Just was reading a little about this case — Dana Boshell disappeared in July 2012, it appears (in terms of last contact with family and last bank account usage), but her disappearance wasn’t reported until October 2012. In the words of one detective working the Tampa-area case, “she literally fell off the Earth.” Here’s a little bit of context, here’s a bit more, and here’s some stuff from NAMUS. Boshell lived in Tampa, but she was apparently last seen in Orlando, FL with “her boyfriend” and her brother. As such, the boyfriend seems a logical person of interest. His name doesn’t appear to have ever been released, but there is this from WebSleuths (take with a grain of salt):
As to Dana specifically, from what I know, she knew a lot of people who were/are into a lifestyle that many of us would choose to avoid entirely. Coming from my wife who has spoke with Dana’s mother on the phone since all of this kicked off, Dana’s boyfriend is/has been the primary suspect. He’s a person who has done a lot of time in both prison and jail for various crimes. He’s pretty much stonewalled the police from the start. From what information I’ve been passed, he told the police he dropped her off, and never seen her again, yet a lot of her possessions ended up in his hands. He’s simply stuck to a very plain story that so far has been hard to disprove. Her family believes he either had something to do with her disappearance, or knows who did.
As to why it took so long to report, I’m simply not sure of that one. From my wife’s account, she didn’t say a thing about Dana missing for months, it sounded to me like it was much more of a recent thing at the time of it being reported as her missing. Her mother firmly believes Dana has been murdered, she says that she just “feels it”, it’s all truly sad. Hopefully at some point the truth of it all will come out, and that both Dana and her family will get the peace they deserve.
There’s also this, from the same thread:
“The police did come down from Tampa and interviewed quite a few people but never came up with anything.i was told there was too much land too cover from here toTampa.The nite before she moved to Tampa I asked how I could get in touch with her and she gave me an address in Englewood,so when her mother called me to see if I had heard from her I got in the car and went down to the address and asked for him or her,the woman ,who I later found out was his sister and the name he had given me was not his real name.At that point Dana had been missing for 2 months.Apparently I was the only one who had that info about the address.”
They all feel strongly that the boyfriend had something to do with her disappearance.
Here’s another look to the boyfriend, via the police:
“We’ve talked to her boyfriend. Her boyfriend has indicated that he dropped her off at her apartment. We’ve checked that apartment and there was signs of any unusual activity there. All her personal belongings or clothing were still there,” said Det. Larry McKinnon with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
Not sure if that’s a typo — “there was signs of unusual activity.” I’m reading that as “there were signs” (affirmative), but it could also mean “there wasn’t” (nothing to see here, folks).
Can’t confirm that’s actually her niece, but still … fairly damning.
There hasn’t been a lot of attention paid to this case — if you search Twitter for it, there’s only about six total tweets going back to October 2012. It seems like the family is fairly resigned to who did it, but it can’t be proven or brought to justice for some reason.
If you know anything, leave it in the comments.
