An American journalist vanished in Syria 13 years ago. His mother never stopped searching for him

“This is either gonna be wildly successful or a complete disaster,” Austin Tice wrote in May 2012, on the eve of a dangerous journey to bear witness to history. “Here goes nothing.”

Tice, a physically towering former Marine and fledgling journalist, threw himself with grit and resolve into war zones, friendships and the injustices he cared deeply about.

But he is yet to return from that journey. Tice disappeared in Syria two months after setting off to cover the country’s crippling civil war, sparking a 13-year mystery that has tortured his Texan family and plagued Washington’s relationship with Syria’s brutal former dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

For more than a decade, nobody has seen or heard from Tice. His family has never lost hope that he is alive, even as successive administrations