SAMANA — Two Americans’ last scheduled night in the Dominican Republic, the couple shared a final drink in town with their new Canadian friends.
Then Orlando Moore and Portia Ravenelle said goodbye, packed their bags and climbed into their rental car for the long, dark drive to the airport.
Their plane was scheduled to depart from Santo Domingo about 2 a.m. But Moore and Ravenelle did not board it. They did not return their rental car, either. Social media posts stopped. Their phones went dark.
Moore, 43, and Ravenelle, 32, may have been last seen by that couple from Nova Scotia, who said Ravenelle was nervous about making a 100-mile drive to an airport for their 2 a.m. flight on March 27.
Cheryl Freeman and her boyfriend Carter Washington met the pair while they were all staying at the Gran Bahia Principe Cayacoa in Samana.
Ravenelle told Freeman the rental car company had warned them that locals would recognize the white Kia they were driving as a rental and may try to mug them, Freeman told CNN.
Dominican Republic National Police Col. Frank Felix Duran Mejia told CNN that an unconscious woman was found lying on the route that led to the international airport in Santo Domingo. They said the woman fit the description of Ravenelle.
The unidentified woman was rushed to the Doctor Dario Contreras Hospital in critical condition. She later died on April 4.
The man who they believe to be Orlando Moore was found on March 31, at sea near Sans Souci, Duran Mejia said.
The man’s right arm bore a tattoo that read, “Milano.” His body was in the advanced stages of decomposition, CNN said.
Authorities are fingerprinting the victims to identify them and autopsies are underway.
Moore and Ravenelle have not been heard from since they checked out of the all-inclusive resort late on March 26.
Freeman said Ravenelle told her she and Moore had gotten a good deal on their flights home without realizing it was so far away from the resort where they were staying in Samana.
Freeman said she has not been contacted by authorities about Ravenelle’s and Moore’s disappearance, and only learned they had gone missing after receiving frantic emails from Ravenelle’s family members.
Their families say it is completely out of character for either one of them to go off-grid.
The pair flew to the island on March 23 and met Freeman and Washington at breakfast at the resort where they were all staying on March 25, Freeman said.
The couples made plans to spend the day together on March 26, taking the missing couple’s rental car to El Limón to meet a friend of one of the bartenders at the resort for guided sightseeing on horseback, which Moore had arranged.
While driving to the city, which is just about 15 miles from Samana, Freeman said Ravenelle shared how nervous she was about making the drive to the airport for their return flight to New York.
During the drive a group of local men on motorized bikes rode up to their car, and Ravenelle told Moore not to roll down the windows.
On the way back, Freeman said Ravenelle kept asking Moore to be sure they had enough gas in the vehicle to make it to the airport without stopping.
The couples went their separate ways for dinner, Freeman said, and reconnected at around 8.30 p.m. to go to a disco in Samana, where the foursome shared a bottle of rum.
The bartender was also at the disco, Freeman said.
The two couples then said their goodbyes in the lobby at the resort between 9.30 p.m. and 10 p.m. and Ravenelle and Moore said they were going to pack and then get on the road to head to the airport.
Washington sent an email to Moore, Freeman said, wishing them well on the drive, but never got a reply.
Ravenelle and Moore had each been uploading photographs of their trip to social media throughout their stay in Samana but have gone silent since the day they vanished.
Moore’s worried sister told NBC news that she had been in contact with police both in the Dominican Republic and in the United States but that no one has heard anything.
“This is definitely not (like) my brother,” Lashay Turner said. “He’s not going to run off on a hiatus and don’t tell his family and his daughter. I’m scared, I don’t know what’s going on.”
Turner said she filed a report with Mount Vernon police on March 29, but authorities said no such report has been filed.
“When these things happen, you always think of the worst, but we are hoping for the best,” Edith Walters, Moore’s 91-year-old grandmother, added.
Ravenelle’s family has not spoken publicly and they have privatized her Facebook account.
People in the Dominican Republic tend to go out of their way to protect tourists of any nationality.
But Samana in the northern part of the country has had grisly outliers of crime, including a French national who was crucified on his yacht.
https://news.sky.com/video/missing-couples-car-pulled-from-caribbean-11692161