11 | Who Do You Think They Were?

0:00You're listening to a Tenderfoot TV podcast. Toyota-thon is on, so stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year-end deals on the cars, trucks, and SUVs known for their legendary reliability, like the stylish and efficient Camry, the ready-for-anything RAV4, or check out a rough-and-rugged Tacoma or Tundra, all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit BuyAToyota.com, the official website for deals, to find out more. Toyota, let's go places. Welcome to Radio Rental. The scariest stories you've ever heard in your life. All told by real people. And off we go.

0:50This wasn't a human being that I saw. There's something here in this house, something not of this world. There was a woman moving through the hall. I stepped back and I was completely alone. Radio Rental is available now. Listen for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:33physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder. The names of survivors have been changed for anonymity purposes. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not reflect the views of Tenderfoot TV or Odyssey. Thank you so much for listening.

1:52Hello. Hey. Hey. I'm so fucking scared. He was a cab driver for Checker Cab. He dropped everybody else off but her. And he says, you know what, I could have killed you, and nobody would have known about it. He pulled out a knife. This guy, his name starts with J. What was the name that you knew him by? Oregon John. I was the last person to see her alive, besides the guy that killed her. The more you look into it, the more unanswered questions and red flags there were. everybody was pretty consistent about what they said about joseph you're dealing with a successful professional person who just vanishes the state's conclusion he had been attacked by a bear and they just didn't find the body there's going to be parts and pieces that the bear is not interested in they're not to leave half of a carcass either he doesn't want to be found or someone doesn't want him to be found.

2:57So you guys were never boyfriend-girlfriend then? No, we were just friends. Him and I, just friends, better off friends. Do you still have the texts that you can refer to? Everything I had on my phone was gone. The roommate lied about his whereabouts on Saturday night. There was also an issue with apparently texting your friends to try and get them to create an alibi. I was trying to save my skin. Save your skin from what though? It's not like you were doing anything wrong. Um...

3:44If you come to Nome, you're not going to go very far. You can go about 90 miles that way, 90 miles that way and about 75 that way. And that's it. When I first touched down in Nome, about two years ago now, the first person I met was this guy. Literally on the plane there, and within the first hour of me being there, he was talking to me on record. They haven't found a body, they haven't found anything. The evidence is gone. You sure about that? What does that tell you? She's not there.

4:21There's a lot of people that come up to hide, because you can disappear up here if you wanted to. I've been a gnome now for 25 years. There's a lot of people that show up here. All of them are chasing the yellow garden. I mean, you can go out here in this driveway and dig a bunch of dirt up and you'll find gold in it. He's a gold miner who's been there for two decades. and he seemed to hear a lot of talk in the town about Florence Okpeolek's disappearance. West Beach, there was a lot of people out there looking for her. All the way up through that country. I don't know the parameters of who she was with or what, you know.

5:04But I do know that she was supposedly last seen with this guy. They found her things in his tent. Do you know who that guy may have been? No. I don't know the guy's name. I don't even... I'm just an old man. And I think logically. I'm a logical thinker. She could have wanted it in the wrong tent. Some people don't like that. Drive down the damn beach and you just see somebody walking along and jump out and kill them. That don't make any sense either. You must have had some interaction with her. And the people on that beach is the ones that had interaction with her. Where the guy went, I don't know.

5:49But he's not here. No, he's not. I don't know where he went, but I do know that if I was an investigator, I'd be on his ass like stink on shit.

6:30From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun, Chapter 2. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey.

6:48Where the guy went, I don't know. Kind of hard to forget this guy. An old town miner in Nome who seems to have heard all the chatter. But he's not here. No, he's not in Nome. I don't know where he went, but I do know that if I was an investigator, I'd be on his ass like stink on shit. I love that line. And he was right. He was not in Nome. He was in Ketchikan, Alaska. And he goes by the name of Oregon John. I was going money, and that's what I was doing in Gnome for four years. I was driving a taxi cab up in Gnome. You've been to Gnome. Let's revisit my interview with John for a second. Why'd you want to get out of there eventually?

7:26I had the legal issues, remember? A girl came and hung out in my tent one night, and she walked off somewhere, and somebody kidnapped her. And yeah, yeah, she passed out, and in the morning I woke up and she was gone, but I left her shoes and her phone. Well, there was no trace of it. Why did they fucking think you did it, apparently? Because I was the last person known to have seen her alive. She just vanished. And they thought I didn't, so I bounced. I was the last person to have seen her alive, besides the guy that killed her. Besides the guy who killed her. We'd go on all day about the things that John said that don't sit well with me.

8:01But going back and listening again, something did stand out to me. Noam is corrupt. You have no idea. Three times in the last 12 years, the law enforcement department has been shut down and taken over by the feds. They are so corrupt up there, dude. It's crazy. We know about the judge that disappeared, right? No, they're not. Yeah, yeah, they fed him to the bears. He's talking about Joseph. Weirdos moved to Alaska, to be weird. Look, 80 % of the people that killed us here, nobody finds out. In unsolved murder cases, the inevitable always happens. The conspiracy theories. The cops did it. They are in on it.

8:42this person's a suspect, that person's a suspect, but rarely are any of those things actually true. On that first day in Nome, I talked to Ray for about two hours, and he was very well aware of Joseph Balderas' disappearance too. If a bear's going to eat you, he's not going to eat your tennis shoes. I just don't think that's what happened to him. I don't know how animals are. When a bear eats you, you're going to eat something. I've seen people getting eaten up here before, you know, and there's something always left.

9:16What I think happened to him is he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The guy was just in the wrong place, I think. Maybe he walked in on drug deals going on or something like that, and they just... If that happens, do I think they'll ever find him? No. people hunt they fish here somebody will come across something if it was there i don't think he's there i think he's in the ocean somewhere there's all kinds of things going to happen to you here we can go right back to adam and eve cain and abel the human species is the only species that will kill for no reason We're not kind people. I just see it.

10:07I see it. Death don't mean anything. Why is that? Because it's on TV. You watch a crime story or a detective story, there's always somebody getting killed. But you never see the end result of that. The family, the people that are affected by that guy's death. Death to these people don't mean anything.

10:33He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You're referring to Joseph's case? Yeah. I've never heard of him being involved in drugs. What I hear, he never was that way. But his roommate was. Why in the hell would you drive out there? I mean, I sure in the hell ain't going to drive clear out there. I can see everything I want to see from the road. That suspected me. I don't think he's there. His car's there. If I did the guy in, I guess I'd drive his car up there and make it look like he got lost. When he disappeared, there was lots of people looking for him. If he'd been eaten by a bear, they would've found something.

11:18I think his car was driven out there.

11:23Joseph dropping out of communication with his fiancée early in the morning on Saturday, June 25th, then his truck surfacing 40-plus miles outside the city, parked in a strange spot. It's just a flat-out confusing set of circumstances. But with no body in this case, Joseph's truck remains a central piece of evidence. I don't know, it seems awful suspicious. Without a piece of anything to go on, other than his truck. This is Jim West, a known local who was helping spearhead the search back in the day. The first private investigator interviewed Jim a few weeks after Joseph disappeared. We've been taught at Search and Rescue that the last person is going to be seen within about a mile or half a mile of his truck.

12:14And we covered all that area, big time. You towed it, correct? I towed it, yes. Did you notice anything suspicious about the truck? There was flowers on the windshield. There was no evidence of foul play or anything like that. There were several sightings of Joseph's truck that weekend, some of which don't seem to really align. But the thing is, sometimes eyewitnesses can just be wrong. But not everybody. Not much of evidentiary value was ever found in Joseph's vehicle, but his cell phone is missing along with him. And it's not the only important thing missing. In March of 2016, about two months before Joseph went missing, he went to a local outdoor store in Nome and purchased a handgun, a Taurus PT-111 G2 subcompact 9mm.

13:08But according to Joseph's friends and family, he wasn't really dead into guns. So was it for protection? Just to fire off rounds in the wilderness? We don't really know. What we do know is that it's missing, along with its traveling case. Where'd it go? According to the Alaska State Troopers' report, upon their first visit inside Joseph's home, they noted, quote, no signs of foul play, no blood, broken objects, bleach, freshly cleaned areas, etc. But they did notice a full box of American Eagle 9mm ammo in Joseph's room, in exactly one round, was missing from the ammo box. But the state troopers didn't seem to find this interesting at all.

13:58Both the gun and the case are missing. Not only was his gun missing, this new handgun that he had purchased, but the case for the handgun was missing. I think that's a very significant fact. The troopers didn't even enter that handgun into the computer system, missing or stolen. Why would they do that? You know, they weren't interested in it. I mean, this is just my impression. The case was done, they had moved on, and they didn't want to reopen it and do more work on it. It's just been completely overlooked. The missing gun and the case that went with it is really significant, I think.

14:41I mean, they just completely ignored the whole issue. These are big leads to follow up on in a missing persons case.

14:53What did that tell you? That somebody stole the gun. He's missing, and somebody stole the gun. Something happened to him, and his gun and the case disappeared. So what kind of scenario do those feel for you in your head? That he was murdered. Let's go back to Christine for a second. and the whole frustrating story about her cell phone. In one version, Christine says that her brother punched in her password and then somehow disabled her phone. My brother had picked up my phone because I was in one of the races. He was wanting to record it, so he flipped up and took a picture or recorded it or something.

15:34And then my brother's a jackass who likes to fuck with things. And so he punched in my password and disabled my phone. And so I had to restore it as a new phone. I have an iPhone, like a lot of us do. And here's how this actually works. After you punch in the wrong passcode six times, the phone will lock you out for one minute. On the seventh, five minutes. Eighth, 15 minutes. Ninth, one hour. And finally, if you put the wrong passcode in ten times in a row, it will permanently lock you out. Her brother must have been a pretty fast typer.

16:14What's interesting is that, at the time, Christine had an iPhone 6S One of the last iPhones that you could unlock with a thumbprint So, her brother disables it because he doesn't know her PIN code But then, all of a sudden, she couldn't remember her PIN code either? I'm confused Who exactly disabled the phone? He disabled it, and I couldn't remember my PIN code Because on the iPhones, I could use my thumb And so that's what I was using. And so he disabled it. So every pin code I thought it would be, I used, and it wasn't. So it ended up disabling it. When it comes to Christine restoring her iPhone, we could split hairs on this all day.

16:55The bottom line is, it's fucking weird. So her phone is erased immediately after Joseph disappears. Her entire phone is erased. That is a little bit concerning. Maybe it's odd timing, or maybe not. But if you start looking around at other places, people like Joseph's roommate, Jake, start to feel like a bigger part of this story. The roommate was interviewed right away, told the troopers he was gone Saturday night with friends, but that he saw Joseph the next morning walking down the hallway in the house. Sunday morning after Joseph had stopped responding to anyone. He's the only person who claims to have seen Joseph on Sunday.

17:46So if his roommate Jake is telling the truth, he's the last person to see Joseph alive. Here's Joseph's sister, Selena. Everything doesn't add up. All the inconsistencies. He saw him mourning with the backpack whenever somebody else witnessed the truck already planted out there on mile 44. but all the other sightings from different people who aren't related, they don't connect. They're all different timings. His roommate Jake has stuck with his story of seeing Joseph on Sunday, 24 hours after anyone else had heard from him. The private investigator Andy asked Christine about this. Do you know of anyone who saw Joseph or the truck back in Nome after Saturday afternoon?

18:31Not that I know of. I mean, Jake had just moved in to my grandma's house, my cousin. And I don't know, and I've never talked to Jake about what he saw or what he thought. Why not? Joseph and Jake, I don't know if they really talked. It was just like a cordial, oh, hey, roommate, you know, type of thing. But I don't know. Andy Klamzer interviewed one of Joseph's co-workers, who had some more insight on Jake and Joseph's relationship. Had Joseph said anything to you about his roommate Jake Stetton-Benz? He said, Camille, he's awfully quiet. We don't talk. I don't know what to do with him. I said, have you tried?

19:15He said, yeah, he just comes and goes. He has a dog that's messy. Into the garbage all the time. He was messy and had a dog. It was very strange to him. He said, but other than that, we're ships in the night.

19:37Jake was a lot younger than Joseph and seemed to throw parties a lot at the house. And according to friends and family, Joseph didn't really like this. Not to mention, he wasn't paying his bills either. Joseph mentioned to a co-worker on Friday, June 24th that he was really upset about Jake using up all the internet and not paying for it. And this comment seemed out of character for him. However you slice it, there was clearly some tension there. Aside from Joseph's handgun, which is currently still missing, when the police originally searched his house, they took photos and notes of what they saw.

20:17But when they came back about a week later, they noticed something that wasn't there beforehand. A rifle. There was a weapon involved. When the trooper went into the room, he didn't see anything. and then all of a sudden when it goes back into the room, there was a rifle. Inside Joseph's room? Are you solid on that? Solid on that. And when they asked his roommate Jake about it, he claimed he didn't know whose it was. What do you mean? They found a rifle in his room. Jake's uncle put it there. Kevin. Kevin would be his uncle. What's the uncle's name? Kevin Piscoya. It was eventually learned that Jake's uncle, Kevin, had just mysteriously put it there, unbeknownst to Jake himself.

21:09Who just sets guns in people's houses and not tell them? Kevin Piscoya is a former officer that was fired. Why would he place a gun in somebody else's room after the guy went missing? Andy Clamser briefly talked to Jake when he was a gnome and asked about this rifle. So when the rifle got dropped off here, was it in the case? I have a case mug, but she gave me that. Oh, okay. So have you ever shot it? Yeah, I shot it this summer after I got it back from the state shooters. Let my uncle borrow it for bear hunting. Kevin, or? Yeah. Yeah, it's a nice ride. It's too bad that your uncle didn't just tell you he was dropping it off.

21:52This became a topic of interest on their conference calls, too. Here's Selena. Did anyone ever follow up on that second firearm? Joseph had two firearms. I mean, we know about the 9mm. Was there a second that's unaccounted for? Said that we found a rifle in his house. We showed up and there was no rifle. We showed up again and there was a rifle. So there's this disappearing and reappearing rifle that Jake at first claims wasn't his, only to find out later it actually was his. But he just didn't know how it got there. What? Andy asked the state trooper, Sergeant Cross, about this. The family and the attorneys were confused about the issues surrounding the.308 rifle that Kevin Piscoya put in the storage area after Joseph disappeared.

22:42It seemed odd to them that Jake wouldn't recognize the rifle, which had been given to him as a gift by his father. A 20-year-old who was given a nice rifle by his dad as a gift the year before, why would he not recognize it? Do you recall anything about that? I don't know. Why he wouldn't recognize it. Because it's supposed to not it. Okay.

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25:38Terms apply. Pretty much right away after he went missing, the family went out to Nome. One of the family members talked to the roommate. Here's Joseph's sister, Selena, recalling her first visit to Nome. We went to the search, the first search. We were sitting with his mother and Christine's parents. And this boy comes in and talks to Bonnie. She's referring to Jake, Joseph's roommate. But at the time, she didn't know that. I didn't know that was her son. Bonnie is his mother. Here's Joseph's mom, Nelda. It was a room full of people. I just shook his hand. looked up and saw him. He had scratches all over his face.