When nothing was heard from Lenz throughout the summer, his family started to worry that something might have happened. The Ottoman Empire was at this time going through a period of turmoil, with the killing of tens of thousands of Armenians taking place in the ongoing Hamidian Massacres. It was difficult to ascertain what might have happened, but Alexander Terrell, the U.S. minister to the Ottoman Empire, felt sure that Lenz had been killed by Kurdish bandits.