HOSTAGES KILLED, INFORMATION SAYS
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| Rick Tenenoff, Mark Rich and Dave Mankins |
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September 10, 2001
Members of NTM's Crisis Committee and the wives of Dave Mankins, Mark Rich and Rick Tenenoff agreed today that, given the available evidence, it was time for a family closure to the 1993 kidnapping.
On Jan. 31, 1993, armed guerrillas burst into the missionaries' homes deep in the Darién jungles of Panama. They kidnapped Dave, Mark and Rick at gunpoint. In January 1994, NTM missionaries Steve Welsh and Tim Van Dyke were kidnapped from an NTM school facility in Colombia. In June 1995, Colombian military forces located the bodies of Steve Welsh and Tim Van Dyke in the mountains north of where they were kidnapped.
Over the years, NTM sought the aid of humanitarian organizations, the US, Colombian and other Latin American governments, and the news media. The NTM Crisis Team followed countless leads. They gathered reports of sightings of the men in captivity, their activities and movements. NTM met with guerilla agents to appeal for the humanitarian release of the men.
But information gathered by NTM and others in years of painstaking and often dangerous investigation has led to the conclusion that Dave Mankins, Mark Rich and Rick Tenenoff were killed by their captors in mid-1996.
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