Police found no foul play in Daniel Robinson’s disappearance. His father says new clues show otherwise
David Robinson has never given up hope in finding his son, Daniel, who mysteriously vanished from a worksite in Arizona in 2021. He tells Andrea Cavallier about promising new leads in his personal investigation
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It’s been over two years since a young geologist mysteriously disappeared in the Arizona desert without a trace. But his father hasn’t given up hope on finding answers and wants law enforcement to look into new evidence that suggests foul play.
David Robinson traveled to Orlando, Florida last weekend for CrimeCon 2023, where he set up a booth and shared with attendees the story of his missing son Daniel.
“This is a lifeline for Daniel’s case,” he told The Independent during the event, his second year attending. “Sometimes families don’t have a platform, but CrimeCon provides that for us.”
Daniel, a 24-year-old geologist, was last seen on 23 June 2021 as he was leaving a worksite in the Arizona desert in Buckeye – about 35 miles west of Phoenix. Local police said there was no indication of foul play and the investigation has slowed to a standstill.
But Mr Robinson has grown increasingly frustrated with the local authorities, forcing him to take matters into his own hands.
In an interview with The Independent and during a panel at the CrimeCon event on Sunday, Mr Robinson talked about how a private investigator he hired uncovered a plethora of information he believes will lead to answers in his son’s case.
“There are things that I found out about my son’s apartment that need to be looked at by law enforcement,” he said, revealing that it was believed someone was likely in Daniel’s apartment in Tempe, Arizona, after he had gone missing.
When he and Jeff McGrath - the private investigator, gained access, the apartment was relatively clean, but the bedroom was “really messy,” he explained at the panel on Sunday.
While Mr Robinson assumed his son had just not cleaned his room, Mr McGrath, who no longer works for the family, told him that it looked more like “somebody digging and looking for something.”
But unable to confirm that Daniel made the mess himself, his father kept pressure on local law enforcement to look into their findings, to process the apartment and overall take the case more seriously.
“My team and I [were] able to convince them to do the forensics on everything, all of the electronics that my son owned, from the gaming system to his personal computers,” Mr Robinson said.
He then revealed they had received results of the testing, which showed that someone “was in there searching on his computer, going through his files” after Daniel had gone missing.
Now his goal is to get law enforcement to look into those forensics of his apartment, and ultimately have his son’s case transferred to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
Mr Robinson told The Independent that, “some kind of foul play happened, I just don’t know what and that’s what I’m looking for.”
He added that this could mean that Daniel was held at gunpoint and someone was keeping him captive, noting that there are drug cartels and reports of human trafficking in the area.
“I’m a man of faith, I believe in God,” he added. “So my faith is to just always hold on to the hope that my son is still alive. I just got to find him.”
On 19 July, a rancher found Daniel’s busted vehicle – a 2017 Jeep Renegade – in a ravine three miles away. His keys, clothes, boots, and cellphone were also found. According to a crash report, the vehicle sped up just before the crash.
While the local authorities have found no evidence of foul play, Mr Robinson believed otherwise and hired a private investigator who found evidence that there could have been a crime.
“I knew my son had not just crashed his Jeep, taken off his clothes and ran off to join a mostary,” he told The Independent. “No, that’s not what happened.”
Mr Robinson’s private investigator found that the Jeep’s airbag control module revealed that the car was driven 11 miles after the airbags were released and that the ignition was cranked 46 times.
He said this evidence led the private investigator to believe the scene was staged to look like a crash - information that was handed over to the Buckeye police.
The police department then hired an accident reconstructionist who concluded that the ignition had been cycled 44 times after the crash, a detail described as an "unanswered anomaly."
"There is insufficient evidence to scientifically connect the Jeep to another crash or support a theory the Jeep crash, as found, was staged," the reconstructionist wrote in a 15-page report. “The driver of the Jeep drove it into the ravine, and having rolled and unable to proceed further, abandoned the Jeep as it lay."
Mr Robinson challenged the report, arguing that the reconstructionist went by photo evidence while his private investigator had examined the vehicle in person.
This private investigator also found that there had been red paint transferred onto Daniel’s blue Jeep - which made him think that there was a crash before it ended up in the ravine. There was at least one crash in the vehicle’s history, police have said. But it’s not clear when the paint was transferred.
The Jeep was found nearly a month after Daniel was reported missing, yet the rancher who found it told police it didn’t believe that timeline as he would’ve noticed it before a month had gone by.
Mr Robinson pointed out that if his son had died in the crash in the ravine, his body would be there. And if he had survived and walked off, there would be signs.
The case has been worked on by Buckeye Police, but Mr Robinson said the department “very much sensualized” his son’s case and he wants it turned over to Sheriff Paul Penzone with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office where it can get the attention it needs.
Mr Robinson, who joined Gabby Petitio’s family at CrimeCon on Sunday to speak about Daniel’s case and the lack of resources in the investigation, has previously pointed to Petitio’s case as a prime example of police properly using their resources and how her remains were discovered not long after she was reported missing.
But with the Buckeye Police Department, “it’s like they’re reluctant to use the resources.”
The Robinson family has a website with information on the case, pleasehelpfinddaniel.com, and provides updates on its social media platforms.
A GoFundMe detailed Mr Robinson’s plans for next steps in the case and how he will foot the bill.
“I plan to have a sit-in at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office this fall to demonstrate my seriousness when I asked Sheriff Penzone to open an independent investigation into my son’s case and do the forensics work that hasn’t been done to date,” he wrote.
“I am covering the costs to house evidence and forensics that law enforcement is slow to do. They pass the responsibility while I pay monthly to accommodate things that should be in taxpayers’ evidence lockers at a police department.”
Mr Robinson said he will continue his efforts to find his son, but also notes the good things that have come even in tragic circumstances.
“Since my son’s disappearance, I have met many families with stories of their missing loved ones. That helped me to become an advocate for them. I saw the disparities and the mishandling of a case from law enforcement. I could not resist assisting other families when I could. I built a platform that I hope to grow and could help more families.”
He continued: “I want to continue and build on my social media platform. I founded the Daniel Robinson Foundation to help other families not go through the pain I had when law enforcement broke down, and my family did not have the resources needed to search.”