Elderly man’s 2003 disappearance still a mystery

SAN DIEGO  — The daughter of an 83-year-old man who mysteriously vanished from his downtown San Diego apartment 10 years ago Tuesday said she will never give up trying to find out what became of her father.

Marie Eck, 53, of Clairemont said she thinks about her dad every day. “It’s like it happened yesterday,” Eck said.

Antonio Cruz, an Army veteran and former employee at North Island Naval Air Station, left his 10th Avenue home he shared with a girlfriend about 6:30 a.m. on May 28, 2003, to walk to the downtown post office to pay his utility bill. He was never seen or heard from again.

Surveillance video shows Cruz never made it to the post office. Police search dogs tracked his scent to a nearby corner and then the trail went cold.

Detectives found $25,000 missing from a safe in Cruz’s apartment. It had apparently been opened with the combination. A gun that he kept under his bed, but never used, was also gone, Eck said.

Eck said her father kept the cash for a rainy day in case one of his seven children had an emergency.

About 10 days later, someone in Mexico cashed a number of checks from Cruz’s bank account, which had $48,500 in it. The checks, made out to a bogus sheet metal company, totaled $48,000, Eck said.

To add to the mystery, someone had gone to the post office and changed Cruz’s address to one in San Antonio where Cruz was born. That address in Texas also turned out to be bogus.

Eck said that detectives reviewing border crossing surveillance tape saw a man who was possibly Cruz sitting in the back seat of a car entering Mexico with two other men who then returned without him.

Still, all the leads went nowhere.

Despite an extensive search on both sides of the border, neither police detectives nor a private investigator hired by the family ever turned up a trace of Cruz.

The 83-year-old had 22 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. Two of his daughters died last year. His wife, who had Alzheimer’s disease, died two years after Cruz disappeared. The two had never divorced.

Eck said it is hard for her family and for her five children, who have never forgotten their grandfather.

“I believe in my heart that he was taken across the border and murdered,” Eck said. “They took his money and they took his life.”

She said her father’s girlfriend has since moved to Ensenada.

Cruz’s case is being handled by the San Diego Police Department’s homicide unit. It is classified as a missing person under suspicious circumstances.

It is not believed that Cruz was involved in any kind of criminal enterprise, police said.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477, where tipsters may be eligible for a $10,000 reward for information leading to the capture of those responsible for Cruz’s disappearance.

“I can only pray that some day I have closure,” Eck said. “This is my father and I want to know what happened to him.“