Tushare Atre, 50, was kidnapped from his Santa Cruz home; he was found dead hours later.
The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office has revealed that the body it found in a car on October 1 is that of Indian American tech executive Tushare Atre.
The 50-year-old was kidnapped from his Santa Cruz, CA, home around 3 am on October 1.
Atre, founder of the web marketing and design company AtreNet, was reportedly kidnapped by more than one person.
According to police, he was last seen getting into a white 2008 BMW SUV.
Police said the investigation is ongoing investigation, but they “have reason to believe the motive was robbery.”
The SUV, which was found 14 miles away from Atre’s home, belong to his girlfriend..
A graduate of New York University, Atre founded AtreNet in 1996. The company focuses on designing corporate websites.
The AtreNet website mentions the founding narrative of the company: “It was May 1996. We drove 3000+ miles in under three days from NYC to Silicon Valley to make the meeting with Geoff Galat and his CMO Jayaram Bhat at Mercury Interactive. We worked with Mercury for 11 years all the way through the 5B acquisition by HP, and we’ve served thousands of corporate marketers just like them* ever since.”
The local KPIX5 reported that Atre also ran a cannabis manufacturing firm, Interstitial Systems, which he started a year ago in Santa Cruz.
By all accounts Atre was a highly driven and successful businessman, who also had made a number of enemies.
Just hours after his body was found, many of his friends are talking both anonymously and publicly to the media about his lifestyle and enemies. “Atre made enemies over his business deals. And specifically with his company,” one friend told KPIX5.
Another told ABC7: “Santa Cruz is notorious for different things going on. And you know, people with money sometimes get sucked into interesting situations.”