In Haiti, a painful quest for finality

PETIONVILLE, Haiti

Jan. 12 was a happy day for the new American chef at the Villa Therese Hotel. Wearing a white chef's coat with his first name embroidered in black over his heart, he walked through the wrought-iron gates at the elegant 14-room hotel, past mangos and palms, to the kitchen.

Rodney Rightenburg, 51, had moved to Haiti in 2009, after his divorce. Just two days earlier, he had called his former wife and 5-year-old son, who live in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and told them he was doing well.

"How's my homeboy?" he had asked his son, Virgil. "I love you. I hope to see you soon."

About 5:15 p.m., guests and workers at the hotel would say later, Rightenburg walked to the garden to gather herbs. He greeted the guests, saying he was going "to pull grass to put in the dinner." Soon he returned to the kitchen with a handful of basil, rosemary and scallions.

A few minutes later, the earthquake hit and the hotel collapsed.

For Rightenburg's family in the United States, it was the beginning of weeks of uncertainty, confusion and fading hope.

What had happened to Rodney?

• • •

During the next week, Rightenburg's sister Laura sent frantic messages to the St. Petersburg Times, whose coverage of the earthquake she had read online.

"My brother Rodney Rightenburg was chef at the Villa Therese," wrote Laura, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz. She said Rodney was originally from Detroit and had worked for years as a chef in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

"We think he was killed and dumped in a mass grave. He was wearing his chef's coat with his name Rodney on it. He had a hip replacement. . . . Could you find out what happened to him?"

There was not much to go on. About 40,000 Americans were in Haiti before the earthquake. At the time, thousands were missing.

Within a week of the earthquake, Alain Villard, the owner of the Villa Therese, e-mailed Laura, saying her brother had been killed. He said the hotel staff had pulled Rightenburg's body from the rubble.

Villard said he walked next door to tell a neighbor who worked at the U.S. Embassy about the dead American. But by Jan. 15, no one had claimed him.

"There had to be a mix-up," said Dutch Consul General Rob Padberg, "because the U.S. Embassy is usually very good about such things."

With no word from American officials and decomposing bodies piling up on the hotel grounds and on the street, Villard asked the hotel staff to turn bodies over to Haitian government workers for burial. But he couldn't be sure the workers carried out his order.

"Things were so chaotic I didn't really follow what happened to Rodney," he said.

As all this was happening, someone telephoned Laura and said Rodney was hurt and in the hospital. She didn't know what to think.

• • •

A week after the earthquake, Laura Rightenburg got an e-mail from an embassy official that the United States was working on Rodney's case.

But it wasn't until Feb. 12 that a team from the U.S. Army and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed up at Villa Therese to talk to Villard about Rightenburg. Two journalists from the Times were there when they arrived.

Villard told the American officials he thought government workers had taken the body to a mass grave by the sea. A sergeant put the information in a report and the team left.

That same day, hotel groundskeeper Resilien Mervelius, handyman Eliphate Serifan and security guard Wilbert Brice gave the Times journalists a different version of events.

They said they wrapped Rightenburg, still in his chef's coat, in a white sheet and put his body in the back of Brice's silver-and-blue Mitsubishi pickup truck. Brice and the others drove the body to the Petionville cemetery. While Brice waited in the truck, the other men placed the body in an open grave and scraped some rubble over it.

They took a Times reporter and a photographer to what they thought was the spot.

That night, the journalists e-mailed Health and Human Services that there was new information about Rightenburg. They also phoned Laura, his sister.

"Hope of finding him means so much to us," she said. "To know nothing about what happened to Rodney — to think he was dumped in a mass grave, never to be found — is haunting."

On Wednesday, a different team of U.S. soldiers and HHS officials asked the Times to lead them to the possible burial site in the Petionville cemetery. There, a sergeant and a corporal hoisted heavy rocks and shoveled gravel and sandy soil. Four feet down, they struck a particle-board casket with a Haitian wreath on the top. They assumed it was not Rightenburg.

Serifan, the hotel handyman who had helped bury the chef, stepped forward. "Here, here," he said, pointing to a pile of rubble right next to the hole.

"It's getting dark. We'll come back tomorrow," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Mitchell Friedman from Fort Lee, Va.

That night, Laura Rightenburg tried not to be discouraged.

"Tomorrow, will there be nothing again?" she asked. "Will this terrible emotional roller coaster continue without resolution?"

The reporter put her in touch with Moise Mireille, the manager of the Latin Quarter Brasserie in Petionville, where Rodney once worked.

"We loved your brother here. He was so light-hearted, so much fun and such a great chef," said Mireille. "You are not alone in your sorrow over what happened to him."

• • •

At dawn Thursday, the U.S. team returned to the cemetery. Within minutes, they uncovered a partially decomposed body wrapped in a filthy sheet. They lifted the sheet, revealing a white coat. The name Rodney was embroidered over the heart. Steel protruded from the hip.

"We've found another missing American," said the Army's Friedman.

Rodney Rightenburg's body will be flown to Dover, Del., where he will be cremated and his ashes sent to St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. His sister Laura and other family members will join his ex-wife and son to scatter his ashes in the sea at his favorite Caribbean beach.

"This way, whenever little Virgil sees a beautiful beach he will think of his dad," said Laura. "At last, Rodney is at peace and so are we."

Meg Laughlin can be reached at mlaughlin@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8068.