Two months on, no sign of US woman missing on Spanish pilgrimage route.
Denise Pikka Thiem had been trekking the famous Camino de Santiago in León province A number of others have reported attacks in area when she disappeared, say local media.
After more than two months of searching, Spanish police have still found no sign of Denise Pikka Thiem, a 41-year-old American woman who went missing while traveling the Camino de Santiago pilgrims’ route in northern Spain.
Little is known about Thiem’s movements before she disappeared: she drew out €50 from a cash machine on April 1, and three days later, sent an email to a friend. On the afternoon of April 4, she checked into a hostel in the cathedral city of Astorga, in León province. The following day, Easter Sunday, she breakfasted in a local café, and spoke with two other women traveling the same route, who say they last saw her in a church in the city.
Some Asian visitors have reportedly “panicked” over the case, says one pilgrim
In her last email, Thiem said she planned to attend Mass on Easter Sunday and then, around midday, make the 14-kilometer trip to El Ganso, a small community that only survives because of its location on the pilgrimage route.
Ramiro Rodríguez, who has been running a local bar there for 25 years, says he cannot remember “a single incident” involving pilgrims along the route.
Missing person notices have been put up all over the area where Thiem – a Chinese American from Phoenix, Arizona – disappeared, and are seen by the hundreds of people who pass along the Camino de Santiago every day. Many of them are unaware of Thiem’s disappearance, while some Asian visitors have reportedly “panicked” over the case, says Justyna, a Polish woman making the pilgrimage. “The Koreans are terrified,” she says. “There is also a rumor, which could be true, that in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port [on the French-Spanish border] a backpack was found that supposedly belongs to a Korean,” she says.
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In Sarria, a small community in Lugo province about 150 kilometers from Astorga, and 100 kilometers from Santiago de Compostela, where the Camino ends, the Civil Guard says it is looking for a man known only as Miguel, who is believed to have attacked an American and a Dutch woman on the route. “He drove up, got out to talk to them, and told them his supposed name, then he assaulted one and tried to force her into his car,” says the Civil Guard source. “Both women fought him off with the sticks they were using for walking.”
