Search continues for missing American Yvonne Baldelli

Panamanian police and American FBI agents still are trying to figure out what happened to 42-year-old Yvonne Baldelli, a California woman last seen months ago near the Costa Rican border. 

Baldelli's mother is convinced her daughter has been killed, Associated Press reported. "My husband, I, the family know that something happened to her. Some people want to say that she's out there somewhere, but everyone in the family knows that's not possible," she told the news service.

Baldelli's mother said she last heard from her daughter in an email last November. She had been writing home regularly until then, the mother said. 

FBI agents and forensic investigators visited the hostel where Baldelli had been staying last week. Investigators have been trying to learn more about Brian Brimager, a former US Marine Baldelli had been dating. 

Baldelli moved to Panama in September after she was laid off from her job at Procter & Gamble, ABC said.

Baldelli is not the first American woman to go missing in Panama in recent years. Baldelli's case may actually be linked to the disappearance of another American Cheryl Lynn Hughes two years ago, the Miami Herald reported.

Hughes, whose body was found four months after she had gone missing from Bocas del Toro, owned the property where Baldelli and Brimager had been staying. 

Brimager returned to the US in December. Baldelli was reported missing in January. 

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