioned earlier explains in tear-jerking

detail how Paul returned to the region in 2014, just a few weeks after enduring hip surgery. Despite still recovering from that procedure and putting his own health and mobility at risk, he hiked the Langtang Trail Aubrey disappeared from. And once again, he had to come home without his only daughter. Paul and Connie are the kind of parents I would want if I disappeared overseas. I hope that wherever Aubrey is, she knows how much she's loved and longed for. I hope she knows that her parents and brothers will never give up, that they'll never stop searching for her. If you know anything about what happened to Aubrey Sacco, please contact the United States Embassy in Nepal or the FBI field office in Denver,

Colorado. Aubrey's parents also have a website, but last I checked, it wasn't active. It's still accessible in internet archives, and you can find a link to the archive in the blog post and show notes for this episode. This way, you can touch base with her family and learn about ways to donate to their efforts to find her. Park Predators is an AudioChuck original show. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No!