On Monday, two different police departments in Arizona were comparing cases to see if a missing person case and a case where a burned vehicle with bodies inside were related.
On June 2, 2012, the police were called to the 9300 block of S. Kenneth Place in Tempe, AZ, by a friend of the Butwin family, reports KTVU News. The friend was a partner in the land business, JCB Ventures, with the man who had left him the note. He reported to the police that he received the note from James “Jim” Butwin on Saturday telling him how to run the business, according to Sgt. Jeff Glover of the Tempe Police Dept., and he was concerned because he had not seen him nor his family.
http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html
Investigators went to the home of James, his wife Yafit and their three children, Malissa, 16, Daniel, 15, and Matthew, 7, and found “suspicious and concerning evidence” inside. The family vehicle was also missing, said the statement released by the Tempe Police Dept, reports the East Valley Tribune.
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Then on Saturday the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office found a burned vehicle in the Vekol Valley in Pinal County with burned remains of five victims. The Vekol Valley area is known as a major drug and human smuggling corridor.
They also found the area was surrounded by “sleepy feet” which are shoe prints made with shoes made out of carpet remnants or burlap to hide footprints. They found that the vehicle was registered to the missing Butwin family.
On Sunday, James Butwin’s brother-in-law told police that he was afraid his brother-in-law was among the dead. The unidentified brother-in-law said that James had told him he was “going to Interstate 8 to make money in the Vekol Valley” with four others on Friday, reports the East Valley Tribune. The police asked him if his brother-in-law was involved in drug or human smuggling and he said he didn’t get involved in his business but he “knows its illegal.”
James never returned from that trip and his brother-in-law was not able to reach him.
Elias Johnson, a Pinal County Sheriff’s Office spokesman said that “we believe the reason why these individuals were going there was for an illegal means of making money. When we asked the brother-in-law if his brother-in-law was involved in drug or human smuggling, he told us, ‘the Tempe Police Dept. has not connected the missing Tempe family to possible drug smuggling.'”
The Tempe Police Dept. on Tuesday afternoon said they believe that the incident was a possible murder/suicide based on the evidence they found in the home, not a cartel drug smuggling situation.
Currently, the bodies inside the vehicle have not been identified as they were so badly burned and will be taken to the medical examiners office for identification.
