When twenty-nine-year-old travel writer Claudia Kirschhoch told her parents a work assignment was taking her to Cuba, they were far from thrilled. Although relations were improving between the communist country and the United States, the red island was not yet rolling out the red carpet for American tourists. When their daughter phoned the following day saying the Cuba trip had been cancelled and she had been re-routed to Jamaica, Fred and Mary Ann Kirschhoch were relieved.
Although Claudia coveted Cuba, she was cool with a Jamaican jamboree– and jam she did. For two evenings, she lived the Caribbean night life, dancing at a reggae club, skinny dipping, and smoking a little weed.
Claudia, however, did not return home when scheduled and there has been no trace of her in over twenty-four years. Her parents believe employees of a Jamaican inn know more than they are saying about her disappearance.
Claudia Kirschhoch
Raised in Morristown, New Jersey, Claudia Kirschhoch had recently moved into an apartment in Astoria, Queens, New York. She was an assistant editor for the Manhattan-based Frommer’s Travel Guide and was a last-minute substitute included in a travel junket sent to the new Sandals Resort in Havana, Cuba.
On May 24, 2000, Claudia and three other travel journalists flew to Montego Bay, Jamaica. From there, the group was scheduled to fly to Havana, but were informed they were being denied entry into Cuba due to increasing tensions with the United States over the ongoing Elian Gonzalez affair, briefly described in the link below.
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Cuba Cancelled
In an effort to placate the writers, Sandals Resorts offered a complimentary week at several resorts throughout Jamaica. Claudia and fellow travel journalist Tania Grossinger were given one in Negril. The women were re-routed to the beach resort town on Jamaica’s western coast until they could book return flights to New York.
Negril, one-hundred-thirty-five miles from the capital of Kingston, had a population between 3,000-4,000 people at the time, but was filled with tourists year-round.
Tourist Town
Claudia and Tania made the most of their Jamaican layover. Though the women had only recently met, they hit it off and partied through the evenings of May 25 and 26.
Tania was able to book a flight back to New York on May 27, but issues with Claudia’s visa prevented her from reserving a flight home. She planned to continue staying at the Negril resort until more flights became available.
The two women had breakfast together at 8:00 the morning before Tania returned home. Claudia told her she may go to Kingston to shop for reggae albums not sold in the United States. Tania, having been in Jamaica several times, cautioned her about the country’s capital, where drugs and crime were major problems. She believed she convinced Claudia not to go there.
Claudia also mentioned of going to Ocho Rios, another beach resort town in northern Jamaica, approximately eighty-five kilometers (fifty-three miles) from Kingston and one-hundred-seventy-five kilometers (one-hundred ten miles) from Negril.
Tania Grossinger
Travel Writer
Claudia was seen in the Negril Sandals Resort hotel lobby later that morning. That afternoon, a lifeguard saw her walking along the beach away from the resort. She was wearing a t-shirt over a bikini and carrying a portable radio.
These were the last sightings of Claudia Kirschhoch.
Last Seen On The Beach
Her visa hang-up having been resolved, Claudia was scheduled to return home five days later on June 2. When she failed to arrive at work, Frommers contacted her parents in New Jersey. After learning their daughter had not been on any flights entering the United States, they reported her missing.
Claudia Does Not Return Home
Sandals Resorts had also reported Claudia missing after the hotel’s maids found she had not slept in her bed for several days. Everything in her room seemed normal when searched by hotel security. Most of her clothes were neatly folded in her suitcase, the only exceptions being a white t-shirt and bikini, the outfit consistent with the clothing she was last seen wearing by the lifeguard.
Claudia’s passport, return plane ticket, credit and ATM cards, cell phone, camera, and $180 in cash were found in the hotel safe. All of the items were taken to the Sandals Resorts manager’s office.
Claudia’s Room
Jamaican police, aided by an American search and rescue team including FBI agents, scoured the island for Claudia. A search dog tracked her scent to the home of Anthony Grant, a twenty-seven-year-old bartender at the Sandals Resort. At the home, the dog hit on a pair of boots, a pair of gloves, and a knife.
While searching Grant’s Toyota Corolla, the dog also seemed to hit on Claudia’s scent in the back seat and trunk. A strand of hair in the back seat was later identified as hers. In addition, police learned Grant had recently changed his car’s seat covers.
The boots, knife, and mat in the back seat of Grant’s car were sent to the FBI Laboratory in Washington, D.C. A minute amount of blood on the knife’s blade was recovered, but it was too small to make any determinations.
Trail Picked Up
Grant and Claudia were seen partying together at Alfred’s Night Club in the evenings before her disappearance and he admitted taking her to his home afterwards. He had called in sick for work on May 28, the day after Claudia was last seen and also did not show up for work after being questioned by the police. Shortly thereafter, he was fired from Sandals Resort.
The Bar Where Claudia And Grant Had Met And Danced
Fred and May Ann Kirschhoch believe Anthony Grant knows what happened to their daughter, but authorities found no evidence tying him to Claudia’s disappearance, and he has not been charged with any crime. The results of a polygraph test administered to him by Jamaican police were inconclusive.
I could not find a picture of Anthony Grant.
A Suspect Emerges But Is Not Charged
Because Claudia was last seen on the beach wearing a bikini and t–shirt, which were her only clothes known to be missing, police investigated the possibility she had drowned. The water at the area of the beach where she was last seen, however, was not deep and the current was weak.
Authorities do not dismiss the possibility that Claudia Kirschhoch drowned but consider it unlikely, believing her body would have surfaced.
The Beach Where Claudia Was Last Seen
Fred and Mary Ann Kirschhoch believe Sandals Resort employees hindered the investigation into their daughter’s disappearance.
The license plates of all vehicles entering and leaving the resort were recorded; the logbook for May, however was inexplicably missing. In addition, a videotape from a surveillance camera mounted near Claudia’s room had mistakenly been recorded over before being viewed. Furthermore, Claudia’s room had been cleaned by housekeeping, cleared by security, and rented out to other guests before the potential crime scene could be processed for clues.
Capping off the series of unfortunate events, Claudia’s cell phone was missing when her parents went to claim it.
Fred And Mary Ann Kirschhoch
Claudia’s Parents
In 2002, Fred and Mary Ann Kirschhoch filed a lawsuit against Sandals Resorts, charging them with willfully destroying evidence and causing emotional stress. The two sides settled out of court in 2005.
The Kirschhoch’s also claim the Jamaican police did not cooperate with them and would not let them examine the investigative file.
Is Sandals Resort Negligent?
After Claudia was reported missing and news of her disappearance spread through the area, several Negril residents reported seeing a woman resembling her living in the hills with a Rastafarian man. Jamaican police investigated the reported sightings but say there is no information indicating the woman was Claudia.
Sometime after Claudia’s vanishing, her parents were mailed an anonymous letter purporting their daughter had died from convulsions after being slipped a date-rape drug at a party. A private investigator hired by the Kirschhochs found nothing to support the claim.
In July 2005, over five years after Claudia’s disappearance, a Jamaican man phoned a United States radio station claiming two men had told him she was buried in a fifty-five-gallon drum. Again, no evidence was found supporting the contention.
Claims Made But Not Proven
Claudia Kirschhoch’s disappearance is sandwiched between the noted disappearances of two other American women from the Caribbean. Twenty-three-year-old Amy Bradley disappeared in Curacao in 1998 and eighteen-year-old Natalee Holloway vanished from Aruba in 2005.
Investigations into Amy’s disappearance have uncovered evidence suggesting she may have been kidnapped and forced into the Caribbean sex industry; those into Natalie’s disappearance show that she likely met with foul play, and she was declared “dead in absentia” in 2012. In 2023, a man confessed to murdering her.
No evidence has been found indicating if Claudia Kirschhoch has met with either scenario.
Here is the link to my write-up on Amy Bradley’s disappearance.
Amy Bradley Natalee Holloway
Claudia Ann Kirschhoch was last seen in Negril, Jamaica, on May 27, 2000. At the time, she was twenty-nine-years-old, five-feet-two-inches tall, and weighed one-hundred-five pounds. Her hair and eyes were brown and she had a tattoo of a phoenix on her right hip.
In May 2002, a judge ruled Claudia legally dead, saying it was unlikely she disappeared of her own accord.
Clauida Kirschoch would today be fifty-three-years-old. A $50,000 reward in American money is offered for information leading to her whereabouts. If you have any information, please contact any of the phone numbers on the poster.
Claudia’s Case Is Still
Clouded In Mystery
Claudia had a framed letter signed by Paul Bowles, her favorite author, hanging in her apartment. Her most beloved work of the American expatriate and composer was The Sheltering Sky. The 1949 novel of alienation and existential despair centers on an American woman who vanishes with nomads in the African desert in a state of shock following her husband’s death.
Some have suggested Claudia, inspired by her favorite literary work, chose to disappear. Her family and friends reject the scenario.
Did Claudia Choose to Disappear?
SOURCES:
- ABC News
- CBS News
- Charley Project
- Daily News Archives
- Los Angeles Times
- New York Times
- Travel Weekly
- Unsolved Mysteries
I wonder with all the advancements in DNA technology that they have now, that this case could be solved. I’m convinced Grant killed her.