On Monday, Oct. 6, 2008, Alexander Abt showed up for work.

The next day, the 44-year-old – who was known as Sandy to his friends – did not.

Aside a brief journey to an auto impound yard a few days later, what Abt did following that Monday shift has never been determined.

Jacquie House, his sister, remembers driving to Abt’s Puslinch-area trailer on the Tuesday.

He wasn’t home. His van wasn’t in the area.

Thinking her brother might have gone for groceries, House went home.

When she returned the following day – again, not finding Abt or his van – she used her key to enter the trailer.

Once inside, she found a note from Abt stating that he was fed up with the extortion that had ruled his life ever since his release from prison several years earlier.

“All he wanted was to get out and get away from them – and he couldn’t,” House tells CTV News.

In 2001, Abt was arrested as part of an investigation into cocaine trafficking in Waterloo Region.

When he was released, the people whose cocaine he had been found with tracked him down and told him he would have to repay them for the drugs – with significant interest.

“Over the next number of years, Sandy worked to pay off this debt,” says Waterloo Regional Police Sgt. Richard Dorling.

Abt was an artist, but much of the money he earned from that and other jobs was quickly sent to his former associates.

It’s not clear what Abt planned to do to escape their reach.

Because of that past, House says she was initially hesitant to contact police.

Eventually, her love for her brother won out.

“I knew I’d be opening a whole new can of worms and I didn’t really want to do that … but at the end of the day, him being missing is the most important thing,” she says.

On Oct. 10, 2008 – four days after he was last seen – Abt’s van was found in a parking lot at a business on Gateway Park Drive in Kitchener.

It was taken to an impound lot.

The next day, Abt showed up at the facility, asking to retrieve items from the vehicle and saying he would be back the next day.

Police say he was walking with a limp and using a cane – traits he wasn’t exhibiting just a few days prior.

He wasn’t alone, either.

“At that time he was with a number of men and looked worse for wear,” Dorling says.

That visit is the last time anyone has reported any sort of contact with Abt.

House says any announcement of the discovery of human remains is tough for her – not only because they could belong to her brother, but because she’s come into contact with families of other missing people, all thinking the same thing.

“The minute you hear … now you’re looking and hearing not just for your missing loved one, but for all of theirs as well,” she says.

“Without them, I don’t know if I would have made it this far.”

CTV’s Nicole Lampa is investigating some of Waterloo Region’s cold cases this week on CTV News.