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Inside The Mysterious Disappearance Of Brian Shaffer, The Medical Student Who Vanished From An Ohio Bar
(allthatsinteresting.com)
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Summary: On March 9th, 2000, Leah Roberts left her home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A note to her sister suggested she was going on a free-spirited road trip. But three days later, her credit card would be used for the final time in Brooks, OR (about an hour south of Portland) and then her Jeep Cherokee would be found on March 18th, in Northwestern Washington, badly damaged, but with no evidence that Leah or her cat were in the vehicle at the time of the crash, in fact, not evidence anyone was inside at the time of the crash. Later evidence would reveal that Leah drove I40 to Los Angeles, then I5 to Bellingham, a strange route considering her destination, and possibly rigged her car to crash on its own.
Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Leah_Roberts
Unsolved Writeup: https://unsolved.com/gallery/leah-roberts/
Overview of the Route:
Bank card evidence shows that Leah took I40 from Raleigh, North Carolina, to its terminus near Los Angeles, California. While her exact route isn't known, we know that she then took I5 to Brooks Oregon, which would be the last time her cards would be used. It is assumed she took I5 to Bellingham, as on March 13th, she purchased an afternoon movie ticket there and was seen having lunch by two men. This is a trip of ~3,800 miles, which was completed in less than 4 days.
Timeline:
March 9th, 2000: Leah leaves Raleigh in the early afternoon. She purchases a motel room in Memphis Tennessee. She covered about 750 miles the first day.
Midnight March 12th/March 13th, 2000: Leah's bank card is used a final time in Brooks, OR. Security camera footage shows her seemingly healthy, albeit watching something or someone in the parking lot.
March 13th, 2000: according to a ticket found in her vehicle, Leah saw a matinee showing of American Beauty, and according to eye witnesses, she ate a meal in Bellingham WA.
March 18th, 2000: Leah's vehicle is found in Canyon Creek, Washington. There is a semi-credible claim that Leah was seen in a disoriented state at a gas station in Bellingham.
Context from Leah's Life: Leah had lost both her parents before graduating college, been in an injurious crash that damaged her leg, and dropped out of college the spring before she would have graduated (it's not clear to me if she attended the spring semester partially or not at all.) After dropping out, she hung out at a local bookstore and became fascinated with the Beat Generation, in particular, she was inspired by Jack Kerouac's road trips through the west, and his stint at the Desolation Peak Lookout (fire tower.) After she left, her sister found a note that said "I’m not suicidal. I’m the opposite. Remember Jack Kerouac.” Her family believes that she was going to Desolation Peak as a way to connect to his experience. They also believed, until the discovery of her vehicle, that she intended this to be a free-spirited roadtrip, lasting about a month (based on the fact she gave a housemate money to cover her share for about that length of time.)
Problems with the Timeline:
Author butting in here; as a westerner, I do a lot of long trips, and I used to do a multi-day trip 8-10 times a year. I'm typically able to average about 50 to 55 miles of progress each hour I'm actively traveling. For instance, if I leave my morning location, and arrive my evening location 10 hours later, I will have, at maximum, traveled 550 miles from my starting point. The speed limit might be as high a 75 or 80, but due to stops, slow downs, construction, and congestion, I only make 50-55 miles of progress. Once in a while I can get it up to 60 miles per hour of travel, but that's rare. In the right vehicle, in the right places, it's possible to make better average time, but Leah's vehicle was a 1993 Jeep Cherokee. Oddly enough, I've known two people who owned this vehicle, and both said that they were not good highway cars as they vibrate at higher speeds, and really prefer to cruise at a lower speed, say 60-65. Jeeps also suffer from something called a Death Wobble that slows them down. Anyway, back to Leah's timeline problems:
The first day is a long day of 12-15 hours driving. But the next two days would be utterly breakneck travel, as she covered ~2700 miles in less than 48 hours. This gives her an average speed of almost 60 miles per hour, which as I state above, is difficult to do. If she stopped for even a short break of 6 hours, her average speed would have been a 67 miles per hour. More realistically, the vehicle was traveling almost the entire time, averaging closer to 55 miles per hour. I've done 16 hours of driving in a day. It's exhausting. I've never done 18 that I recall. Not by myself. To do a 12-15 hour day sucks a lot, but then it seems feasible she slept it off in Memphis. But then she got up and did nearly non-stop driving in unfamiliar country, for nearly 48 hours, with any rest apparently being in her car.
On the fourth day, she's up an at it early enough to be in town for a matinee movie. I'll be honest, if I'd just driven non-stop for 2 days, had a short rest, and then done almost 8 more hours of driving, all I want to do is sleep, and a movie theatre isn't a cheap or easy place to do that.
I think it's safe to say, Leah was really hauling ass.
How did Leah achieve this aggressive travel schedule and still arrive well-rested enough to apparently enjoy a movie, and not seem worn out on security footage? And why, on a supposedly free-spirited roundtrip meant to last a month, was she hauling ass?
Personally, I think there's really only three good explanations for this rate of speed:
Leah was using substances to stay awake and alert.
Lead was experiencing mania that was allowing her to stay awake.
There was a second driver.
Of these options, I personally feel that only the second driver makes sense. I believe any drugs she may have taken to stay awake and alert would have probably led to erratic or dangerous driving that would have LIKELY attracted notice on these busy routes. If she was experiencing mania, I believe it's even more likely she would have driven erratically. But we don't have records of police stops. I also think if she were on drugs or experiencing mania she'd have gotten off the main road, spent money, or stopped to pass out somewhere along the route.
I also think her stop in Memphis suggests a second driver. While again, a 12 hour day of driving is a lot of driving, especially for someone who seems to have not done a lot of long haul driving, it's still very doable for a solitary driver. She stopped at a reasonable point and rested on a reasonable human schedule. Her pace only picks up to non-stop after Memphis. Put a pin in this, as a second driver also helps with the next problem. ** Problems with the Route: ** I40 makes sense for a bit, being a direct route west until reaching Nashville but taking it all the way to California added 1000+ miles to the trip. 1000 miles of some extremely repetitive driving, too. It's possible that she wanted to stay off more northerly routes to avoid late season storms, but I80 or I70 would have still been southerly enough to benefit from most of the route experiencing spring. There's only a limited section of possibly dicey driving on that route during the spring, but it seems like if she was on some sort of schedule (and from her non-stop driving habit, it seems she was), it seems like that possibility would have been worth shaving off nearly 20 hours of travel time. But she still took I40 to I5.
Before we argue that it's 2000 and there's no Google Maps, Mapquest existed, as did atlases. Furthermore, road signs would have guided her on a more direct route if that was all she was following. Nothing would have "chosen" this route for her if she was looking for instructions.
The other issue with the route is that if she had intended for it to be a pilgrimage out west, I40 isn't really the classic route for someone headed to Oregon, and then Washington. But, the western portion I40 does overlap significantly with route 66, which may have been her intention. While I think of I70 having the classic pioneer landmarks and stops, the western portion of I40 does have a lot of cachet and charm. But if her intention had been a free-spirited roadtrip on either of these routes, why not you know, stop and enjoy the scenery instead of barreling through like a rocket sled on wheels?
Why did Leah choose this southerly route? And why, if she was on a free-spirited roadtrip that overlapped with famous Route 66, did she never seem to stop to take it in?
Personally, I think this route may have been selected because it was absolutely free of snow, and with a second driver, it could still be accomplished in a tight timeframe. This route also may have suited the second driver. It stands to reason that the second driver appears after the stop in Memphis, but not in Memphis (if they had joined in Memphis, I don't think she would have stopped for the night, because they already planned to swap in and out of driving duties.) I would argue that they joined the trip within 10-12 hours of departing Memphis, because that seems to be when she's too tired to drive again, and if she were alone, she would have again stopped to rest.
It's also possible that this route accommodated the second driver's destination, which may have been in California, or Southern Oregon. Because they didn't report any belongings in the Jeep that didn't belong or feasibly belong to Leah, and Leah appears to have taken a sleep break between March 12th and March 13th that indicated she was again a solitary driver, I think it's safe to say this second driver got out before the Brooks-to-Bellingham leg of the trip. Also, at this point the police mention that if she did have traveling companions at this point, they didn't feel they were in the car with her.
But let me ask the question that isn't directly related to the problems with the timeline or the route, but is tangled up with both: ** Why does Leah seem to be on a schedule?**
I don't have any explanation for why she might have been on a schedule. At best I can say that maybe she wanted to get there fast and then do a slow route home, but that doesn't pay well with the route problems. If there was a second driver, it's possible their own needs contributed to the sense of needing to be as fast as possible, but once Leah dropped them off (which seems to have been in the early hours of the 12th) Leah had no need to maintain the breakneck pace, and yet, she did not stop to enjoy the new Beatnik scene in Portland Oregon, which seemed like it would have been a draw, nor did she enjoy the Columbia Gorge, the Pacific Northwest coast, or anything else, instead beating a fast path to her final destination, only to stop and see a movie when she was less than an hour away from her final destination (and where her vehicle would be found.) I can't say this makes sense to me.
Post Road Trip:
Personally, I feel that if we could answer why Leah chose the route she did, why she took it so fast (and how) that we'd understand where her story seemingly ends. So I think my other questions are more important. But we do have a final sighting, and a vehicle to contend with.
On March 14th, Leah was supposedly seen in Bellingham by two men at a lunch counter. (This is the same day of the movie ticket.) One man claimed he'd seen her but not spoken with her. The other man said that they spike about Jack Kerouac, and that she had a travel partner named "Barry." The police find this man suspicious because the other man claimed that Leah was alone. I'm not sure I find that so odd -- in this subreddit I think we all know that eye witness testimony has flaws, and there's a variety of reasons the man may have believed Leah to be traveling with a partner; Leah herself may have made "Barry" up as a safety mechanism. He may have mistaken the Barry in her story to be the other man at the counter, too. While the man who claimed Leah was traveling with Barry has since left the country, I'm not sure we should consider this as suspicious as some investigators do. (More in a moment.) Investigators still had a sketch artist work up a sketch of "Barry." The sketch is of a remarkably generic white guy. (Does he look like the first guy?)
Could "Barry" have been her second driver?
On March 18th, clothes were found in a tree branch, and further inspection revealed broken branches where Leah's car had darted off the road and tumbled down an embankment. Her clothing, wallet, and jewelry were found in the vehicle. Blankets covered the broken windows as though someone had been staying in the vehicle or protecting the contents. But Leah and her cat were missing.
Why leave money, important mementos, and everything else she'd so carefully chosen to come with her in the car?
The "Accident":
There was no blood inside the vehicle as would be expected after an accident of such scale. A man's fingerprint was found in the vehicle, as was DNA, but the fingerprint did not match the man the police found suspicious. When the case was reopened, the Jeep was reviewed, and it was determined that the Jeep had been "rigged" to accelerate on its own, which suggested that the accident was not an accident. But as Leah's body was not inside, it wasn't an accident that was seemingly designed to cover up a murder or be an actual murder. This also would have required some mechancial know-how, know-how that seems unlikely to have come from Spanish and Anthropology major.
Who rigged the car? If Leah agreed to dump the car, why? Is it possible that this is actually the result of damage the accident caused, and not deliberate?
"Conclusion" and Final Questions:
I believe that Leah was on a schedule of some kind, and I believe she had a second driver who may have added schedule pressures. I believe, however, something happened on the 14th; either she met her schedule or she blew it completely, and that's why she went to a movie. I also believe she temporarily had a second driver, and I'm willing to guess that this was a man. If that's so, she had to have felt safe enough having him driver her car with her asleep, and not deviate from the plan. Either she's very trusting, or she knew him well enough. It's possible the second driver was also female, but that wouldn't play well with the "Barry" detail, nor the male DNA found in the car. (Implied to be spit, but I'm not sure.) I don't know if I think Leah is dead. Honestly, I don't. But I don't know how she could "become" someone else in this day and age, especially since it seems she had neither money nor valuables to sell.
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For the past few months, I've been working on reducing my online footprint. When I search my name in Google image search, the first (and only) result is my old GitHub profile photo and it links to my Github. However, I changed this image months ago to a text based avatar, so in theory it should be displaying that image instead. Is there a way to force Google or Github to update the image?
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Cindy James was a 44 year old nurse living in the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada. When police found her body on the front lawn of an abandoned house in 1989, her hands and feet were bound behind her back, and she had been strangled. But how she died, and importantly, who killed her is still a mystery.
Cindy claimed she had a stalker since 1982
Four months after separating from her husband in 1982, she claimed got creepy and threatening phone calls. In the next 7 years, Cindy would contact the police nearly 100 times reporting events ranging from being physically attacked by an unknown person to phone calls in the middle of the night with threats or audible breathing on the other end to strange notes and strange letters. Such as:
In 1983, her friend was visiting Cindy and found her outside of her house with a nylon stocking tied tightly around her neck. She claimed that she was going to the garage and was attacked from behind by someone wearing white sneakers. Cindy moved shortly after.
Cindy had hired a private investigator who had given her a two-way radio to keep with her so she and the PI could speak directly. One night in 1984, the PI heard some strange sounds over the radio and went to Cindy's house. The door was locked, but when the PI looked through the window Cindy was on the floor with a small paring knife that was stabbed through her hand. At the hospital she claimed that the same person who attacked her sometimes showed up with two or three other people to harass her. She also claimed that that night, she remembered being poked with a needle. Here's a picture of her face after this attack.
In 1985 she was found in a ditch disoriented with no memory of what happened miles away from her house. She had hypothermia and cuts and bruises all over. She was wearing men's boots and gloves and had a nylon stocking tied around her neck.
In 1986, Cindy was living with her friend and her friend's husband who were there to provide her a sense of security. One night, they awoke to the basement on fire and the phone lines cut. The husband ran to the neighbors house and allegedly saw a man standing on the curb who later ran away. The police claimed that the fire was set by someone in the house, because everything was locked and undisturbed - if someone had come in, they would have had to break in through a very oddly placed and shaped window which would have surely been damaged while climbing through. No fingerprints were found.
That same year, Cindy's doctor had her committed into a psychiatric ward because the doctor believed she was suicidal. After being released, Cindy's family claims that she told them that she knew a lot more about these events than she was telling everyone and the police. She had an earlier stint in a psychiatric hospital in 1985 for depression and anxiety, but it’s not clear if it was voluntary or involuntary.
In October 1988, Cindy said she was almost murdered in her driveway but did not report it to the police. The source is from Cindy’s sister’s blog.
During this time, the police had extended 24 hour surveillance of her house numerous times but would never see anything. Once they left, Cindy would report that the attacks and calls would happen again.
Cindy is found dead
Finally in May 1989 (almost 7 years since the first strange phone calls), Cindy went missing and her car was later found in a parking lot where there were groceries and a wrapped present inside. Blood was on the outside of the driver's side door, and the contents of Cindy's purse were found underneath the car. I can't find any information on whether the blood was Cindy's or not.
Two weeks later her body was found on the lawn of an abandoned house. Her hands and feet were hogtied behind her back. But her cause of death was an overdose of morphine and other drugs. The case was closed as a suicide, but the coroner made no determination of whether the death was an accident, suicide, or murder. ** Theories on what happened ** If you go the murder route, then the theory is that there really was a stalker who had done all of these things and ended up killing her when the time was right. This would also connect Cindy's memory of being poked with a needle in the first attack and then eventually overdosing on morphine. But who was it? Police suspected her ex husband and also her on and off again boyfriend who was also a cop. If it was her boyfriend, it would explain how no evidence was really found and how the police didn't do much, because he would know how to stage scenes a certain way and dissuade the cops.
If you go the accident route, another theory is that Cindy had a mental condition and was faking all of the attacks for attention. She accidentally overdosed on morphine and died when she was actually just trying to replicate the state she was in when she was found in the ditch years earlier. Cindy's faking would also explain the lack of evidence.
If you go the suicide route, then perhaps Cindy was trying to make her suicide as sensational as possible with the hogtying behind her back and her car being found with blood and her purse items scattered underneath the car. How exactly the 7 years' events factor into this, I'm not sure there is a good explanation.
I personally believe she really did have a stalker, exactly who I'm not sure. But I don't think all of Cindy's reports were legitimate. I think she was frustrated at the lack of progress and fabricated some events to get the police to pay attention to her case again. I don't think the major instances of her being beaten/attacked were fabricated, but perhaps some of the phone calls and threatening letters. Exactly who her stalker was is anyone's guess.
More detail is at the unsolved website.
An excerpt of a book written by Cindy's sister provides more details Here's her sister's blog which provides more details
Bill and Peggy Stephenson were two halves of a loving elderly couple known in Florence, Kentucky, for their church work and generosity. Bill had founded the Trucker’s Chapel Ministry, a spot where traveling transporters could gather and pray. Peggy played organ at Union Baptist Church.
They led quiet but impactful lives, according to their loved ones – which made the disturbing crime scene police discovered in May 2011 all the more unfathomable.
On May 29, 2011, the Stephensons were slain in brutal fashion – bludgeoned and stabbed – and then, whoever killed them staged a bizarre scene. Detective Coy Cox, who’s headed the Boone County Sheriff’s investigation since Day 1, told me he’s been “guarded and careful” about the details he’s released from the start. What he will say is that the bodies had been posed. Items inside the house had been moved around. “There wasn’t one room in that house that wasn’t staged,” Cox said recently on a podcast called Just the Tip-sters, in which host Melissa Morgan features unsolved cases.
Investigators have long believed that whoever killed the Stephensons knew them. This is based on a few things: There was no sign of forced entry at their condo, and the couple would have had to buzz in any visitors. Neighbors were situated quite close, yet reported nothing out of the ordinary. The killer(s) also seemed comfortable in the environment, staying hours after the couple was killed to inflict a postmortem injury on one of them and stage the scene.
There also was a message left by the killer(s), Cox said, though he wouldn’t share the details.
Detectives state this case is an old case not a cold case. They have continued to work hard and follow up on any and all leads.
Backstory: Detective vows brutal slayings of Florence couple won't go unsolved
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Brandon Swanson was born to Brian and Annette Swanson o January 30, 1989. He was born and raised in Marshall, Michigan. Brandon had recently graduated from Marshall Senior High School in 2007. He was enrolled in a one-year program in Wind turbines at Minnesota West Community and Technical College located in Canby, Minnesota. The day Brandon went missing. Leading up to Brandon’s disappearance, he was celebrating the end of his program at Minnesota West Community and Technical College. His friends threw him two parties on May 13, 2008. The first party Brandon went to was located in Lynd, Minnesota which is 7 miles away from his home. Around midnight, Brandon left the first party and drove approximately 40 minutes to Canby, Minnesota to attend the second party. Friends who went to both parties, recall that Brandon had consumed alcohol but he was not intoxicated.
By 1:45 a.m. Brandon crashed his Chevy Lumina in a small ditch. Thankfully, Brandon is not injured, but he does call his parents to help get out of the ditch. At this point, he was in between Lynd and Marshall. His parents set out to find Brandon, they recall that they thought they knew exactly where Brandon was. However, when they arrived there was no car or sign of Brandon. Brain called his son again to see if he could see headlights or hear the car horn, but Brandon could not see or hear anything. His parents were aware that Brandon had the wrong directions. Brandon was confident that he was giving his parents the correct directions, which led to frustration but nevertheless, he stayed on the phone with his mother.
Brandon told his mother he would stay on the phone but would leave his car and attempt to walk toward the lights he could see in the distance. Brandon had assumed that it was towards the town of Lynd, he did this all while on the phone with his parents. He remained on the phone with his parents for 47 minutes. Around 2:30 a.m on May 14, 2008, Brandon screamed “Oh Shit” before the call ended. His father tried to call him back several times but Brandon never picked up.
His parents reached out to Brandon’s friends for help and they searched all night, driving through farmland and dirt roads, but unfortunately, there was no sign of Brandon. By 6:30 a.m. Annette reported her son missing to Lynd Police Department, and it wasn’t long before officers joined the search for Brandon. There was still no sign of Brandon. According to a CNN article, the search response was delayed because it was not unusual for a 19-year-old to stay out all night after finishing school. One officer also told Annette Swanson that her son “had the right to go missing”. Police were able to locate Brandon’s car roughly 25 miles from Lynd and were unclear as to which direction he was headed while on foot.
Brandon Victor Swanson stands at 5’6” and weighs 125 pounds. He has brown hair, and blue eyes and was last seen wearing blue jeans, a white or black hat twisted to the side, and a white short-sleeve shirt.
Brandon’s case remains unsolved. On July 1, 2009, Brandon’s Law went into effect in Minnesota. The law requires that authorities conduct a preliminary investigation once a missing person report is received. If anyone has information about Brandon Swanson please call the Lincoln County sheriff at (507) 694-1664.
Source 1: https://uncovered.com/cases/brandon-victor-swanson-marshall-mn Source 2: http://immelman.net/brandon-swanson Source 3: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/18/grace.coldcase.swanson/index.html
In 2013, A college sophomore returns to school after spending the entire summer with his parents and within two weeks he disappears without a trace. According to his roommate and his girlfriend, his behavior had significantly changed and they were both worried about him. Bryce had been mixing alcohol with an ADHD medicine (that was not prescribed to him.) After giving some of his possessions to his roommate and breaking up with his girlfriend, he was driving home to CA to where his parents live. Pretty soon his parents get a phone call from their insurance company stating that the car that Bryce is driving has just requested road side assistance. His parents check their credit card records and find that the card was used in a small town 3 hours away from them called Buttonwillow. His mom gets a hold of the company that serviced the car and they stated that the car had run out of gas and they had filled it up enough so the driver could get to a station. Bryces mom had asked about the state of the driver and they said he seemed coherent and fine. They even volunteered to go back to where the car was located to see if it was still there. Karen, Bryces mom, asked if they could do that that would be great. Carlos, the service man, arrives and calls Karen and says that the car is still there and Bryce is still in it. She asks if she could speak with him since Bryce had been refusing her calls. Bryce gets on the phone and tells his mom he is fine he just ran out of gas is all. She tells him to go fill up and drive home. He agrees and everyone goes on their way. Bryce was only 3 hours away from home and his parents were expecting him around 3:00 PM. 3:00 PM comes and goes. 5:30 PM. Nothing. He is still not answering his phone.
Karen calls the police and they end up finding Bryce sitting in his car only 8 miles away from where the car was serviced. The police tell Bryce to call his mom and he is very reluctant to do so but eventually he does. His mom asks him what he’s doing and he doesn’t have any sort of real answer for her. That he is just blowing off steam. She tells him he needs to come home asap. After speaking with the cop, who did a field sobriety and searched his car, they inform Karen that Bryce seems totally fine. He is answering all of their questions, he’s alert, coherent. Nothing out of the ordinary. So the cop leaves. Carlos, the service man, after his shift returns a missed call from Karen. She tells him how the cops found Bryce only 8 miles away when he should’ve been on the highway heading home. Carlos offered to go check on the new location and see if he was still there. He was. Bryce has now been in the town of Buttonwillow for nearly 13 hours just sitting in his car. Eventually Bryce is convinced to start driving home and Carlos follows him for up to 30 mins until he sees Bryce get on the freeway. After that Carlos calls Karen to say Bryce is on the freeway heading home. While he’s driving on the freeway he is in contact with his parents a few times and eventually he tells them he is going to pull over because he is too tired to drive, mind you it is now 2:30 AM. They agree and he pulls over on the next exit.
Bryce pulls over near a cell tower where there looks to be a large body of water right in front of him. It’s deceiving though because once you go forward there is some brush and then a 25ft drop to a street below before you get to the water. Bryce drives forward towards the water and drives off the cliff. From the car tracks in the brush, he had accelerated his car. There was no sign of him braking so he intentionally is driving, fast, towards this body of water. Eventually his car crashed to the road below first landing on the front bumper and falling on its side. The back passenger window was broken out from the inside and all of the belongings were left in the car. His laptop, his phone, wallet, clothes. Everything. Two spots of blood were located in the car that were Bryces blood but that’s it.
Two bloodhounds tracked his scent on a route that was away from street view to a truck stop and there is where his scent ends. And that’s it. Bryce has vanished.
I should mention that when Bryce broke up with his girlfriend, Kim, Kim had called Karen to say that she took Bryces keys away from him because he didn’t seem like himself and knew he had drugs and alcohol in him and didn’t trust him to drive. Karen spoke to Bryce and offered to fly to him so she can be with him and help him get home. He told her to not book a flight, he was okay, and that he had a lot to talk to her about. Karen told Kim that Bryce seemed okay and to give him his keys.
People now wonder what Bryce had to tell his mom. He had only been back at school for 2 weeks (actually in class for 4 days) and what could have happened in those two weeks. Was he stalling in Buttonville so he didn’t have to confront whatever he had to tell her? Did he have so much alcohol and the ADHD drug in him that he had a psychotic episode and drove off the cliff with intentions on killing himself? Did the car accident give him a concussion to the point where he doesn’t remember who he is?
What happened to Bryce Laspisa?
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Terry Brisk was a 41-year old, Married father of 4. He was killed while deer hunting, alone, on his parent's property on November 7, 2016. The murder occurred between the hours of 2:30 and 4:30 pm on property located at Belle Prairie Township, northwest of the intersection of Hawthorne Road and Jewel Road, northeast of Little Falls Minnesota
Terry had taken the day off work, unknown to his wife, but not shockingly, as the Minnesota Firearms Deer season had just started 2 days prior to his death. Terry's family had done fairly well hunting over the weekend, but he still wanted to get a deer on his license - and the weather that day was perfect, unseasonably warm, clear skies and little to no wind.
Terry was found dead in the woods that afternoon by his oldest son, who had came out to join him in the hunt after school.
Terry was found dead, from a single gunshot wound inflicted by his own rifle. Police have ruled out suicide as the rifle was found hidden some distance from his body, and the particular model of rifle he hunted with has safety features which make it difficult if not impossible to commit suicide. Also the angle and impact suggest someone who was close to him, but not himself as the shooter.
Speculation has ranged from a trespasser on the property looking for Agates (rocks) or possibly another hunter - again on the property illegally. Terry's family have repeatedly said that he would never have threatened or shot at anyone first and strongly suspect that he encountered someone unexpectedly.
Law enforcement have recently (2022) indicated that they are looking for a Blue Van or Mini Van that was possibly in the area on that day.
There is a $30,000 reward being offered for any information that results in an arrest or conviction in the case.
On April 15, 2005, Ray would tell his girlfriend, Patty, that he was taking the day off of work and going for a drive- maybe even do some shopping. This was not too out of the ordinary for Ray, so Patty didn't think too much about it.
Patty would speak to Ray around 11:30am that morning as he told her he was heading to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania to do some shopping.
Patty would not hear - nor see- Ray again.
Patty reported Ray missing at 11:30pm that evening when she failed to reach him.
Ray was 59 years old, and months away from retiring. He was the district attorney for Centre County, PA, and during his 20-years in that position had put his fair share of criminals behind bars.
As 'one of them', the police jumped on the case and began searching for Ray immediately. The next day they would locate his red Mini Cooper in the parking lot of an antique mall in Lewisburg. Ray loved antique shopping, so that seemed understandable he would've went there. However, there was no sign of Ray, his car was locked, and interestingly they found cigarette ashes on the floor of the passenger side of the vehicle. The car also smelled of cigarettes and they found discarded cigarette buts on the ground outside of the passenger door. Ray was not a smoker- in fact- he loathed everything about it, especially the smell.
DNA proved no useful results from the cigarette butts.
Some witness thought they recalled Ray in the antique mall with a tall, brunette, woman.
Ironically, in May 1996, Ray's brother Roy was reported missing. His body was found a week later in the Miami River in Ohio, near where they found his car. Roy's death was ruled a suicide.
Some people noted the similarities between Ray and Roy's case, as his car was found near the Susquehanna river.
Months would go by with no sign of Ray. Until, some fisherman discovered his laptop under a bridge in the Susquehanna river. The laptop was in poor condition and the hard drive was missing. This was Ray's county issued laptop. When the FBI searched Ray & Patty's home computer, the found searches for 'How to erase a hard drive'. They also found software in his office for erasing a hard drive. Patty said this was because he was going to be retiring soon, and planned to make sure all his personal information was off of his county issued laptop.
Shortly after, a woman walking her dog found the hard drive in a different part of the river. It was destroyed and no useable data could be recovered.
Was this a suicide? Ray had no signs of depressions, in fact everyone said he was happily looking forward to retirement.
Did Ray go off to start a new life? There have been a few 'sightings' of him through the years, but none were confirmed.
Recently, an inmate told a cell mate that he knew what happened to Ray. He said they were contracted to kill him, and dispose of a body. He had two accomplices, a man and a woman. Is this a possibility, considering he likely had some enemies as a D.A.?
What do you think happened to Ray Gricar?
Sources:
https://wherearetheypodcast.medium.com/the-unsolved-disappearance-of-ray-gricar-20a299e6a13a
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