Paul Staehle is alive!
The 90 Day Fiancé star was reported missing last week after his wife, Karine, posted a series of shocking Instagram posts insinuating he was dead. His mother later revealed the reality star was apparently lost somewhere in Brazil, where he’d been since July, and in desperate need of help.
After losing touch with Paul on Thursday, an investigation was reportedly started by the US Embassy in Brazil. And now the family finally has good news!
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Over the weekend, celebrity blogger John Yates, who has been working with Paul’s mom Edna to track him down, received a voicemail from the missing TV personality! The call came in from Brazil on Sunday at 9:39 a.m., and in it, Paul shared:
“Hey John, it’s Paul. In a small indigenous community. My signal is insanely bad. Give me a call back if you can on this number and hopefully, you’ll be able to get through to me.”
Wow!
John captioned the post:
“As I just discussed on my channel I have heard from Paul and he’s also talked to his mom.”
What a relief!
Over the weekend, Yates also spoke with Newsweek about the mystery, explaining Paul went to Brazil in hopes of earning money amid a custody battle. His two children with Karine are currently in foster care after Child Protective Services placed them there in 2022.
If you don’t know, Paul and Karine have a very complicated past. They married on the TLC show in 2017 and welcomed their first son in 2019 and second in 2021. They broke up in December 2021 after a video of them fighting went viral and Karine filed a restraining order against her husband, accusing him of sexual assault. She later dropped the suit and they got back together in April of this year, reportedly so they could regain custody of the kids.
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This isn’t even the first time they’ve faced missing person reports either. In June 2022, their oldest son Pierre went missing after CPS removed the kids from the Staehles. The org believed Paul had the child — and he later admitted to such when he claimed it was a “big misunderstanding,” and that he’d been on a long work trip with his son.
Pierre was placed in the same foster home as his brother. Now, Paul’s trying to do everything he can to win back his little ones, the blogger explained:
“Paul is in Brazil to make money. He said that he could earn a lot more there than here as he has an ongoing custody case with his kids.”
On socials, John also took aim at Karine, calling her out for starting this drama in the first place via cryptic posts that suggested her hubby had died, including a message about life insurance. Throughout this scare, she maintained she was not involved in the search while also revealing she is pregnant.
In a statement seemingly uploaded on Sunday, Karine confirmed Paul had “showed up” but reiterated she has “nothing to do with this.” She also denied rumors the 40-year-old is dating a local but suggested he might be “talking to a[n] older member of her family.”
And Paul says…
Paul also broke his silence on Sunday — but he didn’t explain what happened! WHAT?!
Instead, he focused on the romance rumors, writing:
“To clarity I am not romantically involved with @tlzz_deusa In any way. She is engaged to marry @danilo_g6 her fiancé/boyfriend. I see and talk to her and her family everyday and her and her family help me out a lot. I am very close to her mother and her mother’s sister.”
Huh…
It’s all rather strange! But we are glad to know he’s safe! Per his mother via an interview with John on YouTube, “he’s OK and alive, but he’s still not in a good situation.” He apparently took a canoe out at night to the “wrong place,” she detailed:
“I think it’s stupid, I don’t know why he would go somewhere at night by himself alone, and [they] said it might’ve been that place everyone was talking about that was so dangerous. And he freaked out and that’s where he said, ‘he screwed up.’ And then he found a way to get back over to this village, so he’s in some remote village over there somewhere.”
While the villagers have been “good” to him, he’s been sleeping in a hammock outside and “getting eaten by bugs.”
The hope was that he would be picked up by boat on Monday. Scary! We hope he makes it home quickly!!
Check out the full update (below):
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[Image via 90 Day Fiancé/YouTube]