- University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki went missing while on spring break in the Dominican Republic.
- Konanki’s disappearance shares similarities with the Natalee Holloway case from 2005, raising concerns about student travel safety.
- Authorities are investigating Konanki’s disappearance but have not classified it as criminal, while her father has urged them to consider possibilities like kidnapping.
- The incident has sparked anxiety among some parents and students planning spring break trips, but travel agencies report minimal cancellations.
A night out in the Caribbean. Blurry surveillance footage. A mysterious disappearance. Worried parents demanding answers. Sound familiar?
University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki vanished from a beach in the Dominican Republic last Thursday while on spring break with five friends. Authorities say she was last seen with a man whom she is believed to have met in the resort town of Punta Cana.
Early details of her case are eerily similar to the disappearance of another American student almost 20 years ago. On May 30, 2005, Natalee Holloway did not return to her hotel room after a night out drinking with friends in Aruba on her high school graduation trip. Her murder would go unsolved for more than a decade.
The questions surrounding Holloway’s final moments captured the attention of the entire country for days, weeks and years after her death – dominating the 24/7 news cycle, inspiring dozens of books and documentaries, and helping to germinate America’s obsession with true crime.
Holloway’s mom, Beth Holloway, told Fox News that she hoped the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic would be able to help Konanki’s family find answers.
“The family is so fortunate to have an American embassy there to work with. I did not have that in Aruba,” Holloway said. “Surely they are checking cameras from hotel, gas stations, traffic lights, store fronts and wherever they had dinner, any casinos they visited, the beach areas.”
More: Punta Cana: What to know about the resort town where Sudiksha Konanki was last seen
Echoes of Natalee Holloway
Holloway’s case struck fear in many young Americans, particularly women, and their parents about traveling abroad. The idea that tragedy could unfold in a place that looked like paradise was “unsettling” to an American public that associated tourism with safety said Amy Shlosberg, a professor of criminology at Fairleigh Dickinson University and host of the podcast Women & Crime.
Holloway was traveling with a large group of students on a high school graduation trip when she died. On their last night in Aruba − May 29, 2005 − she and a few friends went to a local bar to get drinks. Holloway was seen leaving with a group of men, including a Dutch teenager named Joran van der Sloot.
Van der Sloot initially denied any wrongdoing but later admitted to murdering Holloway in a confession that was made public in 2023. He said he threw a cinder block at her after she rejected his sexual advances while the two were alone on the beach. Her body was never found.
More: Person of interest identified in disappearance of US student in the Dominican Republic
Authorities investigating Konanki’s disappearance said she was last seen on Thursday on a beach with her friends. Authorities have said surveillance footage shows five women and one man leaving the beach at about 6.am. but Konanki allegedly stayed behind with a man named Joshua Riibe who she met on the island. Surveillance video showed him leaving the beach area hours later without her.
Local authorities are not labeling Konanki’s case as a criminal investigation. Her father has asked investigators to consider multiple options for her disappearance outside of drowning, including kidnapping.
Konanki’s story, Shlosberg said, has the potential to “reawaken” many of the traveling anxieties that Holloway’s disappearance triggered in a new generation of young people.
“Even though something like this happened 20 years ago, it’s not a thing of the past, these things are still happening,” Shlosberg said.
Are parents, students worried about spring break travel?
Search #PuntaCana and #SpringBreak on TikTok, and you’ll find dozens of videos of giddy college students packing for their trip and waiting with friends to board their flights. Some expressed hesitancy about travelin because of Konanki’s disappearance. On Facebook, a parent asked whether travel to the Dominican Republic would still be safe for her daughter this week.
Jake Jacobsen, vice president of STS Travel, an agency that books between 5,000 and 10,000 spring break trips for students, told USA TODAY he has fielded calls from nervous parents but “very few” students have cancelled their travel plans in the days since Konanki disappeared.
His advice to them: weigh the facts and make the decision that feels most comfortable.
“Right now, there’s 1000s of college students down there having a good time. That’s pretty much what we tell them,” Jacobsen said.
Jacobsen said the destination of the Dominican Republic should be not be tarnished by the incident.
“We’re all very concerned, and we all want to know what’s going on, and we’d like to know sooner rather than later. Our hearts go out to the family,” Jacobsen said. “As far as people wanting to travel, all we can do is update them on the current information.”
Contributing: N’dea Yancey-Bragg, John Bacon and Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY
