In a mysterious case in which very few details have been publicly revealed, a 50-year-old tech entrepreneur from Santa Cruz was allegedly kidnapped from his home early Tuesday, and his girlfriend's vehicle was later found with a dead body in it.
According to a witness inside the home on the 3000 block of Pleasure Point Drive where the alleged kidnapping occurred, Tushar Atre was abducted by more than one suspect around 3 a.m. on Tuesday. As the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports, Atre was last seen getting into his girlfriend’s white BMW Tuesday morning. Hours later, according to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office, that vehicle was recovered, and the body was then found — though detectives have declined to say whether that body was Atre's.
Deputies made their way Tuesday morning around 10 a.m. to the 24000 block of Soquel San Jose Road near the Summit, which is where the vehicle was found, per the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Authorities are looking for two suspects, as KTVU reports, and it's unclear if they had any connection to Atre. As a spokesperson for the sheriff's department tells the station, regarding the lack of identification for the body, "There are a lot of moving parts to this investigation."
KRON 4 refers to Atre as a "millionaire tech company founder," and he founded a company called AtreNet Inc. that specializes in digital marketing. According to his LinkedIn page, he founded his company in 1996 and it works in the field of "corporate marketing websites for tech."
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
Update: The body that was found Tuesday morning has been identified as Atre. As the Chronicle reports, the property on Soquel San Jose Road near where the body was found also belonged to Atre. Authorities say the motive "appears to be robbery," but "There is a lot of evidence to go through."