Ask HN: My dead 16 years old daughter.

Dear reader,

It was the night of 27/28 november of 2015 when I got the call that my daughter was missing after a night out with her friends. We tried to reach her all night and looked everywhere with the support of the police. After a couple of hours we got sent home and at 9.57 am that morning I got a call from the police that two officers would visit my home for a chat. About 30 minutes later these officers did visit my home and gave me the most horrifying news I’ve ever had and ever will have that my daughter “committed suicide”. As it later turned out, my daughter Dascha was hit by a train at 5.22 am.

The police decided to close the case right at the train track; no further investigation was necessary, as this was an obvious suicide in their opinion. Lots of evidence was lost and/or not collected because of this decision. Because the police decided to not investigate this case, a group of volunteers ranging from private investigators to digital researchers (TDO) offered their help to find the truth about what really happened in Dascha’s final hours.

We know that her ID and her iPhone 5S were taken from her. Her ID was found a couple days after she died, but we didn’t find her iPhone until 6 weeks after the fatal night. Outside of the club she was seen with 3 boys pulling her by the hair and there were screams. We know there was a car at the spot in the forest right before and during the time Dascha was hit by the first train of the day. In addition to this, we’ve found a lot more that (at the very least) could be classified as “suspicious”. The police still didn’t think it was worth investigating. In fact, all official reports I’ve seen contained numerous errors and inconsistencies.

The digital researchers who vouched their help found quite some interesting data in Dascha’s iPhone 5S. The Health/Fitness app provided us with insights in her movements that night and the hours leading up to that point. Binary data of a set of coordinates in SnapChat’s location data provided us with a Geofence around the city of the club, with an additional GPS coordinate placing her phone right outside of the club at a very relevant timestamp. In the weather app we found a GPS/timestamp datapoint that placed her near the place where her phone was found 6 weeks later. After 3.04 am no movement/activity was detected by any app on her phone and at 11.47 am her phone was out of battery and lost its connection with the world. After reading (literally) every message on her iPhone and laptop, as well as talking to every person who knew her or knew anything about that night, we found ZERO evidence pointing towards suicide.

Fast-forward more than a year until we’re here today and we’re still looking for answers. Lots of things don’t add up.

Please, anyone at Facebook, SnapChat, Google, Apple or any other company who could point us into any direction to obtain additional location data or help me in whatever other way; please please share your thoughts.

Warm regards,
Dascha’s father Rene Graafsma
info [at] daschagraafsma.nl