Couple Vanishes From Their Loft After Feud With Landlord

Cat Leigh
True Crime by Cat Leigh
4 min readMay 3, 2019

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Camden Sylvia and Michael Sullivan have been missing since 1997.

Camden Sylvia and Michael Sullivan had been together for six years and were living in a loft in Lower Manhattan, New York. Camden, a 36-year-old originally from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was a real estate agent and painter. Meanwhile, Michael was a 54-year-old actor and choreographer who worked at an art gallery.

Camden and Michael / The New York Times

The couple paid $300 a month for the fifth-floor rent-controlled loft. The owner of the building, Robert Rodriguez, ran a locksmith shop on the ground floor but did not live in the building.

At the beginning of every winter, tenants would complain that Rodriguez took too long to turn the heating system on. Moreover, he was trying to increase the rent to $3000 a month.

On November 7, 1997, Camden handed Rodriguez a petition, signed by all of the building’s tenants, threatening a rent strike if he didn’t turn the heating on.

Later that evening, Camden and Michael went on a jog. They were last seen renting a movie, Addicted to Love, at a store down the block from the loft.

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