The disappearance of a University of Texas at Austin graduate student and his wife continues to baffle family and authorities, as the couple mysteriously went offline during a road trip through Mexico to Chile last summer and have not been heard from since. Frank Guzman, a Ph.D. student, and his wife, Caroline Katba, were en route to Chile for Guzman's research on the Palestinian diaspora, embarking on a trip that was expected to span two months, but concerns grew after Guzman missed an online class and subsequent check-ins with his family ceased. "They're very adventurous people," Elizabeth Guzman, Frank's sister, remarked in an interview with FOX 7 Austin.
Constant communication was maintained until a week into their journey, which commenced on July 15, then abruptly, on July 22, Frank and Caroline went offline, at that point this wasn't immediately alarming due to the nature of their travels but as time passed without a word, the situation painted a bleaker picture. By September, the absence of Guzman in his academic commitments prompted a professor to alert the family, and Elizabeth shared with Yahoo News the near impossibility of international case filing, as the couple was last known to be in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico.
Attempts to involve various institutions have met with limited success; the university, FBI, and the U.S. Embassy were contacted, only for Elizabeth to encounter hurdles since there were no clear ties to drug trade activity involving the couple. An investigator was finally assigned in Coatzacoalcos and Frank is now officially listed as missing by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The ensuing months have seen Elizabeth struggling to get legal assistance which could help with accessing vital personal information that might shed light on their whereabouts, "We're trying to get legal help to access their information because that's really like that's the big thing that we need in order to accurately find them wherever they are," she explained to FOX 7 Austin.
Now, six months since their disappearance, the quest to locate Frank Guzman and Caroline Katba continues, with the family yearning for their return and Elizabeth stating, "It's gotten easier, just not better. Ideally, it would be better if they came back," according to her interview with Yahoo News. The hope persists as the Guzman family works on retaining an attorney to help navigate the complex mesh of U.S. and Mexican bureaucracies, all the while hoping sustained attention on the case can yield answers to their loved ones' fates, expressing a heartfelt belief "I think they deserve that because they're good people, and I think they should be home."
