Cody Dial

On May 22nd, cable television network National Geographic will broadcast the premiere of Missing Dial, a documentary series on the disappearance of explorer Cody Roman Dial,  a college student from the United States who arrived in Costa Rica with adventure in his mind.

Cody intended to hike across Corcovado National Park in our Southern Pacific region; he has been missing since July of 2014.

You can watch a preview of Missing Dial here.

The following is a synopsis of a long article published by The Costa Rica Star in February 2015 about the efforts made by Cody’s parents to learn the truth about what happened to their dear son. They believe that foul play may have played a part in his disappearance:

Our 27 year old son, Cody Roman Dial, disappeared on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula in July 2014.

On the morning of July 9, seven months into an overland journey starting in Mexico, he wrote family and friends one of his usual emails outlining his plans. He said he planned to cross Corcovado National Park, a huge wilderness of rain forest, tropical coastline, and rugged mountains, alone for 4-5 days. He articulated his route and included a link to a map.

On July 24, ten days after he should have been out, I contacted Corcovado National Park and the US Embassy in Costa Rica and reported him missing. Due to the way my emails were threaded, and the fact I had been away on my own trip, we didn’t fully realize he had actually left on his trip until that day, July 24.

By July 26 I was in Puerto Jimenez where Cody Roman had written that he was shopping for food before his trip. 

My wife Peggy and I had raised our son on wilderness and biological research trips around the world. [When he was] 12, he had walked with my tropical ecology class across Corcovado.

As the Red Cross would not allow me to participate in their search, I was forced to fly friends down to help in my own clandestine search. After the first two weeks, including ten hours of helicopter time, the Red Cross and the Park Service announced they were pulling out. 

My friends and I had combed through the one square kilometer surrounding the area where Cody Roman had last been seen and found nothing. Together these searches suggested that maybe he was not lost and injured in the jungle, but rather the victim of foul play.