AGI – Mint Butterfield, 16 years old, the heiress and only daughter of two Silicon Valley giants who disappeared mysteriously on Sunday from her mother’s house, north of San Francisco, continues to be a mystery. The police are scouring the entire area looking for a trace but there are no signs. The searches were concentrated in the Tenderloin neighborhood, land of criminal gangs, homeless people and drug dealing, where the girl may have gone in search of refuge or perhaps to meet someone.
In the past Mint had had problems with drug abuse and had expressed suicidal intentions. Her disappearance is mobilizing the world of online platforms, also because her story is not the story of just any minor: her father, Stewart Butterfield, is the founder of the online messaging platform Slack, sold in 2021 for 28 billion dollars ; her mother, Caterina Fake, founded the Flickr platform in 2004, a multilingual website, including Italian, where users can share photos. The site was later sold to Yahoo.
The two app creators, very popular in Silicon Valley, have been separated since 2007, the year of the girl’s birth. According to investigators, Mint left a note at home, in which she said she wanted to leave and that she would do so by taking a suitcase with her. She would not have a cell phone or a car, two elements that would make it even more difficult to track her.
The county sheriff admitted that there is a fear that the girl may have taken her own life, although the suitcase hypothesis leaves some hope. But as the days pass, the situation becomes more worrying. Investigators have, however, ruled out the hypothesis of her kidnapping with the aim of demanding a ransom from her parents. A friend of the girl said she saw Mint north of San Francisco, but he would provide no other useful details.
Meanwhile, the mug shot of the young heiress has gone viral on social media and in the American media: the girl is described as just over five feet tall, frail, with long red hair, eyes made up and eyebrow piercings. On social media there are those who support her for her escape, and those who ask her to return home, but on X there are also those who cruelly say that they have no empathy for a “spoiled girl, drug addict and billionaire”.
She was last seen at home on Sunday evening, wearing a black T-shirt, flannel trousers and boots. The police made a series of telephone numbers available, and asked in the various chat apps to report any details. Everything can be useful, the sheriff explained, to track down the teenager who seems to have vanished into thin air for almost a week.
