Home
cover of episode The Disappearance of Jeremy Alex

The Disappearance of Jeremy Alex

2024/4/23
logo of podcast Murder, She Told

Murder, She Told

Chapters

Jeremy Alex, a free-spirited individual with a history of drug use, was acting paranoid and erratic before he disappeared. His family and friends noticed changes in his behavior, and he was involved in a drug-related operation at the time of his disappearance.

Shownotes Transcript

Hey.

Sending money direct to her bank account is super fast and Aunt Tina gets more time to be the bingo queen. Western Union, send money in-store directly to their bank accounts in the Philippines. Services offered by Western Union Financial Services, Inc., NMLS number 906983 or Western Union International Services, LLC, NMLS number 906985. Licensed as money transmitters by the New York State Department of Financial Services. See terms for details. I'm Kristen Seavey. This is Murder, She Told.

Tim and Debbie Dougal walked the strip of pebble beach that lay at the foot of their new coastal home in Northport, Maine. It was May of 2004, and a cool breeze reminded them that they were just out of winter.

Glancing down, one of them noticed a small pale rectangle. They plucked it from the ground and turned it over, examining the face of a young man with dark hair, round cheeks, and a strong chin. Jeremy Theodore Alex. Brown eyes, 5'7", 155 pounds. Looks like he just had a birthday in April, and if their math was right, he would have turned 28 years old.

The couple chuckled. Wherever Mr. Alex was, he was missing his driver's license. Had he lost it at a day at the beach? Or after taking an impromptu swim in the bay? Or from hitting some chop while on a boat and launching it overboard? Looking over their shoulders, the Dougles surveyed their new house, which was nearing completion. It was huge, 5,000 square feet of brand-new high-end construction.

They were nestled in the trees on an almost two-acre lot, with a huge deck and views that looked out over their private beach and beyond the salt water of Penobscot Bay. They were only in their 40s, but Tim was the president of a successful bulk printing and mailing service in Concord, New Hampshire. Debbie was a realtor operating out of their hometown of Bow. Between their work lives and raising children, they decided that it was time to treat themselves to a piece of the good life in Midcoast, Maine.

The ocean brought them so many interesting things: feathers, sea glass, knobs of wood smoothed by the currents. Just two weeks before, about $30 had washed ashore in the same place. The couple shrugged, one of them pocketing the driver's license for the time being.

Later, they would put it in the glass vase that sat on their coffee table, where they kept all the bits of detritus that the sea presented to them. And, for four years, that's where it stayed. On April 8th, 1976, in the coastal town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Paula Caswell and Ted Alex welcomed their son into the world. They named their little boy Jeremy Theodore Alex.

Ted was from Portsmouth and Paula from the next town over, Greenland, New Hampshire. They were young parents. Ted was 17 years old and Paula was 19. Four years later, in January of 1980, Paula gave birth to a girl they named Nicole. Unfortunately, Ted and Paula's marriage didn't last, and not long after Nicole's birth, they divorced.

Paula moved to Atlanta, Georgia with the kids, and Ted soon followed. But their stint in the South didn't last long, and soon after, they both returned to the Northeast. Ted back in Portsmouth, and Paula to Belfast, Maine. Though separated by 150 miles, Ted remained involved in his kids' lives.

Belfast is the quintessential New England coastal town. A main street lined with colorful brick storefronts, a glass-clear harbor dotted with sailboats, and a trail of lighthouses winking from across the bay each night. We connected with Jeremy's younger sister, Nicole, who's four years younger. She remembers just what Jeremy thought of her.

Jeremy explained that he had a love for me as a younger sister to an exact point in time that he could remember. One day, I was just the pain in the butt sister who was interrupting Mr. Rogers.

Jeremy loved Belfast. He would later go on to travel extensively, but he always felt like Belfast was home, returning periodically to the quaint seaside town, the thick Maine forests, and the protected waters of Penobscot Bay. Jeremy was often in nature. He was an active child, learning to sail, fish, snowboard, and skateboard.

He was an adventurer, perhaps channeling some of his love for Star Wars by finding new worlds in his small town. But he also pursued intellectual hobbies as well. In particular, Jeremy enjoyed playing chess. He learned to play in elementary school and continued to play into adulthood. Though Jeremy and Nicole were primarily with their mother, they would often spend time with their father at his second home in Booth Bay. And in the summers, they would often stay with him in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Living with my dad and my mom were like night and day. My mother's home, there was not a whole lot of discipline. We were pretty much free to do what we wanted to do. We did go to our dad's during the summer and it was much more structured with rules and consequences.

and that's hard when you're a kid or a teenager and you go from one environment that has, I mean, there was structure, you know, we ate dinner at the table every night and, you know, we did those things at my mom's, but when it came to consequences of behaviors and actions, there just really wasn't a whole lot, especially out of my mom. You know, when we would go to my dad's, it was like an instant pushback for Jeremy or myself.

Back in Belfast, Jeremy was away from home constantly, hanging with his friends. He had a solid group of friends. They just kind of ran the streets. They were awesome. And, you know, as a little sister, I always looked up to that whole crowd. But they skateboarded downtown and anywhere they could, really, and anywhere they weren't supposed to.

They were in trouble all the time. I think the Belfast Police Department kept an eye on them always. They were that group of guys that just kind of hung out and they weren't always like doing anything to get in trouble. They just always had eyes on them. Excellent skateboarders, though. Funny story. He did get arrested for streaking.

in downtown Belfast. So there's that. He was just funny. I think he just wanted to live his life and he lived a wild life and that was it. When Jeremy wasn't skateboarding with his group of friends, he was a sponge filling his head with knowledge.

He just was so very well-read. He knew plants and edible plants and poisonous plants and trees and just so much. He was such a wealth of knowledge. Like he didn't want to hold it all inside. Everywhere we went, he shared that knowledge with people so that they could know too. One of his biggest achievements at Belfast High School was in swimming.

Jeremy did go to the state of Maine swimming competitions. I want to say his sophomore year, he enjoyed it. He was great at it. When my daughter, Jeremy's niece, became a swimmer in high school, my mom presented her with Jeremy's state swimming trophy that he had won back when he was swimming. But Jeremy's high school career was brave. He dropped out around his junior year.

I don't really think that he was all that interested in school, to be honest. I think he felt like he could learn more outside of school than in school. He often challenged the teachers and it became an issue as well as just kind of going through a rebellious stage and time of adolescence.

He really did leave home at a younger age, and that being about 16, he just kind of stopped coming home at night and being with friends. And he had been on his own. And that was really when a lot of the traveling started and, you know, hitchhiking and getting to festivals and doing that type of thing. And so he gained an independence very early on in his life.

Reflecting on his son's childhood, Ted would later recall Jeremy was kind of a free spirit, even from an early age. Ted watched as his son morphed from a sandy-haired, dimple-cheeked toddler into a wiry teenager with a curly brown ponytail and a penchant for wearing Grateful Dead t-shirts.

When Jeremy was 18 in August of 1994, his mom decided to move away from Belfast to Missouri. He decided that he wanted to stay in Belfast, but he wouldn't be there for long. Jeremy loved the Grateful Dead, along with Bob Dylan, Phish, and Dave Matthews Band, and he dreamed of crisscrossing the country following them on tour.

So not long after his family left for Missouri, he bought a van, packed a light, and began driving west with a group of friends. The Dead played venues up and down the West Coast throughout June and early July in cities like Sacramento, Seattle, and Las Vegas before finishing the summer with a tour of the eastern states.

The pace was relentless, and throughout it all, Jeremy followed the band, living out of his van and supporting himself by selling grilled cheese sandwiches that he made from the back of his vehicle. Jeremy's family described him as a minimalist. In fact, he was right at home living amongst other deadheads, a community of Grateful Dead followers who emerged in the '70s and bonded around their shared connection with the band's music and message.

Deadheads were considered counterculture, rejecting mainstream values, materialism, and conformity. Instead, they put an emphasis on communal living, spiritualism, and cooperation. I would say he was very spiritual and very connected to the earth. Crystals, rocks, anything that he knew or researched that would bring in positive powers and that type of thing was something that meant something to him.

But despite the distance, Jeremy made it a point to stay in touch with his family. I know that he called Collect. He also wrote my mom letters quite frequently that she would get in the mail and just let my mom know, like, I went to this concert and I've done this and different types of adventures that he was on. And she keeps those letters. She's got them. So he did a good job of keeping in touch with us, letting us know that he was doing okay and loving the life that he was living.

Nicole regularly described Jeremy as resourceful, that he could get a job anywhere. Another aspect of Jeremy's life was his activism. He took an interest in environmental issues while he was on the road.

I knew that he was volunteering with Greenpeace and really doing some activism on the West Coast. He wanted to make a difference regardless of what he was doing. He always wanted to help better the community that he was in. And so by spreading the word of, you know, Mitsubishi or Kleenex tissues or PVC pipe and different types of things that he was protesting, he really loved that.

He loved being able to educate others in things that were going to make a positive impact in the world, really. Jeremy felt at home with his extended family of wanderers. He loved playing his guitar in venue parking lots with near strangers, discussing philosophical issues and bartering goods to get by.

Each show was a unique improvisational experience that they could share together. Another experience that members of the dead community also shared, however, was heavy drug use. Deadheads were widely recognized for their consumption of mind-altering drugs, particularly marijuana and psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin mushrooms.

There was also ample access to harder drugs like cocaine and heroin, which frontman Jerry Garcia himself struggled with. Numerous people have described Jeremy as drug- and alcohol-free in his late teens and early 20s. But it's safe to assume that he would have been exposed to drug culture while following the band around the country. Whether he experimented during this time is subject to debate.

On the hot, sticky evening of July 9, 1995, the Grateful Dead played their final concert of their summer tour at Chicago's Soldier Field. It wasn't their finest performance. Jerry Garcia reportedly seemed disoriented and struggled with equipment throughout the show. The following month, Jerry Garcia died in his sleep from cardiac arrest at a drug treatment center in California.

With no more tours to follow, Jeremy found himself out west volunteering with Greenpeace. It was during this time that he met Suzanne, who went by Susie. Originally from Palm Springs, California, she was a tall blonde with a wide smile. About six years Jeremy's senior, they were introduced through a mutual friend and began dating around 2000. Susie liked the fact that Jeremy didn't seem interested in cigarettes, drugs, or alcohol.

Like him, she enjoyed the outdoors, snowboarding, and music. Sometime in 2000 or 2001, Jeremy and Susie moved out east to New York State for a landscaping job, and at some point in the next few years, they moved back to Maine.

I think that sometimes he found relationships to be frustrating because there was some sort of accountability there and he wasn't allowed to feel free, which is something that he always kind of had was that sense of freedom, like be able to go when he wanted to go. And he felt tied down and that was not really him. He just had such a free spirit. He had a very deep connection with the people that he was with.

But I think in the end, he always struggled to just be able to maintain that grounding of staying in one place with one person for a long length of time. According to Susie, this was around the time that Jeremy began periodically using drugs with friends. She and Jeremy's father, Ted, would later describe him as a binge user, going a bit wild every six months or so.

Binge addiction can be difficult to spot, and even more difficult to confront. It's typically defined as consuming drugs or alcohol in larger quantities over a short period of time. Like a weekend of partying or during vacations, binge users can write off their drug or alcohol use and altered behavior as blowing off steam or cutting loose for a bit, especially if they are functional most of the time.

And, like any other form of addiction, binging can progress over time. Ted would later tell the media that he was aware that Jeremy did drugs, but not to the extent which he was using. He noted that his son was always able to get himself off drugs. Even in the fall of 2003, when Jeremy was charged in Searsmont, Maine with possession of marijuana, charges were later dropped. He seemed to have everything under control.

Ted was glad when Jeremy and Susie made plans to move back to the Belfast-Northport area in the spring of 2004. He thought that the pair made a good couple. When Jeremy began discussing with his father the possibility of buying some land in Maine, it seemed like a good indication that he was finding his way and beginning to settle down. But in reality, things were coming apart at the seams for Jeremy.

Very soon, he would lose the control he had been maintaining over his substance use. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workouts, sleep, and even stress management.

All you have to do is breathe into your lumen first thing in the morning, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism. Then, lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on those measurements.

Your metabolism is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you eat into the fuel that keeps you going. Because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, and much more.

The key to metabolic health is something called metabolic flexibility, and that's where Lumen really shines. It refers to your body's ability to efficiently switch between different fuel sources like fats and carbs. After getting to know you through your breath, Lumen gives you a metabolic flex score that you can track and improve on.

I've been using my Lumen for about a month and I've already seen the changes in my energy levels throughout the day. Having a better understanding of how food and workouts affect my body has been a game changer. So if you want to take the next step in improving your health, go to Lumen.me and use SheTold to get $100 off your Lumen.

That's L-U-M-E-N dot M-E and use the code SHE TOLD at checkout for $100 off your Lumen. Lumen.me with code SHE TOLD. On April 8th, 2004, Jeremy turned 28 years old. Susie and he were living in Lincolnville, Maine, another coastal town just south of Belfast, and they were preparing to move into a single-family house in Northport at the end of the month.

In the second or third week of April, he left a voice message for his father and stepmother that Theo later described as unusual, asking to get together for a belated celebration of his birthday. Jeremy's friends also noticed that he was acting differently. They thought he sounded paranoid and on edge.

Kathy, a close friend of Jeremy's from high school, later told the media that he was not himself anymore. He went on a day trip with Susie and some friends on Thursday, April 22nd, to go snowboarding. Though it was late in the season, the slopes at Sugarloaf Mountain in western Maine were still open. After his return, he seemed eager to part ways with Susie, saying that he wanted to keep moving things into their new place, alone.

There was tension between them about his drug use, and she suspected that Jeremy wanted to be able to party without her disapproval. It's unclear where he slept Thursday night, but sources say that this was the first night of a multi-day drug bender. An unidentified friend of Jeremy's would later confirm that she was with him on the next evening, Friday, April 24th, and that he had used both cocaine and heroin.

She would later state that she knew his drug consumption was out of control, needed to stop. That same night, home alone in their new rental house, Jeremy saw something outside that scared him. Through the first floor window, he saw what he believed was Susie and two of their mutual friends wearing black ski masks. They stood outside, staring menacingly at him.

The next morning, Saturday, April 24th, he drove back to the Lincolnville apartment and confronted Susie about the incident around 11 a.m. She later said that he was freaking out, claiming that there were people out to get him, and he believed that she was in on the conspiracy. Understandably, Susie was upset. She stormed upstairs and shut herself in the bedroom, crying.

She didn't approve of her partner's drug use under the best circumstances, but now he just seemed paranoid, angry, and possibly dangerous. After a little while, Jeremy came in, apologetic and consoling. But minutes later, he was back to being agitated. At last, he packed up some of their furniture into his van and took off, noting that he had an appointment in the afternoon to see about buying a moped.

The couple parted ways on less than happy terms. It was the last time that Susie ever saw Jeremy.

Sunlight was fading and shadows were growing long in North Port, Maine on the evening of Saturday, April 24, 2004. It was a little before 6 p.m., and Sergeant James Porter navigated down Pond Hill Road. Behind him, a Belfast ambulance and a cruiser from North Port followed silently. Sergeant Porter had been with the Waldo County Sheriff's Department since 1989. He had only recently been promoted to sergeant.

In that time, he had learned a thing or two about dealing with people who might not be in their right mind. He knew that it didn't do anyone any favors to drive in with the lights flashing and the sirens screaming. Perhaps if the ambulance had been running silent earlier, they wouldn't be here now, cruising down the road looking for a man who was unwell.

Less than a half an hour before, dispatch had called the sergeant over the radio to inform him that a resident on Bay Ridge Road in Northport had placed an emergency 911 call.

Cynthia Monkhalt had been in her yard, enjoying the end of a pleasant spring afternoon when a young man emerged from the woods behind her home. He ran across a small footbridge and into her backyard. He appeared panicked and unkempt, dressed in blue jeans, an olive green sweatshirt, and black sneakers. A red backpack was slung over his shoulders, and a wad of cash was clutched tightly in his hand.

It took a moment, because it had been some time, but Cynthia recognized the man as Jeremy Alex. She had taught English to Jeremy at Belfast Area High School a decade or so before. According to Cynthia, Jeremy was paranoid and acting erratically, claiming that bad guys were trying to hurt him. One moment, he seemed to recognize her, and then just as quickly, that recognition would be gone. She thought he might be hallucinating.

He begged Cynthia not to call the cops. Cynthia's husband, James, came out and attempted to talk Jeremy down. He got him to have a seat in the backyard and tell him about his troubles. He described having an argument with his girlfriend and being chased by people who wished him harm. When Cynthia went inside to call for an ambulance, Jeremy got up and tried to run, but was tackled by James.

Jeremy pleaded with James to let him go, offering him the money he had on hand to try to buy his freedom. As the cry of sirens approached the house, Jeremy broke free and took off running back into the woods.

The Monkelts weren't the only people who saw Jeremy that afternoon. About five hours before, a woman delivering flowers on Pond Hill Road saw a man who matched his description talking to two men in a red pickup truck with a ladder rack. Later at 5 p.m., a second woman driving south on Route 1 spotted him crossing lanes on foot, heading west.

He seemed to change his mind and darted back across the eastern side of the road, the side from which he could access Pound Hill Road. Her sighting was consistent with the timing of the Monkholtz account, which occurred just ten minutes later. Sergeant Porter kept his eye on the treeline, watching for any sign of the young man. There were a couple of sparsely populated residential roads here,

Some gravel, some paved, but mostly the road was sheltered by a thick forest on either side. If Jeremy had run east into Mount Percival Preserve after fleeing the Monk Helts, it would be impossible to find him. The temperature was dropping into the 40s, and it was critical they got a hold of him before full dark.

At the northern end of Pound Hill Road, Sergeant Porter found a van parked in the small gravel lot owned by the Waldo County Humane Society. He suspected the vehicle might belong to Jeremy. He got out of his cruiser and peeked into the car. The keys were still inside, as were some personal belongings. The other first responders joined him in a search of the immediate area, but found no sign of Jeremy.

Though people were clearly concerned about his well-being, nobody contacted Jeremy's family on Saturday night after he ran away. To be fair, neither of his parents were local. His dad was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and his mom was in Missouri. However, Jeremy had a big group of friends that cared about him. And doubtlessly, the news about his erratic behavior and disappearance would have spread quickly in the small town he grew up in.

From all of our research, it doesn't appear that anything happened Saturday night. No formal or informal search was conducted after the initial 911 call response. Sergeant Porter returned early the following morning, Sunday, April 25th. He found that Jeremy's van was still parked in the same spot on Pound Hill Road. Searching the van, he found Jeremy's cell phone and began calling his contacts.

Nobody had heard from Jeremy nor seen him since Saturday afternoon. Little else appeared to have happened on Sunday, too. On Monday morning, things started to change. Jeremy's father, Ted, received a call from police around 7 a.m. notifying him of Jeremy's bizarre behavior and disappearance. Initially, he and his wife, Susan, were worried, but they thought that there might be a reasonable explanation for the event.

Perhaps Jeremy had just tied one on while partying too hard on Saturday night. But when they called Susie, it became clear that this was part of a larger, more distressing pattern of behavior. Her concern was contagious, and Ted and Susan began to worry that Jeremy might be at greater risk than they first imagined. They got in the car and started heading north.

It's been reported that Susie learned of Jeremy's disappearance on Monday as well. But how she was unaware that her boyfriend, with whom she was living, was missing Saturday night, Sunday day, and Sunday night is unexplained. Susie went to go check out their new rental home in Northport and found it open with the keys in the lock. She found drugs in the home, so she flushed them, fearing that it would bring more trouble upon Jeremy.

On the afternoon of Monday, April 26th, Ted and Susan arrived in Belfast to search for Jeremy. They joined Susie and friends of Jeremy, who were already searching in the woods surrounding the area where Jeremy's van had been located. Most of the efforts on Monday were devoted to preparing for the wide-scale search that would be starting Tuesday morning. Also on Monday, the word reached Jeremy's mom and sister Nicole that he was missing.

My dad called me and told me that Jeremy had been missing since Saturday evening, and they weren't quite sure what was going on, but they'd been trying to piece everything together. And at that point, I contacted my mom, and we were on a plane that night. Bright and early Tuesday morning, the search began. Ground zero was Jeremy's van, sitting in a sleepy gravel parking lot off Pound Hill Road.

The Maine Warden's Service arrived and was joined by eight canine units and local law enforcement. The investigation was led by Detective Jason Trundy with the Waldo County Sheriff's Department. Numerous friends and family of Jeremy were also present. They searched the roadways and hilly woods surrounding Jeremy's van. Bluff Road, Neely Pond, Pound Hill Road, Bay Ridge Road. They even searched vacant camps.

A mile to the east of his van, the forest sloped steeply into the salty waters of Penobscot Bay, and the wardens used ultralight aircraft to search the coastline by air. It had been three nights with low temperatures right around freezing, and everyone was concerned for Jeremy's well-being. After eight hours, sadly, they called it a day, empty-handed.

By late afternoon, the chief of the Waldo County Sheriff's Department, Bob Keating, asked the public for help, looking for anyone who had seen Jeremy after Saturday afternoon at 5 p.m. Like, I thought, oh my gosh, like, he's a traveler. Like, he does all these things. Like, he's got to be somewhere. You know, he just went to Canada or he went to Bar Harbor or why are we so concerned about this? Just because he was a traveler. And then the more...

I found out the more concerned we grew regarding his disappearance and the seriousness of the situation that we were facing as a family. And that was really difficult when it all kind of clicked. You know, it still just didn't seem real. It was, I just thought that he would show up.

How does somebody just disappear? I mean, there was just no trace of him whatsoever. The next day, on Wednesday, the chief said to the public, the search is off until we have something new to go on. But despite waning law enforcement support, Ted chartered a plane and kept searching for his son by air.

Have you made the switch to NYX? Millions of women have made the switch to the revolutionary period underwear from NYX. That's K-N-I-X. Period panties from NYX are like no other, making them the number one leak-proof underwear brand in North America. They're comfy, stylish, and absorbent, perfect for period protection from your lightest to your heaviest days. They

They look, feel, and machine wash just like regular underwear, but feature incognito protection that has you covered. You can shop sizes from extra small to 4XL. Choose from all kinds of colors, prints, and different styles, from bikinis to boy shorts, thongs to high-rise. You've got to try NYX. See why millions are ditching disposable, wasteful period products and have switched to NYX.

Go to knix.com and get 15% off with promo code TRY15. That's knix.com, promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's knix.com.

As Detective Trundy learned more about Jeremy's life, he grew concerned that foul play was possible. And he was worried that someone in the inner circle with whom he was conveying details about search locations and times was a mole. I mean, I refer to it as the arsonist at the fire. That's someone who kept showing up at

At the family meetings was taking that information and relaying it to somebody outside of the meetings. And they were moving ahead of the police department. So things were starting to get sketchy. Somebody that Jeremy trusted that was alongside us during his initial disappearance, who eventually would possibly become a suspect later on.

A second search began in early May, eight days after his disappearance. Jeremy's family still maintained hope that he might be alive and just roughing it in the wilderness. After all, he had lived out of his van in the past, and he certainly knew his way around the woods. Perhaps he was still in the midst of a mental health crisis and was hiding from his perceived enemies.

Without his phone, he had no way of contacting his friends or parents from wherever he might be hunkered down.

On Sunday, May 2nd, five game wardens, 17 members of area search and rescue teams, six canine teams, and several civilians combed a three-square-mile stretch of land. The stretch lasted four days and covered wooded areas previously scoured along both sides of Route 1 in Northport, as well as some terrain beyond. For four days, the teams worked over any space that Jeremy might have reasonably been able to cover on foot.

Finally, on May 6th, Chief Keating called off the search. He told the media that officials were now reasonably certain that Jeremy was not in the area.

I think when I realized how serious the situation was, I had been there about four or five days. His group of friends were very like anti-law enforcement. And so that didn't help the situation any. I don't think no one really wanted to talk.

My parents were fighting. I got wrapped up in the middle of that fighting and it was just ugly. The whole thing was ugly. It was just a difficult time and emotions were so high. And I stayed as long as I could. I mean, I had a family at home and I needed to get home to my husband. But I was there for two weeks and we walked grids in the woods and we looked everywhere, hung posters everywhere, did everything we could from sunup till sundown.

Weeks and months dragged on. Summer came to Northport without any sign of Jeremy. In August, Susie packed up her belongings and her dog Gonzo and returned to California. Jeremy's absence was too painful, and his disappearance reminded her how fleeting time could be. With nothing keeping her there, it was time to go home. For Ted, Susan, Paula, and Nicole, there was nothing left but a looming question mark.

What if he were afraid and alone and needed help? Or what if his body was waiting to be found by some unsuspecting hunter in the fall? There would ultimately be three searches for Jeremy Alex that year. They swept over mostly wild terrain of a protected area called Mount Percival Preserve, centered on its 500-foot-tall namesake peak, near where he had last been seen.

In September, their hopes were reignited by a series of potential sightings. A contractor working in Owl's Head, Maine, a town about 40 minutes south of Northport, reported seeing a man who matched Jeremy's description.

He was working on a house when a man emerged from the nearby woods. He had a sweater tied around his waist and was acting strangely, refusing to speak and seemingly unable to understand what was being said to him. When the contractor offered the man food, he refused and went back into the forest.

Another nearby resident, Wayne Drinkwater, also spotted the man and believed him to be Jeremy. Although Wayne owned property in Owl's Head, he was the owner of the restaurant Belfast Soup and Sandwich and was familiar with Jeremy. He would later tell the production crew of Investigation Discovery's show Disappeared, "...I'd seen posters of Jeremy, and it looked just like him."

The Waldo County Sheriff's Department determined that both sightings were a case of mistaken identity. The Maine Warden Service told the Alex family that September would be an ideal time to search. So game wardens, dog teams, Unity College students, and more than 50 volunteers searched the woods off Route 1 in Northport, trying to find some sign of Jeremy.

Sergeant Pat Dorian with the Maine Warden Service told the Bangor Daily News, We're looking for clues, items of clothing or shoes, any indication of where he might be. Their search spanned a massive seven-square-mile area, but the search came up empty. Ted was informed that this would be the third and final search for his son. The family's hope rested on avid hunters in Maine to come across evidence.

The Alex family had, since the disappearance, hung up posters with his photo at locations around the state and created a website, jeremyalex.com, on his behalf. Their hopes were on two possibilities, that Jeremy would turn up one day, return from his own long, strange journey, or that a hiker or hunter would look down into the carpet of fallen foliage and find a fading figure wearing a red backpack.

In the summer of 2005, more than a year after Jeremy's disappearance, his good friend Kathy shared with Ted and Susan a reflection of her friendship with Jeremy and the impact that his absence made on her life. Kathy wrote that she started a tradition of doing something small on Jeremy's birthday in his honor, taking the opportunity to think about him.

She wrote, "I do simple things with the thought, presence, and celebration of Jeremy and his day of birth. It sounds sort of silly that I did and still do this, but I really loved Jeremy a lot. He was the friend that I'd known the longest. He was the closest man in my life. I considered him my dearest friend. I haven't heard someone call me sweetie. I haven't played a card game in a few years.

I haven't come close to having a great conversation about gardening and dreams of land and building sustainable structures. I haven't had a conversation about music, crystals, sailing and even snowboarding. And I don't snowboard. I guess there are just a lot of conversations that I haven't had in a while. And I haven't come close to seeing the sparkle that Jeremy had in anyone else.

My life, and those of everyone else who knew him and loved Jeremy, our lives are forever going to be different. And I really haven't gotten used to that yet. I'm not sure I ever will. Kathy's words warmed the hearts of Jeremy's family. It was comforting to know that Jeremy's life had value to people beyond their little unit.

Nicole remembers that around this time, she learned something that caused her to rethink what her brother's life looked like in those critical days and weeks leading up to his disappearance. Something that would cause her to wonder if his friends were really looking out for his best interests, or their own.

Jeremy had been missing for over a year when I found out that he was cultivating mushrooms. Wasn't surprised. He had a love for mushrooms in general, but then he also had a love for psychedelics. But about a year after he went missing, I was told about a

plan that was going on at the time of his disappearance. So he had a mushroom cultivating operation, which consisted of three people. And one person was maintaining basically like security and care of the mushrooms.

And then there was the mastermind, kind of the person who was just in general, like the almost coordinator of the whole thing. And then there was somebody to take those mushrooms when the mushrooms were done and were ready for selling, who had a connection outside of the local area.

So the plan was for them to be moved on to Boston. And then that's where that other person came into play. He was the runner. Jeremy was the mastermind. He paid someone to live on this location in this rental home and take care of the mushrooms. As Jeremy went back and forth, that was the plan. And either the week before he went missing or the week that he went missing was the weekend of the payoff.

So a large sum of money, thousands of dollars in psychedelic mushrooms were brought to the Boston location and sold off. And it is known that Jeremy had money in his apartment and those types of things. And so there was thousands of dollars at stake.

There are rumors that Jeremy was killed. There are rumors that the Waldo County Sheriff's Office and the Belfast Police covered it up. If you look around online deeply enough, you'll find specific names. Names that I've chosen not to repeat. You'll find family relationships that weave the cops and some nefarious characters in the Belfast community together. You'll find references to a map of dead bodies buried in someone's backyard.

There's even a guy who goes on a YouTube video and says that his son did it. He also says that it happened in 1986 at a 4th of July party. Jeremy disappeared in April of 2004, 18 years later. It's unclear what to make of these accounts, but there is a lot of muddy speculation.

The Maine State Police, per Ted's request, are now in charge of the investigation, so all of the work done by the local cops has been reviewed by the state. The initial local detective, Jason Tremblay, went on to have a very successful career in the Waldo County Sheriff's Office, becoming its chief of police, and ultimately he was elected as sheriff of Waldo County, a position that he currently holds.

Ted wanted to do something positive in the wake of his son's death. He organized a celebration of life ceremony a year after Jeremy's disappearance. He found it unlikely that Jeremy could still be alive.

The Portsmouth, New Hampshire community rallied around Ted. Jackie Valli, the director of the city's community diversion program, was moved by the family's loss and Jeremy's story. She helped to organize the first annual Healthy Kids Expo at nearby Odeon State Park in Rye.

On a sunny summer day in 2006, a crowd of hundreds of children and parents gathered to play lawn games, enjoy live music, and participate in health-focused sessions like yoga and nutrition classes. Building on the community's enthusiasm for the expo, the Portsmouth Rotary Club contributed $3,000 to the Jeremy Alex Fund, an endowment that Ted created in his son's memory.

The fund would be used to help children at risk. Ted believed that Jeremy's life had become derailed when he began using narcotics, and he wanted to help prevent a similar fate from befalling other young people. By 2007, the fund had received more than $200,000 in contributions from area businesses and supporters.

One grant allowed a young boy described as troubled to join his Spanish class on a trip to Costa Rica rather than staying at home. The experience was a transformative one for him. Ted told the Bangor Daily News that meeting the boy after his return was especially moving. He said, The hardest part was when he looked at me and he said, Tell Jeremy I said thank you.

That really hit me. That's just one of the positive things that has come from the fund. And it was just getting started. The following year, 2008, the Jeremy Alex Fund underwrote the purchase of 200 chess sets, which were distributed to fourth-grade students in Portsmouth.

One Rotary Club member told the press that the game offered a variety of life lessons, such as decision-making and consequences. Ted told the Bangor Daily News, I don't think we'll ever see the true results of the Jeremy Alex Fund. All it takes is a kid to have a chess set, meet up with a friend, they get playing chess, and it keeps them out of trouble. And maybe it sends them in a different direction. As a child and in his young adulthood, Jeremy had loved chess.

Ted must have imagined what things might have been like had his son taken a different path. Perhaps he pictured Jeremy, now in his 30s, head bent over a checkered board, trying to work out his next move.

Since finding the driver's license lying on the beach near their home on that day in 2004, the Dougals' lives had not crossed paths with those of Jeremy Alex and his family. If they had heard anything about the missing young man from Northport, they hadn't drawn any connections to their little seaside discovery, and it very well may have remained forever frozen in their glass display vase, if not for a freak accident.

It was a sunny April afternoon, nearly four years to the day since Jeremy was last seen. Tim Dougal, now 51, was outside doing some yard work with his teenage son. Tim was in the process of cutting down a tree when the chainsaw kicked back and struck him in the head. His son rushed to get help, but it was no use. Tim died on the spot. Most of the summer slipped by as his widow mourned Tim's loss.

In August of 2008, she finally felt ready to return to the Northport house. Debbie invited a family friend, Jim Baker, to come and visit. She gave him a tour of the house, the grounds, and the little shoreline where the yard met the bay.

She told him about how the Tides deposited little bits and bobs that she and Tim loved to collect. Why, it had even brought them money once and a young man's driver's license. Jim was a retired California patrol officer who had spent time in the area previously.

Something in his memory prickled, and he asked Debbie if he could see the ID. She showed him the glass vase that she and Tim had always kept on their coffee table in the living room, filled with all the oddities that they had found during their walks on the shore. In amongst the sea glass and pebbles was Jeremy Alex's driver's license.

Jim turned it over in his hands, asking Debbie if they had ever reported the lost ID to the police, and she replied that they had not. Jim recognized the face on the license. He had seen the missing persons posters in cafes and on light poles throughout this stretch of Maine. To confirm his suspicions, he got online and looked up several news articles and websites devoted to Jeremy's disappearance.

This was indeed the young man peering back from the ID card. At this point, he knew that the right thing to do was to notify the Maine State Police. But Jim didn't stop there. His career had left him all too familiar with the pain that families felt when their loved ones couldn't be found. He contacted Ted Alex.

Ted would later recall, "He ended up emailing me about it, saying, 'I have $30 of Jeremy's money in his license,' which was obviously really bizarre." Following the discovery, Tim began driving to Maine every weekend to search the area near the Shore Road house. Perhaps there were more items that belonged to his son dotting the coastline. By then, the Alex family had accepted the possibility that Jeremy was no longer alive.

Even if he had been living rough and avoiding attention, surely by now he would have reached out. Ted made it no secret that he believed there was foul play involved in his son's disappearance. In 2007, he told the Bangor Daily News that he believed Jeremy's involvement with drugs and drug dealers led to his murder. But now, four years later, here is a new clue.

Had somebody killed Jeremy and thrown his belongings into the sea? Was Jeremy himself thrown into the sea? Or had the young man wandered into the water himself, panicked with delusions, and trying to escape some imagined attackers? I just know that something happened that day, and we don't know what it is, and it has haunted us for 20 years.

Wherever the truth lay, it wasn't along North Port's shore. Ted scoured the coastline week after week, but the waves held on to their secrets. Jeremy would have turned 48 years old on April 8, 2024. And April 24 marks the 20th anniversary of his disappearance. The Alex family has endured a lot of pain in those 20 years. It's changed my life a lot.

I feel like it was really hard to be a parent and not helicopter the shit out of my own kids. I feel like in my own life, I kind of had to turn around and parent my parents. I mean, I can't imagine

the pain and the hurt that they go through. And I think that trying to comprehend their pain has been the worst part of all of this. You know, my parents, I've tried to protect them this entire time from those extra things. You know, my dad and I have a much better relationship now than we've ever had. But the last 20 years have been absolute hell.

But I made a dedication to myself and my community that I would do whatever I could to help those around me and help those that I love. And I live that every day. I think my brother being gone motivates me to keep going. I really want my parents to have some kind of closure. I think that's the biggest thing I just really need for them to have some closure.

and that's probably the thing that keeps me up at night. Nicole holds on to some mementos that remind her of her brother.

I have two favorite gifts that he gave to me. One of them is a green tourmaline necklace that he picked out from one of his friends' shops in downtown Belfast. And the other one is a Rennie's mug because we moved away from Maine, but Rennie's is like a department store that my mom just absolutely loved. And, um,

It is just something that I cherish. I stopped using it because I'm afraid to break it. It is irreplaceable, especially with the fact that, you know, I got it from him. It really meant a lot to me just because it brought up those happy memories together and just growing up as kids. Jeremy may have found the world had moved closer to his worldview had he been around in 2024.

He was a big supporter of medicinal marijuana. And now I just can't even imagine how excited and elated he would be about the fact that medicinal marijuana became legal in the time that he's been missing. Jeremy's legacy survives in different ways. Nicole is forever changed, not just because of his death, but because of his life. He was such a pain in my butt most of the time. Oh, shit.

He influenced me by his, I think, love for music. If you ask anyone I went to high school with what they remember most about me, it's that little hippie girl that, you know, wore the tie-dye shirts and was going to drive the Volkswagen bus. And he definitely had that influence. I wanted to be like my big brother. I mean, it was like, who doesn't love Pabst Blue Ribbon? Yeah.

Which, you know, was like, we'd get together, I guess, and have a paps, but it's like, whew, some interesting stuff. She has hope that Jeremy could still be alive. But she's also realistic.

I don't think he would let us go 20 years without giving us some clue or something that he's alive. I mean, my mom kept the same phone number for 15 years, hoping that he would just call. I mean, she didn't move out of her house. You know, knowing that he had the address, I can't imagine that he would be alive and not reach us somehow. Everyone has an opinion about what happened to Jeremy Alex on that spring day in 2004.

He died from hypothermia in the woods. He swam into the cold waters of Penobscot Bay while fleeing imaginary attackers. He was murdered by drug dealers who were looking for money. You can wander down some very dark rabbit holes exploring the web of theories surrounding his disappearance. Over the years, commenters on forums like Websleuths and Reddit have championed variations of the theory that Jeremy was killed.

One user claimed that there had been sightings of three people all wearing a black ski mask, scaring people around Belfast. A Redditor claiming to be from the region posted that one of the alleged killers got drunk and admitted what they'd done to a friend once. I mean, obviously I say like, I don't want to give up hope that he's alive, but I know the reality of the situation. And I know that people know what happened to him that day.

Shame on them for continuing to go on with their life while the rest of us hurt every single day.

20 years to go on with their life, have kids, raise a family, whatever the case may be, and have no regard for the decision that they made that day or even anyone that even knows. And I highly suspect that there are a couple of his friends that know. And so I have a message for those friends that know or those people who call themselves friends.

I would call on them to do the right thing and to come forward. And that I know that at one time in their life that they loved and cared about Jeremy and that they've been holding onto this secret for 20 years. And it's just time. It's time to come forward and let our family be able to have some type of closure so that we can move forward together.

Turn yourself in. Hell, turn whoever it is in that needs to be turned in. Just do the right thing. It's been 20 years, 20 years too long. But regardless of how Jeremy died, this is how Nicole wants him to be remembered. Remembered as he was in life and not death. I want everyone to know how loved my brother was.

He was loved by his family, by his siblings, by his friends, by his community. And he wasn't just somebody with a drug problem or some junkie who got high and went on a binger and didn't mean anything to anyone.

Many people in our community suffer from substance use disorders or just trauma. And just because they have an addiction doesn't mean they're worthless. And it doesn't mean that they don't play a vital part in people's lives. He meant a lot to a lot of people around him. This world is not the same without him.

If you have any information on the disappearance of Jeremy Alex, please call the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit Central at 207-624-7076, extension 9.

If you or someone you know are struggling with your mental health or substance use disorder, help is available 24/7. I encourage you to call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration at 1-800-662-HELP. Your life matters.

If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you shared Murder, She Told with a friend. If you want to support the show and buy me a coffee, there's a link in the show notes with options. A detailed list of sources and photos can be found at MurderSheTold.com. Thank you so much to Nicole for sharing her memories with us.

Thank you to Morgan Hamilton for her writing, Byron Willis for his writing and research, and Bridget Rowley and Kimberly Clark for additional research. If you want to suggest a case, you can email me at hello at MurderSheTold.com. I'm Kristen Seavey. Thank you for listening.