Father of Girl Found in Puerto Rico Visits Courthouse in San Diego

Jeffrey Anzaldi, the father of an 8-year-old girl who disappeared from San Diego in 1990, spent about 3 1/2 hours at the federal courthouse Friday, but law enforcement authorities refused to confirm that he was testifying before a grand jury.

His daughter Crystal was raised in Puerto Rico by a woman who has been charged with falsifying the girl’s birth certificate and who is under investigation for kidnapping.

Jan Caldwell, spokeswoman for the FBI in San Diego, said she could not comment on the inquiry.

Anzaldi did not speak with reporters before being whisked from the courthouse in an unmarked car.

Caldwell did say that the investigation was ongoing and that the woman who raised Crystal in Puerto Rico, Nilza Gierbolini Guzman, remained part of that inquiry.

Anzaldi and his wife Dorothy separated soon after their child vanished. They divorced last year. Anzaldi, a computer technician with a Beaverton, Ore., company, has custody of their other daughter, Kendra, 10. He lives in Banks, Ore. His ex-wife lives in Corning, Calif.

Authorities were interviewing people familiar with the place the former couple lived at the time Crystal disappeared, San Diego Police Sgt. Jim Munsterman said. “This was a crash pad, with a lot of people living there,” he said.

Anzaldi was a Navy radioman stationed at Coronado Naval Base at the time his daughter vanished from the bed where he and his wife were sleeping.

Child experts said the case cuts to many parents’ deepest fears and hopes.

“It leaves that window of hope for people in that terrible situation. Investigators had always felt there were loose ends, but that they [the parents] couldn’t hold out for much,” said Margaret Dalton, project director for the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law. “To have closure is so unusual.”