S21 E19: Searching for Florence Okpealuk and Joseph Balderas with Payne Lindsey of Up and Vanished
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Hao hao.

Me, you do know.

I am super excited to welcome pain, linsey, to our show this week. I have been a long time follower of your work pain since twenty sixteen when you launched, which is crazy to me that it's been that long. The world was a different place. Then you reference that going into the fourth season, that you're coming into the season eight years later.

right? I think so. I say that I know .

it's like me having a fifteen year old now and like I can't hide my age now.

IT is what IT.

IT is what IT is. What I loved about your style of what I classify as like documentaries is that IT really brings people along side you in the journey. And you have such a natural ability for you're writing really lens to IT and you're very likeable, easy to follow. You break IT in a way that's just really approach able and I think that IT makes even the most brand new person to these sorts of investigations feel like they might be able to help in some way. Is that a active choice that you made from the beginning to, like, bring listeners along your journey?

I think I just naturally started doing IT that way because in August twenty sixteen, which is forever ago, as we know, I really only knew of a true crime pocket in the narrative way, in something like serial. Sarah, can. I did the same thing in her own style.

I felt like a fish out of water, investigating and unsolved missing person's case. I felt compelled to share that part of IT that, hey, I don't what i'm doing here. This is crazy because I, but I felt that way.

I've always written from the first person narrative. My favorite movies have narrators like a overworking narrator in some way that is like that style of storytelling. And i've always made up and vanish in every other podcast i've made into something that I think that I would want to listen to.

Nothing, nothing that I want to this to myself I really don't but in the way of like hold my hand a little bit and let me be a fly on the wall to this insane investigation and not feel like i'm so distant from IT and gently remind them how real this is and in the best way possible without converting up some fake true crime. Suspend, show them the stakes. And the real life part of this, whether that's insight into my own experience or everyone else, is if we show that across the board, IT can feel like a real thing and I should because they're real people and their real problems.

Yeah absolutely. Leading up to twenty sixteen. What were you doing in life? Like what sort of LED you on this path and made you get into this kind of work?

He was definitely a like fucking decision where I had been doing music video for years since I was a kid. I was always writing, creating, singing, dancing. I was decade as I grew up. In my twenty years, I was in a band, and I was wrapping two thousands wrap. White boy, silly, stupid.

but it's honestly pretty good. I'm not gonna.

E, thank you. We had a lot of fun and we were doing videos on youtube is start out with parody songs. And then we did original music, and I got burnt out on being the starving artist and decided to take my video skills more seriously.

So I made my own company and started directing music videos professionally for other artists, which I did not start out that way. I say professionally eventually, because I think at the first client was for like three hundred bucks. And IT was some random rapper from crux list.

I sort of hit pause on my career as an artist in the sense of trying to be a music artist for the rest of my life. Not that I wouldn't never do that again or explore that autrement c Better career choices. And I was start to be in broke, so I was doing that.

Can I use this creativity for others to have at least something to count on, so to speak?

Yeah, so at that point where I done that for years now and I was, I think, twenty seven, twenty eight, I wasn't fulfilled doing what I was doing. I felt like I was just making content for everyone else and not really reaping the benefits of IT and always chasing a check.

And I wanted to go back to my childhood dreams of making my own content and being sustainable, doing that, which is really, like all i've ever really wanted, was to be able to create and then pay my bills. With that, i've always been in a true crime, like forensic files on soft mysteries. As a casual viewer, that was always my shame, always in the suspend stories, true detective, that kind of stuff, my favorite.

And I was just sitting in my house one day. Like, how does one become the person who does that? Like the guy who made the James? Did he just decide that i'm going to go due an investigative documentary? IT was amazing to me that I was so gripped by a documentation in that way, and they had a real influence on the case.

And then i've been serial as like, okay, what if I set out to do a documentary on a cold case that I pick and find in my home state and then the podcast will be like a proof concept for something bigger. That time I didn't even know that you could want tize a pocket or that would even be here a business at all. So that's really how I started, was just me jumping head first and and trying to solve a missing persons case in south georgia.

Terry rinsed a sole georgia and making a podcast of vanished around that. And in my mind at the time, I was really a stepping stones, the first step into doing something bigger than that. And then IT became what IT is today through .

the month years. You ended up having a huge role in that case. Where's that case now?

So after years of just pushing IT back because the government is good at doing that, ryan duke, who was originally charged with terrain, says murder. He was found not guilty of the murder. That was really because the state did pretty much fucking nothing during the five years that they had to build a strong case. There was a lot of animosity, I think, towards the broadcast in a way that maybe even clouded their objective goal.

because everybody was like, what's a fucking .

podcast still in twenty teen? But during season one, we under a lot of new information, even like town secret types stuff, and people not like the local enforcement at a state level, the georgia government investigation were at odds because they didn't want share anything and they seem to be getting more active all the sudden because of the pocket that was cool to me. That was progress or momentum.

I wasn't really setting out to take claim er ownership of solving anything. I wanted to make some sort of difference. They eventually made two arrests, and essentially they just kind of bungle the whole and turned a blind eye to some strong information that was definitely out there from the podcast. I think that ultimately hurt them because his defense did not do that. They brought in everything and was able to paint a picture that at least made more sense to the jury.

Has anyone been convicted .

of terrorist murder? No, it's a shame.

It's hard to like, do this work working on cases and putting your absolute all into IT. And then still at the end of the day, or at the mercy of this system, which is, unfortunately, in my opinion, a very broken system, and something that stood out to me that you said, and these and force on pervading. But it's like I can do my job.

I can present these people with the facts of this case. I can present them with all the interviews i've collected, all the information I collected, and I can't make them do their job. And I feel like that's the wall that I run into all the time, is I can literally create seventy page dogs, pass them off to detectives with every interview, like game keeping, nothing, absolutely nothing, and still have no movement on a case. How do you navigate that frustration as you're going through these cases that are so cold and often neglected?

I honestly just go into every case knowing that and thinking that if I already there, it's probably because of some version of that.

That's true. That's why people are reaching out to us because they're already desperate in its arty gun cold, so to speak.

I'm going in assuming that they're not going to CoOperate with me, not they're not gonna try. I always hope that there's some sort of decent relationship or a relationship at all with me and us who are covering a missing person's case, but a majority, the time that just does not happen. I think there's a lot of ego involved sometimes, and it's not their desire to talk about a case they are able to solve.

I think a lot of people just offended by someone else coming in there. And really, it's not a competition to us. And I think the profession view IT that way. That speaks volumes as to what the helder problem is in the first place.

something that I hear a lot from, whether to be police or F, B, I agents that I reach out to as they claim, like a lack of resources, a lack of staff. And I know that that you often run into on your cases, how do you think we would address that problem? Is that a matter of staffing IT is a matter of training.

is such a vague thing to say, like lack of resources, what do you mean? Like what do you need to get paid more to have more officers, to have a detective, a cold cuni? I think IT just depends on specifically where and what, but I think IT just takes people who care like the right people, not the people with egos, who became a cop for the wrong reasons. I've talked to some good cops and some bad cops, and all the good ones acknowledged that there is a lot of shady ones, and i've told some good cops who really care and will go out of their way to assure the family that something is being done or try new things and not be as gay keeper or stuck in the nineteen and sixty or something like pre internet on how things work. I have a little bit of hope, but I going to a place like, no malaca.

They're not there yet. I was recently following up on this car accident that happened related to season. When I reach out to the police, they were like, honey, we have one cop car. Like, your expectations are insane that you expect to stop a functioning website, or that we actually have an officer that higher to do that job. Your assumption is insane.

The more variety of states and things that I look into, the more you see the difference in season four as well as season three, you focus on the missing appearance of multiple indigenous women. Can you speak to the importance of those types of cases? And how do you select the cases that you decide to move forward .

on IT in in my w missing a murder and digest woman. It's been a problem for years and it's been largely under the radar in the past couple of years. It's picked up more national attention in general.

The hey, this is happening bit for a long time generations. They've been overlooked. And this was just brought to my attention over the years of doing true crime pocket. That's how I learned even the term in in my is because people would leave IT in a comment or they would say, hey, please go look at this case it's a missing a moderate into person and they're not being looked into and i'm like, okay, that's a rule I made a conscious decision to use up and vanished, specifically the platform as a tool in the ways that it's work in the past in getting new information.

If I could apply that in any way to move the needle on a case that would otherwise Normally get less ridge, then IT feels like I can make some sort of difference, even if it's just mainstream platforming the case in putting IT before other people's eyes and showing the community and family and friends and other people that there are people out there who care, and that this is a problem for the last two seasons, that's been a theme, because IT is a problem, and allow these cases go unnoticed or unsolved strictly, because they are indigenous, and there has been a long history of that. So I conscious ously was like, the next season needs to be a story about a victim who would otherwise not get as much coverage. And that's how I can immediately start helping in some way.

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Not really what I appreciated hearing that in season for and why I wanted to have you on the show, especially as listeners you feel compelled you want to try to help. Is there a way for listeners aside taking in content and learning about the details? Is there things that they could be doing to help support your efforts or help support the families?

I think that just awareness in general is number one is the easiest thing that anyone can do is spread awareness of the issue in certain cases, like season, for a lot of people are listening in the actual town, and there's people who are involved in the case and our friends or family of person's of interest, and we've heard things.

And when they start to hear people they know or themselves on the podcast, I would like to encourage more people to come forward. And I think that IT starts to create the sort of shift in momentum, tilting the scales where you have all these people talking who is not talking. That's just kind of like a natural human observation that I don't even have to assert.

People can just pick them up on their own. You would be surprised sometimes people from far away can connect the dot that we couldn't or the police couldn't, or offer a new perspective or have some little piece of information that breaks something wide open. So in a real way up and especially this season that's actively going on. If you're a listener, especially if you're someone who is closer to the case or in you can most certainly help because you're either from there or have resources or people that you know an information that could be helpful no matter how close to IT IT is or not.

What kind of things are you doing to like keep yourself safe when you're working on a case like this?

Really, we just try to think ten steps ahead being ahead of the curve. We worked on both of these cases for almost a year before we did anything, before we told anybody, before we made any sort of announcement. So we were in known multiple times where people didn't really know who we were unless we told them why we were there.

And we have like a general cover story for where we were there, for people that we didn't want to know but think we said we were doing something like national geographic thing, like a documentation on the wilderness or something. We did stand out a little bit and we didn't want to say out right to at least certain people that we were there on behalf of these families trying to solve these missing person's cases because we didn't know who to trust. We didn't want to cut out of the bag.

And in the first call was to actually solve this, which IT is that would not be of any benefit us. But eventually, IT comes out and people do know and now they really know. And from now at least, they are on the look out for that or they're aware of that and they have an opinion about that.

My friend Cooper had first pointed out FLorence his case, and he went missing in twenty for a week. I was looking into IT and just reading what I could online, which there wasn't very much. And from what I could find, IT just looked like he was very suspicious and he did not just walk off on her own or something.

I looked like there was probably ball play involved. They weren't getting a proper investigation. At the same time, there was another unsolved missing person's case, just bodies. And in my inbox, I had an email from both families, kind of near the same time from years ago, and they had reached out basically knowing what up venit was and having listen to IT and asking if we would cover their case in the podcast.

And it's the first time that's ever happened in that way for an official season of the show, where they knew what this was and reached out and said, hey, will you cover my families story? Immediately we were able to establish a strong relationship with the families and friends and get some good insight from the community itself who has been experiencing the lack of investigating. We wanted to raise mistakes a little bit too.

If we're going na go to know alasia, we weren't gona try to solve one case. There's three thousand people here. That would be odd, I think, to neglect one of those cases.

It's such a small place where the same names start to resurface, because it's the same police department is the same court system is the same person of the bar. So eventually the lines can sof burning our own internal investigation, which will become a lot more apparent. Done the line. As you see, these cases can emerging together, not in the sense of same persons of interest or things that happened to them, but the same problems affecting different people.

the same patterns in the case, and also like how they're n investigated and how word travels. I was like puffing on my inhaler, listening to the episode where you go to the bar as your fake facebook self with your bud Cooper, who is also, I think, using a sum to meet up with organ. Jon, first of all, work and john's voice, the second I heard at my skin, literally crawled.

There's just an essence to what I believe psychopath feel like when you talk to them and I was default giving that for me and then him sending you completely insane videos of him like shooting guns and stuff. You're just like, this guy is a live wire to say the least. How did you stay calm in the conversation or you internally losing IT because you did a really good job of being like no man. And i'm not .

with them to date. To me, that feels like the craziest thing i've ever done. Catfish, a suspect in a murder case. There was a lot of self doubt and anxiety about whether or not he really believed my story, that I was not paying lenzing and I was this other guy. I was really concerned about that.

But over time, I just became convinced that I really, truly think that he thinks i'm this other guy, and for whatever reason, he definitely wants to talk to a stranger, or at least is willing to. As crazy as that sounds, maybe I should keep proceeding as this fake guy, which was not like the plan. The first place per say was more so to figure out where he was.

But we just made an end like an entire back story. And there was two of us. I, as much as I could in the moment where my hat low, were wearing winter year. And it's a darker bar. If he had googled me or something, maybe would take a minute also, like we knew that there was a chance in the first ten seconds he could be like your pain, linsey, in the whole things over. So we had a plan for every possible outcome.

We did not know what to expect at all, but we got there probably like three hours before he was first to meet us and set up and talked IT over every detail that we needed to match and creative ways to steer the conversation back to name in the case, or even get there at all in the first place without seeing suspicious. Because that is weird. When you hear in the podcast, I think IT is up being like twenty three minutes or so, and there's some more that we didn't put in there.

But IT was a two and a half hour conversation we had, and obviously we did not talk about the case for two and half hours because that's not what he was even there meeting about. We were completely floored at just how open he was talking, the way he did. And he brought up, known on his own within the first five minutes, he brought, known, that was our entry point.

Oh no. Oh yeah. We know where no is, and we start talking about IT. Then we can get to why you leave them. He tell us the story about FLorence and people accusing him of murdering her.

And I think in an attempt to change the subject, he says some really crazy stuff about how he knows that he was murdered by some guy and she's put in this sparrow and very so specific things that he should not be saying if they're not true at all in the moment. He does not think he's being accorded. Just for clarity, like in the city of alasia, you're allowed to do that. It's a one party state. I'm not afraid to go talk as me to somebody, but I debated this one for a while and I just knew and I got that if I said who I was for real, that he would say, fuck off and that's all we get, and we wouldn't learn anything.

This was your one chance to do IT.

yes. So like we became convened, I didn't know what was going to happen at all, but we all left that bar. Like holly shit.

you had to be fucking looking at each other when you plays. Are you kidding? needed. That just happened. Like the fact that he brought up every time you would say something, I would get goose bumps all over my arms.

That moment I will never forget, because he's kind of got a weird that I stare a little .

bit sometimes, you .

can tell, thinking IT just feels weird. He was looking at me and he brings up that. I thought that you might be this podcast guy. And for a brief moment there I thought, holy shit, he knows who I am.

This is all like microseconds and i'm like, okay, react the exact opposite now and I go, what like? You're kind of playing dumb and I like that that it's going to go into complete one eighty hard, the other direction. With no hesitation, he brings up again. And I think on the second time he had become convinced within the hour so that I wasn't that guy and that's when I knew holy should okay. He actually does not know who I am and does not think that pocky is me, and the only reason he doesn't is because he simply didn't google someone had tipped him off and told him about me in the pocket, and he just didn't take the time to type in my name or the show. And if he had any time in the previous twenty four hours, he would have known who I was, but he didn't.

Who had her daughter went flow, went missing that night?

That night I believe IT was her ex who's been talked to and pretty much cleared for the most point, but that I believe that who had her daughter.

I was trying to put myself in her shoes. She's a thirty three year old mom. She's going out for a weekend. I was just her birthday. So this was probably like her big celebration weekend.

So I was just thinking, the person who always knows where I am if i'm not with my kids is the person who has my kids. I was just curious if he had any insight of where he was going and what not her was able to. Confirmed that yeah her plan was to be at .

west beach yeah I mean, I I think IT wasn't really a plan but as they piece IT together red by talking to people in her last movements, IT was very clear that that's where he went to the west. B, each of known where a bunch of gold miners and random travellers like to sit up camp and pretty much party. So SHE was going through like out a trouble time in the moment.

And SHE was out there with some objectively sketchy her individuals. Then SHE disappeared that last he was seen, and her stuff was found in an outside of this guy tent, the guy that I have fished. And he has no good story as to why that is the case. As far as we know, no one seen or since then.

Do you know if at any time, if the police checked shelters, either domestic violence shelters or shelters for the unhoused for either flow or no.

is so small that there only be one place and they are not there.

And if they were around, people would see them?

Yes, it's not a place that unless you get super lost in the wilderness and fall down a hole or something which people like to theorize may have happened to Joseph, despite all the suspicious circumstances, there's not anywhere to hide. And no, there isn't that many places to go look for somebody.

So when did you first physically land in them? You mentioned you guys worked on this for about a year before you went public with any information. I think that's important. A lot of people might not realize us creators how much time we're putting in before we go public because like you said, there is sort of that magic invisibility cloak that you have until you start taking things public. And then it's like your job is twice as hard now.

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I want to say, I first landed in the late twenty two or early twenty three, and we really made a serious effort to be as incog to as possible, just about what we were doing because we knew that I would eventually impact the case some way. And that wants to cast out of the bag. We can't take that same approach anymore.

So preserving that for as long as we could and we did for a majority of this season. It's been that until I visited when the pocket came out, and then once people realized that we were actually for real covering Joseph case too, and IT wasn't get ten gentle story. IT changed everything forever.

Because now the entire town knows that the two unsolved cases here of missing persons are being covered by this podcast. And these people and everyone's talking, and we're hearing everyone inside the story that people never hurt before. Interviews from people eight years ago that no one even knew occurred and they're sitting back and pieces together their own version of events.

That's when people start reaching out to us and say, hey, having known this now, this doesn't make sense. We're able to kind of, in a way, thanks to the private investigators and jose's case and the family who spearheaded the whole thing. Look at what was transferring eight years ago and what people were saying that no one has ever heard even them.

And compared to what they're saying now, I would not remember what I said eight years ago, especially if I was lying about something and I was not too sure about IT. So there's a lot of big, big holes from people who are related to each other. And in weird places, in this case, and it's like they are refute ably weird IT would be crazy if he got eaten by a bear and the bear ate his cell phone in his boots, in his backpack.

Two, if that's what happened, which I don't believe, that's like getting struck by lighting twice or three times in your life and so at what point are you like? Okay, why are these people lying? Because it's not just misremembering.

It's not just like a little detail here and there. It's big, big things that when you zoom out, you go, oh, IT looks like they're painting a story here and all these things can be true. That's what we're leaning on.

Is answering that question and less of the assertion of involvement, more like why did you lie in the first place? And if you lied to the police, which we have proved that something you all did, the police should be doing something about that. When I watched forensic files back in the day, if you lie to the cops, they take you to the station and they, you like, put you in the room. Go cup back. Cup one comes out with a diet coke and the other ones grilling you for two hours.

Why do you think the police gave you the run around? Maybe because they didn't do their job. But are there any other reasons?

My gut instinct is that that case file is like two hundred characters of words. I don't have any proof of them really legitimately interviewing anyone in a real, real way. So I think that the case file, if there even is a real case file in that way, is so lackluster and so nothing burger that they're gona hold on to. This is an open investigation. That's really why we don't want to show IT to you because not only are we not doing anything now, we didn't then either.

What was also so valuable in the season is hearing those recordings that you mentioned between the different P. S and Christine and her family. And what's obviously you're hearing those interviews back is that these stories aren't adding up and there's different perspectives on work.

Christine and Joseph having more than a friendship. You're also wanting to represent Megan, his Fiona, and be respectful to the family. How did you navigate those pieces?

It's really difficult because you have to really look at IT objectively and remember what you're doing this for and what the goal is and not to fall down the rabbit hole of trying to make things fit. Or just because you feel like somebody did something mean that they did. I can remember back like listening to some of the tape a year and a half ago in the way that I hear IT now is so different.

There are things that I would have never picked up on as odd. I just because of how much we've learned in the process since then. And so in terms of the podcast this season, we've been unfolding IT to you in the way that we learned IT because that's how you as a listener would be able to also point out different audience, different strange anomalies or plot holes in their story by hearing what's said then and now and what doesn't fit and how that might be suspicious.

I think that in both Joseph and FLorence, this case, they died. And people know that they died, or they died in front of people, and people hit the, I don't know if they were out right murders, or if they were accidents, or if they or something even more malicious, but I think that people knew they died and felt they were close enough to this or responsible enough to go out of their way to hide the truth. And that's what the families firmly believe.

It's not like any other theory has been proven to be true, or more true. You can sit there and say, hey, FLorence walked off the ocean. Well, that would be weird.

And why didn't you wash back up? That's a theory, sure. And maybe that did happen, but there's a proof of that. There's evidence to support IT or there is defending less evidence supporting that.

Where does this other guy fit into the whole picture? At what point do they go beyond being coincidences or taken seriously? These things don't add up. And when things don't add up, you got to recommit and say, okay, why is that? And sometimes where shit does happen. But when IT happens in a pattern and it's still an unsolved case, you've got to start looking at what's right in your face and call for what IT is to release get to the boom of that.

One thing that also came up a lot as suggestions in both FLorence and josep cases was bear attacks. You did a great job including those statistics, but I maybe curious. So I wanted to do some independent research as well.

And the statistics really would point to she's more likely to have been harmed in like an A T, V accident that's so much more common in the state of alaska. Even a dog attack is much more common than a bear attack. Do you think some of that is almost like lower in small towns or spread so frequently that people think they happen more often than they actually do?

I think in terms of the police ever making that kind of assertion is more of a this is the VGA st. conclusion. We can come to that.

You can prove otherwise unless you find a body. It's almost like saying, the boogie man got in the woods, okay, bear got him in the woods, okay, but there's no signs of that. How far could he have theoretically walked from his truck? reasonably? That's gotta be under like a five mile radius.

I don't like how far he possibly on. And they searched that place up and down, biggest search you've ever done in that city. And they found nothing.

That in itself is just really weird. The way his truck was parked is weird. Those facts alone don't support a bear attack. You can't rule that out because you don't know where he is. But when you combine that with everything else and all the other people who are relying about where they were and trying to create alibis for different days and nights and digging deeper and finding out these different relationship dynamics that choice have have with people, there's more questions. And if they really cared about him in the way that they showed themselves to eight years ago, then where are they now?

Yeah, one thing I found really compelling was that you guys literally put up fires. And no, me, you had a tip line, you had a reward. And then there was sort of this robot woman who came into the picture, who started essentially like feeding you information.

And in, I believes, the latest episode, episode fifteen, we clear the robot voice melt, and her voice sort of becomes this Young woman's voice because of the age we live in with A I and the internet. And how insane hinged people can be. How do you vet those sorts of claims and how serious do you .

take them to get to any truth or fact? You're going to go through a lot ship so you got ta beyond the look out for false information, misinformation, not fall for the crazy rush mal town shit.

Yeah most unreliable people will tell you their unreliable in the conversations that I have with them without even speaking to the evidence. You can start to track that like the things that this person says are not aligning with reality in the facts I have yeah .

that that's a till tale. But if someone's telling potentially the truth, if or there is a meat on the bone, it's user because they say something that only they would know. We haven't ever said that.

How do you know that detail? And so now we're listening in terms of the creepy AI voice that you have thus far all say this, it's more than one person. It's actually like a lot of people oh.

who share it's a whole squad of robots. yes. Have you been able to fact check some of what they're saying in IT seems credible.

absolutely. yeah. I've heard the same story from different people who are both in the same place, both having no knowledge of the other. I have snapshot data proving where people were.

I have video proof of people being places with time stamps, and except data on the photos of dumb being where they said they're not to, pretty much everyone, except for anyone who would be hiding something or lying about something, they're just now realizing that what they witnessed at one point in time was something that mattered because this is a Normal day or night for them. But then in hindsight, when you know that this has been happening behind the scenes when you were there eight years ago, you're going on, hold a shit. That dog connects to this dot IT met nothing then because there was no context.

But that's what's been happening is that that summer, not everyone who was there that summer is still there. And at least sixty percent of the information that we've been getting stuff from having people who were there that summer, who dw was their only time there and they have notice to anymore. They just happen to be around and close to some of the people who come up in the story.

Well, something that come up more recently is this alasia airlines thread. Can you break that down for me? Because I want to make sure i'm understanding this correctly. Essentially, there's one plain in and one plain out.

right? Yeah, if you want a book, a flight to know. You're gna go through encourage first and then you'll fly from encode to know via alaska airlines.

That's the main airline to all the small towns in alaska because alaska is enormous and there are tons of small airports and they have all these different flights to different airports. There's other airlines. But in terms of Normal assa, the main one that runs from entries to know, which is the only one that I can take, is alaska lines.

About two or three weeks ago, I had a flight booked to go to know I had one night in my sleep, decided on a win that I was going to pop up and known and ask certain people some questions while the potato was coming out. And I was banking on the element of surprise, some people that I wanted to approach a few days before my schedule slightly, I cancelled everything, and there was a series of at least three other flights that I cancelled. But I was just being stupid, and I literally forgot to cancel my last flight, which was from anchorage.

Sno me and I never checked in. I've flown enough. I know how IT works on the consumer side enough to know that if I didn't tell anybody this and I didn't check in, i'm gonna appear on your APP as like p linz in some upgrade list, but not calling my name out at the desk.

I know that those things aren't how somebody new else coming to them IT had to be from someone who can look that up the day of the flight IT was as if people knew the flight I was going to be on. Specifically, I decided because they were so certain that I was coming that I just going to pretend like I was there. So if anyone was trying to keep tabs on me, at least for a moment, they think how we should hard to get passes or simultaneously try to figure out, is there anything to this? Am I reading into a too much and turns out I wasn't.

But nine or not, multiple people had looked up to see if I was coming. And without any hand that I was gonna be there. I can only assume that somebody was monitoring IT checking frequently.

My name. I don't work for asia airlines. I can't go into the computer system. I can't prove who did what, only they can do that with some form of internal investigation.

And obviously, we don't feel safe like commercially viet alasia airlines to know anytime soon if our information can remain private. And that's a major safety concern when in a town that small were basically here to investigate two unsolved murders. IT could be a vacation, and I don't want you .

to know where I am. I don't even post my location until I leave somewhere for sure.

I don't have to making any big claims here other than I don't like that. I don't want you to know where I am at all times, and I think everyone might feel that way. So in the furious or not or a combination of all the above, i'd like to know where that came from. And i'd also like to know that IT won't happen again. I would sly, i'm going to take their airline anymore, and i'll find other creative ways to get there.

Are there other routes that people take in?

You can get there by boat, but now I would have to be something that we're really creative on, who we're telling, who, what we cannot be, the names, the real names of ourselves on that thing, which we know some people who could help us with that. But that would have to be what IT is.

So essentially, they may have looked at the flight manifest and saw that you were supposed to be on this flight.

Yeah someone who works at the airport and or airlines who has access to that. I do know that it's federally regulated because of terrorism. IT is a federal crime to access and disseminate private information like the IT could have been one person, two people, three at a curiosity.

whether was an a furious or not, you still .

deserve your privacy. yeah. And I think that with as many ties to certain individuals who have been aired on this podcast to the airline and could be somebody who could be privy to the information or also have access to IT, IT just makes you feel even less safe. You don't have to connect the whole bunch of dots for you to understand why we would be uncomfortable or feel like something should be done about IT.

What comes next in this case? How many episodes are you anticipating and where you are in the investigation?

We have one come out this week, epo de sixteen. And then we have episode seventeen coming out next week. Then we're taking another small break and we're going to come back in conclusion with eight more episodes.

And just like in the first installed and he was mostly about forest, this case, and then I became about joyce's case. And then part two has been about Joseph. Mostly the third installment will be both cases more evenly covered. And now, ether, you're caught up on what there is to know, pulling out everything we got in the box and showing IT to you.

What does IT been like to have that support from FLorence, his family, and from jose's family? Have they listen to the powders? Ast.

I can't imagine what I would be like to hear the pocket. I know some of them listen to IT, some of them choose not to, which I also understand. Some people have listened to certain parts because they were told by other family or friends that they should hear this part. But I think that overall, it's felt to me and them too, I believe like a sense of camera tary that feels pretty nice in the sense of us collaborating to get answers and attention .

for their loved .

one yeah and all the people care and they can see that people done beautiful like oil paintings of Joseph and FLorence and self like that to the family that's amazing. They're not forgotten. I'm sure it's simultaneously the hardest thing on earth to relieve IT and go through all that and ford to be spotlighted again.

And unfortunately, that's kind of what has to happen to solve IT unless the police do something different. But I think for the most part, what they've believe happened or didn't happen to their loved ones has been more and more validate that matters more than people consider IT does. Sometimes I can't arrest anybody, but like knowing that they weren't crazy and that that person did say this, or that my own objective investigation found what they thought was weird too. That validation is also something that's helpful and just moving forward in some way, not being alone on the island. The only one thinking and talking this way about IT.

i'm sure we didn't still hope more eyes is always Better, especially on missing person's cases. And so I imagine that for them, I would bring such a sense of comfort that somebody he's actually working this, especially after waiting so long. What is one of the more common misconceptions that people have about missing persons cases?

This just my opinion, but I feel like most people never go missing. Missing means they're dead. Now there are cases where people have been found and they were alive, or they were kidnapped, or they ran away and started a whole new life. But when years go by, a lot of those things become less likely. And I tend to believe that a majority of year old unsolved missing person's cases, they're basically just unsolved homicides without the party, especially if the evidence points to that circus antibody.

It's very infrequent that somebody would actually have like a mental break or choose to vanish themselves essentially yeah choose .

to go missing on their own account in accord and still be alive and well somewhere. That is, in my opinion, the lowest on the list. It's not the most common thing that I think is a common misconception is too broad of a look at IT you gotto zoo m in some more and say, okay, they are not hiding somewhere. Maybe someone hit them somewhere.

What is the most common misconception that people have about you?

I think there's a lot of misconceptions. There's a level of staying objective that I do. I think because of the way i'd like to tell the story from first person perspective, I get a lot of people saying shit like he's always making IT about himself, of course, is going to find a way to bring himself back and to IT and pat himself on the back like I get that take is a bad take because you also have to be saying, why do all these other people trust him enough to talk to him? And really this sort of silly, goofy, laid back dude ninety percent of the time when i'm not investigating a unsolved disappearance.

well, it's really more about your investigation, which of course you are part of because you're you're investigating. So yeah, it's just one of those things you can never win. That's what i've learned with some people. They're determined to misunderstand you and that's what IT is.

I relate a lot to your story like I was got creative and really wanting to get more in the work that listening up and vanished was definitely one of the shows that inspired me to get in the podcast, because I love documentary. And if I would have had my way, would have gone to school if I could have afforded IT to study film and become a director. And so audio was the way I could afford to do the work that I wanted to do, especially the way you like, brought people on the journey. The humanest of IT IT makes you realized that all jobs are worked by humans.

I appreciate .

so much the work that you do, not only as a listener and somebody who has been a fan of years for a long time, but also just as somebody who's lost a family member to murder.

I have always said i'm so grateful for independent nal ism and quote, murder podcast or true crime podcast, because I used to feel seen in that word before I worked in this IT brought me comfort to know that other people were giving a shit about people's murdered loved ones. I can relate to those victims and and relate to some of the sentiments. Even within season and four, I didn't have a missing person, but I could relate so much to the family. In their words, i'm happy and thankful that you were able to make time to come on, and I certainly appreciate the work that you do. And where can we go and support you?

Well, thank you for all those kind words. That was very nice if you I feel the same way about you, you're doing amazing things, has been awesome to see you grow. And I for a while d and even know that you even listen to up to learn later, that you were like a real fan of door. And what i'm doing was I was flattered. So thank you.

It's like a given to me. It's like cereal of been finished. You know there some there was definitely those shows that paved away for a lot of us.

What I appreciate that IT means a lot to me but yeah, up and vanished season for it's called in the midnight sun is the subtitle of IT. If you haven't heard IT just dive right into episode one of season four and just binge the first sixteen or seventeen right now, and you'll be up to speed. And we have a whole new installment of episodes coming out in a more final way around the corner.

I personally listened to all of IT in like a day in a half. I was like, nothing in this world exists. Shut out to you and your team for all of the work you've put into this season thus far.

IT is incredibly done, and I appreciate the sensitivity that you bring forth and the education you bring forth. Definitely five stars. Highly recommend. And we will blink IT in the episode notes two on the major platforms. So you can just click through and go this.

And now thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening until next time. Stay safe, friends. Something was wrong is a broken cycle media production created and hosted by me, tifany rees. If you d like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow something was wrong on instagram at something was wrong podcast, our theme sung was composed by glad rags. Check out their album wonder under thank you so much.

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In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a lovely wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hit man on the dark web to kill her, and he wasn't the only target, because buried in the debt of the internet is the killer st.

A cash of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses and specific instructions for people's murders. This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those who lives were in danger. And IT turns out convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy.

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