Photo: Marin County Sheriff's Office
The man accused of luring away Mint Butterfield, the 16-year-old child of billionaire Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield and Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, sported a face tattoo during his first court appearance on Wednesday (May 1).
Christopher 'Kio' Dizefalo, 26, a parking valet in San Francisco, was seen with a facial tattoo of a scythe, a tool associated with the Grim Reaper, while facing charges for his alleged involvement in Butterfield's disappearance including child abduction, delinquency of a minor and other violations. An arrest warrant was also issued for an adult woman named Sarah Atkins, who was also present in a white van with Dizefalo and Butterfield, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, last Saturday (April 27), six days after the teenager's reported disappearance, in the notorious Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco.
Atkins was also charged with child abduction and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Stewart Butterfield appeared in the court via Zoom on Wednesday. Mint's parents, as well as their stepfather Jyri Engestrƶm, previously issued a statement publicly thanking the Marin County Sheriff's Office ad San Francisco Police Department for their efforts in locating the teenager.
"A heartfelt thanks to all the family, friends, volunteers andĀ strangers who called in tips and made this recovery possible," the family said in an email. "We especially want to thank the seasoned law enforcement officers who understand the very real threat of predators who use the allure of drugs to groom teenagers."
Butterfield was suspected to have run away to Tenderloin, which has the highest levels of crime and homelessness in the city, as well as an open-air drug market, prior to being located given their reported history of substance abuse and having frequented the area in the past, the San Francisco Standard previously reported.
Stewart Butterfield co-founded the popular messaging app Slack in 2013, but departed after it was sold to Salesforce for $28 billion in 2021 and is reported by Forbes to have a net worth of $1.6 billion. Fake founded the imaging service Flickr with her ex-husband and sold the company to Yahoo! for an estimated $30 million in 2004.
The couple was married in 2001, but divorced in 2007, the same year Mint, their only shared child, was born. Stewart Butterfield remarried Away co-founder and CEO Jennifer Rubio in 2020 and relocated to Aspen in 2021, while also owning multiple owns in New York.