Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Larry Regal was an interesting guy. He was a pilot. He was a really accomplished pilot. Small aircraft, bush pilot. He was extremely social, friendly with everybody. He was the kind of guy that he would call everybody. If he would call a friend and they didn't answer the phone, their answering machine would pick up and he would fill the entire segment until it just shut down. And if he wasn't finished, he'd call back and add some more.
I was the one taking the bull by the horns. I was so upset. I kept very detailed notes on everything. Everybody I talked to, date, time, phone numbers. I started doing that because I have two friends that are retired FDIs. I called my friend a week or so into his disappearance and I said, I don't know what is going on. I mean, nobody plans for a disappearance.
People never tell you how difficult it is. There are roadblocks at every turn. He said, you write down everything. And I'm really, really, really glad I did that because I was diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. There are things that sometimes I forget.
It was Christmas of 2009, when 57-year-old Lawrence Regal, better known as Larry, vanished from Yakima, Washington. He had made plans to visit his family the day after Christmas, but never showed up, which was completely out of character for Larry. He was known for always showing up with his famous peach pie in hand. At the time, Larry was living with his girlfriend, Ladina, who told the family that Larry had left town, headed for the coast.
But that explanation didn't sit right with his loved ones. Larry would have never missed Christmas, especially without calling to let his family know. Ladina later said that Larry returned in early January. Then the two got into a physical altercation, and Larry supposedly walked out and was never seen or heard from again. This new story raised even more questions. No one else had reported seeing or hearing from Larry since before he missed that Christmas visit.
Though Ladina's account has long been viewed with suspicion, Larry's disappearance remains unsolved more than 15 years later. Recently, there's been a renewed effort to re-examine the case, hoping that new tips might finally bring answers to what happened to Larry Regal. I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 486 of The Vanished, part one of Larry Regal's story, Shifting Narratives.
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Yakima, Washington sits in the heart of the state's south-central region, surrounded by the rolling hills and orchards of the Yakima Valley. It's here that Larry Regal grew up, the middle child in a big family, alongside a group of sisters who adored him. When Larry vanished without a trace, it was his sister Susan who stepped up. She had always been close to her brother and was convinced that he hadn't just walked away from his life. Larry wouldn't have left without saying a word, not
not to his family, and certainly not to his grown children. It went against everything they knew about him. We spoke with Susan, who shared memories of their childhood in the Yakima Valley, a place that now holds a lasting ache for answers.
Larry was the middle child of five children. He's got two older sisters and two younger sisters. I'm the youngest. I was very close with my brother. He took me for show and tell in first grade when I was born, and he just was always there as my big brother. We have a very large family. We
And the Yakima Valley was settled by our great-grandparents. So the Yakima Valley was home to all of us. It's in central Washington. We're surrounded by the Cascade Mountains. A lot of outdoor sports, hunting, fishing. And Larry loved to hunt. He loved to fish. He loved to water ski in the summer, snowmobile in the winter. He had friends.
friends all over Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, all over the Pacific Northwest. And he would hunt and fish with all of them.
In adulthood, Larry married and had two children. While he was devoted to his family, his struggles with alcohol took a toll on the marriage, eventually leading to divorce. Still, Larry remained a steady presence in his children's lives and continued to build a life for himself. He found success in the construction industry and later pursued a passion that had always fascinated him, flying. Larry became a licensed pilot.
Susan shared more about this chapter of her brother's life, painting a picture of a man who, despite his personal challenges, was hardworking, dependable, and deeply connected to those he loved.
He owned a business and I was the bookkeeper for that business for over 20 years. He had a construction company. It was called Larry's Construction. A number of our uncles all had construction businesses. So he kind of grew up in that trade. And that's what he did from 73, 74 until...
About 2000, maybe a little bit later than that. At that point, he started working as a contract pilot for Cub Crafters. He was a bush pilot. He had his license and he had a plane for about 10 years. He would fly to pick up, deliver planes, some
Sometimes he'd take a commercial jet someplace and pick up plane parts and or pick up a plane and fly it back across the country. He was doing a lot of that at the end until his cervical issues. He had a neck injury. He started having problems from a snowmobile accident and water ski accident, both with his neck.
As that became worse, then he couldn't fly. And then he had had surgery in October of 2009. And he was recuperating from that when he disappeared.
By the fall of 2009, Larry was living in Yakima with his girlfriend Ladina. Larry underwent major surgery in October of that year. As Christmas was approaching, Larry was still recovering, and it wasn't going as smoothly as he had hoped. He experienced complications from the surgery that left him increasingly frustrated with how slowly things were healing. According to his family, during those months, he wasn't able to do the things he normally did. But
But Larry was still making plans and talking about seeing his loved ones for the holidays.
He was in a vulnerable state. It was a very major surgery. They did a fusion on C3-4 and I think 4-5. And so he had a lot of arm numbness, tingling. His arms would go completely numb. He was doing physical therapy and he's not a real patient person. So it was really hard for him to sit around and recuperate. But I had talked to him on the
December 23rd. In fact, it was the last time I ever talked to him. And he had gone to his physician that day. He was telling me about the nerve damage that he had in his left arm. He said that they were going to be running some additional tests and were going to give him nerve-blocking medication, which is gabapentin. I did mention to him,
you know, you can't mix that with alcohol. And he said, yeah, well, he'd had to quit drinking to have the surgery. And he said he was just having a beer once in a while. And then he said he had another appointment right after Christmas. They were looking at his next surgery, which was probably going to be his left knee. They were going to do a knee replacement. He had had a knee surgery about seven
75, 76. He was a balls-to-the-wall kind of guy. He lived life really fast and hard. He didn't just water ski. He was an exceptionally good water skier, an exceptionally good snowmobiler. He was an adrenaline junkie. So anything he did, he gave it his all. So his knees were shot as well as his neck. That's why he was limited somewhat physically.
The last time Susan spoke to her brother was on December 23rd. By then, she had moved away from the Yakima area, but she and Larry stayed in close touch. During their final phone call, they talked about how he was feeling.
still dealing with complications from his recent surgery, and they made plans to see each other on Saturday the 26th for a family Christmas celebration. Susan remembers that conversation vividly. Nothing about it suggested that Larry was planning to disappear. In fact, he seemed to be looking forward to the visit, even if he wasn't feeling his best.
When I spoke to my brother, it was about six o'clock that night. I was on my way home from work. We talked about, we always had a family dinner. Christmas that year was on a Friday. We were going to have family dinner on Saturday. It was going to be at six o'clock. He said he would be there. He asked what he could bring. My brother made the most outrageous peach pie that you'd ever want to taste. And
And that's what he was going to bring. He sounded very upbeat, very talkative. At the time, I was living over in the Seattle area. Those commutes are brutal. So I talked to him for over an hour the whole way I was driving home.
His birthday was December 15th. I was teasing him about getting older. And ironically, on December 15th was the first test flight of the Boeing company 787. And I worked for the Boeing company. So I was bringing him posters and all kinds of swag and bling because one, he was a pilot and two, it was first flown on his birthday. And I thought he'd get a kick out of that.
But I didn't tell him what I was bringing, but we just laughed and it was a good conversation. I have a very good memory of it. So that was the poem. He said on the 25th, he was staying home. He was cooking dinner. His girlfriend didn't cook. My brother was a very good cook.
very traditional, the turkey and all the trimmings and stuff. And that was the plan. And he said his son was going to Portland to spend Christmas with his mom, who was flying in from Maui, and his sister. His sister lived in Portland.
Ryan was going there. So it's just going to be him and Ladina on the 25th. And I said, well, we're staying here. We've got five kids, grandkids and stuff. And I said, well, we were going to stay close to home, but that we would be there on Saturday and then we would get together and have a nice dinner.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary during Susan and Larry's last conversation. They were both looking forward to seeing each other and the rest of the family on Saturday, December 26th. But when Susan set out for her trip to Yakima that morning, she tried calling Larry to check in, and his phone went straight to voicemail. At first, she tried to reassure herself. It could be nothing. Maybe Larry was just resting. Maybe his phone had died.
But as the day dragged on and Larry still hadn't answered, returned her calls, or shown up at the Christmas party, a gnawing sense of dread began to take hold. That day marked the beginning of a nightmare. Red flags were everywhere, and Susan knew, with a certainty she couldn't shake, that something was wrong.
On the 26th, I phoned him as my husband and I were driving to Yakima. The call went directly to voicemail. So I tried him a couple of times and I thought, well, I'll see him tonight. About 5.30, other family members started showing up. By 7, Larry hadn't shown up for dinner. So I was calling his cell phone, going to voicemail. So then I called his house phone and his girlfriend answered.
She said that Larry wasn't there. She goes, well, I didn't know he was going to your house for dinner. And I said, oh, yeah, well, we're having our family dinner. And I said, Larry, you know, is bringing his peach pie coming over. She told me he had left for the coast. Now, let me tell you, in the state of Washington, the Cascades separate western Washington from central Washington. And
Anything west of the Cascade Range is considered the coast. It doesn't mean it's on the beach. It's just a local thing. So she said, oh no, he left for the coast. And I said, why would he do that and not call me? Because I lived over there. She said that he had decided to leave suddenly. I asked who he was going to visit. And she said she didn't know that he had friends over there and
and was going to stay with them. That sent all kinds of antennae up for me because, one, my brother didn't have any friends over there. But my brother hated driving over there. He's a country boy, doesn't like the city. He doesn't like all the traffic. He'd rather have a root canal than drive over there. So I was pressing her on that.
who? What friends? And she said, well, I don't know who they are. He just went. I said, Ladina, why wouldn't he call me and come stay with me if that's really what he wanted to do? She said that Larry was a little blue because he hadn't spoken with his kids on Christmas Day and that he had just decided to go. She also told me that doctors were treating him for a brain disorder and
and that he'd been blue for a while. That also sent up red flags. I said, a brain disorder? What's that mean? And she said, well, it's not really a disorder, but it's complicated. And I said, well, this doesn't make sense. He hates driving in Seattle. Why would he go there? I lived over in the Seattle area for almost
for almost 30 years. And in that time, I can tell you, my brother came one time when our dad was dying. My mom had knee surgery. He brought his kids school shopping and he came to my wedding. That's four times in 30 years that I remember him ever going over there. So she said, well, we should probably talk. And I said, I'll come over. If Larry calls you, you have him call me. It's
as soon as he gets home or as soon as you hear from him. And I left it at that. But I told my husband, something's wrong. I knew immediately. My brother and I, we were friends. We camped together. We went water skiing together. I mean, we hung out. So I was with my brother a lot. I knew his personality and I knew immediately something was wrong. It didn't take me a couple of weeks to realize.
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Holiday gatherings with family are the kind of events most people don't miss. And if they do, they usually call to let someone know. That's what made Larry's silence so unsettling.
It was completely out of character. Larry had briefly seen and spoken to his mother on Christmas morning, and that would be the last confirmed contact Larry had with an impartial witness. After that, no one except his girlfriend, Ladina, claims to have seen or heard from Larry again. Ladina told the family that Larry had suddenly decided to leave for the coast, but that explanation didn't sit right. Not only did he have holiday plans with his family, but Larry had never been particularly fond of traveling to the coast.
It just wasn't something he would do on a whim. The idea that he would suddenly vanish, without a word, felt wrong, especially to those who knew him best. Driven by her growing sense of urgency, she went to Ladina's home to confront her about Larry's sudden disappearance. When she arrived, Susan's mind was racing with questions. Why hadn't Larry reached out to his family and told them that he was leaving town? Why was Ladina saying he had a brain disorder? As the conversation unfolded, the tension in the room was palpable. And
and Susan couldn't ignore the nagging sense that Ladina knew more than she was letting on.
My husband went home Sunday. I stayed an extra day with my mom. Monday morning on the 28th, 1030 in the morning, I went over to their house. Now, it had snowed the night before, and I was the first car into that driveway. I could see a pair of footprints that came from the doorway out to the paper box and back, and that was it.
There was no other activity in that yard. The first thing I noticed when I walked in is that the house was picked up. She was not a housekeeper. It was very unusual. My brother was a meat net, but she was not. There were a few Christmas wrappings in a bag and...
And she was in her pajamas. She said she hadn't gotten dressed since Larry left on Christmas night. I walked over to the dining room table and put his birthday presents down. In addition to all that going swag, I had also bought him a knife and a money clip set. I went back and I sat in my brother's recliner. And I never left that spot. And that's the one thing I regret, that I didn't go into the kitchen. I didn't go to use the restroom.
But I asked her about the brain disorder. She said that he had been depressed. As far as his kids not calling him, that's not true. I didn't know it at the time, but I found out later he'd been talking to his son and his daughter both that day. She told me that she was with her sister on Christmas Day, which was not unusual. This
This was their thing. Every Christmas morning, they would spend time together. When she got home, Larry was depressed because nobody had called him. He had had to call lots of people himself, but nobody had called him again.
Again, I didn't know it at the time. That was not true. She said he needed money. So he decided he would drive to the coast and he wanted to take some old jewelry to a pawn shop on the other side, Western Washington, because he would get more money for it over there. He would
He was going to take that money and gamble and play poker so he could win more money. She said he was so insistent on going that she packed a couple of T-shirts for him, gave him clean underwear, packed his toothbrush, put his jewelry in a little Ziploc bag.
So he wouldn't lose it. This stands out distinctly. She's making these gestures with the Ziploc bag. She said he was going to stay with these friends and that he was going to go visit his son, Brian, on Monday, the day that we were there, when he got back from Portland. All right.
I asked her if Brian was where his dad was in Seattle. She said, no. I said, I thought he would have at least called me to say he was in the area, but she insisted he was going to stay with friends. And I asked her repeatedly who the friends were, and she kept saying that she didn't know. I asked her if he had his cell phone, and she said he had it, but he didn't have a charger. So
So he wouldn't have any battery life left. She continued to tell me Larry was feeling depressed, stressed out because he needed money to pay taxes and water on the hair farm he was buying from our mom. The hair up on the back of my neck this whole time I'm sitting there because for one thing, my brother was not buying our family farm for my mom. My brother was to inherit that farm upon my mother's death.
During the confrontation, Susan recalled this moment that sent a chill down her spine. When Ladina mentioned something about the family farm, it made the hair on the back of Susan's neck stand up. At first, Susan wasn't sure what to make of it, but as the conversation lingered, it became clear that this detail wasn't something Larry would have said. Larry was due to inherit the farm eventually and had a plan worked out with his mother to help financially support her as she aged and
in return for her leaving the family farm to him. This arrangement had been in place for years, and it was something Larry had discussed openly with the family. The farm wasn't just an asset, it was a significant part of Larry's future. To Susan, Ladina's mention of the farm felt like more than just a coincidence. It was as if it were a piece of the puzzle, but one she couldn't yet place.
The timing fell off, and it stirred a nagging suspicion within her. Why was Ladina suddenly so focused on the farm now, just as Larry had gone missing? He had moved out to the farm and was living in the farmhouse, and he lived out there for about four or five years. And then he broke up with his longtime girlfriend. He met Ladina, the current girlfriend. So he moved the
the 20 miles into town to live with her. And then Ladina introduced him to a friend of hers who needed a place to stay. And that is who was renting the farmhouse. That guy was paying
rent and my brother was giving that rent money to my mom because the deal was that my brother would pay a monthly rent while my mom was alive. And it was paying her house bill, her mortgage payment, so that she wouldn't have a house payment. But there would be no reason for somebody to buy a farm that they're going to inherit 100% upon their parents' death. And
And I'm thinking, okay, now I'm almost hysterical.
As Susan continued pressing Ladina with questions about the strange stories she was telling, Ladina abruptly shifted the conversation. She began talking about Larry's son, Brian, in a way that felt oddly out of place. At the time, Susan couldn't understand why Ladina would bring up Brian out of the blue, especially when she was trying to focus on Larry's sudden disappearance. But later, Susan spoke to Brian, and she learned something that raised even more red flags. Brian had also been calling Ladina a
attempting to locate his father.
So then she goes on to tell me this long and complicated story about Larry not trusting his son, Brian. She said that when Larry had his surgery in October, Brian didn't stick around. He went out with friends instead and that he couldn't be trusted to be at the house alone. And Larry didn't want him at the house. I mean, I'm just looking at her. And she said Brian hated her and was trying to turn Larry against her all the time.
I didn't know it at the time, but I found out later. That morning on the 28th, Brian called the house phone and wanted to talk to his dad. And she said he was sleeping. Now, this was before 1030. I was there at 1030 and he supposedly isn't there.
The story shifted once again. Now, Ladina was claiming that Larry and Susan's mother had borrowed hundreds of dollars from her, and that Larry had taken $2,700 from her wallet. The accusations seemed to come out of nowhere. And the more Ladina spoke, the more random and disconnected the details became. Susan's mind continued to race, trying to piece together why, in the midst of Larry's disappearance, Ladina would keep bringing up these strange claims. Nothing about the accusations added up.
They felt like distractions, scattered and defensive explanations that only deepened Susan's sense that Ladina wasn't telling the full truth.
She said that our mom had borrowed $900 from her. Our mom called her up and said she had checks bouncing all over in her checking account. She didn't want her daughters to know about it, so she needed to borrow some money. She said she brought $900 to my mom. My mom met her at the door, reached out, and grabbed the money out of her hands, shut the front door, got in her car, and drove away.
She repeatedly told my mom, apparently, that that was her money and not Larry's and that she needed the money to pay for bills. She also went on to tell me that she knew at the time when my mom grabbed that money out of her hands, she would never get repaid. Then she said that my brother had taken $2,700 out of her wallet on a horse sale and
And she kept saying that she couldn't pay her bills. She's missing all this money. She was really going on and on about it. And it got to the point that I felt like she was expecting me to pay the money on behalf of my mom and brother. I almost wrote her a check right there. But I thought, no, I'm going to talk to my husband first before I dole out the money.
As their conversation came to a close, Ladina returned to the subject of the family farm once again. But this time, she began discussing the idea of selling it to someone else. The mention of selling the farm, especially so soon after Larry went missing, struck Susan as extremely suspicious. Why was Ladina so invested in the farm, when no one could even find Larry? The more Susan thought about it, the stranger it seemed. If
It felt like Ladina was shifting the focus away from Larry and his whereabouts and toward the future of the farm.
The last story that she told me was that she had suggested to my mom that she sell the farm to one of her neighbors so Larry wouldn't be burdened with trying to care for the house. She felt having the farm sold to her neighbor would keep Larry from having to worry about paying water and taxes, and it would give everyone some money. And I vaguely remember my mom mentioning a similar story to me
a year or two before that. Ladina had shown up at my mom's house while Larry was out of town on a business trip with Cub Crafters. She told my mom she had a buyer for the farm and suggested the house be sold before Larry returned home. And my mom was really unhappy with Ladina's interference. And
And Ladina told me that my mom had never liked her since. She didn't go over and visit my mom anymore because of this event. She's given me two stories. She's telling me that my brother's buying the farm for my mom. And then she's telling me that she wanted my mom to sell the farm to her neighbor so that Larry wouldn't be burdened with it. So if Larry's buying the farm, how could my mom sell it to her neighbor? So
So about an hour and a half later, I got ready to leave. I asked her to have Larry call me. And she repeatedly asked me to hold her confidence on everything we had discussed and not to say anything to Larry or Brian or my mom. And I just said, oh, OK, yeah.
But my impression of the entire visit was that her stories were odd. They are not in line at all with what I knew about my brother's personality or his habits. They were random, all over the board. I thought the stories were lies. And there may have been some threads of truth on a few things that she said, but the details I felt were untrue.
I wondered about the unusual way she gave me details about packing his bag on Christmas night, the jewelry, and him going to play poker to make money. My brother enjoyed a good card game.
He wasn't into high stakes poker and he certainly didn't have the money to risk losing money. The other thing is I noticed that she was laughing. She was very animated during the entire visit. Too much for the stories that she was telling me. She kept bouncing around on the couch, folding her legs underneath her and sobbing.
flipping her hair and just weird. I was uncomfortable with the whole visit, thought something was wrong or she wasn't telling me the whole truth. And up to that time, I really didn't have a reason not to like her. We did have things in common. We always had a nice visit. And basically I did that because I loved my brother and I wanted to be able to go over there. And if it would have meant brown nosing anybody to be around him, I would have done it.
He was my friend. It was her house and I didn't want her saying anything about me not being able to be there. My brother had a dog named Jesse. Jesse sat by me the entire time I was at the house. She wouldn't go near Ladina. She didn't walk around. She just sat there and just kept looking at me. It was just very, very sad.
When Susan left Ladina's home, she was a mess, trying to process all of the strange and conflicting information that Ladina had just dumped in her lap. Why had she brought up the farm, the money, and all the other odd details? What was the real connection between those stories and her brother's disappearance? None of it added up. The first thing Susan did was call her husband. She
She needed someone to bounce this off of, to help her make sense of it all. After that, she went straight to her mother, hoping to get some clarity about the money Ladina had mentioned. But when Susan asked her mother about the loan, the version of the story she heard was vastly different from what Ladina had said. The story felt off, like pieces from different puzzles were being forced together. And the more she dug, the more the discrepancies between Ladina's version and her mother's stood out.
I got in the car and I called my husband. I started crying and I said, something is wrong, really bad, wrong. I don't know where Larry is, but it's just really bad. My husband said, your brother's a big boy. He can take care of himself. Come on home and we'll talk about everything that happened. I did talk to my husband about the money.
He did ask me if my mom would get involved between Larry and Ladina if they're having money disputes. And I agreed that she would. He suggested that I called mom, which I did. And she confirmed the $900 she took from Ladina was Larry's money. She said she told Ladina the money was for Larry and wasn't for her at all. And
And then she continued to tell me this really complicated story about Ladina taking money out of my brother's wallet, $2,700. My brother had sold two horses and Ladina had taken it. The $900, it was for something else. But that again, Ladina had taken it out of Larry's wallet. Ladina kept asking my mom to get the $900 back. My mom actually wrote her a check. And Ladina returned the check a couple of days later saying,
saying Larry wouldn't let her keep it. So my mom tore that check up and they didn't discuss it again. It happened in the fall, probably around August, September.
The days wore on, and there was still no word from Larry. If he had truly taken off for the coast, he wasn't reaching out to friends or family, something that felt increasingly unlikely with each passing day. Susan remembers how alarming the silence was, how completely out of step it was for the brother she knew. Susan recalls that it was around this time when smartphones were starting to gain popularity. One night, she was out with a friend who had just received a new iPhone for Christmas.
Her friend showed her how they could instantly look up phone numbers and contact people right then and there. During the week after the 28th, I called and left messages on the house phone. I called his cell phone, which wasn't even ringing. It was just going directly to voicemail. As the week wore on, I asked my mom and sisters if they'd spoken with Larry. Everybody was saying no. And they'd say, yeah, I've left a couple messages too.
On January 8th, my youngest son is a musician and he was playing at a venue in Western Washington. And so I asked some friends from Yakima to bring my mom over so she could see him play. As soon as my mom walked in, I looked at her face. I could tell something wasn't right. She said, my God, honey, I'm so worried about your brother. I keep calling and leaving messages and I'm not hearing back. And she couldn't
couldn't find anybody that had talked to him. So I talked privately with my friend, Nan, and we'd been friends since the third grade. She knew my brother very well, like a little sister. We both said, you know, something is wrong. So my girlfriend and her husband, that's what they got each other for Christmas were these iPhones. And I said, can you look up phone numbers on that? We were able to find phone numbers. We started calling.
Earlier, Susan had recalled that during their tense conversation, Ladina made several pointed comments about Larry's son, Brian. The way Ladina spoke about Brian struck Susan as odd, almost as if she was trying to shift attention onto Brian, to cast suspicion or blame. It felt deliberate, but Susan couldn't quite figure out the motive. It wasn't until Susan finally got in touch with Brian by phone—
The things started to come into focus. Brian had been trying to reach out to his father too, making phone calls, asking questions, and getting nowhere. He was just as concerned, just as confused, and feeling just as shut out as the rest of the family. It only sparked more questions about why Ladina had been so quick to turn the spotlight away from herself.
I called my nephew and he hadn't been able to reach his dad. He was very worried. He was extremely angry with Ladina, felt that she was keeping his messages from his dad. He
He said he'd last talked to his dad on Christmas Day about 4 o'clock, tried calling them again that night several times between 10 p.m. and midnight, couldn't reach him. And he said he was calling and leaving messages either with Ladina or on the voicemail. And he said a few times when he called, Ladina would say his dad was sleeping, couldn't come to the phone. Brian said he and his dad spoke to each other daily.
oftentimes three, four, five times a day. That was all verified. Next, I called his daughter down in Portland. She hadn't been able to reach her dad either. She'd been calling, leaving messages. She was very worried, didn't know how to reach him. She had discussed with her husband filing a missing persons report, but her husband kind of poo-pooed it, said, nah, your dad, he's fine.
Susan and her friend sat together, scrolling through phone numbers on her friend's new iPhone, determined to follow any lead they could find. Eventually, they came across a number from one of Larry's closest friends. When Larry's friend answered their call, he shared a story that immediately caught Susan's attention.
So then I called one of his very best friends, Ray. And Ray told me he had made repeated attempts to contact Larry, hadn't heard back from him. Ray was good friends with my uncle. They were talking to each other and they couldn't find Larry. Then Ray told me he was especially worried because Ladina had returned Larry's car to him. So my brother was buying a Volkswagen Cadillac.
diesel turbo. He had four or five payments left on this car. Ray said that he came home and he saw the bug parked in his driveway with the keys in it. He'd been trying to reach Larry and finally got ahold of Ladina. And she told him Larry wasn't going to be able to make any more payments on the car and wanted to return it. Ray wanted to talk to my brother, but she said she didn't know where he was. And
And I also regret that I did not look into the backyard to see whether or not my brother's car was back there on the 28th.
Each person Susan spoke to shared her concern about Larry. The pieces weren't adding up, and the information she gathered only deepened her fear that something was terribly wrong. But it was this call with Ray, one of Larry's closest friends, that became the tipping point. While Ladina continued telling everyone that Larry had simply gone on a trip, Susan's search turned up nothing. No one had seen him, no one had heard from him, and no one could confirm the story that Ladina was spreading.
After she hung up with Ray, Susan didn't hesitate. She called one of her sisters and told her firmly, it was time to go to the police and report Larry missing. So then I hung up from that phone call and I called my sister Candy. I asked her to call the police and file a missing persons report and she agreed to do that. So that was on the 8th.
By the time her sister went to file a missing persons report, Susan had already gathered a substantial amount of information. The family expected the Yakima Police Department to jump on this, as they were seeing red flags everywhere. But there was one major roadblock standing in their way. The last person to have seen Larry, other than Ladina, was his mother on Christmas morning. He then failed to show up for their family gathering the following day, and Ladina claimed he had left town for the coast. However…
When one of Larry's other sisters, Candy, went to report him missing, she was told that Ladina had already filed a report, not a missing persons report, but one about an alleged domestic dispute that she claimed had taken place 11 days after Larry was last seen by his mother on Christmas morning.
She calls the Yakima police and they said there was no missing person's case because there was a report of domestic violence at Larry's house and it was reported by Ladina on January 5th. Supposedly, the domestic violence happened on the 4th that evening and she walked into the police station on the morning of the 5th to report this. The police told my sister, though, that they had contact with Larry and that...
And that he had left the house in this lame low for a few days.
This was an unexpected and troubling twist. The police department claimed they had made contact with Larry, and Ladina was now saying he had returned from his supposed trip and that the two had gotten into an altercation on January 4th, an incident she reported to the police on the 5th. But despite this claim, no one in Larry's family could reach him. More than that, no one—not friends, not neighbors, not even casual acquaintances—could confirm seeing or hearing from Larry since Christmas Day. It didn't
It didn't make sense. If Larry had truly come back, where was he? Why hadn't he contacted his children, his sisters, or his mother? Susan and her sisters refused to accept the story at face value. They kept asking questions, calling anyone who might know something, and tirelessly searching for even one person who could confirm that Larry had been seen alive after Christmas. But every lead brought them right back to the same troubling truth—
No one but Ladina had seen or heard from Larry since he vanished in late December.
So then I asked my sister to call one of the local taverns. So her husband called down there and asked if anyone had seen Larry. The bartender asked the crowd. Someone came to the phone and said Larry hadn't been in there for at least four months. My sister said she had stopped by the house several times that week. And either Ladina would say Larry was sleeping or he wasn't there. And I was getting, of course, more upset the more phone calls I made. So then
So then I called back to that same tavern again, spoke with the bar patron by the name of Nelda. And she said Larry hadn't been there for a long time. But I told her I knew Larry had been in there with his son recently. So then she said Ladina had called the tavern on January 2nd and said Larry was headed down to the tavern for a beer run. Asked Nelda to give him Larry the money that she owed Ladina. And
And also told her that she wanted Larry to come right back home because she was holding dinner for him. And of course, I'd already mentioned she didn't cook. So that was another weird thing.
Susan didn't want to outright dismiss Ladina's claims of domestic violence. She knew those allegations had to be taken seriously, but something about the timing felt off. It seemed less like a genuine report and more like a diversion. Still searching for clarity, Susan reached out to a friend with local connections, hoping for guidance on what to do next. That conversation proved to be a turning point. With their help, Susan was directed to the right people, and that's when she discovered something crucial—
Despite what had been said earlier, officers from the Yakima Police Department had not made contact with Larry. The claim that he had spoken with police had been used to justify why they wouldn't take a missing persons report, and now they were learning it was completely false. It was a moment of both frustration and validation. Finally, Susan had confirmation that something wasn't right, and for the first time, she felt like she was beginning to make real progress.
I had a lot of questions, lingering questions about that domestic violence issue. I will tell you one thing about my brother. He could peel paint with his blistering conversation and choice words, but he was not a physical abuser.
physical abuse was not in his wheelhouse. And especially, he's recovering from a very serious neck injury. He's got numbness, complete paralysis at times down his arms and into his hands. He was in a very vulnerable state. So,
So I have a friend who is a probation officer at Kitsap County Jail at the time. And she helped me find weekend phone numbers for police stations, back door to 911, still hospitals. If there was a remote chance of a domestic violence report, we would be able to find it. And
And I hadn't been able to confirm any of this, of course, because it was the weekend and everything was closed down. First, I called the back door into the 911 dispatch offices and explained that my brother was missing, gave her his home address. She's the one that told me that the domestic event didn't occur at the location because Ladina had walked into the police station.
she suggested that I talk to the officer. At 10.30 p.m. on the 9th, I got a call from an Officer Gordon who said he stopped at LaDena's house to ask about Larry. I
And she told him he wasn't there and hadn't seen him since before. She told him there was activity at the house when she was gone, and she believed Larry was coming and going. And she told him Larry was probably out at the Harris farm. Again, that was kind of weird because there's a tenant living in the house. And in fact, the night that he supposedly walked away, he
He didn't take his wallet. He didn't take his keys. He had a cell phone with no charger. Didn't take his car. Car was sitting in the driveway. And he walked out into the snow and the cold. He didn't go to my mom's house, which is just a few blocks away. So I asked him about filing a missing persons report. And he said there's no time limit. We only needed to feel there's a credible threat to a person's welfare.
I asked him if the officer who took the report had spoke with Larry and he didn't know, but he gave me the name of the officer.
Sunday the 10th at 10 o'clock in the morning, I called dispatch and left a message for this officer. She called me back, said Ladina walked into the police station and filed a report that Larry had assaulted her. She said Larry and her fought. He hit her, knocked three teeth loose. She said she was paying all the bills. They were having money disputes. Told the police that he had walked away from the house after the fight.
but that she didn't want him back at the house and couldn't take it anymore.
Officer Sear had told me there was no physical evidence on her face from being hit or in her mouth. She gave her a physical exam, but she did say she was crying really hard and seemed genuinely upset. Then the officer told me the police didn't go to the house and didn't have any contact with my brother. There would be no charges filed against him because it was basically her word against his word and there was a lack of evidence. So
So I explained to her that we believed Larry was missing and that nobody had seen or spoken to him except Ladina since Christmas Day. I explained the whole chain of events, the people I'd spoken to, and that I couldn't find anyone besides Ladina who had any contact. She suggested I come to Yakima and file a missing persons report. And that's what I did. I hung up and asked my husband to drive me to Yakima.
After this phone call, Susan and her husband set out for Yakima once again, this time with a clear purpose, to officially report Larry as a missing person. As her husband drove, Susan stayed busy in the passenger seat, making phone calls and scribbling notes. She was piecing together a puzzle of conflicting accounts and tracking the web of inconsistent stories Ladina had told to different people in the days following Larry's disappearance. The timelines didn't match up. The explanations kept shifting.
And the more Susan uncovered, the more convinced she became that something was being hidden.
On the way to Yakima, I continued making numerous calls to my sisters, my niece, my nephew, my friend, Nan. And we agreed not to say anything to my mom until we had more information. But there were all these inconsistencies by this time that we were able to kind of piece together. December 28th, the day that I went to meet her, Brian called his dad at 8 o'clock in the morning and
And Ladina said his dad was sleeping and couldn't come to the phone. And then that was the same day I was there from 1030 till noon and was told Larry wasn't at home and hadn't returned from the coast yet. It was obvious no vehicle activity in the yard because of the fresh snow. So she could not even say that, well, he came home later. And
and then left. I was also told by the assigned detective that my brother was seen at the Yakima Costco in the parking lot the morning of December 28th. That person didn't speak to him, so I'm walking with his head down and in a hurry. But on the 14th of February, my husband and I did talk to the managers. We explained that he had been seen at this time 10
And they said his card hadn't been renewed since 2007. So that means it would have expired in 08, a year before he went missing. They looked under his name, his business name, Ladina's name, no membership at all. They
They did mention to me, they can tell what everyone has bought for the last 10 years. There was no activity with Larry's name on it. That indicated any kind of sighting of him on the 28th was probably not correct. I found out in all these phone calls,
January 5th. So this was the day Ladina went to the police and filed the domestic. My sister Sandy passed her at the intersection right by their house. Ladina motioned for her to pull into this parking lot and Ladina had a passenger in her car.
Ladina explained to Sandy that this woman in the car with her had helped drive Larry's car to Ray's house because she and Larry bought. She didn't want Larry coming back to the house. Larry had knocked three of her teeth loose.
But again, my sister didn't notice any physical evidence or marks on her face. And supposedly this had happened the night before. But here's the thing. Sandy and I both remember Ladina telling us and showing us that she had two teeth that she would super glue back into a dental partial plate. And she said she needed dental work but couldn't afford it. And we were told that at a barbecue probably a year later.
if not two years before that. When my husband and I got to the police station, we filed a report.
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Susan is the kind of person you'd want in your corner if you ever went missing. Relentless, focused, and fiercely loyal, she was determined to leave no stone unturned in the search for her brother. She wasn't just in Yakima to file a missing persons report. She was there to take action. After leaving the police station, Susan hit the ground running. She visited the places Larry was known to frequent and spoke to anyone who might have seen or heard something.
My husband and I left there and we just went to a couple of taverns we knew my brother would go to once in a while. I did talk to that gal, Nelda. She repeated the story about Larry on the beer run. She told me that Larry never showed up. The one thing that we thought was kind of funny, everybody would say, well, where's his car at? And we said, well, Ladina had returned it to Ray. They
They all went, oh, no, no, that's not right. Larry would never return his car. We had a neighbor of his come forward later on and say, I only lived two houses down from your brother. And he would drive his car to my house to have coffee in the morning with my husband and I. I mean, he didn't walk. He wouldn't.
He would walk in the woods for hunting and stuff like that, but go out for a little stroll. That wasn't him. So we continued to just talk to people, took down people's names, numbers, when they last saw my brother, what their impressions were.
While in Yakima, Susan also sat down with her mother to go over everything she knew. That's when her mother revealed something she hadn't yet told Susan. Shortly after Larry disappeared, she had confronted Ladina directly, looked her right in the eye and asked point-blank if she had killed Larry. It wasn't what Ladina said that frightened her. It was what she didn't say. Her refusal to give a clear answer and the way she reacted to the question left a chill that Susan's mother hadn't been able to shake.
on the 11th, the day after we filed the missing person, I finally went and talked to my mom. And she said she went over to Ladina's house and she asked her point blank, did you kill my son, Ladina? Ladina wouldn't say yes or no, but she kept saying, why would you ask me that? I'm a gentle person. And
And my mom, she goes, I kept asking her and she would never say yes or no. She just kept saying over and over, I'm a gentle person. And mom said, I knew right then.
Susan, along with her sister and a couple of detectives, paid Ladina a visit at her home, hoping to get some answers. Ladina kept insisting that Larry had done this kind of thing all the time, disappeared for days without any explanation. But Larry's sisters weren't having it. They adamantly refuted Ladina's claims. He wasn't the type to just vanish without a trace, without any communication, especially around the holidays. The more Ladina spoke, the more it felt like she was trying to rewrite the narrative.
But Susan and her sister knew better. They had known Larry their entire lives. And nothing about Ladina's story seemed believable. On the 11th, my sister Sandy and I met the detective over at Ladina's house. They were asking questions. And she kept saying, no, he takes off. He does this all the time. And he's not in contact with anybody. I said, that's not true, Ladina. He's in contact with his family all the time.
And she was sticking to her story and she kept saying, no, no, he goes away and I don't know where he is. And he just does this. Finally, the detective did say to Ladina, he might go away and not be in contact with you, but he obviously stays in contact with his kids and his family. Finally, she stopped saying that.
Ladina's stories kept shifting. At one point, she claimed Larry had left for the coast. Then she said he came back, only to leave again. To some, she said he was home but sleeping. To others, she insisted he was gone. What made things even more disturbing was what happened next. Not long after Larry was last seen, Ladina began quietly getting rid of his belongings. To Susan and the rest of the family, it wasn't just suspicious, it was chilling.
Larry hadn't been seen or heard from, yet his life was being dismantled piece by piece. It felt less like someone waiting for a loved one to return and more like someone with intent on erasing his existence.
April 2010, one of my cousins drove by Ladina's house. She's having a huge yard sale. I have so many. Ladina didn't know all of them. She stopped and she looked at it. She goes, I know some of that stuff was Larry's because she used to go camping with Larry too. She goes, I remember being on that boat out in the lake. So she's selling Larry's stuff at this yard sale. In addition, one of the neighbors that I talked to...
because I went up and down the road, two blocks in all directions, knocking on everybody's house. Anybody that would answer their door, I talked to them about my brother, showed them pictures, and got any information that I could about activity there. So one neighbor who is kitty-corner from their house, really nice, she's deceased now,
She said,
And she said, I thought they were moving out. That's how much stuff came out of that house. In fact, we never got anything, not even a pair of socks that belonged to my brother out of that house. We didn't get anything, not photographs, his furniture, nothing. I told the police that too. They never went over and asked her. They screwed this case up so bad from the very beginning.
What Susan would later learn was that in the fall, just before Larry's major surgery, he had been trying to leave Ladina. Larry wanted to rekindle a relationship with his ex-girlfriend, but Ladina thwarted those plans. When she discovered that Larry had been seeing the woman secretly, her reaction was extreme. In a fit of rage, she went to the woman's home. Susan told us more.
They were in the process of breaking up. My brother was trying to sell anything he could get his hands on so he could move out of Ladina's house. They were done. He was secretly seeing his old girlfriend. They were having dates. I mean, I found all this out later, but Ladina, in a jealous fit, had even gone over to the girlfriend's house and Ladina ran her car into the corner of it. My
My brother wasn't there. And so the money thing had happened in like August or September. My brother had the surgery October 7th. He was laid up, but he was trying to move before he had the surgery. But every time he got any money put together, she was taking it.
We wanted to learn more about the relationship between Larry and Ladina. Susan told us that they had been together for about two years. Looking back, Susan can now spot the red flags, signs that Ladina was controlling, and possibly even physically abusive. But like many men who are victims of abuse, Larry seemed too embarrassed to open up to his family about what was going on. Whether he didn't want them to worry, or he felt a sense of shame from the stigma surrounding abuse,
Susan remembers how Larry would often brush off the injuries he sustained. He'd make excuses that never fully explained the marks or bruises she could clearly see.
I think it was very unhealthy for probably the last year. In August of 2009, we had a barbecue. My brother shows up and he's got this horrific wound on his calf. It's like a hole. Ladina was with him at this barbecue. I said, what happened? And he said, oh, I had a misstep and a stick went into my calf. This
This is a man who has grown up in the woods, hunted, walked thousands of miles. He doesn't have a misstep. One of my sisters was there and we both looked at it. I told her later, it looks like he got shot. And she goes, that's exactly what I thought. I said, Larry, it's getting infected. You should go to the doctor. And he said, no, no, I don't want to go to the doctor.
We kind of dropped it, but it did get infected. And I told him several times we would pay for him to go to the emergency room and have this thing cleaned out and get some antibiotics. Looking back on it, I think that there was something going on because that wasn't the first time that my brother had shown up with a wound. One time he came over to my mom's and again, we were having a barbecue. He was black and blue.
all over on his inner thighs and legs. I said, good God, what happened to you? I mean, it looked like somebody had just chipped him. Well, my brother passed out. She was upset and she pummeled his groin and his inner thighs. He told me that. It was awful. And I'm going to tell you, my brother was an alcoholic. He drank beer. He wasn't a hard liquor guy, but he loved his beer. I
I think that sometimes it just got the best of them. After the family reported Larry missing, Susan quickly grew frustrated with the lack of urgency from authorities. It felt like no one was taking his disappearance seriously, so she took matters into her own hands. Susan kept branching out to find anyone who might have insight into what happened to Larry. Along the way, she connected with several men who had previously been in relationships with Ladina. Their stories were unsettling and eerily consistent.
As I talked to people and did my own investigation and talking to her ex-husband and ex-fiancé's domestic violence, she perpetrated against all of her husbands and this fiancé. And I think that's what was happening with Larry. I think she was very violent. I think he was probably more embarrassed, but I'd say that whole last year was awful for him. And I wish he had confided in me because I would have helped him.
In the early years of the investigation, Susan found herself fighting an uphill battle with law enforcement. From the start, it seemed like they were fixated on the domestic violence claim Ladina had made, a claim that painted Larry as someone who may have had a reason to run. To them, it explained his absence. But to Susan, it didn't add up with who her brother was, and he didn't have a history of this type of behavior. She believed the allegation was likely a calculated move, an
An intentional diversion meant to steer the investigation off course. And if that was the goal, it worked. Law enforcement appeared content with the idea that Larry had simply skipped town. What was being described was nowhere near the kind of crisis that would cause Larry to abandon his life entirely. It just didn't make sense.
That initial detective, he always said Larry had run away, laying low, because he was scared that he was going to get charged with domestic violence. And I said, no, you don't understand my brother. He was a very verbose, very gregarious guy. He would be here in your face defending himself. He's not one to run scared. That is so out of character to say, oh, he ran away.
or he's hiding, that wouldn't be happening.
At the beginning of the investigation, Susan pressed the initial investigator to obtain Larry's cell phone records. She believed that they might hold the key. Maybe there was someone he had been in contact with around the time of his disappearance. Or the location data could help to prove whether he had really taken that trip to the coast, as Ladina had claimed. Susan told us more about her efforts to push for those records, knowing that that information could make all the difference in solving the mystery of what happened to her brother.
It was almost a year into it because I asked the detective. He requests the records. I had to write the check. And then he tells us, your brother isn't missing. He's standing right here at this exact location making all of those phone calls. And it's way up on a ridge of mountains. And I'm like...
Well, that doesn't even make sense. He didn't know that location was the cell tower that he was saying that's right where your brother was standing. The other thing, he requested the wrong phone number. It was off two digits. So, you know, another two months wasted on that. I just can't tell you. It's like F Troop incompetence back then. And it just ruined it, ruined the whole case.
Despite the fact that the initial investigator had told Susan early on that he believed that Larry had taken off to avoid law enforcement after that alleged domestic dispute, months later, he called Susan with an unexpected update. His stance had completely shifted. After further review, the investigator now questioned his previous conclusion and was beginning to consider the possibility that Larry may have met with foul play.
This detective who kept saying that, oh, he's laying low and he ran away and he did this. He calls me at work one day. He doesn't even say hello or anything. I answer the phone and he says, I believe you. I said, what? And he goes, I think Ladina killed Larry and that he's dead. I lost it. My friends had to come get me and get me into the bathroom so that I could calm down because I was so distraught.
Even with this newfound belief that Larry had been killed, years passed with little to no progress on the case. The more time went on, the more Susan and her family became fed up. They were stuck, unable to move forward, and it felt as though the answers were right in front of them. But despite their relentless pursuit of the truth, it seemed like the investigation had stalled.
Susan could only do so much on her own. She wasn't law enforcement, and there were limits to what she could accomplish without the authority and resources that came with an official investigation. The family was no closer to finding Larry than they had been on day one, and that was a burden they carried with them every single day. Finally, Susan had enough. She wasn't going to let this case go cold without a fight. Determined to get the attention Larry deserved, she demanded a meeting with the chief of police. She wasn't going to let anyone forget about her brother.
or the unanswered questions that still lingered. By the time we got rid of one detective, and then we had another one who didn't do anything, three years into this, we got a new chief of police in Yakima. I was like, okay, we're going to strike while the fire's hot. And so I got a meeting with him. My husband, my sister Candy, and myself, the three of us went in, and they pulled in...
a couple of detectives and a captain and the chief of police. I said, you guys have never done a forensic search of the car, which by now, three years later, it was too late. They never searched his truck. They never did a search warrant on the house where he was living. They never looked for him, period. Nobody tried to find him.
That police department was just incompetent. And that's the nicest thing I could probably say about them. I was very upset and I'm very vocal. We had a three-hour meeting and we left. We were only a few blocks from the police station and my phone rang with Captain Rod Light. And he said, we are assigning a new detective and this is the pit bull of the YPD.
and it was no one went. He was put in charge, and it was only after we got no one involved that he was able to get the search warrant for not only the house where she lived, but her sister's house. But at that time, it was too little too late. There was no forensic evidence left anywhere. We kept saying, hey, he was in a vulnerable state. I know in the state of Washington, if
If you are a vulnerable adult, they have silver alerts and they have all different things that they do when it's a vulnerable person, whether it's children or special needs. And they would never consider him a vulnerable adult until we got Nolan. And by that time, it's three years too late.
Susan was relieved to have a new investigator assigned to her brother's case. While she knew that time had been lost and evidence was likely gone, she finally had someone on her side who wasn't going to dismiss her brother's disappearance as Larry simply walking away from his life. This new investigator had a fresh theory, a different angle that gave Susan a glimmer of hope. And this is where we'll pick up next week with part two of Larry's story. We spoke to retired investigator Nolan Wentz about his relentless quest to find Larry and
and uncover what really happened to him around Christmas of 2009. And while everything had initially been pointing straight at Ladina, he found new evidence that suggested the case may not be as clear-cut as it once seemed and pointed in a surprising new direction. If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Larry Regal, please contact the Yakima Police Department at 509-575-6200 or Yakima County Crime Stoppers at 1-800-248-TIPS.
See, I got into this years after the fact. I was a lieutenant at the time, but I cut my teeth being a detective in major crimes, homicide cases. And at the time, Susie and her family came in not real happy with the results they had gotten from the police department beforehand. Kind of slept it off. I mean, he's been gone and wanted something done. So they talked to the chief, they talked to the captain, they
handed it off to me. Here you go, see what you can find. The longer the time goes, the less you're going to have to dig up and find.
Christmas Day was the last time anybody talked to him. Unless you talk to Ladina, and that's another story. I got a hold of Larry's phone records, and I know that he made a couple calls to a guy. Now, I could say that his cell phone did ping on the cell towers going that direction, but there were never any more calls. And that was the last anybody ever saw him.
That brings us to the end of episode 486. I'd like to thank Susan and retired investigator Wentz for speaking with us for this story. If you have a missing loved one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a case submission form at thevanishedpodcast.com. If you'd like to join in on the discussion, there's a page and discussion group on Facebook.
You can also find us on Instagram. If you like our show, please give us a five-star rating and review. You can also support the show by contributing on Patreon, where you can get early and ad-free episodes. Be sure to tune in next week for part two of Larry's story. Thanks for listening.
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