Todos Santos Shaken by Recent Disappearance
http://www.latimes.com/news/yahoo/la-me-maureen14feb14004437...
By Geoffrey Mohan, Lisa Richardson and Robin Fields, Times Staff Writers
TODOS SANTOS, Baja California -- It's an uneasy bargain, made all along the Mexican coast: American expatriates get stylish homes and a little piece
of paradise. Mexican natives get a ready-made clientele for their shops, markets, hotels and bars. People mostly ignore whatever twinges of resentment
occasionally intrude on their lush, sun-drenched co-dependence.
If one town epitomized this winning formula, it seemed to be Todos Santos, a once-sleepy resort town of 4,000 (7,000 during the winter tourist season)
50 miles north of Cabo San Lucas, at the south end of Baja California.
Here, most Americans do not live in walled-off compounds. They live and mingle with the Mexican fishermen and merchants who founded the town.
Together the locals and the expatriates have forged an artists colony and outpost for big-wave surfers, a place of bohemian elegance that attracts
those put off by the more lavish resorts of La Paz and Cabo San Lucas.
But in the past week, the fragile alliance between gringo and Mexicano has been tested by the disappearance and suspected murder of Maureen Osterich,
an 82-year-old woman from Marin County.
Osterich, a retired architect and doyenne of the town's growing American retirement community, vanished Feb. 6, leaving behind only two small pools of
blood, some strands of long blond hair and the fevered buzz of a tropical mystery.
Police here say Osterich may have simply wandered off, victim of a fading memory and the heart problems that have plagued her. But her American
friends say there is no way Osterich would have left town without her faithful dog, Bart. The small mixed-breed pet continues to pace nervously beside
the seat that Osterich regularly occupied at Brown's Cafe, an expatriates' haunt on the edge of town.
Most Americans think the eccentric Osterich was murdered. They are fanning out over neighboring hillsides, searching deep in the dry, dun-colored
chaparral for her body, eager for results from Mexican police, who answer that it is time for patience.
"Everyone in the community, Mexicans and Americans, has been looking for her, but there is no trace," said Iker Algorri, owner of the cafe.
Concerns over Osterich's whereabouts arose late last week as the town's internationally known annual arts festival neared its climax. The streets were
full of tourists and the old woman was headed to an evening recital. She never arrived, vanishing sometime between 6 and 7 p.m.
Police found her abandoned Nissan compact about a mile outside of town, her keys and empty purse inside. The next morning, friends discovered the
puddles of blood, each about 5 inches across, in the empty parking lot where she rented out spaces for cars and campers.
What's left is a whodunit in a town where people are hard-pressed to recall another serious crime.
"It's a sad, very concerning thing, because Maureen had been here so long and made a life for herself," said Jane Perkins, a seasonal transplant from
Portland, Ore., who strolled the dusty back streets of Todos Santos on Wednesday morning.
"This is frightening for folks, but I still walk in the dark," she said, shaking her head as she strolled. "Maybe the world closes in on us, and maybe
we can't have that feeling anymore."
"That feeling" -- so cherished by Perkins and several hundred other retirees, artists and surfers -- is a laid-back, doors-unlocked sensibility
integral to the charm of this fishing and farming village.
From the highway that runs between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz, Todos Santos looks like any other colonial-era town. There is a modest ochre-facade
church on a traditional town square lushly planted with palms and laurel trees. There's the whitewashed General Manuel Marquez de Leon Theater, built
in 1944. Its faded scarlet scrolled parapets stand out from the staid facades along one of a handful of streets -- half of them unpaved.
But Todos Santos is like few other Mexican villages this size -- playing host to a dozen or so art galleries, Internet cafes, a spa and a yoga studio.
The casually elegant Cafe Santa Fe gives the town a restaurant that fans call the best on the Baja Peninsula. And next month, a local theater is even
staging a very un-Mexican play: "The Vagina Monologues."
In recent years, Todos Santos has increasingly begun to resemble a sort of Mexican version of Santa Fe, N.M., with a community of artists and their
patrons living there year-round, many of them northwest of town on a ridge overlooking the ocean. And with that, the genial relationship between
locals and newcomers has developed strains.
Foreigners' demand for homes has sent real estate costs soaring, displacing local farmers in favor of private homes and gated American enclaves.
In 1999, a local cooperative farm, or ejido, was accused of digging out palm trees by the truckload and selling them to resort owners in Cabo San
Lucas. The patchy clear-cuts marred the landscape and infuriated some Americans.
Also in 1999, the local English-language newspaper anguished over the treatment of a pack of starving stray dogs that hung out on the beach where
local fishermen kept their boats. The paper advised outraged gringos, in essence, to grin and bear it so as not to offend their hosts.
In the mid-1980s, when Osterich came to Todos Santos, American residents were rare. An architect by training, she had lived for many years in
Inverness, Calif., a quaint town on the Point Reyes Peninsula. Though friends would later joke that Osterich, a chain smoker, moved to Mexico to get
away from California's stiff smoking regulations, she found in Todos Santos an inexpensive, low-key haven. She acquired a block of property near the
center of town and soon gave her house an elegant Spanish style.
On the evening of Feb. 6, Osterich had been visiting friends Richard and Marge Olson, who left Santa Monica 16 years ago and opened a campground
outside Todos Santos.
Osterich drove off about 4:30 p.m., heading to her home to walk Bart and get ready for a reading at the local cultural center. After that, she planned
to attend a recital at the Marquez de Leon Theater.
Police saw Osterich walk Bart past their office at 5 p.m. Another resident saw her talking with a couple about an hour later near her house.
Marge Olson didn't worry when Osterich failed to show up at the Casa de Cultura at 8 p.m. She grew only mildly concerned when her friend didn't appear
at the theater an hour later, Richard Olson said. Among hang-loose locals, "it's not unusual for people not to show up," Olson said.
But then the dog appeared, alone, at Brown's. Friends became alarmed. By 10:30 p.m., Richard Olson had climbed through a window to search Osterich's
house. Nothing appeared amiss.
But when friends checked the walled parking lot across the street from her house the next morning, they made the macabre discovery of the blood, open
doors on the two vehicles parked there, and tools scattered on the ground.
In hindsight, residents recalled several burglaries at her home in the last few months, and her account of a dispute with her mechanic over money.
One resident, Patricia Baum, said there have been at least five attacks, including one rape, against foreign women at local beaches and in town over
the last four years. In one case, the culprits were imprisoned. The other cases remain unsolved.
Marcos Spahr, owner of Caffe Todos Santos, is crushed by guilt over his friend's disappearance. "I talked to her Wednesday, the day before she
disappeared," said Spahr, a former resident of Camarillo who moved to Todos Santos the same week as Osterich.
"She was being robbed for about a month," he said. "I was very concerned. I asked her, did she know who was doing it? And she said, 'Yes.' " Her
mechanic, identified only by a nickname, was responsible, she insisted. Once, she told Spahr, she kicked him out of her house after he walked in
through an unlocked door.
"She kicked him out and said, 'Don't ever come back again.' She said he looked at her in a very scary way. After that, she told me someone tried to
break in her door one night. I became very concerned then. I thought, 'If anything happens, I'm going to feel guilty.' And then, I thought, 'Oh, in
Todos Santos, nothing like that ever happens.' "
Now Spahr is one of dozens of Americans who assume she has come to a violent end.
The police are not convinced. For one, they say, the name she gave for her mechanic in the nearby village of Pescadero matches no one who lives there.
And the three mechanics they interviewed say they never did any work for Osterich, said Eduardo Ibarra, local commandant of the state judicial police.
"The people of this town are very imaginative," Ibarra said. "They like to talk about things that they heard as if they were fact. There are lots of
rumors."
Ibarra hotly blamed the American community for disturbing the crime scene, including breaking into the house and parking area.
"They didn't belong there; that's for the police," he said. "Her friends have tried to help, but they've also committed some errors. They contaminated
the scene and some evidence was destroyed."
Ibarra said that as far as he's concerned, he is looking at a case of a frail, elderly missing person. Numerous friends dispute that description,
saying Osterich was alert and relatively spry, despite a recent hospitalization.
The blood found in the parking area appeared to be mixed with saliva, Ibarra said, indicating that it may have been coughed up by someone who was
sick. In addition, despite what Ibarra described as an exhaustive search in a steamy environment where any corpse or carcass is soon marked by
circling buzzards, no body has been found.
"I saw them putting flowers by her house," Ibarra said, "I said, 'Why did you put flowers? People will see flowers and they're going to think she's
dead.' No one knows that. The only thing that does is alarm the Americans who live here."
The American community has collected nearly $800 to post as a reward for anyone who finds Osterich, but it has not been offered officially to allow
the police more time. The case has newspapers, radio and television abuzz in nearby La Paz.
Osterich's picture is circulating in local schools, where teachers have discussed her disappearance with students.
Police had begun sealing off Osterich's house Wednesday. There, a daybed still lies perfectly made in the center courtyard, a magazine and paperback
on a nearby table. In her studio, papers and pencils are scattered across her architect's drawing table, where she apparently still doodled with
plans.
Down the main street, plastic banners from the arts fair stir in the warm breeze, while day-tripping tourists from Cabo San Lucas wander in the midday
sun from gallery to espresso shop. Inside a nearby general store, owner Raul Salgado rocked slowly in a chair.
"The people are very angry and worried," he said. He shrugged when asked if Osterich would ever be found.
"If it's a crime," he said, "it can't be someone from here."
*
Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux and Richard Marosi and special correspondent Carol Pogash contributed to this report.
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