Anna Laura Costa Porsborg
Costa Porsborg, circa 2022; Luis Gomes Akay
- Missing Since 12/27/2022
- Missing From El Segundo, California
- Classification Endangered Missing
- Sex Female
- Race White
- Age 22 years old
- Height and Weight 5'5, 130 pounds
- Clothing/Jewelry Description An orange sweater, ripped jeans and white sneakers.
- Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Blonde hair, brown eyes. Costa Porsborg was born in Brazil and moved to the U.S. five years prior to her disappearance.
Details of Disappearance
Costa Porsborg was enlisted in the Army at the time of her disappearance and based in Virginia. In December 2022, she told her family she was going to Los Angeles, California on a vacation with her boyfriend, Luis Antonio Gomes Akay, who like Costa Porsborg is a Brazilian national. During her trip she sent her mother in Brazil photographs of various tourist spots in the Los Angeles area.
A photo of Gomes Akay is posted with this case summary. He did not know that Costa Porsborg was already married to a man she'd met in college; Costa Porsborg's husband didn't know about Gomes Akay either.
Costa Porsborg's family last heard from her on December 27, 2022. She and Akay were staying at the Doubletree Hotel in El Segundo, California. That same day, Gomes Akay called Costa Porsborg's family to say they had broken up and she had left their hotel room and never returned.
Costa Porsborg's family was suspicious of his story and two days later they reported her disappearance to the Brazilian Federal Police, who reported it to the FBI field office in Los Angeles. When questioned by law enforcement in the hotel room, Gomes Akay repeated his story about him and Costa Porsborg having an argument and how she simply left him.
Surveillance video at the hotel on the night of December 27 showed the couple together, but did not show any argument between them. The footage from December 29, two days later, showed Gomes Akay dragging a bulging, heavy suitcase out of the hotel while carrying a trash bag with the other.
On January 1, Gomes Akay was arrested on suspicion of Costa Porsborg's murder. At first he denied it, but after questioning he confessed that he and Costa Porsborg's disagreement on the night of December 27 had turned physical and that she had struck him twice in the face and he had strangled her. He then put her body in the suitcase and left it in the hotel room until December 29, when he took her remains into the mountains and buried them under some rocks.
Gomes Akay has not said specifically where he left Costa Porsborg's body, only that it was in the mountains. Authorities believe her remains may be in the Angeles National Forest, but they have not been located in spite of searches. He is awaiting trial.
Brazilian media has reported that Gomes Akay is also a suspect in the disappearance of a woman who vanished from that country in 2017. He was never charged in that case.
Costa Porsborg was raised in Santarem in the Brazilian state of Para and traveled to the United States on an exchange program in her senior year of high school. After graduation she enrolled at Johnson & Wales University and got a degree in business and marketing. She enlisted in the Army because she saw this as a path to U.S. citizenship.
Foul play is suspected in her case due to the circumstances involved.
Investigating Agency
- U.S. Fort Lee Provost Marshal's Office 804-734-7400
Updated 1 time since October 12, 2004. Last updated January 23, 2024; casefile added.