Replay: Ian Eckles Part 1 - The Hunting Trip
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He was hilarious. I mean, he was the life of the party. He was the type of guy that was, you know, always cracking jokes, always making people laugh. He was the guy that was, you know, there to have fun and, you know, kind of a free spirit, so to speak. He really loved cats, and I'm kind of a cat lady myself. We kind of bonded over that, and I'm into rock digging and rock hounding, and he had gotten into...

gold panning and digging for rocks up in outside of Ellensburg, you know, so we kind of developed a bond over that. Nathan is the oldest. I'm the youngest. And Ian was the middle child, the center of our family, the glue that held us all together. It's just hard. It's hard to lose what held you all together.

Well, I mean, there's that show that they have, that they have a see no evil or whatever, where it shows people the last time they were caught on video, last store they went to or whatever they did last. And it shows all that. And that's even hard to watch. And it's,

not your person. And it's hard because it's interesting to find out how they catch people. But when it's your loved one, something happens like that. And when you watch those shows, you're like, oh, you know, that'll never be me. You don't ever think that something like that could ever possibly happen to you.

41-year-old Ian Echols spent the majority of his free time outdoors and loved to hunt. So when he and his friend made plans to spend a weekend hunting in the mountains near Liberty, Washington in May of 2020, nothing was out of the ordinary. But when Ian's friend got to the spot where they agreed to meet up in a popular national forest, Ian wasn't there.

In fact, there was no sign of Ian, his vehicle, or any of his camping equipment. For more than a year, Ian's family, friends, and law enforcement have been looking for him. They haven't found Ian yet, but what they have uncovered is bigger than anyone could have ever anticipated. I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 292 of The Vanished, part one of Ian Eccles' story, The Hunting Trip.

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The one thing that we heard everyone tell us was that 41-year-old Ian Eccles could make anyone laugh. He valued the simple things in life. He enjoyed spending time with family and friends and exploring nature. Ian was an avid outdoorsman and spent much of his free time in the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. These were the things that were the main themes of our interviews with his family and friends, who remain in disbelief that nature would be where his life seemed to end.

We spoke to Ian's older brother, Nathan, and he told us about who his brother was.

Ever since I can remember, you know, as kids growing up, you know, he was always the funny guy. Like, he always, always had a sense of humor, like, about everything. He was so quick to make a joke all the time. I got him in trouble in school a little bit, you know, here and there, being the class clown. I remember he just kind of tried to make light wherever he went with comedy, you know what I mean? So it's the one thing that I'll never forget about him. Such a pleasure.

For me to have the pleasure of having that kind of soul in my life at the time that he was here. And I'll never forget him. I miss him every day. He was such a kind soul. We made friends pretty much everywhere he went, you know, growing up up until, you know, the very end. He just brought a lot of light with him, you know. And being able to spend time with him was always a pleasure for me. It was always fun, you know.

Nathan explained that when they were kids, Ian always had a love for building things. From Legos to tree forts, it was clear during Ian's childhood that he had a passion and the talent. When Ian grew up, it was an easy choice for him to pursue that line of work.

He was always into making stuff. He had a way with building things, you know, with wood. When we were kids, we used to build tree forts. When we played with our Legos, he'd always have something built before I did, like to build stuff. He was really good with marble and granite and perfected that as a part of his career choice and, you know, got to the point where he was a warehouse manager. He knew how to do all the installs, all the fabrication, you know. He used a finished carpenter for a long time.

Ian was the middle child and has a younger sister, Stephanie. Stephanie explained how she and Ian formed a close bond. The three of us kids are just about two years apart. Nathan and Ian were 19 months, and I think Ian and I were like 28, maybe 28 months. So at one point in the year, we're all like two years apart.

They became these big protectors for me and were my best friends. And especially Ian. We were very close as we got older, just best friends. He did not lack personality. That's what he was, just a huge, huge personality. There was never a time that Ian was somewhere that you didn't know he was there. He was not a wallflower. He stuck out in the crowd. He always had something to say, always had a story to tell.

And it was above and beyond and huge. And he talked with his hands, had different voices. And I mean, he was always growing up. He was always a class clown. So he's always getting in trouble for one thing or another. And so, yeah, he was he's just a very large personality.

Ian had an infectious personality, and sometimes that got him into trouble, but most of the time it attracted people to him, and in a world of decreased human interaction, Ian thrived on being with people and being outside.

He was always into hunting, which is weird because my dad wasn't a hunter. That was more like my great grandpa. And he was always into going out, target practicing, shooting, of course, hanging out with his friends and partying and just being the life of the party. And he loved to fish. As he got a little older, he got more into like rock hounding and

metal detecting and things like that. But camping was huge in his late teens and 20s. I mean, we were always going on camping trips and we were always outdoors. It wasn't he wasn't a teenager that sat in the house and played video games. He didn't sit at home and watch TV. He was always gone. He was always out in nature.

We also spoke to Ian's dad, Stephen, who told us that his relationship with Ian wasn't always perfect, but he loves his son dearly.

he'd do, you know, whatever silly things to make people laugh. I mean, he really was a pretty average kid growing up. He didn't really have a lot of problems with other kids and, you know, getting along with other kids. And, you know, we'd go and do certain things. I'd take the kids a lot of time on the weekends and we'd go down to the

Down at the waterfront in Portland, there was a park we used to go down to down there so that mom could have time to clean the house and do things without kids being in the way. And when he got older, he was a lot like me, really.

And so we didn't really, we didn't, we really didn't get along super great through his, I would say mostly through his teenage years and into his early twenties, or maybe even through his twenties who we, it wasn't, we didn't see eye to eye, but I had certain expectations of the way that I thought people should behave or, and he had a different,

view on that. So we kind of, we clashed quite a bit through, probably through his 20s. Me, you know, me being an older parent, you know, kids will come up with an attitude about something and you've been through it and you just try to get them to understand that you have to work through the problem.

Kids many times try to figure it out and do the same thing you told them not to do. And the consequences were sort of kind of what you told them they'd be. But you do know that at the end of the day, every once in a while, he would say, remember when you told me. And he would insert whatever. And that's when you know.

that he was paying attention. I think the thing that kept him, made him the happiest was going out and hunting and camping because

In his late teens, he was working down at the Amtrak station in Portland and he met a guy who, he was kind of a hunter and fisherman and stuff like that. And he met this guy and they become fast friends. He was older. He was kind of a surrogate father to him and he worked for quite a few years for his friend and they went hunting and fishing together and did a lot of stuff together and he

He spent a lot of time with that family. And I mean, those kids kind of just viewed him as another brother because they were about the same age. For many years, Ian had been in a long-term relationship with a woman named Julia. They had chosen to break off their relationship a few years ago, but continued to live together as roommates. Ian's sister Stephanie told us about Julia and how their breakup affected Ian.

He met somebody who he thought he was going to be with forever. She's wonderful. It just didn't end up working out in the end. But they were together for, I want to say, 18 years. I don't know. It was a lot of years. And in the end, they were going through a breakup. So it's...

hard because I understand why and that maybe they just weren't meant for each other in the end. I wish that he had some great happiness in his life because he spent a lot of his life having negative things happen to him and

being down and just not having these great, wonderful things always happen to him. Meeting her was a great, wonderful thing, and they enjoyed many good years together. But it was just sad in the end that it didn't work out, even though I completely understand why. It was just really hard for him the last few years. And it was hard to see him like that, just down and struggling. At this point, he wasn't

really happy. He was kind of looking into finding another job, maybe moving back home to Portland. He was kind of in this weird in utero, like he didn't know whether he was going to stay in Seattle or if he in Kent or if he was going to move in with a friend because he was needing to leave where he was living or if he was going to come home. And, you know, I for two years, I begged him. I begged him to come home.

and start a new life. And it was really hard for him. It was something that he had established so much out there and so many friends, and he was scared to start a new life. He didn't feel like he was young enough to do that at 41, that he was never going to be able to start over, that he was never going to find anybody to be, you know, to start over with. So

That he was just too old for all that and that he struggled with that just starting over. He just wanted to hold on to what he had for so many years and be there and make that work. So he spent the last few years trying so hard to make that work that he couldn't put much energy into starting a new life. Ian's brother Nathan told us where he believes Ian was at in life at the time his relationship with Julia ended.

I think he was kind of getting pulled in two different directions at once. It was, I think, finally coming to terms with accepting the fact that the 10-year-plus endeavor that he was in up there in that part of the world kind of was coming to an end, but he didn't want it to. But I think he knew what it was, and he was feeling conflicted and wanted to be there and stick with his job and stuff, but didn't want it to be a way to come back and kind of start over again.

He needed a new start. I was kind of working with him to get him toward that, just trying to give him some kind of help and telling him, you know, hey, I got an open bedroom here. If you need to just get on your feet, don't pay me any money. I don't care. Just do what you got to do for you to get back on your feet. And my sister had a room too, and my parents had a room, you know. All three of us kind of was like, yeah, hey, we're here for you. You know, if you need to come this way and start over. And I just, he was conflicted. He wanted to, but then he felt like he couldn't. Trying to

grass-bath straws to make it work with her one last time. I think in the end they kind of were not together but they just lived in the same house but were 100 miles apart and I think he was trying to figure out what he was going to do and how he was going to get there you know because I'm pretty sure he knew it was over and she knew it was over and

In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had hit the U.S., and Ian's work shut down for a period of six weeks. Ian took advantage of the time off and used it to visit his adult daughter, Audrey, and his new grandchild in Colorado. Nathan joined Ian on this trip and has fond memories of the time.

Ian was really proud of his daughter. He had a lot of pride there. And he was so ecstatic to be a grandfather and being able to see him hold his grandson with my own two eyes and see the smile he had on his face, just seeing that touched me, you know, because, you know, giving him a little hee-haw like, hey, grandpa, how you doing? You know, and he's like, oh, shut up. Just kind of tease each other a little bit, you know, and

I was able to fly down to Colorado and meet up with him. My dad was down there and my niece, Audrey, and her husband. Beautiful family. We hung out and went out in the mountains and went shooting. It was nice to be able to have that memory. That was the last time I see my brother alive was when we went down to Colorado and just seeing him happy, seeing him with his grandson and his daughter.

And his son-in-law just said he was happy in that space, in that moment. You know, he was truly happy. And I hadn't seen that of him in a long time.

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Ian returned to Washington when his work reopened and began working on May 11th, just days before he disappeared.

At this time, Ian and Julia were still living together. Ian decided to go on a turkey hunting trip with a friend. According to the records we received from police, Julia said that Ian woke up shortly before 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 16th. About an hour later, he left and said that he was going to go hunting with his friend, Charlie. Julia said that she last saw Ian when he left at approximately 3 p.m. that day.

It was around this same time that Ian was texting back and forth with his daughter. He sent her a funny video, and this was the last time she ever heard from her father. From what Julia understood, Ian was going to spend the weekend hunting and planned to be back at work on Monday, May 18th. But that didn't happen, and Julia received a call from Ian's boss asking if she knew why Ian hadn't reported to work that day.

We received an extensive file from law enforcement on Ian's case, which allows us to really give his story the thorough coverage we hope to give every story we cover on the show.

We learned from the police file that Ian's friend Charlie told investigators that Ian wasn't in the place where they usually camp together because there were already people at that campsite. But Charlie thought that Ian may have continued on to another area, possibly one of the several other campsites the pair had camped at before. Police said that Charlie told them that the two had plans to meet in the early morning hours of Sunday, May 17th at around 4 a.m.

and that Ian had expressed to Charlie that he planned to spend the night before in the area, so that he didn't have to get up so early to drive there for their 4 a.m. meeting. Charlie told police he arrived at their agreed-upon spot, but that Ian wasn't there, and he assumed that Ian had overslept, which he said would have been typical of Ian. So Charlie didn't think much of it at first, and went ahead on his day hunting.

Charlie said that after he finished hunting for the day, he drove around looking for Ian, thinking that maybe he had gotten stuck or Ian had run into some kind of trouble, but didn't see any sign of Ian or his vehicle anywhere. On his way home, Charlie drove by Ian's house, becoming more concerned that his friend hadn't simply overslept.

When Ian's car wasn't in front of his house, he decided to call Ian's job the next morning and spoke with Ian's boss, which prompted the call to Julia. Ian's sister Stephanie told us about how she found out that something was wrong and no one knew where Ian was. Before all this happened, he was looking a little bit, he seemed a little hopeful. He had a friend who he was going to be moving in with.

and possibly looking into some new jobs. With the pandemic and everything, he was laid off for a while. So when he did go missing, we didn't worry at first because we thought maybe there was a miscommunication, misunderstanding. When he didn't show up for work, we just thought maybe she had sent him a message saying, you need to come to work, and he didn't know. He didn't get the message or something.

So we weren't super worried at first because he would go out to the woods for a week and not talk to anybody. And it was fine.

But when he didn't meet his friends, that was not like him. So that was when we got worried. I think it was a denial thing at first because he wouldn't not meet his friends. But then again, he had struggled with a little bit of sadness and just wanting to be out in the woods alone. So we tried to hold on to that hope that maybe he just wanted to be alone, even though we knew in the back of our heads that he would not do that to his friends. He would not meet his friends.

By the time Thursday came and no one heard from him, then we knew something was not right. I think a lot of us were just in denial because he was so comfortable in the woods. There was nothing was ever going to happen to him out there. He was always prepared. He knew that area so well that what could possibly happen to him? Whatever had happened to Ian, things didn't seem to add up to self-harm.

Stephanie knew that he had been making plans and seemed to be in a more positive place. She said as far as she knew, he hadn't been depressed or down like he had been when the relationship first ended. We also spoke to a friend of Ian's named Chandra, who had met Ian when they were just kids, but their bond grew with time. And she also became very close friends with Ian's sister, Stephanie. Chandra told us more about their close friendship.

Ian really took the role of becoming like the big brother. He always looked out for you. He's very charismatic, full of energy, full of life. I know people say this about, you know, that one person in their life, they're just really unique, but he was, he was definitely a special person. Lots of just brightness, right?

We had a massive group of friends and we all came from different walks of life. And we just kind of grew up together and did everything together. So he's definitely been a part of my life for almost as far back as I can remember. Anything he tried to do, he was just naturally good at it. He could actually sing too. Like he had a really beautiful singing voice. He didn't do it much. He didn't really get to hear it.

Stephanie, she is the godmother of my children and my best friend. One of the greatest loves of my life in a, you know, platonic way. But Ian, he brought me her. That's something I'll never be able to, you know, truly thank him for. Chandra explained how she learned that Ian was missing.

Stephanie had texted me and she said, I think my brother may be missing. And that's just kind of how it started. He would just go off and he would camp and, you know, do what he wanted. Like he was very capable and he knew what he was doing.

We also spoke to another friend of both Ian and his sister Stephanie. Her name also happens to be Stephanie. She told us that even before anyone knew that Ian had disappeared, she had a dream that felt like somewhat of a premonition.

it was really weird. The day he disappeared, like that night, I'd had like a very weird, bizarre dream about him. And I remember waking up the very next day going, wow, that, that was really weird. Like, why, why did I have that dream? You know, it was just, it was just kind of weird to me. And so weird that I remember thinking about it as I was waking up going, God, that was just strange. And then, uh,

The following Monday, I saw his sister. Her and I get together, you know, pretty frequently, at least every other week or so. She had told me that Ian was missing. And I was just like, my heart just dropped to the floor. I was like, are you kidding me? That's not good at all. Ian's friend Chandra was very concerned when she heard the news that Ian was missing. This was not like her friend at all.

She and another friend jumped into action to help spread the word that Ian had disappeared. Initially, law enforcement had told the family that Ian's phone had last pinged in Kent, Washington, and they felt that they should look for him there. Ian's friends and family weren't so sure about this. It didn't feel right to them. Kent was the area where Ian had lived and worked, but they knew he had planned to go to the mountains. Was it possible that he never made it out of the area?

We had planned to drive up because at this point he was still pinged in Kent. When Ian says he's going somewhere, he's going where he's going, period. That's just the way he is. He's not going to tell you I'm going to Liberty, but I'm staying in Kent. Like it just made no sense. It wasn't, he was very cut and dry. Like this is what I'm doing. This is where I'm going. And that was it. We

We put together our missing person packets and we went and we bought logging tape, tacks. There were posters made, some that were in plastic coverings so they could be hung without rain getting on them.

And then her and I just basically hid everywhere we possibly could around Kent before the rest of the group started coming in to help search. So we did that just right out of the back of a car, just putting these packets together for all the groups of people. And then Steph made it up. She worked all night. And as soon as this actually became a real thing, like she...

She was totally in a daze. Like I could see it when she got there. She works at Costco. So when she got off, she just grabbed as much food as she could, knowing that this

was going to be big and to make sure we could take care of the people that were going to be out searching. And so she came up and there's quite a few of us in the parking lot and the detective called. The detective that called her was just not very great. She was

Wanted to talk about the statistics of finding a missing person. At some point, she told Stephanie to stop talking. She was just not, she was not being empathetic at all to the situation.

Ian had a massive friend group. I mean, it was massive. And so, you know, you have people from all over the state of Oregon and Washington calling the police department saying, hey, this person is missing, this person's missing, you know, all working together so that they would take this seriously. And I still didn't think he was in Kent. I had booked a hotel.

where we were handing out the packets. And I went and got the room key before this, and the room was disgusting. It was awful. It was like everything was telling us, and we all knew anyways, that that's not where we were supposed to be. A police car came up at one point, and it was like, this is the unsafest part of this

keep an eye on your stuff. We have cars stolen out of here all the time. And then I think Steph had mentioned something to them about her brother and they were like, Oh, we know all about it. It's all over our scanners right now. And that felt really good that we'd finally pushed them to a point where they were listening and they're like, okay, this, this isn't just some guy that just wanted to go off on his own or whatever. Yeah.

In what turned out to be an unexplained act of cruelty, someone posted online that Ian had been found, but didn't want to have contact with his family. Ian's sister Stephanie told us more about this.

At one point, you know, we had issues because somebody had said that he was found and that he was fine and that he didn't want to talk to any of his family. And we knew that that was wrong. And that came from the Kent area. And I don't know how wires got crossed. I don't know what that was all about. But people were posting online that, oh, he said, you know, I called the police department in Kent and they said that he was found.

and that he doesn't want to talk to any of his family. And we knew then that is absolutely not true because we were everything to each other. He was our everything. We were his. There's no way he would do that to his family ever. At the very beginning, when a police report was taken, it was, I believe it was done in Kent because that was the last place he was seen. Though he had text messaged somebody saying, I'm in Liberty.

We're going turkey hunting at 4 a.m. Come meet us to a friend. And that friend said he can't go. But he sent a text message saying that he was in Liberty and he wouldn't do that unless he was. But according to cell phone records, he sent it at four and it pinged in Kent. And so that's where we started was Kent. And I'm fighting that he's in Liberty. But I guess he sent that text message when he was on his way out there. Kent police.

said that there's no record of him ever making it to Liberty area. And his phone shuts off almost immediately after that text message, pretty much insinuated to me that my brother must have, nobody shuts off their phone is what I was told. And that he must have

gotten in some kind of accident right after that or something happened because nobody shuts off their phone. So then it was, what do we do? Do we call local hospitals? It was grim. Anything that was told to us, there was no positive outcome. It was either he got in an accident or he shut it off, I was told, because he wants to be away and he doesn't want anyone to talk to him or

He pretty much wanted to be missing is kind of what I felt like they were trying to say to us. Because yes, adults do go missing on purpose and they want to be, but that just was not him.

On Thursday, May 21, 2020, they received additional data from Ian's phone that indicated that his phone had pinged in Cle Elum, Washington on the evening of May 16, the day that Ian had left to head to the mountains. This shifted the focus of the investigation away from Kent.

So we just drove up there as fast as we could get safely. And the rain, it was just torrential. It was just like strange. All these things that led up to it. And like we were being drawn to where we were supposed to be. We got up to Cle Elum and mainly we were just standing in the parking lot. And search and rescue came. The deputy came and talked to all of us.

And we just kind of stood there and listened. There was a game plan. They were going to go up and do a quick search. The family members had a meeting. So that's just kind of how we ended up in Cle Elum. There was a travel lodge right across the street from the parking lot. We were all standing in and we booked rooms. Everybody, there was probably 25, 30 of us up there.

After speaking to Ian's friend Charlie, who was the friend Ian had planned to meet to go hunting, authorities learned that Ian always stopped at a gas station in Cle Elum to fill up his gas tank and purchase provisions before heading out to their hunting spot. A detective went to the gas station and asked to review the surveillance footage from the evening of Saturday, May 16th.

While reviewing the video, they spotted Ian. Ian had filled up his gas tank and purchased several items, including beer, a bag of ice, and various snacks.

Then he left and pulled out of the gas station parking lot. The initial thought was that Ian must have gotten into some sort of accident or was stuck out in the wilderness with car trouble and no cell signal to call for help. Search and Rescue began looking for Ian, while his friends continued their own desperate search efforts. Honestly, we were just thinking it was a car accident.

Which also at the same time, in the back of our minds, you know, Ian was a really good driver. He was very reactive. He was agile. He was spry. Like, it still didn't make sense, you know? So we're thinking that and then we're thinking, you know, maybe he just went up too far the mountain and there's snow and he got stuck. And the whole time was find his car, find him.

And that's what we had in our head the whole time. It was a lot of, you know, looking over the side of the road, looking for accident debris, looking on all the logging roads going up as far as we could up top to where, you know, there was still snow on the ground and looking for tire marks or footprints, just any little detail that could be picked up. We tried.

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I start making phone calls and thinking, okay, you know, maybe he just decided to take a day off or whatnot. And on the fourth day, I'm still trying to figure out what's going on. And just really unapprehensive about having this bad feeling, you know. And four days after the fact, there was people up there looking for him. Friends of ours committed their time to going out there and trying to find him. And due to my job, I couldn't get out there until about the sixth day afterwards. It was a reality at that point.

Something's not right here and we need to figure this out. And so I came out there and with some quads and some friends and that was probably a good 15, 20 of us out there. We were just combing and scouring. The hardest thing I've ever had to do is I'm not sure looking for my brother and what if I find him. I mean, every second of every moment, just trying to like stuff that down enough to have my head together enough to deal with the reality of that may being a possibility, you know, is hard.

I mean, I never thought in a million years that I would be looking for my brother anywhere where he could be lost or hurt. You know, like he just, I would never see him getting himself in that kind of situation. You know, there's some people in this world apparently that are willing to set aside their humanity to survive.

We had the opportunity to speak with another friend, Sean. Ian's friend Sean and his wife immediately joined the group to search for Ian. Sean told us that this was not the first time his family had found themselves looking for a missing person, and that when he found out that something had happened to Ian, it was all too familiar.

Well, two years prior to finding out about EM's incident there, we lost our son in a car accident. And he just, he went missing. He didn't show up to work.

I read this on Facebook that Audrey, Ian's daughter, had posted that her dad was missing. And I was like, what the hell? And it was just too close. It was too close to too many similarities, you know? It's like, fuck, I've been in this situation before. It's not good. Let's just fucking go. And we live 300 miles away. I got absolutely zero sleep. You know, my wife is like, no, let's just wait. So it's Tuesday morning. We...

Wednesday comes, and I'm like, Rachel, I haven't slept. I can't. We have to fucking go up there. So we just fucking drove straight there. I mean, I couldn't let it go. It was too close. Too many similarities, you know? So I was like, let's just go. And that was it. We drove up there. And then we stayed up there for the next three months straight. The people of Cleom are amazing. Literally, just that community is...

Awesome. The search was treacherous, and Ian's family and friends knew that though Ian had made trips to this very same place on many occasions in the past, finding him in an area so densely wooded with little cell signal was going to be difficult. Sean told us more about that.

But that place is desolate up there. I mean, it is. You seriously, you could be walking up there and it's so thick. You know, that brush is so thick. If somebody seriously was 10 feet away from you, and unless you went over there and looked, you would walk right past it. You wouldn't see it. The mountain ranges, the different elevation changes, the terrain, the granite face, you know, the granite face mountains, all the...

all the mining, all the, the hunting trails, the game trails, so many places, you know, while I was up there, typically most people would go out there and just find breathtakingly beautiful. It turned into a really scary place because every single place was a hiding spot. Every single place was a fricking, a potential place that my buddy could have been. And

And we're going through on these four-wheelers, and we're going on and off the road. I'm walking five miles off of the trails and just going down into these gulches and trying to come up. And it's just, it's a proverbial needle in a haystack. When you get up on top of the mountains and you look over the area where they're searching, it's just, it is ambivalent.

endless. Things come into perspective, what you're looking for. He could have been 10 feet away from you and you would not have seen him unless you went over and looked behind that log. There's horse trails up there, hiking trails. There's caves. There's natural caves. They have wells up there that they've dug. There are 20, 30, 40 feet deep. You can't see the bottom.

The long, arduous search gave Ian's family and friends more time to think about all the possibilities of what could have happened to him. The question remained if this could be a case of self-harm. We know that Ian had been struggling after the breakup of his relationship, and Stephanie told us that he had expressed thoughts of self-harm in the past. But she felt like there was more to this, and that this wasn't a case of suicide.

It's hard because Ian has had those thoughts before. He has had. He told me everything and that that has been something he has considered, but he could never do it. He was never able to go through with it in his darkest times in his life.

He's had those thoughts. And how do you tell that to a police officer that he has had those thoughts in the past, but he would not do that now? That's why I never wanted to try to have that discussion with him because I knew it wasn't a possibility in at this time in this instance because of everything that he's been through.

But in the past, there were ideas, there were thoughts, there were actions that were taken. And I could never admit that to them because I knew 1000% that in this case and in this scenario, it was not a possibility. He was in a good spot. If he was going to go do something like that, he wouldn't have told anyone he was going out there and he would have done it.

He went to meet his friends. He was so excited about going turkey hunting. I could see it in the text message that he sent his friend. He was excited about moving in with his friend. He was positive about his future at the time. If he was negative about his future at the time, and I just had a conversation with him and he was upset, I had just seen him May 5th, Cinco de Mayo, he came. And that was the last time that I saw him. We made a video together. It was the

pretty much the beginning of the pandemic and we were joking about toilet paper and he we made a video of him grabbing our toilet paper and running out of the garage like he was going to steal it and he was jovial we were happy to see each other he was in a great mood we had an amazing visit it also didn't make sense to ian's friend sean that he'd hurt himself or that he'd gotten lost or injured in this area that he knew so well

He was very, very comfortable, especially with that area. The area that he was in is a very well-known camping area. He wasn't that far off the road where he would have camped. It was probably a mile and a half up off the highway. There were other campers up there where he was.

Ian went out there to, you know, decompress. You know, he grabbed up his beers and he went out there and probably turned up the music and fucking started throwing them back, you know. And it was piss-pouring rain. I mean, just really hard. I mean, they had the faucet on full blast that night. So he wasn't, you know, he wasn't out of fire or nothing like that out in Missouri or anything.

And then, several days into their search of what had become a massive area, Chandra explained how things took a frightening turn when one of their friends called and reported that they had spotted Ian's vehicle.

I think we were two days in. A search and rescue had brought out a canine unit. We were standing in the parking lot. She had a search dog with her and it was still pretty young. And so she was telling us all about the dog and how they do things. And we had some stuff of Ian's and we watched her do, you know, all the things that she needs to do to give the dog the scent and

I mean, it was really interesting, and it was something that kind of took a little bit of the constant insanity in your head off for a brief moment. It was when we were standing there, Jesse called, and we heard him say,

Somebody we found Ian's vehicle. There was somebody else in it in the back of the, the windows been shot out in the back. And then it was just panic, fear, anxiety.

Not understanding what was happening. I mean, it was just pure chaos. It was chaos. Every thought that you had been thinking this entire time, you know, we're looking for his truck, stock or crash, was gone. And we had this whole completely different scenario that is being thrown at us.

Ian's friend Stephanie and her husband were out looking for him with the group that Chandra mentioned when they spotted someone driving Ian's vehicle. Stephanie explained how this terrifying situation unfolded.

a whole caravan of people from Portland drove up there and, you know, just looking for him. And I remember seeing on a, on a Facebook post, one of his hunting buddies had said, you know, well, these are the areas that we go to. And he'd listed off like, oh, I don't know, like five or six different spots in that area where he had liked to go. And

For some reason, just one area in particular just kind of hit me in the face, so to speak. It's very dangerous terrain, especially in the early spring when it's wet and snow melting off. It's just, it's crazy dangerous. We're up there on this mountain road and we're so high up, you know, there's still snow on the road.

We're driving and we come across this little curve and that's when it just kind of gets like clear. And you've got like a clear line of sight in front of you, probably about a couple hundred yards or so. And then all of a sudden we see Ian's vehicle come around the corner coming at us.

And he's not going very fast. And we're like, oh, my God, is that Ian? We're thinking, was he able to get out? And he's on his way down. What's going on? We had pulled over to pull up next to him. And my husband was driving, and he rolled his window down. And Ian's vehicle pulled up next to us, and it wasn't Ian driving.

Ian's vehicle had, I'm sorry, he had very noticeable front end damage on his vehicle. He had had all kinds of stickers on his windows and stuff like that. But the main thing was, is that he had had notable damage from a previous accident on his vehicle. And, you know, we'd all known that because, you know, he'd sit there and laugh. He'd be like, oh, ha ha, you know, dumbass me, look what I did to my car, you know.

And so as soon as we saw the car, we knew, we knew it was his car. I mean, from even 200 yards away, we knew it was his car, but we just couldn't see the inside until he got closer. You know, we saw his car.

Then we saw somebody else driving it. We engaged in a brief conversation with him. Like we were, we were just shocked when we realized that that wasn't Ian driving. There's somebody else driving his car. You know, my husband rolls down the window and he's like, uh, Hey, how's it going? You know, it was just kind of like, you know, and then my husband starts asking him about the front end damage on his, on the vehicle.

Our friend who is sitting in the backseat of my Jeep, he goes, he says out loud, he goes, that's Ian's rig right there. That's that's Ian's rig.

And the guy driving says, man, I don't have time for this shit and just took off. And mind you, we knew that our friends were coming up behind us. So we got out the car trying to box him in, you know, on both sides. And we tried to reach him on these two-way radios that we had. And because of the mountain peaks and everything else, like they just weren't working. So we ended up firing a fire.

warning shot up into the air just to let our friends know behind us that something bad is happening and watch out, danger is coming your way. As soon as we fired off the warning shot, the guy driving my friend's vehicle

He stopped. He just stopped right there in the middle of the road and said, really? What the fuck? And we were all yelling at him and stuff. My husband was yelling at us to get back in the car and he was trying to turn the car around. And, you know, it was kind of a scramble fest at that point, you know, just kind of turned into a complete shit show. About that point is when my other friends came up from behind us around the corner and

And that's when the guy just took off. He just took off like a bat out of hell.

And so we all had to climb back into our cars, turn around and chase him at 50 miles an hour on some of these mountain roads. I don't think I've ever gone that fast in my life on roads like this. I mean, it was looking back on it. It was terrifying. The whole situation was terrifying. We ended up chasing him and, you know, he had a jump start on us, unfortunately, and he had gotten away.

This terrifying encounter that Ian's friends had with a mysterious man turned their search for their missing friend into a massive multi-agency manhunt focused on capturing an armed and dangerous fugitive.

The territory was vast and encompassed dense wilderness. Law enforcement had the latest technology, but even they were unable to communicate at times without any cell phone or radio signal.

Tomorrow's episode is called The Manhunt, and we're going to discuss the horrifying journey that took place after Ian's friends spotted the man driving his car. And we'll take you along for the search for Ian that spanned hundreds of thousands of acres and weeks of terror.

Our deputies were up in the woods on the day, on May 23rd, with Search and Rescue volunteers and Ian's friends and family. Our deputies were working with information from a Forest Service law enforcement officer that there was another stolen vehicle in the woods. And so they headed up there, thinking, well, that might be connected. And it was. When they got there, they...

then found, oh, well, there's the stolen car that the Forest Service identified. And now sitting right next to it was Ian's car, tucked way back in the woods, deeply concealed. And as they approached, then this strange guy pops up and takes off into the woods with something in his hand that looks to them like a gun.

I knew there was somebody out there.

That day was when our missing person case became a criminal something as

super effed up. Like, this is not Ian over a cliff, which is what we spent every day looking for is his car over a cliff, his car on the side of the highway. He got in an accident. He's stuck in the snow. Those were all the possibilities. There was never one second that what happened was even a possibility.

That murder or any kind of death other than a natural, an animal, an accident of some kind was even a possibility. Or even self-inflicted. I mean, whatever. But never somebody else taking his life was never a possibility. And that's what happened, so...

That brings us to the end of episode 292. I'd like to thank everyone who spoke with us for this series. 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. I'm on Twitter at The Vanished Pod and also on Instagram.

Thanks for listening.

Today is the worst day of Abby's life.

The 17-year-old cradles her newborn son in her arms. They all saw how much I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes.

and force them to secretly place their babies for adoption. In hidden corners across America, it's still happening. My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will. They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me. The godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern evangelical right and the

and the founder of Liberty University, where powerful men, emboldened by their faith, determine who gets to be a parent and who must give their child away. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.