Spanish authorities have searched for Denise Pikka Thiem, a 41-year-old American woman who vanished while walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage path in northern Spain, for more than two months without finding her.
Little is known about Thiem’s whereabouts before to her disappearance; on April 1, she took €50 out of a cash machine and, three days later, emailed a friend. She booked at a hostel in the León province’s cathedral city of Astorga on the afternoon of April 4. When she had breakfast at a neighborhood café the next day, Easter Sunday, she talked to two other women who were on the same path and who claimed to have last seen her in a city church.
According to Thiem’s most recent email, she intended to go to Mass on Easter Sunday before traveling the 14 kilometers to El Ganso, a little village that only exists because of its position on the pilgrimage route, at around noon. After 25 years of operating a neighborhood pub there, Ramiro Rodríguez claims he has never heard of “a single incident” involving pilgrims.
The hundreds of visitors who travel the Camino de Santiago every day observe the missing person signs posted across the area where Thiem, a Chinese American from Phoenix, Arizona, vanished. According to Justyna, a Polish woman traveling there, some Asian tourists have reportedly “panicked” about the situation, while many of them are ignorant of Thiem’s disappearance. She claims that the Koreans are afraid. “A backpack purportedly belonging to a Korean was discovered in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port [on the French-Spanish border], which is a rumor that may or may not be accurate,” she adds.
The Civil Guard said it is searching for a guy identified only as Miguel who is suspected of attacking an American and a Dutch woman while traveling through Sarria, a small village in Lugo province approximately 150 kilometers from Astorga and 100 kilometers from Santiago de Compostela, the end of the Camino. According to the Civil Guard source, “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.” “Using the sticks they were using for walking, both women repelled him.”
Several women have reported experiencing “harassment” while walking the Camino, according to Astorga’s local media. In a May blog post, Annie Carvalho, who writes about many pilgrimage routes in Spain online, cautioned ladies against deviating from the path and traveling alone, citing issues in the region where Thiem has vanished. “It’s just a matter of being cautious; there’s no need to get paranoid,” she said. “The Camino has always seemed safe to me.”
A woman from a small village near Astorga told authorities that two males in a van “who spoke with Eastern European accents” attempted to kidnap her while she was jogging, further raising concerns about the safety of women walking the Camino de Santiago.
But for the moment, the police are not making any connection between the incident and Thiem’s disappearance. Some local people have dismissed the alleged kidnapping as an exaggeration. The head of the residents’ association in one village has complained about “media attention” in an area that he says has “always been peaceful,” adding that it was in Astorga where Thiem went missing. “Nothing ever happens around here. Three years ago there was talk about an Italian woman who disappeared. They were searching for her for six weeks, and eventually they found her living in a nearby commune. Who knows what has happened to this foreign woman. So many pass by here every day… what seems clear is that her body hasn’t been dumped anywhere, because they have been using helicopters, dogs, forest rangers, and groups of up to 150 volunteers to look for her.”
Thiem’s younger brother, Cedric, who flew to Spain in April to report her missing, says his sister was inspired to walk the Camino de Santiago after seeing The Way, a movie featuring Martin Sheen as a father who travels to the French section of the route to claim the body of his son who was killed in the Pyrenees, and ends up walking the rest of the Camino. Cedric Thiem has now set up a Facebook page called “Help Us Find Denise,” prompting a number of false sightings. But the Spanish police say that so far they have no evidence at all as to her whereabouts. She has not contacted her family or used her credit card. Of the 70 or so pilgrims who stay most nights in the hostel where Thiem lodged before going missing, “only three or four are Spanish,” says the owner, Conchi Alonso. “There are a lot of Americans, around 20 a day, as well as Germans, Japanese… Asians like her, hundreds. I didn’t even know she had stayed here until the police came and I saw her name in the guest book. She left around 7am, and after that nobody knows what happened: none of what is being said about this makes sense to me,” she says. Denise Thiem did not have a cellphone with her. She contacted friends and family via the internet, doing so every four or so days to report on her experiences and upload a photo or sketch.
The hills around Astorga are known as the Maragatería, and eventually rise to the mountains of León, which even at this time of year have snow on their peaks. The searches that have taken place over the last two months have been hindered by the spring growth, which has caused tracks and trails to become covered by dense undergrowth. Thiem’s family has contacted their local Congressional and Senatorial representatives in the US, and were hoping that US Secretary of State John Kerry would raise the matter during a planned visit to Spain – though his trip was subsequently canceled. Her brother Cedric says he will continue the campaign to find his sister: “I want to dedicate my time to worrying about my sister. When I am eating, where could she be eating? When I am sleeping, where could she be sleeping?”
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