Family frustrated in search for missing man
NILAND -- Finding a loved one who disappears into Imperial County is no simple feat, Michelle Blair and her brotherin-law, Chris Hinkle, are learning. If he’s also homeless, it can border on impossible.
Both are trying to track down Tom Peterman, 38, who is Blair’s husband and Hinkle’s younger brother. According to Blair, his last confirmed location was at the El Centro Regional Medical Center emergency room on June 9.
Hinkle said while it is not unlike his brother, who has a history of drug use and mental illness, to vanish periodically, he always found a way to make contact. That has not been the case this time.
“Something is not right,” Hinkle said.
Blair and Hinkle, who are both in Ashland, Ky., said they have had trouble getting answers. They said in many cases their inquiries have met with a certain level of dismissiveness. They’ve been advised transients turning up missing is a pretty common problem hereabouts, that “it happens all the time.”
“That may be true there, but it doesn’t happen here all the time,” Hinkle said.
“I do understand that the Sheriff’s Office is very busy with a variety of issues and the investigator can only do so much,” Blair said. “But I have oftentimes felt as if I have had to ask them to follow up on certain questions that the officers, who are trained to deal with this sort of issue, should have already been thinking and investigating.”
Blair said she and her husband, whom she married in 2005, left Kentucky in late September or early October 2019 to find a place to relocate “for a fresh start.” Along the way, their car broke down near Niland and they wound up in The Slabs.
They were there together until April, when Blair decided to return home. “I decided I could no longer live in Slab
City due to the climate, our living arrangements, etc.,” Blair explained in an email. “I had tried for months to get him to leave with me, but he would constantly change his mind and wouldn’t leave.”
Blair said when she left Niland in April, “I had no money, no phone, nothing besides my two dogs.” Initially, she got only as far as Palm Springs, where she remained homeless while she tried to regroup.
She said her ID and all her documents had been stolen. “It took me until sometime in August to get a phone,” she said. “I was then able to get a bus ticket back to Kentucky.”
That’s when she began searching for her husband.
“Around the first week of August 2020, I called ICSO in Niland, and spoke to officer (Martin) Zavala regarding my concerns about not knowing where my husband was since April 2020,” Blair recalled. “He did say he knew my husband from patrolling the area and had seen him a couple of weeks prior at the United Food Store. Tom had been asking to use a phone to call his brother. Officer Zavala said he would be in Niland later that day. He was going to attempt to locate him and offer to let him call.”
However, Blair said she believes it is unlikely her husband would have her new number or even his brother’s. In either case, she said she didn’t hear from her husband or the deputy sheriff, so on Aug. 12 she filed a missing person report.
Blair said there have been rumored sightings of Peterman in El Centro, Calipatria, Niland, Slab City, Salton Sea, Mecca and Indio, but the only confirmed contacts occurred on June 8 and 9. On the first date, he was a suspect in a suspicious activity call. Blair said police made contact with her husband, but no summons or citation was issued.
The following day, according to an ICSO investigator’s report, Peterman reportedly visited the emergency room at El Centro Regional Medical Center.
Blair said there has been no activity on Peterman’s debit card or on his CalFresh account since April. However, since she and Hinkle began searching for him, they both have received “numerous violent and concerning ‘ ransom’ text messages from an unknown person requesting various amounts of money” up to $7,000.
“They requested the money for his safe return, or even phone communication,” Blair said. “The individual who sent the messages said they were part of a group of individuals who had kidnapped him and where holding him for ransom. Throughout the texts, I received threats to not contact the police.”
She said reported the threats to ICSO’s Niland substation and learned that when a deputy there attempted to call the number, he began receiving the ransom messages, too.
Blair described her frustrations with the search for her husband as being overwhelming. “It seems like every time we seem to get close to something being done in the case, it just leads to me having to place another email, phone call or voicemail,” she said.
She recalled asking about issuing a be-onthe-lookout (BOLO) alert for her husband and being advised by an officer that if Peterman is seen anywhere other than the patrol area of a deputy who is familiar with the case, “he will just be another guy on the street” unless his background is checked for some official reason.
Tom Peterman is listed as 5-foot-4 and approximately 140 to 150 pounds. He is described as balding and reportedly was last seen with a long beard and mustache. He has a number of tattoos, including lettering along his left rib cage in old English text, a cross tattoo between his shoulder blades, a tattoo of the sun on his left shoulder blade, the Roman number 13 on his right shoulder blade, the word “Hitman” in old English text on his arm below his right shoulder, Chinese symbols on the front right side of his chest, and faint lettering on the lower part of his right leg.
Blair said her husband is most likely will walk with a limp due to past ankle surgeries.
“As his wife, I am definitely trying to do everything possible to hopefully get some answers and ultimately find him,” she said.
Anyone with information regarding Peterman’s whereabouts should contact ICSO investigator Gerardo Quero-Lora at (442) 265-2047 or (442) 2652045, or ICSC dispatch at (442) 265-2021. The case number is 20081048.