LOS ANGELES — Two young men from Rishon le-Zion, who hoped to make good as disc jockeys in the United States, have been reported missing after not having been heard from for more than two months.
Ben Wurzberger, 24, and Adar Neeman, 25, were last heard from on Nov. 30, when they apparently left Los Angeles for Las Vegas in a car loaded with expensive electronic and sound equipment.
Their mothers, Johanna Wurzberger and Silvie Neeman, have been in Los Angeles for the past three weeks and have enlisted the help of the local Israeli consulate and Israeli community in a search, which has so far been fruitless.
Both women say their sons are good boys, who have never been in trouble and who phoned home regularly every one or two days.
Ben Wurzberger arrived in Los Angeles about 18 months ago and started working as a DJ at private parties while writing a film script.
Last Nov. 29, he went to the Los Angeles airport to pick up his boyhood friend, Adar Neeman, who arrived with about $1,700 and sound equipment he had purchased in New York. The next day, Neeman phoned his mother in Israel and told her that he and Wurzberger were about to leave for four months in Las Vegas, where Neeman had earlier rented a room in a private home.
Silvie Neeman was expecting another phone call from Neeman on Dec. 2, before she left on a trip to France. Not hearing from him, she called Wurzberger’s apartment in Los Angeles.
A man speaking English answered and said that Neeman had forgotten his cell phone but would call her in a few hours.
Early the next morning, the phone rang at the Wurzberger home and a woman, speaking Hebrew with an American accent, said, “You will get a surprise in two to three weeks,” and hung up.
On Dec. 3, Las Vegas police found Wurzberger’s Chevrolet parked across from the police station, with the key still in the ignition and the expensive sound equipment and Neeman’s suitcase intact. After a few days, Las Vegas police concluded that the two Israelis had disappeared of their own volition and closed the case.
The distraught mothers flew to Los Angeles and they hired private investigators, who speculate that Wurzberger and Neeman never reached Las Vegas, and that someone took their car along the way, but have found no concrete evidence.
In the meanwhile the Israeli consulate is assisting the two mothers by providing them with accommodations, and the Israeli community is trying to raise funds to pay for the continuing private investigation.
The two mothers, who can only stay another week or so, are living day-to-day “between hope and despair,” a friend said.