High-Wire Hunt

He climbed. He saw. He hasn't yet conquered the mystery of his missing brother.

Comments (0) By Forrest Norman Thursday, Mar 23 2006

...continued from page 6

The attention did generate at least one new lead. After seeing Robb on CNN, Ed Sherry, a researcher for the South Florida Researcher's Group — an enclave of investigators obsessed with anything remotely related to JFK's assassination and all things Cuban — decided to find out about Robb's aunt, Mariada Arensberg. "I never knew his aunt was involved with any anti-Castro activities, so I did a little digging," Sherry says.

He found testimony from a Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing that Arensberg, who left Havana after Castro took power, had recommended recruits to the CIA. "We knew she was part of an anti-Castro group when she came back to the States, but we never thought she was recruiting for the CIA," Robb says. "I'd hate to think she had anything to do with what happened to Harrison, or that she might have known anything she didn't tell us."

Vincent Hobbs

Robb Annable

courtesy of Robb Annable

Harrison Annable (in a high school photo from 1958 when he was eighteen) was an avid outdoorsman who never discussed politics

More About

It's possible, Robb says, that Harrison was recruited by his aunt and sent on some kind of CIA-sponsored sabotage or smuggling mission. "The thing is, I don't know what it was," he says. "It could have been anything, but it sure doesn't seem like a fishing trip. Harrison never talked politics."

Robb's aunt died a decade ago. His mother passed away in 2002 after a ten-year bout with dementia. He doesn't know where Lila Rahm is, and he says he heard that Trevor Davies died long ago.

Linda says she hopes Robb feels like he has fulfilled his obligations. "He is a sane, level-headed person who felt very strongly that he had to do this," she states. "But now I keep hoping that maybe this will be the end. This obsession to get to the truth and get the answers from the government is something that I'm not quite sure I understand. I don't have the same need."

His wife Pam is more blunt: "I don't think anything definitive is going to come out of this [protest]. And I don't think he's going to stop."