A new group has joined the search for a New Jersey girl who disappeared more than 3 1/2 years ago.
The Florida-based Anti-Predator Project says it will investigate the case of Dulce Maria Alavez, who was 5 years old when her mother reported her missing from a Bridgeton park on Sept. 16, 2019.
The group’s co-founder and president, Trent Steele, described his organization as a “fully licensed, non-profit private investigation firm” staffed with volunteers who bring an array of experience from work in law enforcement, the military and the intelligence community.
“We specialize in all things human trafficking- and missing children-related,” Steele said. “Between everybody on our team, we’ve got well over a couple hundred years of missing children and human trafficking and organized crime case experience between us.”
On the day she vanished, Dulce and her family were visiting Bridgeton City Park after stopping for ice cream. Her mother, Noema Alavez Perez, said she remained in the car with her younger sister, while Dulce and her 3-year-old brother, Manny, ran off to a playground about 30 yards away.
When Alavez Perez went looking for the kids a short time later, she said she found only Manny.
A sprawling investigation has yielded no evidence of what happened to Dulce and a $75,000 reward remains unclaimed.
Detectives have conducted hundreds of interviews and visited or communicated with law enforcement officials in 11 states and Mexico, according to investigators.
Volunteers supporting Dulce’s family recently reached out to the Anti-Predator Project for help and Steele took on the case, saying he plans to contact local investigators soon to introduce his group and see how they can help.
“We’re in the very early stages of this,” Steele said. “We’ve gone over the case file. We’ve had the initial meeting with the family. We’re going to start our process of reaching out to law enforcement and seeing what we can do to assist them.”
As a nonprofit group, the Anti-Predator Project has access to technology to aid in the search at a lower cost than law enforcement, Steele said.
However, most of the group’s work won’t take place behind a computer screen, Steele added.
“The reality is that a lot of these cases, and Dulce’s is no different, really come down to just good old-fashioned detective work,” he said. “Knocking on doors, talking to people, putting things together and analyzing a lot of things that probably didn’t make sense at first, but now they do.”
“There’s a good chance that in the next 90 days or so, people in Bridgeton will see me and a couple of members of our team up in town talking to some people,” Steele added.
After leaving his job with a defense contractor, Steele said he worked in foster care and, in that role, assisted many teenage human trafficking victims.
“Their stories were absolutely horrific,” Steele recalled. That experience drove him to found the Anti-Predator Project with his wife in 2011. Collaborating with people he had met in his career, they built a group that not only investigates, but also trains law enforcement officers in how to handle human trafficking cases, he said.
The entire operation, which relies on fundraising, is made up of volunteers, Steele said. No one the group assists receives a bill.
“We’ve got currently 37 open cases that span 15 states and four countries,” he said. “Everybody on my team, all of us are still working other jobs. I’ve got two other jobs aside from this that I work. All the money that we raise, everything we do, that goes directly back in to helping these families.”
Brenda Trinidad, who leads a volunteer group supporting Dulce’s family, hopes Steele’s group can make a difference.
“They work with Homeland Security, they have ex-FBI agents, they have everything that they need to be able to bring her home. That’s their goal anyway,” she said, adding that Dulce’s mom is thankful for the assistance.
“She was super-excited about that. She doesn’t refuse any kind of help that comes along. She feels real confident with these people and she feels like they have an understanding to her situation,” Trinidad said.
Steele acknowledged the challenges of cracking tough cases like Dulce’s.
“Sometimes I feel like we’re a doctor that only gets terminal patients. We don’t get a lot of easy cases,” he said. “We get a lot of the very complex cases. Obviously, Dulce’s case falls into that category. Sometimes we’re able to make things work and sometimes we hit the same walls as everybody else.”
The group has had many successes.
“We actually just brought back a young lady that’s been missing from Florida since 2013 from Mexico. That’s a win,” Steele said, noting that he cannot identify the woman because of the ongoing sensitive nature of the case. Her return was documented in a video posted to the organization’s Facebook page with some faces blurred to protect identities.
“We’ve been involved in quite a few high-profile cases. We’re involved in the Alicia Navarro case in Arizona,” he added. Alicia was 14 years old when she vanished from her home in Glendale, Arizona, on Sept. 15, 2019, just a day before Dulce disappeared. Alicia left a note saying she would return, but her family fears she was lured away by someone she met online, according to media reports.
In cases like Dulce’s, the general public often grows frustrated with local investigators when answers don’t come quickly, Steele said, but outside observers may not be aware of what’s happening behind the scenes.
“Nine times out of 10, law enforcement has something in their back pocket that they’re not telling everybody … that they’re kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, before they do something,” he said. “It’s not that law enforcement’s not working on the case, they just have to do it very quietly.”
His group doesn’t storm into an ongoing investigation, Steele said. They plan to reach out to local police and not “step on whatever they’re doing or step on their toes,” he said.
Investigators have repeatedly said they believe Dulce is still alive and have found no proof of her death. They insist the case remains a priority.
With the Anti-Predator Project joining the effort, Trinidad sees an opportunity to send an important message to those responsible for Dulce’s disappearance.
“I hope that this organization does stand their ground,” she said. “That’s what Dulce needs. When there’s a huge organization backing up this child, my hope is that the abductor says, ‘Damn, they’re not stopping.’ And that that will put some fear into the abductor.”
Anyone with information about Dulce’s disappearance is asked to contact authorities via one of these options:
- Bridgeton Police: 856-451-0033
- Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office: 856-453-0486
- New Jersey State Police: 609-882-2000, ext. 2554
- FBI: 1-800-CALL-FBI. Select option 4, then option 8.
- Anonymous tips may be sent to Bridgeton Police at bpdops.com/tips or to the prosecutor’s office at njccpo.gov/tips.
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Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.
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