Gene Losik of Lawrence has been missing for three months, and his family has increased the reward for information leading to his return from $10,000 to $12,000.
"We just want to raise public awareness of the case," said Losik's mother, Zhanna. "We want people to know that he's still missing and that he might be in need of help. We're hoping for new leads."
Losik, 25, disappeared without a trace Feb. 20. He had been out celebrating a birthday in Faneuil Hall in Boston with friends and returned to the Long Wharf Marriott Hotel, where he was staying, around midnight.
He went on a walk with a friend shortly afterward and returned to the hotel at 1 a.m. He was last seen by a security camera leaving the hotel's back entrance alone at 2:24 a.m. People who know him are baffled and devastated.
"It has been the most horrible three months of my life," his mother said.
Losik's family and friends have been distributing Losik's photograph and have taken out newspaper advertisements, including an advertisement in USA Today that ran for four days.
They hoped to gain attention from people in other parts of the country who may have been in Boston when Losik vanished, but nobody came forward with new information, Zhanna Losik said.
"It's so strange," she said. "Maybe (it's) because he looks like so many other boys."
"It seems so impossible that somebody can just disappear into thin air," said Gene Losik's girlfriend, Caitlin McGovern. "Someone in downtown Boston had to have seen him at some point."
For more information, visit findgenelosik.com.
