As Seen on TV (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00One night in March of 2016, two friends sat on a couch in Lunel, France, watching a true crime show on TV. And the episode really hit close to home, literally, because it was about a missing person who had vanished just miles away from where they lived. And so they're watching this show, and then all of a sudden, in the middle of it, one of the friends suddenly stood up and began pacing around the room, muttering to themselves. And when the other friend, who was still sitting on the couch watching this, asked them what was wrong. They were not ready for the answer. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do.

0:41So if that's of interest to you, please offer the follow button a really nice, really expensive steak dinner. But make sure you first significantly dull their steak knife. Okay, let's get into today's story.

1:28We'll see you next time. Mean Girls and Dream Girls all landing on Pluto TV all summer long. Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers have trusted Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years. Just tell Progressive what you want to pay and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Visit Progressive.com to find a car insurance rate that works for you. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. At 4.30 p.m. on June 23, 2014, 49-year-old Patrick Iswar hurried out the side door of a hospital in Sette, France, buttoning a fresh collared shirt as he ran to the parking lot.

2:13He climbed onto a scooter and then quickly checked his watch, and then he lifted the kickstand and sped off into traffic, ignoring honks from all the other drivers as he swerved between the cars. Patrick did not care who he was annoying right now. Because he was running late for a date, and then right after the date, he had to rush over to his daughter's dance recital. And he desperately wanted to make sure he made both of these events, because they were some of the only things he'd had to look forward to in ages. So things in Patrick's life had not been good for a really long time. Eight years earlier, he had slipped into a rut of serious binge drinking and gambling.

2:50And one day, when he was drunk, he had actually struck his wife. Following that, his wife had divorced him, and he'd lost custody of his daughter, Alabama, who was now 12 years old. After that, Patrick's life really did not get any better. He had moved in with his elderly mother, and his drinking had only gotten worse, and his gambling continued to the point where he basically gambled away most of what he made by working as a hospital janitor. And then after that, he'd gotten involved with a married co-worker, and then when her husband found out about this affair, she died of an apparent suicide.

3:23Her death had been five years earlier, and it had been so traumatic that Patrik had barely dated since. He had just about resigned himself to a life of bachelorhood, when actually a few weeks earlier, he had gotten a call from the woman he was now going to meet, Audrey LeVay. But Patrik was now running so late for his date that he worried Audrey might not wait around for him. So he twisted the throttle of his scooter and shot across an intersection, ignoring more honks from more cars. Patrick had actually met Audrey a long time ago, right after his divorce, and they'd gone out a handful of times before they ultimately lost touch.

3:57She was a lot younger than he was, and she'd stood him up more than once in the past, but she was also a lot of fun, and it had been a while since Patrick had been on a date, so when she called him up saying she wanted to go out again, Patrick had said sure. They'd made plans to meet this afternoon at a park near Patrick's work that had this big rocky hill rising behind it. And the place had some of the best views in the whole city, with the ocean on one side and dramatic cliffs dotted with all these old caves on the other. Now, they were not going to have a whole lot of time together, probably just enough for a short walk before Patrik would have to rush off for his daughter's dance recital later that night.

4:34But he hoped that the romantic setting might help spark something between them again. A few minutes later, Patrik pulled up to the park entrance, and to his relief, Audrey was still there waiting for him. So he parked his scooter and locked his cell phone in the scooter's underseat compartment, and he walked over to her. And from her nervous smile, he got the sense that she was almost as excited about the date as he was, which gave him a nice boost of confidence. So he took her hand, and they started down the path.

5:08Around 8 a.m. the next morning, 10 miles up the coastline from where Patrik and Audrey had been walking at that park, Patrik's older brother, Mark Iswar, stood on the deck of his boat, pulling a big oyster trap out of the water. As he was doing this, his phone rang, so he stopped and he answered it. But before he could even say hello, his mother's very worried voice came across the line asking if he knew where Patrik was. Mark frowned because Patrik lived with their mother, so she should know better than he would. But his mother explained that Patrik hadn't come home last night. He also wasn't answering his phone.

5:41He hadn't shown up to work that morning. And perhaps most concerning of all, he'd missed his daughter's dance recital the previous evening. And it was this last fact that made Mark think that something might actually be wrong here, because he knew how much Patrik loved his daughter and how much he was looking forward to that recital. So he promised his mother he would get to the bottom of it, then he hung up and began calling Patrik's friends. However, with each conversation he had, Mark got more worried, because nobody had heard from Patrik since yesterday afternoon. He'd apparently left work around 4 p.m., but he hadn't told anybody where he was going.

6:14Now for Mark, he felt like this was at least somewhere to start, Patrik's work. So he steered his boat to the dock, tied it off, and then jumped in his car and started heading that direction. Four hours later, Mark stood on a rocky lookout point scanning the city below. Patrik's hospital stood in the middle of Setz's business district, which was packed with canals and cafes and tourist spots. And Mark and a handful of Patrik's friends had spent all morning checking them one by one, looking for Patrik. But they hadn't found him or any sign of him. And so now Mark had turned his focus to some of the more remote areas around the city, like the hill behind the park where he now stood.

6:54But there was still no sign of Patrik anywhere. And so Mark was trying to think of anywhere else his brother might have gone when his phone rang. It was one of Patrik's friends from the search party and he just found Patrik's scooter outside the park at the bottom of the hill. Just a short drive from where Mark was. And so Mark told him not to touch anything and he sprinted back to his car and he sped down the hill and he left the park and he stopped in the parking lot right outside. and sure enough, there in the lot was Patrick's scooter. And as Mark looked at the scooter and at the quiet park all around him, he felt a cold weight settle in his stomach because he really couldn't think of any reason why Patrick would leave his scooter here overnight.

7:35In the back of his mind all day, Mark had been worried that something bad could have happened to his little brother. But now, after seeing this scooter, he felt sure of it.

7:49Almost two weeks later, at 8 a.m. on July 5, 2014, Detective Boris Verrier took the exit ramp toward the French town of Set. And as the sunlight hit his windshield, he had to squint as he looked out at the long stretch of beaches and canals framed by these beautiful rocky cliffs in a small, dense urban center. Verrier was a senior investigator from the nearby city of Montpellier, but he had just been called in to take over a missing persons case that had stumped the local police and set. About two weeks earlier, 49-year-old Patrikh Iswar had disappeared after going on a date with a woman whose name was Audrey Louvet.

8:26The local police had already spoken to Audrey, who said she didn't know what had happened to Patrikh. She said they had gone for a walk, and then he had escorted her to her bus, and then after that, she'd assumed that Patrikh just sort of went back to his scooter and carried on with his night. But the scooter had been found the next stay, still parked, where he and Audrey had met up for their date, with no sign of Patrik anywhere nearby. And now, almost two weeks later, Patrik had still not turned up. Since then, Patrik's brother, Marc, had been helping the investigation. Verrier had spoken to Marc on the phone, and Marc had talked about Patrik like he was a saint, a guy who would drop everything to help out somebody in a jam who never got into fights and had really no enemies.

9:04But Verrier didn't necessarily believe this, because in his experience, people who inexplicably vanished, oftentimes were kidnapped or murdered. Now, he had no reason to actually suspect that around Patrique. He could have just as easily gotten into an accident, fallen off a cliff, or maybe he chose to vanish. But at this point, what Verrier really needed to do was, on his own, dig into who Patrique was and figure out if there was a reason why he wasn't here right now.

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13:15A few minutes later, Verrier followed Patrique's ex-wife, whose name was Claude Ozais, into her living room, and they both sat down. Verrier switched on his recording device, and he asked Claude where she was on the day Patrique went missing. Claude said it was just an ordinary Monday for her, and that after work, she had picked up their daughter, Alabama, from school and driven her to her dance recital. She had expected to meet Patrik there at the recital, and it really surprised her when he didn't show up, because even though Patrik had plenty of flaws, he was a good dad. And at that, Marriere sort of leaned forward, because Patrik's flaws were actually what he wanted to know about.

13:53Now, he didn't think Claude was guilty of anything here, since she had a pretty strong alibi and didn't really stand to benefit from Patrik's disappearance. But he hoped she could maybe tell him about any old habits or current habits that could have gotten Patrique into trouble. And so when he asked her about this, Claude hesitated before saying she really didn't want to badmouth Patrique, but he drank and gambled a lot more than he should. At this point, Verrier pressed her for more details, but Claude just insisted that Patrique had really always kept that part of his life away from her. But after she thought about it for a moment, she said there was someone who might be able to tell Verrier more.

14:31And then she called their 12-year-old daughter, Alabama, into the room. Alabama appeared very visibly nervous and shaken up by everything going on with her dad. But her mother, Claude, took her hand and encouraged her to share her story. And slowly, the girl began to speak. She said that about a week before her dad disappeared, he'd brought her along on a very strange errand. They'd parked outside of a tunnel and he'd told her to wait in the car. And then he got out and walked into this tunnel to meet with someone. It was a man. But it was too dark in the tunnel for Alabama to make out the man's features.

15:06But she definitely saw her father, Patrik, hand this man some kind of package before he quickly turned and ran back to the car. And then afterwards, her father wouldn't tell her who this man was. He just said that he'd done something really stupid, and because of it, he now owed some people a lot of money. After Alabama finished talking, her mother, Claude, thanked her and sent her back out of the room. And then once she was gone, Verrier asked Claude if she knew who this man in the tunnel might be. But Claude said she had no idea. But she said she did have one name that was worth looking into.

15:37Now, this was not someone who would have lent Patrick any money, but instead it was a man who held a personal grudge against him. His name was Remy Shen and he was a local hairstylist.

15:51An hour later, Verrier sat in a cramped cubicle of the set police station, scrolling through a file on his laptop. Based on Claude's tip, he'd looked up the hairstylist's name in the police database and had immediately found a connection to Patrik. Back in 2009, so a few years after Patrik's divorce, Patrik had been questioned as a witness in the suicide of Remy Shen's wife, a woman named Nadezh Shen, who had worked with Patrik at the hospital. Apparently, Nadege had come home after a work party and confessed to Remy that she'd been having this affair with Petrieg. The couple argued for hours about it, and Nadege ended up sleeping on the couch while Remy went upstairs to their bedroom.

16:31And then the next day, Remy found Nadege in their garage, hanging by the neck. As soon as Verrier was done reading this, he knew he finally had a suspect, and so he looked up Remy's last known address and contact information. At around 10 a.m. the next day, so July 7th, Verrier followed Remy Shen into an interrogation room at the set police station and shut the door behind them. Remy was a short, wiry man with a very obvious scowl on his face that made it clear he thought he was being very inconvenienced here. Verrier immediately got the feeling that Remy would likely only crack under intense pressure.

17:07So right away, he tried to shake Remy by saying they knew he was involved in the kidnapping of Patrik Iswar. Now, this was a total bluff because Verrier did not actually have any evidence, but he wanted to see how Remy would react. And to his surprise and irritation, Remy just laughed. Remy acted like he literally had no idea who Verrier was even talking about. And when Verrier brought up his late wife and sort of insinuated that obviously Patrik had had an affair and was a witness when she had died, Remy just scoffed and reminded him that it had been five years since her passing. He said he had moved on and begun dating other people.

17:45And anyways, it was sort of absurd to think that he would hold a grudge for five years without doing anything, but then suddenly now decide to take some sort of revenge out of the blue. It just didn't add up. But Verrier didn't really know what to make of this. It seemed like Remy was really confident, almost too confident. And so he pivoted and just asked Remy where he was on June 23rd, the day Patric went missing. And after thinking for a moment, Remy just said that he had spent the whole afternoon alone cleaning out a storage unit that he had rented. This was obviously not a great alibi at all.

18:19But at this point, Verrier had no choice but to let Remy go. As Verrier watched Remy leave, he knew he was running out of time here. I mean, two weeks had already passed since Patrik's disappearance, and every day the odds of finding him alive got worse. So out of desperation, Verriere decided to circle back to the very start and speak again to Audrey Louvet. I mean, being the last person to see Patrick before he went missing, Audrey was an obvious person of interest. But Verriere wasn't sure what more he could learn from her. The local police had already questioned her at the very beginning of the investigation, and Verriere had already watched that interview tape a number of times.

18:58But Verriere knew he just had to take a shot. So he picked up the phone and he called Audrey into the station. Later that same afternoon, around 2 p.m., Verrier sat across from Audrey in the same room where he just interviewed Remy. He said hello to her and he started the recorder, and then he asked her to explain her history with Patrik again. And at first, her answers were all just like they'd been on the tape. She said they had met eight years ago in 2006 and they dated casually for a while before losing contact. And then, just a few weeks ago, she happened to pass the bar where they first met, and it made her think of Patrik.

19:34So she'd called him up out of the blue to ask how he was doing, and they'd ultimately made plans to see each other again. She described their date as being a short walk around the park, after which Patrik had walked her to the bus stop and then headed off, presumably to go back to his scooter and to head off to his daughter's dance recital. And that's when Verrier interrupted, and he asked Audrey to tell him specifically which direction Patrik had headed off after dropping her off at the bus stop. And Audrey sat there for a minute, and then she said, you know, I can't remember. And this really bothered Verrier, because here was this person who should be able to tell him the most about Patrik's last moves, and she had basically nothing useful to offer the investigation.

20:14So Verrier just sort of dropped the polite tone and really went after her. He told her he wasn't buying her act, and that she needed to tell him everything she knew right now, or this was all going to get much, much worse for her. Audrey's eyes went wide and her voice began to shake as she insisted that she'd already told them everything. But Verrier didn't let up. He kept demanding that she just admit what she'd done until he was practically shouting at her. And Audrey was in tears and she was repeating over and over that Patrik had been fine when she left him. She just didn't remember all the details.

20:48And finally, Verrier backed off. He'd run countless interrogations throughout his career, and his gut was starting to tell him that Audrey's fragility was not really an act here. He'd pushed her as hard as he could, and he had to admit that maybe she was just telling the truth. A little while later, after Audrey was gone, Verrier sat alone inside the interrogation room thinking about the case. He hadn't managed to rule out any suspects yet, and he still had no idea who that mysterious man in the tunnel might be. And on top of all that, there was still the possibility that no crime had been committed here, since they had no body.

21:23I mean, who knows what really happened to Patrik at this point. And Verrier knew that there were just too many unknowns. And Verrier knew that if the case was ever going to gain real traction, they needed to find Patrik, dead or alive.

21:42Around 11 a.m. on July 17th, so three and a half weeks after Patrick Iswar disappeared, Detective Boris Ferrier parked along the shoulder of a winding roadside in the French town of Set. He got out of his car, he stooped beneath a strip of yellow police tape, and he headed across the long strip of dry grass leading up to a sheer cliff wall. A dozen yards ahead of him, barely visible in the rock face, was the dark, round opening of a cave. A few hours earlier, a group of teenagers had shown up at the police station, seeming very frazzled, saying they had found a human body inside of that cave. And as soon as Verrier had heard about this, he had rushed to the scene, because the cave was less than a half a mile away from where Patrick's scooter had been abandoned.

22:26And so now, Verrier turned on his flashlight, and he stepped into the cave. And as soon as he did, a forensics team found a step right behind him, and together they began making their way into the darkness. Thanks to his flashlight, Verrier could see that the walls were covered in graffiti and that there were empty bottles and other garbage everywhere. So it seemed like this was probably a popular party spot for young people. As they moved deeper, the cave split off into a maze of all these different narrow tunnels. And just as Verrier was about to direct his team to spread out and begin searching all of them, he passed by one of these tunnels that absolutely reeked.

23:03And so Verrier stopped what he was doing and just aimed his flashlight down this particular tunnel. And he saw there was a shallow pit dug into the floor. And lying at the bottom of this pit was what looked like a ragged lump of black fabric, until Verrier stepped closer. The smell was overpowering now, and Verrier knew he was standing over the charred remains of a human body. Verrier bent down to examine it, and he saw right away there was what appeared to be a bullet hole in the skull and a bullet hole to the torso. And those details, one to the head, one to the stomach, and then the body being burnt afterwards, likely to get rid of evidence, felt very familiar to Verrier.