Retired FBI agent says Kiwi woman missing in Miami ‘likely a murder victim’

Tuesday, 23 April 2024

From drug taking to partying on Epstein’s island, Kiwi Alysha Hanin was living the fast life before she vanished into the night in Miami in 2002. Now, her son is on a mission to find out what happened to her. Katie Ham investigates.

When Kiwi woman Alysha Hanin mysteriously disappeared in the Miami Beach area of Florida more than two decades ago, she left behind a then three-year-old son.

Now a year older than his mother was when she went missing, Adrian Hoffmann is determined to find out what happened to her.

“She was a very sweet, smart girl who got caught in a bad circle, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve justice,” Auckland based Hoffmann told Stuff.

At Stuff’s request, retired FBI specialist agent Bobby Chacon has reviewed all of the documents collated as part of our investigation into Hanin’s disappearance.

“I always say it’s never too late to find out what happened,” Chacon says, citing his decades long experience investigating cold cases.

What do we know about Hanin’s disappearance so far?

Hanin’s case resurfaced earlier this year when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement posted her profile on their social media as part of their ‘#MissingMonday’ series.

Her son, Hoffmann, was then contacted by the Miami Herald, which prompted him to think back to 2002.

Describing a life littered with tragedy, Hoffmann told Stuff that his mother had been born in India but had spent her life travelling as part of the Hare Krishna community.

When Hoffmann was just four-months-old, his father died, leaving Hanin to raise him alone.

By the early 2000s, Hanin’s life had begun to spiral as she struggled to come to terms with being a solo mum, with drug use and work as an escort becoming more regular, Hoffmann understands.

On January 6, 2002, Hanin was last seen leaving the luxury hotel Shore Club in south Miami Beach at approximately 4am.

She never returned to the hotel and has not been heard from since. Her passport, luggage, purse, ID and credit cards were found inside the hotel room.

Hanin wasn’t officially reported missing until a friend filed a missing person’s report on January 27, 2002 - a full three weeks after she was last seen.

Miami Beach Police Department have since said they suspect “foul play” was involved in her disappearance and have declared Hanin “presumed dead”. The case is still open and will remain so until the investigation is resolved, they said.

Just weeks before she was last seen, Hanin returned to New Zealand to drop her then three-year-old son with her mother while she went back to Florida to “tie up some loose ends”.

She told her mum she’d recently broken up with her partner and was going back to Florida to collect her belongings before returning to New Zealand to “start a new life”.

In the years leading up to her disappearance, Hanin was in an on-again, off-again relationship with a Florida lawyer, who Stuff has chosen not to name for legal reasons.

In Hanin’s official missing person’s report, her ex-boyfriend is described by police as a suspect, marked “S01”.

Stuff previously revealed that Hanin had filed two police complaints against him for physical abuse- the second of which was filed just five days before she was last seen.

All charges were dropped when Hanin - who was already missing - failed to respond to a court summons.

Stuff has made various attempts to contact Hanin’s ex-boyfriend, but received no response.

The Miami Beach Police Department has also not responded to Stuff’s requests for comment.

Who is Bobby Chacon and what does he think happened to Hanin?

Chacon is a retired specialist agent, who spent almost 30 years working for the FBI, including time in the Bureau’s violent crimes department. He has worked on hundreds of homicide investigations, and helped set up the FBI’s cold case department.

“I tend to believe Alysha was probably gone that night and that she was likely a murder victim,” Chacon told Stuff.

So, if Hanin is dead, what happened? And why is the case still unsolved 22 years on?

Stuff can now reveal that Hanin’s phone records show five calls from the same number between 12.30am and 2.20am on the night of her disappearance.

“Perhaps someone called her, asking her to leave the hotel and come out and meet them.”

One major factor about Hanin’s case that might have tied investigators' hands is the lack of a body.

“It’s outlandish in this instance, but in any case without a body, a defence attorney could always say she made herself disappear. Without a body it’s very, very hard to prove that a crime was committed.”

But, from Chacon’s years of experience, he doesn’t think Hanin “fits the profile” of someone who would up and leave their life behind.

“This is a woman who had a close connection with her family. She had a loving family back in New Zealand who she’d seen just weeks before she disappeared.

“In cases where people make themselves disappear, they don't usually have that support network. They’re either estranged from their family or their family is their abuser.”

But then, if Hanin really is dead, where is her body and why hasn’t it been found?

“I know Florida well. I went to college in Florida. My whole family lives in Florida. If you wanted to get rid of a body, you could either go west into the Everglades and if you put the body in the right place, alligators would consume it and there’d be nothing left at all.

“Or you can go out east into the Atlantic Ocean. You could weigh the body down, and over time marine life would consume it,” Chacon said.

It would be almost impossible to find any land grave without being directed there by somebody who knew something, he said.

Chacon added that it was “very unusual” for local police to have said they believed foul play had been involved in Hanin’s disappearance without there being a crime scene or signs of a struggle, for example.

“I think that in a case like this, investigators could have got to a point where they’re pretty sure they know what happened, but are just reaching stone walls about what evidence they can get to prove it.”

The problems with gathering enough evidence to prosecute anyone in relation to Hanin’s disappearance would only have compounded over time too, Chacon said.

“There are two things that as an investigator you’re always looking for - evidence and testimony. Physical evidence tends to degrade over time, as do memories.”

What makes things even harder is that Hanin’s case wasn’t reported as a homicide, but rather a missing person’s case.

“If it was a homicide, they would have collected all of the physical evidence and preserved it. But this was filed as a missing person’s case, and was filed weeks after she went missing.

“I used to work on crime scenes a lot, and the quicker you can get on a crime scene undisturbed, the better the results you’re going to get. Here we don’t even have a crime scene.”

But there is “one major plus” to investigating cold cases, according to Chacon.

“Oftentimes the initial reluctance of witnesses to come forward also dissipates with time. Maybe at the time they were fearful of a certain person, but now that person is dead, or in jail, or just doesn’t hold the power that they used to over the witness.

“So there could be someone out there who knows what happened that night, who wasn’t willing to talk about it at the time, but is now.”

But with any case related to the Epstein world, the challenge of finding someone willing to talk about what happened becomes “even more tough”, Chacon said.

“It’s a very insular community, almost like you find with gang crimes. All of the young women would have been scared about breaking out of that community and going to law enforcement back then.

“Even now most of them won’t want to relive that life or even admit they were part of it. There’s a stigma there that we’re still trying to shake.”

Chacon was keen to stress that while the life Hanin had been leading may have contributed to the circumstances of her disappearance, she wasn’t at fault.

“This is a lifestyle that's very intoxicating and the men who run these things have a lot of money and power. People have this attitude of ‘that would never happen to me’ but it could happen to anybody.

“Every victim deserves justice, no matter what their occupation, race or orientation.”

This is Part 4 of Katie Ham’s investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Alysha Hanin. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.