As reported by XBiz, Wright and Kraynak, represented in the industry by San Francisco-based FCF Agency, had been missing since the morning of Aug. 22, when they failed to meet a friend at an after-hours club as planned.
Police eventually were able to use the global-positioning feature on Kraynak’s phone to lead them to the bodies in a quarry just a few hundred yards from the night club. Autopsies revealed no obvious signs of violence such as bullet or knife wounds.
However, Police say a surveillance video outside the club showed the two men jump from the cab and run into an alley. The cab pursued them off camera. Police speculate that the men then jumped a fence at the end of the alley, not realizing in the dark of night that a 50-foot drop into the quarry lay on the other side.
The official explanation from police is that Wright and Kraynak most likely were running from the cab to avoid paying the fare, which, based on the distance between clubs, would have been around $40.
But Kraynak's mother refuses to accept the police account. She said there are too many unanswered questions, including why her son would run from a cab to avoid paying the fare when he had plenty of money in his pockets and an ATM card in his wallet.
She points to a statement from a waitress who reported that the men had left her a $200 tip earlier in the day as evidence that her son would not stiff a cab driver for $40.
Also, Wright is shown on the video tape to be about two car lengths behind her son, leading her to wonder how he would not see Kraynak fall into the quarry.
"I have reason to believe my son was being threatened at the time," she said. "To me, he was running for his life. That's what it looks like to me."
Police have been unable to locate the taxi driver, despite repeated public pleas for information.