A $10,000 reward is now being offered for finding a Phoenix man reported missing Friday.
Benjamin Anderson, 41, was last seen December 31 around Seventh Street and Maryland Avenue.
In the reward poster, he is listed as 6 feet, 1 inch tall, over 250 pounds, possibly wearing shorts, blue zip sweatshirt and a black T-shirt. He also wears black glasses.
His car was found burnt over the weekend with no clues as to where he might be.
From usual to abnormal
Anderson, who was born and raised in Glendale, was supposed to have breakfast with Daniel Stahoviak, his friend of 24 years, on the morning of December 31.
Anderson called Stahoviak around 8 a.m. to cancel, citing fatigue. This wasn’t “unusual,” Stahoviak said, because Anderson had been up in northern Arizona visiting friends and had driven a lot. Approximately two minutes later, Stahoviak texted him about an issue related to his work as an executive concierge manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Anderson replied that it had been resolved.
Stahoviak told The Arizona Republic that was the last time he talked to Anderson.
Around 6 p.m., Stahoviak received a call from Anderson’s aunt, Suzanne, saying she hadn’t heard from him. He said that he would go over to his apartment. Stahoviak tried texting his friend, but the messages were not being shown as delivered, indicating Anderson’s phone was off. As he was leaving, Anderson’s other friend, Susan, called Stahoviak saying that Anderson was not responding to her calls and that they went straight to voicemail.
When Stahoviak arrived at Anderson’s apartment, much was amiss.
His lights were on, his car was gone, there was money strewn on the counter, and his credit cards were in a little bowl next to the front door. Anderson was not there.
The normally tidy Anderson had a wet towel on his bed, which was unmade, and there were some clothes on the floor in the kitchen.
Stahoviak started making phone calls butno one had heard from him.
Another sign something was awry: Stahoviak guessed Anderson’s password to his ‘Find My Phone’ app on Apple, and the last time it showed a location was at Anderson’s apartment before 9 a.m. on December 31.
“He never turned his phone off so the fact that his phone hasn’t been pinged since and isn’t broadcasting any signals since then is highly unusual,” Stahoviak told The Arizona Republic.
In a written comment to The Arizona Republic, Sergeant Andy Williams of the Phoenix Police Department confirmed that Benjamin Anderson is listed as a missing person, and that the investigation remains open as of Sunday evening. It was officially reported to the police around 7:30 p.m. December 31.
Friends find vehicle with 3 strangers in it
Anderson’s other friends came to the house and started to call Lexus. Anderson drove a 2020 White Lexus UX, which had GPS tracking on it. When they contacted Lexus, Stahoviak said that the company triggered its active tracking measure, but would not disclose the car’s location, allegedly saying that they would only disclose that information to the police.
A friend of the group’s called the police. Stahoviak said that the group of friends tried to get the Phoenix Police Department to call Lexus, but the police would not do it.
Stahoviak said that they started putting more pressure on Lexus and at, some point, got somebody to disclose that the vehicle was near Interstate 17 Black Canyon Highway. The group headed over to the hotels in the area.
At around 10 p.m. December 31, the friends called the Phoenix Police Department, whichconfirmed, according to Stahoviak, that Lexus called them around 35 minutes prior and would dispatch someone to the location that Lexus had given.
They received a phone call from an officer, who was at Super 8 by Wyndham off the I-17 and Northern Avenue, the car’s last recorded place, and said, according to Stahoviak, that the car was not there and that there was nothing further the police could do. Stahoviak also said that the officer informed them that the spot was a known drug location.
According to Stahoviak, Anderson did not do drugs and rarely drank.
The friends decided to keep looking at hotels in the area and drove to the Sheraton on the other side of I-17. They went to the fourth level of the parking garage, where Stahoviak said he saw three people sitting at Anderson’s car, none of whom were Anderson.
He described seeing a woman, approximately 5 feet, 11 inches tall, with blonde hair and a bright pink beanie, standing on the passenger’s side. There was a male of average height, with dark curly hair and light skin, either Latino or white, standing outside on the driver’s side.
Stahoviak was unable to get a good look at the third person in the car.
It was around 12:25 a.m. Saturday morning and the friends went around the corner to call 911 and get a nearby security guard to help.
The three people drove off promptly in Anderson’s car and the friends chased after them, going north through a dirt lot and over curbs. At one point, Stahoviak says that they thought the car was going to purposely back into them and that the three individuals in Anderson’s car turned back down the frontage road going the wrong way with their lights off.
“That’s when we thought, ‘This is getting way too dangerous,'” he said.
Stahoviak says it took around 20 minutes for police to show up, and that when the officer did arrive, he was unable to find anything.
The friends returned to Anderson’s condo in the hope of finding clues to their friend’s whereabouts. Stahoviak says that they were able to get Lexus to reset Anderson’s account, giving Stahoviak access to the Lexus app so that he could look for the missing car. The car was off, and when Stahoviak asked Lexus what that meant, the company allegedly replied that somebody perhaps had tampered with the tracking device.
They said it was in 85021 near a park north of the Sheraton, Stahoviak said.
Around 4 a.m. January 1, they found Anderson’s car in the UEI College parking lot, badly burnt and destroyed.
“His Louis Vuitton bag was in the trunk. He had purchased some vanity lamps that were left burned, but he was nowhere to be seen,” Stahoviak said.
Anderson’s aunt, Suzanne, who resides in Sun City and owns the vehicle, had already reported the vehicle as stolen. Anderson’s case was eventually elevated to a “suspicious disappearance,” according to Stahoviak.
Anderson ‘always saw the good in people’
Stahoviak met Anderson junior year at Centennial High School in Peoria, and says that the two “have been connected at the hip” ever since.
He says that Anderson has never gone missing before and had no enemies, to the best of his knowledge.
“Ben always saw the good in people… he took care of his parents, he took care of his aunt and he did everything for them and nothing for himself… he was helping his aunt remodel her house… that’s why there were lamps in the trunk,” Stahoviak said.
Susan Dzbanko, Anderson’s friend of 22 years, told The Republic “there is possibly, literally hundreds of people that are praying for him and are thinking about him, all the way from California to New York City.”
Stahoviak said he was frustrated with Phoenix police.
“Of course, we’re more concerned than anybody else, we found the car, the first time and the second time, you didn’t. And it was only us fighting with Lexus and driving around to get you guys to come out. and when we were chasing them on the phone with 911, the police didn’t show up until over 20 minutes later.”
On who might know more about what is going on, Stahoviak says the three people he saw in Anderson’s car “know something.”
“That car isn’t something you can just hotwire, it is a sophisticated vehicle and they have the keys to it,” Stahoviak said.
The Phoenix Police Department didn’t respond further.
Anyone with information about Anderson’s disappearance are asked to call the Phoenix Police Department at 602-262-6151 or Silent Witness at 480-948-6377.
Tara Kavaler is a politics reporter at The Arizona Republic. She can be reached by email at tara.kavaler@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter: @kavalertara.