Christine Mustafa: Missing Mom’s Body Dumped In Phoenix Landfill, Cops Believe — Boyfriend Faces Murder Charge
Christine Mustafa, a 34-year-old Phoenix, Arizona, mom was last seen on May 10, leaving the Walgreen’s drugstore where she worked, at about 1:30 in the afternoon. Now, more than four months later, police have come to the conclusion that the woman’s body was thrown away as if it were trash by her former boyfriend, 37-year-old Robert Interval. The cops are preparing to search for Mustafa’s body in a landfill early next month, according to a report by KNXV news in Phoenix.
Her family became alarmed when Mustafa failed to show up to work, or even call in to report her absence, on May 11. According to court documents cited by the Arizona Republic, in 11 years of employment she had not missed a single day.
More importantly, she disappeared without her eight-month-old baby, or her car, purse and credit cards, according to a separate KNXV report.
Interval, who was described by Mustafa’s family as jealous, frequently accusing Mustafa of cheating on him, and “quick to snap,” despite a seemingly outgoing and charismatic personality, was arrested in early June about a month after Mustafa’s disappearance. But despite the fact that he has been charged with first-degree murder, the lack of a body in the case will make prosecutors’ job complicated, a report by the AZ Family noted.
Christine Mustafa update: Boyfriend pleads not guilty in connection to disappearance. https://t.co/Zqb7qcj9CX #abc15 pic.twitter.com/NV6AZwzmKf
— ABC15 Arizona (@abc15) June 27, 2017
According to the police account, Mustafa and Interval had argued fiercely on May 10, over another of his accusations that she had been unfaithful in their relationship, and that Interval had threatened to kill Mustafa in the course of that confrontation. Police and Mustafa’s family say that the mom, who also has a 15-year-old daughter, feared Interval, and had been planning not only to leave him but to seek legal protection against him, according to a report in the Arizona Republic newspaper.
Mustafa’s daughter was abroad, visiting family members, who live in Jordan, at the time that her mother disappeared.
Though police have not released the name or location of the specific landfill where they believe Interval ultimately disposed of Mustafa’s body, KNXV reported that the investigators have asked the landfill’s managers to stop piling garbage in the area where they suspect Mustafa’s body may lie.
Watch the below KNXV video news report for more details on the search for Christine Mustafa.
The landfill search was originally scheduled for July, but due to the high cost and complicated logistics of digging through a landfill, police postponed the dig until October. A previous search for a murder victim in a landfill in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, in 2012, ran up costs of $750,000 — and still failed to turn up the victim’s body.
Interval’s own sister, according to court documents cited in the Republic report, described the murder suspect as “paranoid” following Mustafa’s disappearance, saying that he made cryptic statements such as, “I took it too far,” and “I can never un-see the things I saw.”
The accused suspect’s sister said that Interval had told her that she planned to leave him and take their baby with her. He also said that he would turn himself in after courts had decided on the child’s custody — but he never told his sister for what he crime he would be turning himself in to answer.
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Mustafa’s family has been searching relentlessly for the missing woman since she disappeared, even going so far as to hire two psychics and a medium — a person who claims to communicate with the dead — in their efforts to locate Mustafa.
[Featured Image by Missing Persons of Arizona/Facebook]
