Mauro Elias Escobar, Jose Guadalupe Gonzalez and Silvia Perez were last seen together on April 16, 2004, at a Wendy's restaurant near Greenspoint Mall in Houston. More than two decades later, none of them have turned up, and investigators have never publicly said what happened to them.
According to Yahoo News, the three were traveling together in Escobar's blue or gray 1996 Chevrolet Tahoe, bearing Texas license plate TBZ-77X, when they met at the fast-food spot in the city's Greenspoint area. Escobar was 21, Gonzalez was 38 and Perez was 24 at the time they disappeared, the outlet reports. Days later, the Tahoe was found stripped and abandoned at a wrecking yard in Humble, though the exact date of that discovery has not been pinned down.
The case was first explored by KHOU 11, which noted the trio has now been missing for more than 22 years. Perez had last been seen by her mother in Dickinson five days earlier, on April 11, before she turned up at the Wendy's with the two men, per the same Yahoo account.
A Stop at Her Mother's House, Then Silence
Per Texas EquuSearch, Perez was last seen at approximately 2:30 p.m. that day leaving her mother's house in Dickinson. She was driving a 1999 tan Chevrolet Silverado with Texas license plate 9KN-G70, the organization's case file states. It's not clear from available records how she came to be with Escobar and Gonzalez five days later at the Wendy's in Greenspoint.
Crime Solvers Central notes that Perez was accompanied at the restaurant by Gonzalez and Escobar, both of whom were described as friends of her boyfriend. Gonzalez and Escobar had both been living in Roma, Texas, in 2004, according to the Charley Project, a nonprofit database devoted to cold missing-persons cases.
Cash for Farm Equipment, Then Nothing
The Charley Project's file on Gonzalez adds a detail that has long puzzled those tracking the case: he was reportedly carrying a large amount of cash with him, intending to use it to buy farm equipment, when he vanished alongside Escobar and Perez. The organization states plainly that all three disappeared that day and have not been heard from since, and that foul play is considered possible, though no determination has been made public.
A NamUs case file for Escobar lists his date of last contact as April 15, 2004, a date that conflicts with the April 16 Wendy's sighting reported elsewhere. Federal and state missing-persons databases sometimes carry discrepancies like this when a case file is pieced together from secondhand reports, and nothing in the available record explains the one-day gap.
An Obituary Surfaces, but Questions Remain
This week, an obituary for a man named Jose Gonzalez was published on Legacy.com by San Jacinto Funeral Home & Cremation Services & Cemetery, with services listed as pending. The posting does not establish any connection to the long-missing Jose Guadalupe Gonzalez, and nothing in the record ties the notice to the 2004 case. More than 22 years after three people walked out of a Houston Wendy's and were never seen again, their disappearance remains exactly what it has been for two decades: unsolved.
