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Family, police search for missing UMass Boston student

Print | Comments () Posted by Martin Finucane April 30, 2011 01:35 PM

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Courtesy the Davis family

By Matt Byrne, Globe Correspondent

Police and relatives are searching today for a 22-year-old student who sent two mysterious letters to friends before he was reported missing yesterday, according to police.

Brendan Davis, a computer science major at the University of Massachusetts Boston, was last seen Tuesday at a Theatre District bar about 11:15 p.m., said his mother Caralyn Davis, 45, in a phone interview. He had three beers while watching a sports broadcast, chatted with some bar regulars, and left, his mother said.

"We’re a tight-knit family," said Caralyn, in a tearful phone interview. "We’re very concerned." Today Caralyn Davis and her husband, Steve Davis, are tracking their son's last known whereabouts, and are seeking information about Brendan.

Davis is 6-feet 3-inches tall, with brown hair and eyes, and about 190 pounds. He was possibly wearing a gray fedora and gray Boston Red Sox hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans, his mother said.

Boston Police are investigating, but do not believe foul play is involved, said Jamie Kenneally, police spokesman, in a phone interview.

The parents were contacted by two of their son's friends, who each said they received a strange letter from Brendan Wednesday. They arrived in Boston Friday morning and filed a police report, Caralyn Davis said. The letters were sent by priority mail and post-marked Tuesday.

One of the missives, sent to an ex-girlfriend, said only that she should take care of his two cats, Davis's mother said. The other letter, sent to a friend and containing house keys, said that his Back Bay apartment was paid for through May and that the friend should use it as a "summer place," Caralyn said in a phone interview.

"He didn’t really say he was going away," Caralyn Davis said. "He just indicated that he wasn’t going to be at the apartment."

Brendan Davis also failed to show up Wednesday to his clerical job at a Boston shipping container company, said Bill Weigele, a supervisor at Columbia Container Services located in Boston harbor. Reached by phone, Weigele said Davis was reliable, and had worked for the company for two years.

"He was very well grounded, very level-headed, again not your typical devil-may-care college student," Weigele said.

At his Back Bay apartment, where Brendan Davis lived alone since breaking up with the ex-girlfriend who received the letter, his parents said they found little missing or out of place, but his Massachusetts identity card and his student ID were still there. His passport, however, was missing, Caralyn Davis said. He also apparently left his cell phone but took its SIM card, the memory chip that contains his address book and unique information that is transferable to another phone.

Neither the man's credit cards nor his passport have been used in recent weeks, his mother said.

Anyone with information regarding Brendan Davis's whereabouts should contact Boston police at: 1-800-494-TIPS.