Exclusive:
Friend Alexandra Pereira remembers a disturbing conversation she had with the British journalist in the summer of 2023 which has been on her mind ever since news of Charlotte’s disappearance on February 8
A friend of the British journalist Charlotte Peet says she once talked to her about the possibility of going missing in the country – TWO YEARS before her mysterious disappearance.
Alexandra Pereira, a migration researcher from Lisbon, got to know the 32-year-old after she met up with her in the Portuguese capital to talk about a story she said she was writing. She says she can’t forget a moment during one conversation in the summer of 2023 when Charlotte talked about her wish to return to Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian city where she had lived for two years. She remembers being surprised when the British woman – who has now been missing for 17 days – began speaking about what would happen if she ever disappeared in the South American country.
Alexandra explained: “Charlotte was talking about going back to Rio, and how she knew an American woman who receives foreigners and rents rooms to them in the Copacabana district. Then she suddenly said, ‘I have no problem because if something happens to me there’s an international company which looks for people who go missing abroad. I was taken aback, because it had nothing to do with our previous conversation. I asked her, ‘Why, are you afraid?’ And she got kind of nervous, and then changed the subject. When I heard that she had gone missing I remembered it, because it was such an unusual thing to say.”
Alexandra said she contacted a close friend of Charlotte who lives in the Algarve, where Charlotte spent some of her time growing up.. “She told me any questions have to go to LBT Global, the company she had told me about all that time ago. She added: “But now the police are saying that he disappearance was voluntary, that she had planned it. I’m astonished. So she told her family to use LBT Global if she went missing, then went missing on purpose? The case gets stranger the more you look into it.”
LBT Global describes itself as an “overseas crisis support” service, which “provides family with information, liaison, advice and support throughout a missing person’s case”. The company claims that “every year we reunite many families with the loved one they feared they may never see again.” The Mirror contacted the company using the dedicated email for enquiries about Charlotte, but didn’t receive a reply.
Charlotte was reported missing in Brazil on February 17 after she was last heard from nearly three weeks ago on February 8, when she messaged a friend telling her she was in Sao Paulo and planning to visit Rio de Janeiro. She asked if she could stay with her but the friend explained her house was full and she couldn’t accommodate her. The friend didn’t hear from her again and several days later Charlotte’s family contacted the friend to say they had lost contact.
Yesterday, however, police investigating her disappearance claimed she was alive and well but doesn’t want any contact with family or friends. Detectives in Rio de Janeiro revealed they had been tracking the movements of the 32-year-old, who has been missing for nearly three weeks, using her mobile phone’s GPS.
They also produced photos she had taken using her phone, including one of the journalist sitting in the coach she took from Sao Paulo to Rio. Another shows her at a beachside bar in the Leme district of Rio de Janeiro, taken on February 15 – a week after friends and family say they lost contact with her. In another photo Charlotte is wearing sunglasses and pouting for her camera, on a street close to Rio’s famous Hotel Hilton Copacabana.
Police chief Elen Souto said Charlotte has been staying in hostels in Rio. She said: “The main line of investigation is voluntary disappearance. We have two mobile phone numbers for her. The British number receives messages and calls. The Brazilian number, which has an area code for Sao Paulo, is programmed to not receive calls.”
Ms Souto said detectives were able to track her movements, saying she arrived in Rio on February 8, then stayed in a hostel in Copacabana until February 17 – the day she was reported missing to Rio’s tourism police. She then moved to another hostel in the nearby Botafogo distict, where she stayed until this Monday.
Since then, she has been “wandering around Rio”, according to police. Her last known location was Morro de Babilonia, a hillside shanty town Charlotte already knew well, and where she she voluntary work when she lived in the city. Ms Souto said: “We have sent her photos, which show her getting off the bus in Rio, and in various places around Rio, to the Missing Persons Facial Recognition Programme.” During at least two days she was in bars in Copacabana and Leme, according to police.