Benjamin Hernandez eased through the passenger pickup lane at Dallas Love Field, searching the crowd for his older brother.
Dozens of travelers embraced loved ones, lifted heavy luggage into cars and drove toward home. But Benjamin couldn’t find any sign of Elijah.
He spun the wheel left around the parking garage, made a U-turn and merged back toward the terminal for another look. Still no Elijah.
He circled the airport again. And again. And again.
He called Elijah. No answer. He texted. No answer.
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After one last loop around the terminal, Benjamin sent a message to his mother. In four hours his alarm would wake him for work, and he didn’t want to spend any more time waiting.
More than two and a half years later, the Hernandez family is still waiting for Elijah to come home.
Gone without a trace
The brothers, Benjamin and Elijah Hernandez, left Dallas for a mission trip in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in November 2014.
Benjamin flew home after seven days. Elijah, 26, wrote in his journal that he felt called by Jesus to stay, but bought a ticket to fly home in January 2015 for a family wedding. He never boarded that plane.
Official investigations to find him have failed time and time again with dead ends to local, national and international inquiries.
In cases like this, where jurisdiction is disputed and physical evidence is scarce, unresolved investigations leave families lost. The strange circumstances of Elijah’s disappearance have left his family in Dallas with more questions than answers.
Elijah Hernandez called himself a disciple of a religious leader named Raoul Garcia, a missionary who splits his time between Addison and Cabo San Lucas. Hernandez was living and volunteering at the time at Garcia's Mexico mission.
When he didn’t appear at the airport, the Hernandezes contacted Garcia, asking when he’d last seen their son and if the missionary knew where he was.
Over two hours in a series of back-and-forth texts, the missionary said he didn’t know where their son was but that the young man had gone out two nights earlier and never came back.
Garcia told the Hernandezes he didn’t keep tabs on their son, saying he “was treated as a guest tourist” at the mission and was “pretty much left alone to do what he wanted.”
The family shared their phone records and text messages to Garcia with The Dallas Morning News.
Garcia offered to check with police, hospitals and others at the mission, but also said the young man was out partying with a girl the night he disappeared.
“I believe he’s hanging out with the wrong crowd and that spells trouble,” Garcia texted that first night. “We can’t be a part of that.”
The Hernandez family says their son wasn’t a drinker, he didn’t do drugs, and he wasn’t one to go out and party, much less with a girl he’d only recently met.
Garcia declined repeated requests to discuss the disappearance with The News or with private investigators hired by the Hernandez family.
Teresa and Martín Hernandez, Elijah’s parents, say they believe their son is alive, somewhere. Sam, the middle Hernandez brother, agrees.
Benjamin, the youngest at 23, isn’t sure. For months, he focused on work, worship and his own family, trying not to let the grief creep in. He wants to believe Elijah is not dead, but experts say there’s little statistical chance that someone missing this long is still alive.
Benjamin has tried persuading his mother to hold a memorial service, a funeral without a body, but she won’t have it.
“It’d be easier to think he’s dead,” Benjamin said. “I don’t have any clue what could’ve happened to him. I think for my parents’ sake, for my sake, I have to believe that he’s alive.”
Acting unbreakable
Growing up in Nacogdoches, Benjamin recalls, Elijah was his protector. The older brother, taller and stronger, was always there to keep him out of trouble.
But Elijah was teased mercilessly by bullies as a child. Other kids purposely kicked him in the shins while playing soccer. Their father is Mexican, and they would mock Elijah, calling him “half-breed.” Benjamin says his older brother internalized the bullying.
Elijah was calm and quiet, but his size made him look intimidating. As he got older, he shaved his head and grew a beard. He kept a furrowed brow and steely gaze to push people away. It was like a mask, Benjamin says, that let Elijah act like he was better, stronger, immune to feeling hurt.
At 23, he married a young woman he had met on a mission trip years earlier, but was divorced two years later. Elijah sent the papers to his wife in the spring of 2014, after she moved to live with her family in New Mexico for medical reasons. Now, Elijah felt he couldn't hide his imperfections.
Elijah had always tried to act unbreakable. All he wanted, Elijah told his brothers, was a family, a house with a fenced-in yard, a steady job. The middle-class American dream. After the divorce, he felt that had all slipped away.
He was living with his parents, sharing a room with his younger brother and struggling to get a good job when Benjamin persuaded him to go to Mexico.
A higher calling
Benjamin Hernandez first met Garcia at the Upper Room, a Christian sanctuary in Dallas' Design District.
Garcia told the Upper Room congregation he had plans to rebuild a barrio near Cabo San Lucas after a deadly hurricane. The senior pastor suggested taking an offering for the Mexican mission.
Many in the sanctuary opened their checkbooks and wallets after his presentation. Benjamin felt called to do more.
He decided to fly to Mexico, and he wanted his older brother to join him.
After a few days of prayer, Elijah agreed. He wrote in personal journals and on a blog that he didn’t know why, but Jesus was telling him to go to Los Cabos.
He sold all his belongings to raise money. He wanted it to be a life-changing experience, not just a simple mission trip. He would work hard, listen for God and learn what he could.
Brothers part ways in Cabo
In the dry and dusty barrio, the Hernandez brothers worked side-by-side, pouring concrete under Garcia’s supervision in the second week of November 2014.
Garcia told them they were building a community center and general store, something sturdy that wouldn't wash away in the next storm.
On one of Benjamin’s last mornings in Los Cabos, the brothers took a deep sea fishing trip out past the tip of the Baja where the Sea of Cortez meets the Pacific Ocean.
The brothers’ throats were sore from all the concrete dust at the barrio worksite, Benjamin recalls. The churning waves made Elijah sick. Back at the mission that afternoon, Benjamin made Elijah deli sandwiches and fed him soup to help him recover.
Elijah had always protected Benjamin, chastised him when he did something wrong, took care of him when he failed. Now, the brothers had switched roles. It’s one of Benjamin’s last memories of him. It’s also one of his best.
After a week in Mexico, Benjamin was scheduled to fly home, but Elijah felt called to stay.
On Benjamin’s last day in Cabo San Lucas, he and Elijah rose early for breakfast with the missionary. Elijah wanted to become his disciple in Christ, he wrote on his blog. He was committed to studying and growing as a man and as a Christian, but Garcia wasn’t convinced.
Benjamin remembers the missionary asking Elijah to submit to his authority. Elijah agreed. He’d need to work hard and worship with the group. Elijah agreed.
Garcia drove the brothers to the airport that morning, according to Benjamin Hernandez. Elijah wasn’t sure when he’d be joining Benjamin in Dallas, but knew he’d be back for a family wedding at the beginning of the next year. Outside the airport in Los Cabos, Benjamin and Elijah hugged and snapped a photo together.
Benjamin can’t find that photo today. He’s looked for it everywhere, but hasn’t been able to locate the image.
Like Elijah, it has simply disappeared.
What happened that night
In the months after Benjamin left Mexico, Elijah communicated with his family regularly through text messages.
Elijah told his family he spent his days building walls and laying concrete. Garcia would drop the work crew off in the morning, sometimes not coming back until after dark to drive them back to the mission. Nearly every day, Elijah listened to the missionary preach for hours and wrote lengthy journal entries on his laptop and in a soft leather-bound notebook.
He wrote prayers to God and letters to his ex-wife. He scratched notes about his fears and desires, how he was actively looking for the will of Christ.
The two dozen or so worshippers who followed Garcia's teachings met every Monday in a small strip mall congregation space. Elijah never missed a service for the eight weeks he was in Mexico, his parents say.
On the day he disappeared, however, he didn’t attend the service, Garcia told the Hernandez family in text messages days later.
The Hernandezes said they believe their son did appear at the sanctuary doorstep but was not allowed in, and that he and Garcia argued.
The News sought comment for seven months from Garcia, his wife and others associated with their Addison-based nonprofit, Way Cool Angels Inc. They did not respond until early June, when Garcia talked to a reporter for nearly an hour, but declined to answer questions about the disappearance or Way Cool Angels.
“I’m not saying I’m commenting or not commenting,” he said. “This meeting never even happened.”
When asked about an argument with Elijah Hernandez, Garcia paused.
“I guess you’re going to have to, you’re just going to have to figure out whether they’re telling the truth or not,” he said.
One last selfie
At 7:08 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2015, Elijah posed for a selfie just outside his apartment a few doors down from the sanctuary and uploaded it to Facebook. In the blurry photo, he’s sitting in the hallway of the shopping center. He’s wearing a maroon shirt and white Apple earbuds. He has one eyebrow raised, sharing a slight smirk with the camera.
At 11:26 p.m., he posted a YouTube video of a violinist performing a medley of Phantom of the Opera songs. "OMG," he wrote. "So many feelings right now."
Then, Elijah stepped out of his storefront apartment into the still, coastal air. He walked down a concrete staircase with wrought-iron railings to the street level, onto the sidewalk and into the dark.
He used his phone four times in the next 20 minutes. Investigators believe he was using WhatsApp — an encrypted messaging app — to text internationally.
His last message was sent at 1:44 a.m., more than two hours after he left his apartment.
Dead-end investigations
Five days after Elijah didn’t get off the plane in Dallas, parents Teresa and Martín Hernandez landed in Los Cabos.
They rented a car and drove straight to Garcia’s mission. Although Garcia and his wife had earlier told them to let the police do their own investigation, he now told them the police wouldn’t help, according to a video recording of their meeting on Teresa Hernandez’s phone.
The parents wanted to see their son’s belongings, although Garcia said he didn’t want to invade Elijah Hernandez’s privacy. His backpack, boots and laptop were all there. His phone, wallet and passport were missing.
The trail has run cold since those first days in Mexico.
There’s little sign that the Mexican police are looking into the case. Neither American nor Mexican investigations turned up additional evidence pointing to Elijah’s whereabouts.
Teresa Hernandez said she met with Dallas police officers, who filed a brief report but did not open an investigation, according to a Dallas Police Department spokesman. She said she met with FBI officials, who told her they cannot enter Mexico to investigate without being invited by the Mexican government.
She also reported his disappearance to the Nacogdoches County Sheriff's Department because the parents own a home there. A sergeant agreed to take on the case, but records released to The News consist mainly of basic internet searches available to any private citizen.
Sheriff's department documents say the sergeant reported the case to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, but it was not listed there until The News made an inquiry about the case last fall; his name still does not appear on the publicly searchable internet database.
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Through their church connections, the Hernandez family hired a private investigation firm headed by an international expert in paramilitary security, kidnapping recovery and other criminal activity. They also set up a GoFundMe.com appeal to aid their search.
The lead investigator, who spoke to The News on the condition that he not be identified due to the sensitive nature of his work, said his team tried speaking to Garcia and others in the congregation, but all refused. The investigators canvassed the neighborhood where Elijah disappeared, but found no sign of him. They hung posters with a million peso (about $68,000) reward for information, but received no tips.
The investigators have since moved on to other cases.
Many questions linger
Sometimes, Benjamin will go back to the airport in his nightmares.
He’ll drive past the passenger pickup lane, straining to get a glimpse of Elijah. He won’t be there on the next pass, or the one after, or the one after that. Benjamin will just be stuck, circling the airport, waiting to wake up.
The nightmares are less frequent now that more than two years have passed, but the unanswered questions still hang thick in the air.
Where is Elijah? Is he alive? Where did he go that night? If Elijah is dead, where is his body? Will the family ever really know what happened?
Benjamin doesn’t know what to make of it all.
Perhaps Elijah was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps he saw something he wasn’t supposed to and was punished for it.
Perhaps, Benjamin says half-joking, he ascended into heaven on a whirlwind like the prophet Elijah, accompanied by brilliant chariots of fire.
