195: What if you never stopped searching?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.

I have a couple announcements before today's episode. Starting today, over the next two weeks, we have a two-part series that centers around the story of a missing woman, from both inside and outside experiences of what happened. This week, we feature Sarah Haynes. These next two episodes will be the last of Season 10, with the last episode of the season airing next week on June 22nd. For five weeks after that, we will be rebroadcasting five highlight episodes from the back catalog. All

All five episodes will be listener favorites before number 130, which are currently exclusive to the Wondery Plus Premium subscription that includes the entire show's catalog. We will then resume with all new episodes for Season 11, launching early August. Also, as a reminder, if you'd like to find out more about the show, go to thisisactuallyhappening.com. There you can find information about the show, submit your own story, or shop at the store for This Is Actually Happening merchandise.

If you'd like to engage with the larger community of listeners, follow us on Instagram at Actually Happening or join the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook. Stay tuned and thank you for listening. I mean, you just hope that there's some explanation. The not knowing is awful. And it's awful from day one and it's awful 30 years later. But every day that goes by, you get more and more in reality. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 195, What If You Never Stopped Searching?

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I grew up in Orinda, California, family of five, mom, dad, my sister, Laura, and my brother, John. I was really focused on animals. I had a horse since I was about five. And so I spent most of my time, even as a really young child, running around, you know, on a farm.

I was a really independent kid. I grew up with two really loving parents, but my dad was pretty strict and fought with my mom a bit, was really stressed. My mom and dad really loved each other, but probably shouldn't have been together. And I think that made me turn out a little defiant.

As a young kid, I realized I never want to be under the thumb of somebody else. I'm going to always be able to take care of myself. And I'm always going to be completely in control of my own destiny. My brother and I got along really well. He also was really independent. You know, so we got to know each other a lot in our summer camps and around the horse and skiing. And

One day I came home from school. I was probably seven or something and I felt sick. So I went to bed.

I woke up in the morning and went into the living room and my brother and sister were watching the Brady Bunch. And I was really confused why the Brady Bunch was on and why they were watching TV. And I said, what time is it? I got to go to school. And they said, it's seven. You're late for the bus. Run, run, run. And they ran me to my room and I got my books and they were dressing me and ran me to the bus stop.

And I sat at the bus stop and it started getting darker and darker. And then my mom drove up and she said, Sarah, what are you doing at the bus stop? And that's when I was like, they told me it was morning. And I realized at that moment that I got up at night and I had just slept for a few hours, but I thought it was morning. And my sister and brother were just making so much fun of me and watching me at the bus stop. They used to make fun of me like that.

My sister feels so terrible about it today. And I keep telling her, you don't need to feel bad. These are some of my very best memories. Looking back on it, I really love those stories. And I really love how we got along and how we engaged with each other as children.

My brother had a hard time in high school. He got bad grades. He was mostly partying and just, you know, having fun. He was a really great skier. He wanted to be on the ski team, the U.S. ski team. So he got sent to a private school called Olympic Valley. And my dad made an agreement with him. If you can get straight A's, which is, you know, would be heroic because he had been getting like C's and D's.

I'll buy you any car of your dreams and I will send you to any college that you can get into. He got straight A's and he was made valedictorian. He was on his last week of school and he took the gondola up to go snowboarding and he and his friends smoked pot in the gondola and they got caught.

He was suspended and sent home for good. And he lost his ability to be valedictorian. And part of the deal with my dad was you can't get in trouble. You have to get straight A's and then I'll do this. So of course he got in trouble the very last week, which was really kind of the worst part, I think, of his life. But I happen to know that my dad had already bought him that car and hid it at my grandparents. So I told him.

I said, John, just be really good. Just be perfect. Be perfect all summer. You're going to get to go to college. He had been accepted to UC Boulder and he did. He buckled up and he kept his mouth shut and he got a job. And about halfway through the summer, my dad said, okay, you've done it. And he gave him the car and sent him on his way to UC Boulder a month before the dorms opened.

My dad was still tough loving him. And he said, you've got to go early. You've got to get a job and sent him on his way with a brand new car full of really nice belongings, you know, multiple pairs of skis, a stereo, that kind of thing. I remember going to IHOP with my dad and my best friend. And my dad said, I'm really worried. I haven't heard from John. And he had called about two days earlier and he had just arrived and

I had listened in on my brother's conversation with my dad and he said, Dad, you know, I'm here. I found a job board and I found a housing board and I'm going to go meet with somebody today who's got housing available and I need some money. My dad said, you know, I'm really worried because he told me he needed money and I told him to get a P.O. box and that I would send it immediately. And he was going to call back the next morning and he never did.

And now we're probably day four or five that he's there. My dad was really gut instinct worried. And I remember my friend Hillary said, Oh, Jim, he's probably just partying. He probably met some nice people and he's having fun. He'll call you. And he never called again. As the days went by, we just got more and more worried. So my dad called the police in Boulder.

And said, I'm really worried about my son. Something's gone on. And the police told him to call the Orinda police because that's where he's from in California, which did no good. So we were really alone. We didn't know how to navigate. And my father died.

was a really powerful attorney and very forceful and did everything he could to try to get help. He flew out there and he insisted something had happened to his son and he knows his son would have called and his son needed money. And there's no way he would opt out of a free ride for four years of skiing on a Boulder ski team. You know, it just, it made no sense that he would go missing on purpose, but the police said, well, kids do this all the time and they just weren't looking.

They said that they'd put an APB out on his car and they'd done everything they could. And we never heard anything. Then the dorms opened and registration opened where you walk through registration, where you pick your classes and he didn't show up for either. And then we knew no way would John miss this.

You know, in 1981, there's no missing children's foundation. They'd not put kids on milk cartons yet. My father was trying to raise hell to the point of meeting with the local newspapers. I think he took a billboard out at one point. He really tried to expose that my brother was missing these first few weeks and

And we never got any answers or even really any clues until I think it was the day before his birthday. It was like December 23rd. He went missing in July. They called us and they said, we have good news and bad news. We found his car, but it's gone now. We were like, what? What do you mean? Well, back when you were here insisting something happened to your son and we told you nothing happened.

His car was ticketed. You know, at that time, they knew he was a missing person. They swore to us that every single policeman knew it, that they had him in his computers. Well, as it turns out, right after he hadn't called us, they got a call from a man who said, there's a car parked on my property at the base of a hiking trail where people are known to go. Windows down, keys in the ignition, nothing in it.

And no one ever came back and got it. And I'm worried that something happened to this person. And the police went there and they put a note on the car saying, if this car's not moved by tomorrow, it'll be towed. And then they left.

At this point, there's 10 feet of snow. They have no idea if the car is there or not, or if his body is there or not, or what's going on. There's mine shafts everywhere, places where people would stuff a body right on that property. You know, we had done a lot during that time. My father was in and out of Colorado. We'd been on the news all the time. We had put out a $10,000 reward.

We found out that he had picked up a hitchhiker. Somebody saw it on the news and they were out in New York and they called us and said, I hitchhiked with that guy. He got me all the way to Boulder.

We knew that he was going to go meet with somebody at the message board. And then he dropped the hitchhiker off at the bus to keep going across the country and said he was headed out to go meet this guy. And he told us on the phone that day, I'm headed out to meet somebody for housing. And that's the end of the line. I think I was a little bit numb, but my father was devastated that

He knew from the get go, this is bad. This is really, really bad. My sister and I are both shocked that they did not have us in some sort of really serious therapy. But we weren't. And I'm still riding my horse and my sister's at Brown and we're kind of out of the loop. My mom sort of

checked out a little bit. You know, I think she felt like if something happened to him, she can't do anything about it. And if he took off on purpose, then that's where he wants to be. And you know, I think there's thought processes. Maybe he was mad at my dad. My dad and my brother had a really difficult relationship. He was defiant like I am. Maybe he just bailed. She probably thought at the

My father was insistent that John was dead. I had some hope, especially because some of his friends contacted me and said, oh, one night we all took acid and he was talking about how he just wants to bail. You know, I get information like that and think, well, maybe he did.

Your mind goes to every possible scenario. I mean, you just hope that there's some explanation. The not knowing is awful. And it's awful from day one. And it's awful 30 years later. But every day that goes by, you get more and more in reality. And then you start hoping that he was killed fast, because the alternative is probably way worse.

I know I mentioned at one point to my dad, maybe we should have a funeral. And he thought about it. And I think he just couldn't handle it. You know, my father dropped everything and put all of his energy into finding my brother for probably the first 10 years. And then he just couldn't take it anymore. And he stopped. I remember the last time I really talked to him about it. He fell to the floor and was bawling. And he's an old man. And I thought, I can't do this to him.

I'm sorry to put too much on him, but the truth is, and our whole family knows it, my father pushed my brother to go to school without money and nowhere to stay. He didn't have a credit card. He slept in his car the first night with the hitchhiker at a KOA campground. He was put in a vulnerable situation. And at that time, I started asking a lot of questions and he didn't want to answer them. He would shut down. He would just yell, look, he's dead, leave it be. And that's where I picked up

I contacted the police and the detectives. And I said, don't call my dad anymore. He's losing it. He can't take it. Call me and I'll do this. I just started getting curious and I wanted to know what happened and why does my father feel so strongly that he died?

What information do I not know about? So I started reading the records and the records were really lengthy. They put an undercover detective into a cult and they put one in a jail. And so there was a lot my dad was pushing for, but I think at some point it just went nowhere for so many years.

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Late 20s, you know, I was in the music business, traveling. I got really into activism, be it environmental or animal, that kind of thing. Also, anytime I saw somebody with a missing child, I would reach out to them. So if I saw something on the news, I would call them and give them any advice I could.

Knowing now what I didn't know then, especially in my later years and when there's internet and GPS cell phones and things, I just thought, my God, there's so many things that we could have done today.

As I got older and I got involved in, you know, I had a marketing agency. We did press. So I started developing relationships in the media world. I thought, my God, we could have found my brother so fast. I wish this existed. You know, but the first time I saw a kid on a milk carton, oh God, I wish that it existed. If that had existed, we could have put his face on a milk carton in all of Boulder. Somebody would have known something. I still think somebody does know something.

It had always been a dream of mine to try to work hard enough and save enough money to retire early and then open an animal sanctuary and get a beautiful piece of land in a tropical place, be it Bali or Costa Rica or Hawaii, and let animals live on my property and be safe, especially those who have really gone through a hard time. So I finally did it.

I moved to Maui about three years ago. I put money down on this house here. And the day I woke up here on Maui to meet the owners, and it was not my house yet, the Colorado police called. It was the same detective that it was when my brother was missing in 81. And he said, I've got news for you. I wanted to be the first to tell you it's probably going to be on the TV.

So you might want to keep your parents away from a television. A skull has been found and we think it might be your brother. And I was half asleep. You know, I'd just flown in. I said, what makes you think it's John? Because there'd been a number of missing people in Colorado. They said the skull was found a hundred feet from where we found his car. And I thought, Oh God, they finally found him. Wow.

I told my mom, but not my dad. And I told my mom to keep my dad away from TV and not to answer the phone. And I thought, wow, if we could find out what happened to my brother before my dad dies, that might be good for him. You know, he's 90 and he's still devastated. And he's also very mentally sharp. It did not turn out to be my brother, which was really weird. I thought for sure that we had finally found him.

I'm moving to Maui. And then all of a sudden, my brother is in the forefront of my mind again. And it was months before they were able to say it wasn't him. And it was like, Oh, God, here we go again, you know, because there were so many potential leads over the years. So when I got to Maui, it was definitely a little scary to do something by myself. I'm on nine acres off a cliff in the middle of nowhere in the most remote island on earth.

But really stoked to have done it. I started doing animal rescue here and had amassed a nice little number of cats and ducks and chickens and cockfighting roosters and various animals that need a rescue. And was just sinking into my life here when I hired a neighbor to work on my property. And he had a helper named Ben. And he and Ben started fixing things up on my property, working on the barn, building a shed,

I developed a loose friendship with them. Ben had recently met a girl named Amanda and that was his girlfriend and they seemed pretty fast and furiously into each other. They moved in together after a few months, I believe. I live out by Jaws, which is a famous surf break. They can get 60, even 80 foot waves and all the best surfers in the world fly in and they do a competition.

So I remember meeting her there. And I remember I had a really bad back when I first moved here. I had hurt my back. And she was a physical therapist and she was giving me some tips. I got some rescue chickens from the farm animal sanctuary here. Really amazing place. I text Jared and I said, I need a chicken feeder. Can you come over and do a chicken feeder? And he wrote back, Amanda's missing. Ben's girlfriend. He said, we're in the Makawau Forest. The police just found her car.

It was the exact same scenario as my brother, a car at the foot of a hiking trail. I immediately called him and I said, have I ever told you about my brother? He said, no. And I said, my brother's been missing most of my life. He's been missing since I was 15.

So I packed my truck and I brought every headlamp I had and all the rope I could find. And I made like an entire loaf of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And I brought everything I could in cases of water from my garage, filled my truck and drove out to this place I had never been. Ben and Jared were hiking the trails trying to find her. Cause at that point we were really confident we'd find her quickly because she probably was just injured. You know, she went hiking and she fell off a rock or something and,

So that was the beginning. I knew what they were going through when somebody is missing and you have no idea why and you find their car. So I was like, don't touch anything. And, you know, the police were already there. So that was good. But, you know, your mind goes to everything. What if somebody abducted her in the parking lot? What if, you know, what if, what if, what if all those dreams I had about my brother, right? Those are all possibilities for her.

There was police there. They were taking photographs of her car. The detective was there and they had found her cell phone in the car. And the detectives, you know, put on their gloves and they were fingerprinting the car and they were looking at the cell phone. And I said, can you look up her parents' phone number? I need to tell them.

And I said, I've got news for you. I'm a friend of Ben's. Amanda's missing. Please call me right away. Here's all my numbers. Here's how to wake me up. And, you know, I'm so sorry to tell you this. I didn't even know where they're from. I just left messages everywhere. And then I found Facebook, her Facebook, and then her family Facebook.

And now we're getting into day three, right? Because there's day one, we don't even know she's missing. Day two, they're running around searching. Then I'm finally late night, go to bed. So we're getting into day three. And finally, you know, middle of the night, I got a call from her mom. She said, this is Julia Eller. They were on a trip somewhere off the coast of Venezuela. They weren't even checking their emails, but somebody saw it on Facebook. And I said, oh, I'm so sorry to tell you this.

And I want you to know I've been through it with my own brother. But Amanda's missing. And her car's been found at a forest. You know, and I told them what I knew. And, you know, her running shoes were gone from the car and her flip flops were in there. Ben said she always wore flip flops and that she'd put her running shoes on to go running. And so we assumed she probably went running and got hurt.

assured Julia that that's what we thought was going on. She said, Okay, we're going to start trying to find flights. And where should we stay? What do we do? And I said, I've got space here, I've got extra rooms, and I have an Ohana. And if you guys want to stay here, you can stay here, you can get a hotel, whatever you want. And they said, we'll just come stay with you. They arrived on Mother's Day. I think that was like day four or day five of our searching.

Ben and Jared wouldn't leave that park and neither would their group of friends. You know, they get kicked out at 7 p.m. and then they'd hike back in and they do overnight searching. So they were on no sleep at all. I said, look, you've got 72 hours with this police before they drop off because that's how it works for missing children all over our country.

Ben was so adamant that she had to have gone running and that she had to have gotten hurt, as were her family members. They said, oh, this is just like her. I said, put her cell phones in her car on the front seat visible. They said, yep, that's Amanda. She trusts everybody. If you find my cell phone at the end of a hiking trail, somebody did something to me because that phone would be with me for sure. So I had to kind of alter my line of thinking to focus on how she would be.

Everybody said the same thing about Amanda. She's incredibly physically strong. She's incredibly emotionally strong. It would be just like her to stick her phone there because she likes to unplug. It would be just like her not to worry about her window getting broken and having her phone stolen. And it would be just like her to stick the key to her car under the tire because if she's running, she doesn't want to hold stuff.

The family really trusted me and just said, run with it. Do everything you can to expose this. So I did. So I did what I would have done if I was in charge of my brother's case. I just started doing news like crazy. And you're sleeping two hours and you're trying to post as much as you can to the public so that it's really top of mind. So if somebody sees her, sees a car, sees a shoe on a trail or anything,

If the whole island knows about this girl missing, they're all going to ask on day three, why isn't anybody looking? You know, I had a press conference set up. I had built flyers and posters and we started putting them up all over the place and going door to door and sending teams of people out looking for camera footage. That was my first thought. There was no security footage. When my brother went missing, maybe we would have known if he drove up there with somebody.

So we started canvassing like crazy every house from the forest to her house, of which there's like four or five routes you could take and had teams of people going up and down the street looking for cameras that point toward the road, looking at stores that point toward the road, looking at everything we could think of. And we got something. Remember, I said it was Mother's Day when her parents arrived. Her father came into my house.

I said, we got a package from Amanda at home. Our pet sitter just told us it was a Mother's Day letter to her mom and it was really loving and really personal. It came with a bunch of items like specialty, nice power bar type things and various presents that she had bought. And it came from the Haiku post office.

We got a basic timeline and then we hit all the grocery stores and everything around there. And that's when we found footage of her shopping at the Haiku market right across the street and buying everything that she sent her mom. And we could see that she was in the car by herself, fully dressed in her yoga slash running type clothing, but with flip flops. And then we got footage from a restaurant showing her pulling out of the post office. So then we felt really confident. She was by herself,

She must have gone to the forest to go running. But did she pick up a hitchhiker? Was somebody in the parking lot? It still didn't wipe out the abduction potential. And then, of course, our biggest strength was the massive amount of exposure. But it was also the thing that harmed us the most. The conspiracy sort of started immediately.

Obviously, from the minute she went missing, everybody blamed Ben. It's very common that a boyfriend or a husband will be the person you need to look at, especially because she did not come home the first night and he did not call the police. He had text her before going to bed, like, where are you? How come I'm not hearing from you? But they're very independent. So he went to bed.

Why didn't he call the police at the night before? I still, you know, I would have. Lots of things were done in a way I wouldn't do, but I'm a different person and I have different experiences. And Ben thought she was probably fine and hanging with a friend. And he went to bed and he woke up in the morning and she was gone. And then he called the police. So the police find out Amanda's missing on day two.

Ben was immediately a suspect within the public opinion. But Ben was at work that day and his boss had picked him up and driven him to work and tons of people had seen him. They were working on a house in Kihei, they're contractors. But just in case he knew something and somebody else did something, they gave him a lie detector test, which he very willfully took. So he got cleared.

And there were still thousands of people that are like, that guy acts weird and he seems suspicious. You know, we had a press conference and he was really spacey. You know, you can see why I feel spacey right now just trying to talk to you about this. It's very traumatic to go through. He drove up to the forest area.

really early in the morning to search as he did every day. And somebody jumped in his car and like attacked him and said, you killed her. We're all onto you. And you know, that was the beginning of the crazy. These conspiracies were blowing up overnight so fast. There were so many conspiracies. I can't even begin to remember them all. I can think of a few.

A girl called me and said she happened to be taking pictures when her husband was driving after their hike. And then there started being conspiracies around that. There was a lady in the background of the pictures wearing a hat. And then there was all these conspiracies about the lady in the hat.

And then somebody said they saw a girl that looked like Amanda walking down the hill on the road that is alongside part of the forest where you hike. And they were like, nobody ever walks down this road because it's really windy and people drive fast. And that's true. And she said, I noticed a girl walking down and it didn't make sense. But she was wearing a totally different outfit.

The conspiracy was, well, she changed her clothes and hiked out and she's hiding. We tried to get footage from all of these streets anyway. We viewed all of the footage and there was no Amanda walk by.

And then people would ask questions. Why aren't there videos? Why aren't they releasing that? Who was standing next to her? What's going on in the background? You know, conspiracies were coming from every direction. But this one thing about this girl walking down the hill became such a big deal. And I think mostly because we were saying, no, that's not a thing. As did the police, as did the girl who originally called it in. All sorts of people were doing this like online sleuth detective stuff.

I mean, and I can't blame them because to some degree I was right. We were all doing everything we could to find this girl. And these people meant well, trying to save her before she died, just like me. So these stories evolved into these things that weren't what was happening. So there's only so much you can focus on that because you've got

Only so much time before this girl, if alive, dies. Even if she's just lost, how long can she live without food? Some searches go for 40 years because my brother's search is still going. Families get wiped out doing this.

And then there's no money left to search for their kid. And I was like, look, I think we should do a GoFundMe because this is going to add up fast and we could easily spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next few weeks. And if you have that, great. But if you run out, what happens for the next five years if we're still looking? So they said, okay, let's do it. And that GoFundMe also created tons of conspiracies.

I remember I was working all day in the forest and talking to press and things like that. And I got home really late. And I remember her father came over to my house and he said, have you seen Facebook today? And he's like, you know how everybody thought Ben did it and they were all on top of Ben. And I said, yeah. And he goes, now they think it's you. They think that you and Ben were having a relationship and that you hurt her. I said, do you think that? And he said, no, not at all. And I said, does your wife think it?

No, not at all. What about your kids? He said, they don't know who did what. Everybody's a suspect in their brain. And I said, they think I could have hurt her. And he said, they don't think you did, but they don't know you didn't. And I said, well, then I should take a lie detector too. And he said, that would be great. It was late night and I sent an email to the police chief and

I gave them all my passwords, my emails, my I was like, I am totally transparent. I have a porch camera. But the timing was still I could have been in the forest at that time.

There's a conspiracy that I did something to her at the date and time that she went missing because it appeared that I had checked in on Facebook in the Makawa forest. That's because I created a site for her and, you know, put the date and time and location where she went missing so people would know. But somehow linked to my personal Facebook because I opened this other site.

Then people were posting pictures, drone pictures of my house and the cliff. And there's a cave right here and her body's probably in there. And Ben and Sarah having a relationship, you know, she probably killed her for him. I'm just thinking like if Ben didn't want to be with Amanda, he'd just break up. Like they're not a mesh. They don't have kids. They don't have finances together. And then, of course, the police verified all that.

And then people started saying, who is this girl anyway? And even some of Amanda's friends, you know, Amanda doesn't even know who you are. Why are you involved? We're watching you closely. Oh, my God. And then and everybody that are close with Amanda were like, just ignore these people. We all come from our background, right? Why am I involved in this? Because of my brother.

Why does this person think I harmed her? Maybe because of something they've been through. So I have to forgive people and know that their motivations come from their own experiences in life or their assumptions. Because I think most people's motivations were really good, but it wasn't helping. It was destructive. Every moment that we were focused on all of these crazy conspiracy theories was a moment that Amanda might not have made it.

They affected our ability to search. It made the whole thing very traumatic for a lot of us. But for those handful of people that were incredibly destructive to finding her, there were thousands of people who were so amazing. 30,000 people from all over the world and tons of them on Maui on that Facebook page, checking it daily,

People are tagging people that are good hikers or free divers because there's a lot of waterfalls. People that are good at scaling rocks and people were really helping. It might have been like day six. I think Amanda's parents have been there one day. We show up in the morning and nobody's there. The police aren't there. The fire department's not there. The big trailer with all the maps on top of it and the tents, everything's gone. And it was like, oh my God, they stopped.

They have to stop at some point. I'm not blaming them at all. The police were still very much on it, but I think they were starting to really look at other avenues like abduction, really digging into her computer and her phone and forensics. The physical search had stopped and there was no helicopter. And I was like, all right, here we go. Go fund me money. Let's start spending it. Now we need the public. And the public showed up.

They weren't always there at the same time, but many hundreds on any given day. And then, you know, five people would show up with food and drinks and restaurants would come. I see Chris Berkus tagged and he showed up the very next day like I can help. I'm a great hiker. I'm really good at this kind of stuff. And he was just a volunteer.

Two weeks later, he's running the volunteers and he's really worried that somebody is going to get lost, another person or injured, and they're done with the trails. Now they're scaling cliffs, diving under waterfalls to see if her body's under there, that kind of thing. So he knew what he was doing and he and a few other people stepped up. Really, really amazing people stepped up.

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I think it was her dad. And he said, I think we need to get into reality here. At some point, we're no longer searching. We're doing a recovery of a body. You can live three days without water, three weeks without food. And I'm like, it hasn't even been three weeks. Her parents and I talked about alternatives to this situation. And we had really covered the bulk of that forest. Well, I should say the bulk of what the fire department told us was a reasonable zone.

I have come to learn that a lot of people have been found just outside of that zone around the country. But when they say this is about as far as anybody goes, that's where you focus.

Ben had pushed for one direction at one point and we exhausted it. And then he said, well, I'm feeling like we should try this direction. So it wasn't the first time he ever came up with something like that. But he was like, I really think we should push this way. And they said, okay, well, we're going to go take the helicopter out there and see if there's even anywhere to land because volunteers can't hike out there. It's way too dangerous. On day 17, Ben,

Troy, who was a hunter and had been helping us from early stages when we needed dogs. Javier, Special Ops Marine Corps alumni. And Chris Berquist knew the area, lived on that main road where the forest runs. The three of them were in the helicopter just scoping out whether or not they could push off to this other area. And they tried to find some locations where they could land the next day. And then on their way back,

The helicopter pilot, just on his own accord, took a turn to go a certain route along a river. They looked down and he goes, look, there's a hiker, a hiker in the middle of nowhere where nobody can get without a helicopter unless you're jumping waterfalls and falling down cliffs. And they're like, look, there's a hiker. And I'm like, that's her, that's her, that's her. And then they immediately start calling, you know, we've got her, we've got her, we can see her, you know.

They can't land where she is because it's really steep. So they have to land up the hill and they have to take like machetes and carve their way down this really steep, difficult area where they're falling and rolling and running and screaming for her. And she heard Javier because Javier and her knew each other. She was like, Javier?

To her, she just thinks her parents and Ben have hired a helicopter. She has no idea that there's. And he's like, thousands of people have been looking for you. And it's just crazy. And thank God he had his camera and he took some pictures. And that's what you see on the Internet of them laying on a riverbed between two waterfalls in what they call a box canyon, like something where she couldn't get back out.

She had been there for a few days. She's now not got her shoes. There's all sorts of stuff that happened along the way for her. There's huge gouges in her legs and infections. And she's just sitting out in the riverbed trying to be seen, you know, and she got seen. It was amazing. 17 days.

It was on day 17 in the morning that we announced the $50,000 reward. And I put it all over the news. I was starting to do interviews with news outlets when her dad called and he was bawling and he was like, we found her, we found her, we found her. And I was like, I remember the first thing I said was shut up. And he's like, it's real. I go, is she alive?

She's alive. And then I was like, is she going to live? And he's like, I don't know. I think so. I talked to her. I talked to her. She's okay. They're airlifting her. Meet me at Maui Memorial. Go right now.

And I was like on with news. I'm like, we found her. It makes me so happy that I cry. But I'm driving to the hospital as fast as I can. And everybody's honking on the roads, jumping up and down in downtown Paia as I'm driving through. They don't know it's me. And I was just the most amazing, beautiful thing. But I still didn't know for sure, is she going to live? And her dad didn't really, you know, everybody's in shock.

And the doctors and nurses are going over her and trying to make sure she's stable. And we were all just in the waiting room, losing it. It was probably the best feeling I'd ever had. This is literally the first time I really thought about my brother. To me, we were just finding Amanda. And I was like, oh my God, I had a do-over. I had a do-over and we did it right. We found her.

This is because of my brother. Thank you, John. Like, it just hit me like this whole thing was, I got to do it right. And I called my dad. I'm like, we got to do it, right. We got to do it, right. And he was so proud. And so happy. And he's like, my kid saved a life. My kid saved a life, you know, and of course, it wasn't just me. Don't get me wrong. I'm just telling you my own experience. But so many thousands of people saved a life, a whole community saved a life.

But from my family's perspective, we got to do it right. And I got to do everything my dad tried to do the first time and nobody would help him. And this time everybody helped me. My whole life set me up to be able to help this girl. And I was just in the right place at the right time. And I think her whole life set her up to live. So all these news organizations are here and we find her and they're not leaving.

The first day we let her be, and then on the second day, we are getting hounded for interviews and anything. And now they suddenly have not just my phone number, but her parents' phone numbers. I mean, I don't mean any disrespect to them because they all did so much for us. And without them, I don't think we would have Amanda today. They're the reason that we had donations worldwide. They're the reason for so much.

but they wanted their found girl interview and you can't blame them. I was like, look, there are so many people that want to talk to you. And she's like, I'm not ready to talk to anybody. And I said, well, would you do an interview with me where you just tell a little bit about your story and you thank the community? I'm like, there are so many people that have helped you. She just didn't want to do it. She didn't want to be on camera, you know, and she's in the hospital and she's all wrapped up and she's way worse than I had heard.

She was pretty traumatized. She was crying. She was super gracious and thankful and still trying to piece it all together. That aired worldwide, but nobody would leave. So we still have every major television show and every major channel.

They're showing up at Amanda's house where her mom is staying and, you know, the whole bit. And I just really want to say no disrespect to these people. They are doing their jobs and they did their job. Everybody wanted to do an individual interview. Amanda could not handle 20 interviews with every major outlet and every major TV show. And we just said, we're going to do one question and answer session with all of you. And you each get two questions and she can do it for two hours or an hour or something like that.

And this time she's now on a lot of painkiller because they're doing these procedures on her legs that were getting pretty brutal. So her perspective on why she had been lost and why she was out there and the bigger world perspective, you know, if you believed in God, it would be, why did God put me here?

She spoke to that. And in doing so, I think she lost a lot of people because people were expecting her to be like, I'm so sorry. I didn't bring my cell phone with me. All these people have been searching for me. People were in danger, looking in difficult circumstances. I think that's what people would have preferred to hear. While she had said that the first time, this time she was speaking more to like, I find this

Sort of like I said to you that my whole life led up to help find her. She felt like her whole life led up to her being able to survive out there, which I think is true. She said she had followed voices. Now, if she had said my gut instinct, that would have made sense to most people. If she had said God, that would have made sense to a whole lot of people. I feel like God was directing me.

But when you say spirit, spirit guide, that sounds like a druggy thing to most people. There was a lot of anger starting to boil up. You know, what I hear is a girl trying to understand why she was out there and what it all means. You know, she's kind of looking for the bigger meaning in life. And people started going like, was she on some sort of adventure? Was this like a spiritual quest type deal? It became she did this on purpose.

She must have taken drugs. She didn't seem traumatized enough to them. Me knowing her now, I've seen her go through a lot of trauma through this whole experience. But you go through phases, right? And then the crazy, crazy conspiracies started up. People started saying like, oh, the Ehlers are hiding people on Oahu in a compound and trying to raise money with GoFundMe to get rich.

And this is all kind of internet stuff. None of the news ever covered it. Nobody ever asked me about it one on one. Like it was not a thing in life, but it was a huge thing on social media.

led, I might add, by somebody that was originally a friend of mine, who had been texting me saying, after we found Amanda, you know, I don't think you're involved. But I think you've been completely bamboozled. And these people planned this whole thing. And your good reputation and your name is getting tarnished. And I was like, these people didn't plan anything. They didn't even know me.

I look back on it now. And at first, the boogeyman did it. Who'd she pick up? Who abducted her? Which, you know, my mind went there too. Then Ben did it. Ben acted weird during the press conference. But he's traumatized. He's been searching in a forest 24 hours a day. I had to beg him to leave the forest. Then I did it. To the point where I had to take a lie detector test. And I was announced as having been cleared.

And I still did it. The police don't know what they're talking about. FBI don't know what they're talking about. Sarah did it. And then we find her and then she did it. Now she's the bad guy and it just evolved. And then, well, her dad did it because he owns a GPS tracking company for trucks. So therefore he probably did it to make money and like sell his GPS tracking. His GPS tracking software has nothing to do with hikers.

Like so you can, it's not even GPS tracking. It's like mapping. So you can see where UPS fleet truck is. But that was it. When we first found her, it was like the most beautiful moment of my life. You know, relief of being able to save somebody the way we couldn't save my brother was so beautiful. I mean, I'm crying, but it's beautiful. I'm crying because it's beautiful, not because I'm sad. But then all of the craziness around it afterward and all of the social media craziness and it just...

It really robbed my beautiful feelings. It's taken some time to kind of process it. I didn't even think I had PTSD with my brother. I definitely think I have PTSD with Amanda. But that's something that happened to him. And I was an observer because I was a kid.

This is something I was blamed for. I was accused of murder by a lot of people. And you'd think it would be nothing to losing your brother. I would certainly take it over losing my brother any day, but it caused a lot more trauma or at least trauma I can recognize as an adult. I was at a restaurant not that long ago and somebody bought my meal.

The waitress came over and said, somebody asked me to buy this for you. They wanted to let you know they thought you hurt Amanda. And they're really sorry. And they're so proud of what you did. And that meant so much to me. Because again, you know, I moved here. I didn't know anybody when Amanda went. Very few people when Amanda went missing.

The main reason I feel PTSD is because I did something completely with good intentions around somebody I loved so much in my brother's name. You know, the fact that one of my closest friends literally was the number one harasser. I am still horrified by her behavior.

It was so shocking to me. I was so blindsided. The number one thing that's going to make me lose it is being accused of something I didn't do. I think that's where the trauma really comes. It's so easy to focus on the people that were just God awful in the hundreds that followed them online. But this is something I learned from Amanda. How much room I give those people in my thoughts and my heart is my choice.

And I work hard to not give that much room anymore. The world gave me a chance to see who my friends are, who my friends aren't, how beautiful people can be, how ugly people can be, what people's motivations are. I don't think anybody tries to be awful. I think they really believe their own thoughts.

How much room are you going to give this situation when you could be feeling the way you felt the day you found her, which is beautiful, proud and happy. My dad died at the beginning of this year. He got to see his daughter find somebody.

using all of his techniques that he tried to do for his son. And he was so incredibly proud. And this was not just a do-over for me, but it was a do-over for my brother. It was a do-over for my dad. It was a do-over for my sister. It was a do-over for all my brother's friends who were all so proud. There was so many beautiful things that came from this. And slowly but surely, I'm seeing the beauty only.

Today's episode featured Sarah Haynes. Somebody out there knows something about her brother John Haynes, who went missing in Boulder, Colorado in July 1981, just days after arriving for college.

If you know anything, please contact the Boulder Police Department. There's a $10,000 reward for information leading to his body, his car, or for information about who may have harmed him. Please see the show notes for additional links to John's case report, Sarah's Facebook page, and to Kitty Charm Farm, her animal sanctuary on Maui. ♪

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I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me, Witt Misseldein, and Jason Blaylock, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Andrew Waits and Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song "Illabi" by Tipper. You can join the This Is Actually Happening community on the discussion group on Facebook or at Actually Happening on Instagram.

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Thank you for listening.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.