
Grim update in search for missing NYC man who disappeared in Turks and Caicos
Brian Tarrence, 52, was enjoying a romantic week-long getaway with his wife when he disappeared from their Airbnb rental in Grace Bay on June 25, just three days into the trip.
He left the rental as his wife slept, after enjoying an intimate dinner and the afternoon on a boat.
On July 5, authorities assisting in the search for the missing Manhattan man found a decomposed male body in Grace Bay, near the couple's accommodation.
On Wednesday, the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force confirmed the remains belonged to Tarrence.
'An autopsy conducted on July 11th revealed no signs of trauma, and at this time, there is no suspicion of foul play,' the police department said.
Officials have not yet announced a cause of death. This will be determined by a full autopsy and toxicology report.
The positive identification draws an end to a painful weeks-long process for his wife and loved ones back in the United States.
'The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force extends sincere condolences to the family and friends of the deceased,' acting Commissioner Rodney Adams said.
'We urge members of the public to refrain from speculation and allow the investigative process to confirm the identity through official channels.'
Tarrence's family had hired a private investigator to help find him.
'Everything prior to the point where he walked out of that house, he seems fine,' private investigator Carl DeFazio said during the search.
'The worst thing is not knowing,' he added. 'Every day that goes by is not good.'
On June 22, the couple arrived at world-famous Grace Bay Beach on the northeast coast of Providenciales - a pristine stretch of shoreline famed for its crystal-clear waters, powdery white sand and upscale luxury resorts.
After being notified of his disappearance, local police reviewed security footage near the Airbnb, which showed Tarrence - wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers - walking toward the tourist-heavy downtown area around 3.30am.
'That's a little bizarre in itself,' DeFazio told News 12, referring to the mystery of why Tarrence left the rental. 'He's in the middle of town. His wife was sleeping.'
The area where Tarrence disappeared is 'very safe,' according to the investigator, and the New Yorker had both his cellphone and wallet with him when he left.
'We have him on camera, and he walks into town, and then he basically disappears, and we haven't heard from him since,' he told the outlet.
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Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Hell in Haiti: How criminals have turned nation into a warzone that has spiralled into complete collapse, kids are raped or forced to become gang 'soldiers' and locals 'pray we're not next'
Port-au-Prince is no longer a capital. It is now a war zone under the reign of brutal gangs. Almost four years after Haiti's president was assassinated in his own bedroom, the country has spiralled into complete collapse. Heavily armed gangs now control an estimated 90 per cent of the capital city. The streets are littered with bodies, hospitals are burning, and children are being raped and recruited as soldiers. The state has all but disappeared. Gangs now wield more power than the government, according to senior United Nations officials, and they rule with unspeakable brutality. One resident of Port-au-Prince, who chose to remain anonymous for security reasons, told MailOnline: 'Nothing shocks me anymore. I have seen the worst of the worst. 'Death is now all around. I have seen more bodies on the streets than I could care for. I have witnessed many people being killed in front of my eyes. 'We are trapped here and there is nothing we can do. We just have to stay put and pray we are not next.' He adds: 'This is hell on earth. You are forced to walk on eggshells and be careful of who you can trust. This is no way for anyone to live.' This week, the UN reported that more than 3,000 have died in this year alone as a direct result of the gang violence. The bloodbath began on July 7, 2021, when Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was gunned down inside his private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince. He was shot 12 times by foreign mercenaries in what remains an unresolved conspiracy. Since then, no president has taken office. A string of interim caretakers have since resigned or have been fired. The national police force has been overwhelmed. The country's institutions, from courts to customs, power stations to schools have been overrun or abandoned. Into this vacuum surged the gangs, looking to seize the opportunity. Last week, the UN warned that criminal gangs have now gained control of a majority of the capital. Led by former police officers, drug traffickers and warlords, Haiti's gangs have formed brutal alliances. The most powerful is the G9 Family and Allies, a federation led by Jimmy 'Barbecue' Chérizier, a former cop turned notorious militia boss. Chérizier, who styles himself as a revolutionary, has openly declared war on the government and promised to lead a 'cleansing' of the elite. His methods are far from political - they are horrifying. His men have been filmed burning civilians alive, dragging mutilated bodies through the streets, and beheading police officers with machetes before setting their corpses alight. Citizens have been forced to witness innocent people getting their throats slit, and women being raped. Bodies are often left on the street for days as no one dares to move them. The 400 Mawozo gang, which operates on the city's outskirts, specialises in 'express kidnappings'. They abduct ordinary Haitians for as little as $100 in ransom and sexually assault women in front of their children. Dead bodies laying cold in front of homes have become a norm for the frightened citizens of Haiti's biggest cities In one infamous attack, they kidnapped 17 missionaries, including several children, and held them for weeks. The slaughter in Haiti has intensified to shocking levels. In December 2024, in the Cité Soleil district, gang members slaughtered nearly 200 people, mostly elderly residents accused of being 'witches.' Some were shot point-blank and others hacked to death, with their homes set ablaze. In October, another group, Gran Grif, one of the most violent, stormed the town of Pont-Sondé, killing at least people including infants and pregnant women. Many were stabbed or burned alive in their homes. In January 2023, 18 police officers were ambushed and executed by gangs. Their bodies were dismembered and hung from poles as a message to the state. The footage circulated on WhatsApp before the government could even respond. The killings sparked riots by police and pro-police gangs in the capital. The human toll in the ongoing crisis is devastating - over 1.3 million Haitians have been displaced in the past six months. Many now live in makeshift tents without food or clean water. UNICEF has documented a dramatic increase in sexual violence against girls under 18. While some are sexually exploited by the gangs, others are forced into prostitution. In some neighbourhoods, girls as young as three have been gang-raped during home invasions, according to local journalists. I have witnessed many people being killed in front of my eyes. 'We are trapped here and there is nothing we can do. We just have to stay put and pray we are not next. Some have gotten pregnant as a result of the rape and since abortion is legalised in the country, many have resorted to unsafe methods to terminate unwanted pregnancies, according to Amnesty International. Boys as young as 10 are also recruited into gangs and are often used as spies, delivery people, or construction workers. Others are trained to kill and commit atrocities. Six in ten hospitals have shut down or are barely functioning. Gangs routinely loot emergency wards, steal medicine and oxygen cylinders, and murder patients suspected of working with the police. Messaging platforms are awash with videos of families burned alive in their homes. Electricity grids have failed, schools have been shuttered, and roads are blocked with burning tyres and corpses. Armed checkpoints demand bribes or blood. Even the international airport was stormed by gangs, forcing it to close on numerous occasions. Earlier this year, Haitian officials were reduced to using commercial FPV drones to strike back, bombing gang-held streets with explosives dropped from the sky. To prevent reporting of the full scale of the crisis, several journalists have been killed, kidnapped, or left injured. In 2022, nine reporters were killed. Many have now been forced to go into hiding. Sources told Mail Online that some have resorted to writing under pseudonyms out of fear they or their families will be targeted. In December last year, a gruesome picture showed people injured on the floor after a group of armed men opened fire on journalists. A Kenyan-led peacekeeping mission, approved by the UN, has deployed just 1,000 troops. That is far short of the 2,500-plus needed. Many countries have been reluctant to send forces, fearing a repeat of the 2004 to 2017 UN occupation, which was marred by abuse and scandal. Meanwhile, the gangs are growing stronger. 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Haiti has been forced to deal with difficulties in the past, from 2010's devastating earthquake that killed over 2,000 people to Hurricane Matthew in 2016, where it is feared that over 1,000 people lost their lives. But this is no natural disaster. It has been orchestrated by criminal gangs who now have an iron grip on the nation. The country is known for its resiliency. But many have now been left questioning whether it can ever bounce back from this.


Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Who WAS Jeffrey Epstein's mate in Sydney? Blockbuster new phone data reveals shocking Australian link to vile paedophile's island hideaway
A mysterious new Australian link to Jeffrey Epstein has been exposed in a massive data leak that has revealed the movements of hundreds of visitors to the sex trafficker's island. Analyst Dhruv Mehrotra claims to have laid bare their trips to and from Epstein's Caribbean seedy resort on Little Saint James, in the United States Virgin Islands. Hidden data leaking from the mobile phones of more than 200 super-rich guests has revealed precise details of their movements - and where they originated from. A huge cache of metadata contained in a dark web database, which had specifically targeted the island, allowed him to pinpoint exact home addresses and workplaces. In among a string of addresses linked to wealthy areas of the US, Europe and the Middle East, was metadata from mystery locations within Sydney. The exact addresses have not yet been revealed, nor the identity of the phones' owner or owners. But the revelation of the claims have sparked fresh speculation over who in Australia had such close ties to the convicted paedophile's dark inner circle. Epstein died by suicide in a New York prison in 2019 after being charged with federal sex trafficking offences. He was accused of grooming young and underage women to be sexually abused by his powerful and wealthy contacts who remain shielded from public exposure. Epstein was a registered sex offender in Florida after pleading guilty to two felony prostitution-related charges in 2008. The White House has recently come under increasing pressure to release the full contents of the Epstein files, which allegedly name many well-known accomplices. In October last year, Mr Mehrotra, a journalist for tech site Wired, said he had uncovered mobile phone data from devices belonging to those jetting into the island. 'The data was so precise, we were able to map the paths of these visitors to within centimetres, including their neighbourhoods, buildings of origin and the paths they took to get to the island,' he said in a YouTube video outlining his analysis. 'These digital trails document the numerous trips of wealthy and influential individuals, seemingly undeterred by Epstein's status as a convicted sex offender.' Epstein purchased Little Saint James in 1998 for $7.95million and made the island his primary residence. An interactive map shows how Mehrotra plotted 11,279 coordinates from the exposed metadata, represented as red dots on the screen Ghislaine Maxwell (pictured with Epstein), former British socialite and Epstein's accomplice, was convicted in 2021 on five counts including sexual trafficking of children by force 'They were left exposed online by a location data broker with ties to the Defence Department, called Near Intelligence, between 2016 and Epstein's final arrest in 2019,' he said. 'Near collected data on more than 200 cell phones that visited the island. 'We don't know why they did that or which client or prospective client of Near decided to query the data in this way to produce the maps.' The firm, which had offices in Singapore and India, sourced its location data from advertising exchanges. Before a targeted advertisement appears on an app or phone, information about the owner is sent to bidding platforms and ad exchanges and often includes users' location data. The painstaking and detailed metadata reveals where visitors to Epstein Island spent most of their time, including the main house, beach and pool area, and when. But the information tracking on their phones wasn't limited to Little Saint James and the surveillance continued after the visitors left to return home or to their work. 'A lot of people were visiting the island, even after Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2008, and served jail time for procuring a minor for prostitution,' said Mehrotra. Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire, tracked to a million-dollar home by federal agents using location data pulled from her mobile phone 'If we keep following the data trail and we widen our view, we'll see that the tracking of visitors continues once they have left the island, and presumably gone back home.' The Near Intelligence data pinpoints 166 locations throughout the United States, in 80 cities across 26 states. 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The Independent
2 days ago
- The Independent
Police responses to missing people must change after teenager death, couple say
A couple have said police must change how they deal with missing person reports to better protect those at risk of harm following the suicide of a teenager who was reported missing several hours before he died. Jason Pulman's mother, Emily Pulman, told police her missing son was transgender, had self-harmed, had previously attempted to take his own life and could have boarded a train around 11 hours before he was found dead, aged 15, in Hampden Park, Eastbourne, in April 2022. An inquest into his death later found Sussex Police had responded inadequately to his going missing, one of several failings which contributed to Jason's death. Mrs Pulman and her husband, Mark Pulman, are now taking legal action against the force over an alleged breach of human rights, claiming it should have acted sooner given that Jason posed 'a heightened risk of suicide'. Speaking to the PA news agency, Mr Pulman, 50, said he still feared the police had not learned from Jason's case and were too 'stubborn' to change. He said: 'Our police force seems to think 'we'll just pop round, and grab a photo and have a quick look around the bedroom, then we will go back to the station and make a decision on what to do'. 'It's not good enough.' In court documents filed at the High Court by law firm Bindmans, Nick Armstrong KC, for Mr and Mrs Pulman, said that on April 19 2022, Mrs Pulman rang police at around 9.45am and told police the teenager was missing. Jason was graded as 'medium' risk, and the call handler also noted that there was 'no suicide intent believed', contrary to what Mrs Pulman told them, Mr Armstrong said. An officer did not access the report until around 1.30pm, and after Mrs Pulman had contacted police twice more to tell them Jason was believed to be travelling to London, most likely by train. The officer maintained Jason's risk as medium, did not contact British Transport Police (BTP) and 'did not even speak to Mark or Emily or attempt to do so', Mr Armstrong added, with no further actions raised as 'urgent'. While BTP were alerted at around 6.15pm, this was after Jason was spotted by a train guard, who later told an inquest he would have attempted to intervene had he known Jason was at risk. A Sussex Police officer did not attend the family home until around 7.30pm, and around an hour later, Jason was found dead in Hampden Park by a member of the public. Mr Armstrong said calls to Sussex Police are graded by a call handler, with the first officer attending the scene then reassessing the level of risk. He added that the force's policy states the first attending officer plays a 'pivotal role' in setting the pace of the investigation, and that 'golden hour' principles of finding missing people apply. As well as a missing persons policy, Mr Armstrong said a call could be graded as 'grade one' where there 'is, or is likely to be, a risk of danger to life'. Mr Armstrong said: 'Jason was at real and immediate risk of life-threatening harm. 'He exhibited a number of characteristics, and fitted a profile, which the defendant knew or ought to have known represented a heightened risk of suicide.' He continued: 'Generally, there was a serious delay of, in the end, nearly 11 hours, during which little if any effective action was taken. 'The defendant's action was in all respects slow, and strikingly casual, given the scale of the vulnerabilities and risks being reported. 'Had there been a reasonable response, there was a real prospect of a different outcome.' Mr Pulman told Jason's inquest that he made more than 100 calls to organisations, including train operators, hospitals and hostels after Jason went missing, to circulate his details and images. But many organisations would not take the information as he was not a police officer, and it took more than an hour for a hospital to agree to take Jason's description. HE told PA the system used is 'not good enough for people with mental health conditions' as it is 'too black and white'. Mrs Pulman, 39, said that changing how police respond to missing person reports would be an indicator of learning, as missing teenagers currently 'fall through the cracks' and reports are perceived as 'flippant'. She said: 'The beginning of the process is where it all went wrong.' She continued: 'If they are not admitting to the failings that happened for Jason, then they're admitting that there is nothing wrong with their system, which isn't the case.' She added: 'Kids Jason's age have so many markers of worry and stuff they are going through, which systems made all those years ago cannot cater for.' Following Jason's inquest, Sussex Police said it had introduced contingency measures for checking reports are resourced and graded appropriately. It also said that a multi-agency group had been launched to 'put measures in place to ensure vulnerable children with complex mental health needs'. In response to the High Court claim, a spokesperson said: 'Our sincere condolences remain with Jason's family following their tragic loss; however, we are unable to comment further whilst legal proceedings are ongoing.'