Status: Untraced - E1: The Razor's Edge
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By now, hopefully you've heard of our latest podcast called Status Untraced. It's from the team that brought you up and vanished. And it covers the mysterious disappearance of an American traveler who vanished from India. The series has premiered, but we're going to play episode one for you right here. As you listen, search Status Untraced in your podcast app and go follow the show. New episodes are available now.

You're listening to Status Untraced, a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast. This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. After some solitude in the caves at 10,000 feet in the Indian Himalaya, I made my way down to the sacred hot springs of Kierganga,

where I could warm my bones and watch the sunrise. One morning, I was walking by the smoky stone hut of a Nagababa, type of Hindu holy man. He had been watching me come down the mountain and he waved me inside. Over the next two weeks, we became friends, I think. - This is a blog post uploaded on August 18th, 2016 by a 36-year-old spirited adventurer named Justin Alexander Shetler. - He invited me along on his pilgrimage.

Three days hard track to a lake at 13,000 feet and then 10 days meditating in a place without vegetation or wood to burn. Then three days back to a small village. I've been cold, feeling a bit malnourished. I think that this is gonna be a challenge on every level and I'm nervous. - Justin is no ordinary tourist. He's a wilderness survival expert and this trek should have been of no challenge to him. - He speaks no English besides good and yoga.

and I'm not totally sure why I was invited. He follows a strict spiritual routine that I know nothing about, but really don't know what to expect. - Not long after this post, Justin Alexander disappeared. I've spent the past four years tracking Justin's movements and his life. I've spoken with friends and family who believe they know what happened to Justin, and I've heard all kinds of theories.

But the thing is, I found something that no one else has. Something that was supposed to be impossible to find. Something that led me 7,000 miles away from home to a dangerous predicament. There's a rumor that this couple was robbed for 6,000 rupees at knife point. Yeah, by four guys. By four guys on the way to Kyrgyzstan. Yeah.

I'm in a remote part of India, notorious for murders. And I've just learned a couple was robbed at knife point on the same trail where Justin was last seen. If we're doing this Kierganga trek, would it be beneficial to have Alex and me walk slightly ahead of you guys, see if we can catch these guys? I think we should bait them. What do you think? Yeah, I don't want to get stabbed. Yeah, I don't want to get stabbed either, but I think we have to do this.

Four years ago, if you had told me I'd be risking my life, let alone leaving the country to look for someone I've never met, I wouldn't have believed you. But that changed when I read Justin's final blog post, because he signed it with a message, one that completely alters the understanding of his case. In his own words, he said, I should return mid-September or so. If I'm not back by then, don't look for me. Sometimes I get the feeling I'm lost

I'm Liam Luxen, and this is Status Untraced. Episode 1, The Razor's Edge.

Justin Alexander, who the hell are you? You're a travel blogger? Is that what you said earlier? Well, no. I mean, I do have a blog, but over the last year and a half, I think I've posted three times. So I'm not a travel blogger by any means. This is Justin Alexander in 2015 on the Tangentially Speaking podcast. I just kind of use it as a space along with social media to share who I am and what I'm doing with people that might be interested. So when people ask what I do, I generally say I'm just a nomadic world traveler person

I sold everything I own and quit conventional life when I was 32. I found out about Justin and his disappearance in a bit of a strange way. In my mid-20s, I found myself in L.A. feeling, and I bet you've never heard this before, unfulfilled. It was by chance that I was at a random house party, and I met this guy named Alex. We got to talking, and I was telling him about what I wanted out of life, more adventure. He told me that I should check out Adventures of Justin on Instagram.

So when I went home, I did. Then I couldn't stop. Since I was a teenager, I used to dress in black and try and see if I could sneak through rooftops climbing out of the Brooklyn Bridge or Manhattan Bridge. I decided I wanted to go live on a sailboat and explore some uninhabited islands. I actually became the monk on January 1st of 2007. I do get stabbed in Thailand. Justin's Instagram was incredible.

This man had trekked the Himalayas in flip-flops, spearfished on remote islands, and tracked wolves on the Great Plains. His adventures were captioned with the motto, "Be kind and do epic shit." He had a pretty strong following, and by the looks of it, his lifestyle lit a fire in people, including myself. You see, I grew up a weird homeschooled kid, constantly feeling out of place.

In my early teens, I found solace running through the woods and daydreaming about traveling to exotic worlds. I had that feeling of wanting to be a part of something bigger than myself. And I saw that in Justin, too. He was living a life I only dreamt of. You know, so when people ask, how do I do this? I just say, well, it just has to do with putting your priorities in order. You know, the more secure and locked in you get in your life, the less opportunity you have to do other things. And, you know, there's pros and cons to both ends of the spectrum here.

I've never had a real sense of home. I've always been kind of a nomad. My family moved around a lot. I've had probably more houses than I have years of life. So it just feels very natural for me to just continue like this. And I feel like my life is about walking that razor's edge. Like Justin said, he decided to retire at age 32. But it was more than that. He was going to travel the world indefinitely. May 19, 2013, he announced the decision on his blog, saying...

So this week I retired, and I'm in the process of selling everything I own, save a Royal Enfield motorcycle, my computer, phone, a change of clothes, a passport, toiletries, and credit card, which all fit into a backpack smaller than a school bag. So let's take this back. What were you doing before? What did you retire from?

In 2009, a friend and I started a technology company, did anti-counterfeiting tracking and marketing for luxury goods. And I wasn't really proud of who I was or what I was doing. I didn't think it was very cool. None of my heroes are tech entrepreneurs. They're all adventurers. So the company did well enough that I was able to step back and still have a passive income coming from my ownership position. Before becoming a world traveler, Justin trained in the art of survival.

When he was 15, he left public high school to enroll into an alternative education program called Wilderness Awareness School. He learned how to build winter-resistant shelters from foliage, and he could even observe birds, listen to their calls, and locate predators and food. But he didn't stop there. He went on to master urban survival as well. He trained with Marines and learned methods to escape and withstand torture. I mean, the guy had the skills to survive anything.

which makes everything about his disappearance all the more suspicious. - Justin Alexander Shetler is missing. He left with a local holy man on or about the 24th of August. - What you're hearing is a GoFundMe post written by Justin's mother. She was seeking help to fund a search for Justin, who was last seen in a northern part of India called the Parvati Valley. It was here he met a Baba, a holy man, who invited him on a trek into the mountains to a sacred ground.

He's not been seen since September 3rd, when he was photographed with some hikers while returning from his trek. Justin was on his way down. He had separated from the Baba with whom he had trekked up the mountain. He refused an invitation to join the hikers, saying that he wanted to get back to his things and to a good source of internet where he could edit his latest video and rest. He never made it. The Baba and a porter, someone who carries camping supplies, returned safely from the trek.

neither reported Justin as missing. A month later, growing restless, Justin's mom and a friend flew to the Parvati. Upon their arrival, the Baba was detained and interrogated. - He changes his story every time the authorities talk to him. I know something is wrong with my son. - The porter, who was also questioned, was released due to lack of suspicion. So all focused was zeroed in on the Baba, a decrepit man whose story was said to shift with each telling.

With no evidence against him, police couldn't continue to hold him in custody and he was set to be released. But just three days before his freedom, everything took a turn. - The Baba has been reported to have committed suicide while in custody. He used his dhoti, a local garment, to hang himself. Police found the man hanging and tried to resuscitate without success. - Per reports, the only guard on duty that night had stepped out for five minutes. There were no witnesses.

Quoted by the Portland Tribune, Justin's mom said, Reading these posts, something didn't sit right.

I found myself questioning if this Baba was a killer, then why'd he do it? What would be the motive? Unfortunately, all hope to find anything new about Justin seemed to die with the Baba. And the Adventures of Justin Facebook page, which previously was a flurry of case information and theories, turned into a place of remembrance.

- It is hard to see such a bright young light pass from this world. - He will continue to inspire. - He was completely fearless. This is a big loss. - I lit a candle for Justin with a prayer that he finds his way back home soon. - I still hope and pray for you, Justin Alexander. - Questions on his Instagram were left unanswered. A celebration of life event was organized. And although there really wasn't closure, life moved on. By the time I was reading all these posts, Justin had been missing for four years.

People seemed to think he met his demise in India. But I kept going back to that final message from Justin himself. "I should return mid-September or so." "If I'm not back by then, don't look for me." Was this a code? A secret message from Justin? Could this disappearance have been planned? What actually happened? It had been a week since Alex told me to check out Justin Alexander. And I was still hooked.

I knew Alex said he did investigative journalism and was curious if he had thought about digging into Justin's disappearance for his next podcast. Although we didn't really know each other, I gave him a call and asked. To no surprise, he had, but had been looking for a partner. I had no clue where to start, but I offered myself up for the position anyways. And before I could wrap my head around it, our investigation had started. I'm going to Mexico City, and it's going to be an awesome vacation.

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Hey, Jay. How you doing? Good. Very nice to see you. I'm Liam, by the way. Jason. Very nice to meet you. This is Jason Schultz. I got to know Jason over the course of making this podcast. But meeting for the first time? I'm nervous. Because I've never met someone whose friend disappeared. I actually was shocked in looking back at all this.

- This whole story that I'm telling you takes place between pretty much late 2013 and Justin's gone from this world in 2016, which if you asked me how long we were friends, I'd have completely overestimated. And so I didn't realize that we'd grown so close in such a short period of time. And I was kind of reflecting it, wow, he's been gone longer than I knew him. - We settled down at a wooden picnic table, order a round of beers, and Jason explains that he first met Justin through mutual friends.

Jason shares endless stories of his memories with Justin, from camping trips in the desert and weekends hanging in California. He says their time spent together was sporadic, just moments here and there, but they grew close.

The conversation drifts towards talking about Justin's lifestyle, and I asked Jason if he ever felt worried about him. I worried about Justin in January of 2016. It sounded like he was having some financial issues. And I used to ask him, like, hey, man, how do you never run out of money? And he would say, well, I got some residual income that comes in from, you know, the work that I'd done. But I know that he was struggling financially. And I reached out, and I said, like, hey, if you need some...

money or something, I'm good to help you out. And he said no. He said that he had some cash and he said he has an expertise at being broke and that he was okay. But that's when I worried about it. That's when I had some worries. There's stories from that part of the world where they'll say like, oh, the person didn't come back because they didn't want to come back. We had plans.

He wanted to come to LA in October or November and his plan was to get a 10-year Indian visa and then go back to India. And I texted him and I was like, "Hey man, where are you? Do you get texts?" That's the last thing I ever texted him. And he didn't answer. Then people are saying, "Well, he's missing." I asked if Justin's odd post, the one saying, "Don't look for me," also worried Jason.

He admits while Justin's writing sometimes had a dramatic flair, that wasn't the post that concerned him. It was a different one. Uploaded a few days before the trek, Justin wrote something quite abnormal about the Baba he left with. For reference, a Baba can also be referred to as a sadhu. The caption reads, "This sadhu has cut his penis off in full renunciation of lust. I don't know how to casually drop that bomb, but I find it both unsettling and impressively dedicated."

Did you get any weird feelings when he was talking about that? Yeah, of course, the guy chopped his penis off. Who's not going to raise an eyebrow? Justin raises an eyebrow in the post. He says, like, I don't know whether to trust this guy. But maybe, you know, and of course, Justin was very trusting, incredibly trusting. So, you know, he was lured in by this guy's spirituality or the potential of... Yes, of course, I had some unease. You want to be optimistic, right?

The not knowing is the worst. I've lost friends before. It's horrible to lose someone you love. But also, you know they're dead. So you can start mourning and start doing whatever you have to do to move forward. Not knowing is like you're stuck. Not knowing is like you don't know whether to move on. Or if you're mourning, does that mean that you just lost hope?

And then of course, there's a lot of optimism. Because even when I started being like, "I think my friend is dead," other people were still saying, "I think he's alive." And then I'd be like, "Well, what am I— why am I going around saying I think he's dead and then other people are saying he's alive?" That's a weird thing to be involved in. — For hours at that picnic table, I watched Jason's expressions swing between joyous memories and the reality that his friend might be gone.

Having to live in that space, the not knowing, sounds unbearable. While Jason longs for answers, there were a few things he said that jumped out at me. First, Justin seemed to have friendships everywhere and develop them quickly. He didn't seem like the type of guy that had enemies. Secondly, he may have been struggling financially, but it's unclear how or if this influenced his disappearance. And thirdly,

Justin said he planned to return to the US to apply for a 10-year Indian visa. So is it possible he had a change of heart and decided to skip that step? I talk it through with Alex, and we agree that we need to get a better sense of who Justin is. We need to speak with someone who can relate to his mindset. Someone who was a nomad at one point or another. And it didn't take long to be certain who we needed to reach out to next.

I got a message from Justin through the Facebook direct message thing. And basically, he said something about how he was going to stay with some hunter-gatherer people in the Philippines. This is Dr. Christopher Ryan, a world traveler, author of Sex at Dawn, and the host of the podcast you heard earlier. He says Justin reached out to him years ago to ask for advice.

I responded to him with some hostility because my first thought was, okay, this is some young alpha male dipshit who's going to

go way back into the middle of nowhere with no preparation and bring disease to them. And I was responding to a sense of selfishness like, hey man, this isn't about you. Have you been in quarantine? How much time have you spent learning their language? Are you just going to wander in there expecting everyone to speak English? Are you going to go back there and expect them to feed you?

To his credit, he responded by saying, "Yeah, you know, those are legitimate concerns. I should have said something about that initially. You know, I've done some research, but I'm not just a thrill seeker, and I appreciate your pushback." Justin seemed to me as someone who was really looking for a depth of experience. Dr. Ryan tells me his communications with Justin grew into a friendship and led them to spend two months together in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

That trip ended five months before Justin disappeared. He wrote to me before he went off with the Baba. And he said, I'm not feeling real well. My body, I have a lot of pains. I've lost weight. He sort of listed several things that to me would have been reasons not to go further. To like go get your shit back in balance and then decide what to do.

But for him, he listed those things and then he's like, but I'm going to go live in a cave or whatever the fuck it was with this guy. And I said to him, like, are you sure you want to do this, man? He's like, no, no, I'm definitely going to do this. And I said, well, all right, do what you have to do, but make sure you come back. And that was, you know, that was it. I feel like he overestimated his responsibility to an audience here.

You know, sometimes you meet people and it feels like there's a performative quality to their existence. And it's almost as if there's no time when they're not feeling the eyes of an audience on them. It can be a heavy weight to carry, you know? But how do you experience the moment if you're watching yourself experience the moment all the time? Ryan Reynolds here from Intmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

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This podcast brought to you by Ring. With Ring cameras, you can check on your pets to catch them in the act. Izzy, drop that. Or just keep them company. Make sure they're okay while you're away. With Ring, learn more at ring.com slash pets. Did you get a sense of him longing for something more spiritually enriching at that point in time? Yeah, I think so. You know, being in Thailand, I was with my wife at the time, and three of us hung out a lot. I think there was a...

feeling of maybe loneliness, which I guess happens when you're traveling and when you're kind of the third wheel all the time. So I think there was a feeling in Justin that something was missing in his life. But I think a lot of us who spend our 20s traveling and adventure and sort of checking things off the list of experiences that we want to have, you get to a certain point where you say, okay, I'm

This is becoming less and less satisfying. And you start to see like, I don't want to do this the rest of my life. So I do think that he was at a turning point in his life where there was an increased yearning because he felt, you know, less and less gratified by the current state of his life.

This kind of goes back to something that I think you said on your first podcast where he talks about like walking the razor's edge and how he feels that that's the only way for him to really truly be alive. Is that something that you similarly felt the same way? No, no, I didn't need to push it that far. For me, it was enough that I was alone traveling through India or Nepal or Alaska or whatever, experiencing the isolation and the beauty and the sort of

serendipity, randomness, but it wasn't like I need to walk along the edge of the cliff. I remember when I was with him on that trip where we recorded the podcast, we rode up to Pai. He was up ahead of us and we're going down this big hill. He was not wearing a shirt, of course, you know.

So he's cruising along and he's like doing this weird movement. I thought, what's he doing? He's just like stretching or something. And then I see that he's pulling his feet up behind his ass on the seat of the motorcycle. So he's got no rear brake now, right? And he's just cruising down this sort of winding mountain road. And then he takes his hands off the handlebars and he's got his arms spread open like he's some kind of a soaring eagle.

Going down this curving road, no hands, no feet on a fucking motorcycle about 45 miles an hour. You know, I've spent a lot of time on motorcycles. I would never do that. Never in a million years would I do that. You're riding a motorcycle already, you know? You don't need to push it further than that. Fucking enjoy the ride and keep your shit together.

You know, I'm pissed off at Justin. I'm still angry at him for taking what I see as unnecessary risks and hurting everyone who cared about him. But on the other hand, you know, I have to admit I took the same kinds of risks and I just was luckier. For example, the first time I was in Chiang Mai, I met these two British guys in a cafe

in the morning, turns out they were using heroin. And the reason they were in Chiang Mai was like the purest heroin in the world. It was really cheap. So I ended up hanging out with them and I tried heroin with them. Long story short, I overdosed. I could have died for sure that night, stupidly. So I have no judgment over Justin for pushing it too far.

I end my conversation with Dr. Ryan and take a step back. I realize I made an assumption about Justin. I was so impressed by his capabilities that I assumed the risks he took were methodical, that they were calculated, planned. I hadn't considered that maybe Justin was, at times, reckless. Could this disappearance simply be the result of an accident? It's hard to believe.

There's so many strange details in this case that it would be careless not to consider the other options. For one, foul play. There are rumblings on the GoFundMe and Facebook, which point to the Baba that Justin left with, the one who supposedly observed extreme practices, like cutting off his own penis. His actions were suspicious.

He invited an American tourist who didn't speak his language to a remote place in the mountains. He didn't report Justin as missing after they were last seen trekking together. And just days before the Baba was about to be released, he supposedly committed suicide in his prison cell. Even with no clear motive, something about the Baba is off. Alternatively, there's reason to believe Justin might have chosen to vanish. "I should return mid-September or so. If I'm not back by then,

Don't look for me. Maybe Justin didn't want to be found. It's hard to say if the story leans one way or the other. There's not enough evidence. And we still really don't know Justin. Is he someone who would willingly disappear? And if so, what would cause him to do so? That question led me to Sarasota, Florida, where Justin spent parts of his childhood. Thank you for having us over. Yeah. It led me to a table where Justin reveled over many dinners. What do you want, Terry?

And it led me to one of the most memorable conversations of my life, with one of the last people to be in contact with Justin, his father, Terry Shetler. Do you remember him? I mean, like, a definition of the spiritual quest is the journey from the alone to the alone, because it changes the journey when someone else is involved. As I get to know Terry, I ask how often he was in contact with his son.

I wasn't prepared for his response. Oh, I mostly through his Instagram account. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Whenever he kind of got perception. Yeah, sometimes it was a long time between conversations. And I mean, I felt very connected. So I wasn't like, wow, you haven't called me in three weeks or, you know, anything like that.

In fact, the last time I saw him during our FaceTime from the MoMA Cafe, he said, "Yeah, you probably won't see me for like five years." Five years have come and gone. So where's Justin?

-Testing, testing. -Coming up on "Status Untraced." -Like, he was saying his goodbyes to everybody. -Yeah, it's Justin. Like, he never dies. -I got to tell you, he was a showman, and this disappearing also didn't surprise me. You know, he threw all his stuff along the river, and then he just vanished. -You could read his posts about the guru

He knew this guy was bad news. There's one place on that trail where someone walking behind you could've just tapped you and you would've been gone. Oh God. This is a float, right? It looks like it. It's fresh. You can take out... Oh, no. It's Justin.

If you have tips or information on the individuals in this podcast that you'd like to share, please email us at [email protected] or leave us a message at 507-407-2833. Status Untraced is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. I'm your host, Liam Luxen. Executive producers are Alex Vespested, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsey. Producers are Meredith Stedman and myself.

Supervising Producer is Tracy Kaplan. Consulting Producer, Jonathan Skeels. Associate Editors are David Bash and Charles Rosner of Get Up Productions, with additional editing by Sydney Evans. Artwork by Trevor Eiler. Original Music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Colder Heavens by Blanco White. Mix by Cooper Skinner. Voice Acting provided by Johnny Lavallee, Robin McAlpine, and Theodora Rummel.

Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group. Special thanks to Arshdeep Sharma and Kabir Sharman. We'd be lost without you. And also special thanks to Maggie Gossiker, Rohan Sinha, Lauren Wiggins, Matt Schrader, Neil Strauss, Jason Cavanaugh, Tristan Bankston, Sunil Patachero, Cole Sternberg, Ryan Suave, and Heather Luxon. Lastly, to you, the listener. Thanks for checking out our show.

Please take a second to rate and review it in your app. It helps tremendously. For more podcasts like Status Untraced, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us at tenderfoot.tv. We're excited to go on this journey with you. Thanks for listening.

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It's Madeline Barron from In the Dark.

I spent the past four years investigating a crime. When you're driving down this road, I plan on killing somebody. A four-year investigation, hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents, all in an effort to see what the U.S. military has kept from the public for years. Did you think that a war crime had been committed? I don't have any opinion on that. Season three of In the Dark is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.