Two Years On: Leyla Namiranian Still Missing

In the US, Chesterfield County, VA-based researcher Leyla Namiranian is still missing, more than two years after she was last seen leaving work.

Namiranian was last seen on April 4th 2012 after leaving tobacco giant Altria (previously named Philip Morris), where she served as Director of Marketing and Consumer Research. She was divorced and had been living alone at the time of her disappearance, and officers investigating the mystery found her car parked in the garage, with no signs of a struggle inside the home.

Police found that she had written in her diary that she 'feared for her safety', after former boyfriend Michael Anthony Edwards had reportedly come to her house uninvited, and choked and threatened her. Phone records show that Edwards, who has a violent criminal record, had been outside Namiranian's home for about five hours on the night before she disappeared, and traces of blood, duct tape, a bucket, and towels were then found in the boot of one of his cars. However, detectives said this did not 'conclusively' tie him to the case. Detectives later found a mobile phone belonging to Namiranian by a main road, and another in a ditch a mile north. They confirmed that Edwards worked near the area where these phones had been discovered.

At the time of her disappearance, Namiranian had more than $85k in two bank accounts. Last year, her father and brother, who live in Italy, had petitioned the local county court to have her four bedroom house put on the market and its contents and her Mercedes-Benz sold, adding that since her disappearance, her estate had not been managed and nobody had paid her bills.

News channel WTVR recently asked local police to provide the name of the case detective, but the request was declined, with the police stating that they have nothing new to add the information already released.