Kidnap in Oaxaca – Epilogue

POSTSCRIPT #1

When I got to San Salvador, I learned that the manager of the hotel, the assistant manager I was replacing and another hotel employee had been murdered a few days earlier. Had my car not broken down and my journey interrupted in Oaxaca, it is very likely that I would have been there as well. I decided to return to Costa Rica with Bob and Susie and lived there for the next year.

I also learned that instead of using the money and tickets her parents sent to fly home with Stefan, Saskia returned to the hippie community near Puerto Escondido and stayed for another six months.

A few years later, when I was living in New Zealand, I was contacted by Saskia after she’d seen a letter I’d written to Rolling Stone Magazine in February 1979. The letter explained that I was trying to get in touch with her because I was thinking of writing about the adventure we had shared in Mexico and that it was likely that Saskia, or someone who knew her, would be Rolling Stone readers. The editor had kindly published the letter with my address details and in October 1980 Saskia’s reply came from a small town in Oregon.

Stefan was fine, she was fine and she thanked me for my help. She added, however, that I couldn’t write anything about the experience unless I first had her approval. That was the last contact I have had with her and the reason I’ve changed her name and that of her son. The letter smelled of patchouli.

POSTSCRIPT #2

In 2013, I opened an email sent to me by ‘Saskia’s’ cousin Earnst in Germany. Saskia didn’t have or use computers so he’d been asked to help her and her three sons to tracke me down. But she’d spelled my name incorrectly (something my friends still do). So it wasn’t until he stumbled upon the’Kidnap in Oaxaca’ story on my SURFWRITER website that he realized that he was reading the story of what happened to his neice.

Dear mr. Feigel,
a couple of minutes ago I finished a phone call with my cousin Bianca Nicolson-Mclean.
She told me her story about the kidnapping of her son Sascha (born on 17th of march 1970) in 1972 at Mexico.
She also told me that she had been helped by a reporter of the LA Times. Without that man she never would have seen her son back again.
Bianca and her three sons had tried to find that man – for many years, but they had been searching for a Robert “Figle”.
I am German and I offered her to google with the German spelling of that name.
So I found your story about “Saksia Martin” an her kidnapped son “Stefan.

After I responded he send another email:

Dear mr. Feigel, Bianca would be very happy, if she could have any contact with you again after all those years.
Unfortunately our “old hippie” doesn’t have a computer. So the only way of communication is phone or letter – just the old way.

On the atached picture you can find my “hippie cousin” about 2 years ago.

I wasn’t a reporter for the LA Times, but I may have ‘infered’ this to the Embassy when they were so uncooperative because I’d tthreatened to send them the story.

It took me a few days to think about calling ‘Saskia’. Would she be pissed off for my descriptions of her difficult behavior during the saga? Would she want me to take the story off of my website?

As it turned out she simply wanted to thank me again for reuniting her son with her.

She had a lot of questions about life in NZ and my family, but was fairly vague about hers and her family. Although she did tell me that ‘Stefan’ was married, had kids and lived “not that far away.” That opened the door for me to ask her to see if he’d be willing to speak to me sometime. But the next time we spoke she told me that he “doesn’t want to go there.”

Basically, we ran out of things to talk about. She was clearly not that interested in telling me more about her life and she’d run out of questions to ask about mine. Then I received a disturbing email from Ernst. The email was originally from ‘Stephan’ and he’d forwarded it to me.

“I just wanted to let you know Bianca is gravely ill. She’s in nursing home called Royal Gardens in Grants pass Oregon. Phone number 541-476-8891 room A 12. She has been diagnosed with bile duct cancer but at this point does not like to accept or discuss. You can call or email me with any questions if you would like. I am sure she would like to hear from you.” The ‘you’ was Ernst, but he kindly suggested that I might like to call as well.

While I was still mulling over that offer I got another email from Ernst informing me that ‘Saskia’ had died.

Although she never asked me not to use her real name I haven’t changed it in my orignal account. Now that she’d gone I feel OK in revealing it for the first time. It was Bianca McLean-Sullivan. However I will continue use ‘Stefan’ for her son.

And I pray that she has found peace.

Kidnap in Oaxaca © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All rights reserved