Replay: Ian Eckles Part 2 - The Manhunt
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I think that, honestly, he's a lot smarter than people are giving him credit for. I think he does very well at manipulating people. I don't think that this was his first time. I just think that it might have been not something that had been planned on his end, but it wasn't hard for him. Some people in this world, apparently, that are willing to

set aside their humanity to survive. I don't understand how somebody could be so negligent with human life.

It's just a really helpless feeling, though, when you want to help and there's nothing you can do to help but wait for an update. When the updates happen, they can't tell you anything, which I totally understand because it is an active investigation and they can't tell you much. But it's very, very frustrating when you're out there and then they have to look at all possibilities, but you're just screaming inside and it's like, he's out there, he's out there somewhere, I know he is.

We don't know when it happened. We don't know what happened. And all you do when you're sitting there and you have this frantic conversation about somebody else driving this vehicle is the what ifs. Is he being held somewhere? Is he tied up? Are they holding him? Did they hurt him? Did they just let him go? Is his leg broken and he's trying to climb? It's all these what ifs. What ifs run through your head, just scenarios, different scenarios.

By May 23rd, 2020, Ian Echols had not been seen in a week. He had made plans with a friend to go hunting, but never showed up to their agreed meeting location. The next day, he didn't report to work, which was very unusual for Ian.

His family and friends had launched a massive search across a vast amount of territory that encompasses the Okanagan Wenatchee National Forest, along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Washington. They had been going for days without any sleep, searching tirelessly for Ian on nothing but desperation and adrenaline.

And then, Ian's silver FJ Cruiser bursts out of nowhere, bounding down the mountains toward them in what sounded like a horrible nightmare. But it was actually happening. Even more strange was the fact that Ian wasn't driving the car. And the man who was? Well, he might just be a serial killer. I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 293 of The Vanished, part two of Ian Eccles' story, The Manhunt.

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Yesterday, we brought you the story of 41-year-old Ian Echols, who was last seen on May 16, 2020, when he left his home to go turkey hunting for the weekend with a friend. Ian's steps can be traced through the afternoon and evening of May 16, but shortly after 7 p.m., Ian had vanished. By the time his hunting buddy arrived at their agreed-upon spot in the early morning hours of May 17, Ian was gone forever.

If you haven't already listened to yesterday's episode, we encourage you to hit pause and go listen to that first. It's called Ian Eccles Part 1, The Hunting Trip.

In order to understand the difficulty and scope of the search for Ian, you must first be able to picture where he was when he disappeared. We've never been to this place, so we asked many people to describe it to us. We also reviewed maps, drone, and satellite footage and did a lot of reading. We're going to try to give you a picture in words of this place, a lush mountainous area known as the Okanagan Wenatchee National Forest.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the forest encompasses 3.8 million acres along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington. You may remember the story of Richie Collins, who we covered in Episode 214. Richie also disappeared along the Cascade Mountains, or at least that's where his car was found, at the North Cascades National Park.

This entire region of Washington is magnificently beautiful and seems so peaceful. It's difficult to imagine that something so awful could happen there. But what makes this area so amazing also makes it extremely difficult to search. The forest is so large that it covers many different types of terrain.

including densely wooded forests filled with pine and spruce trees, lakes with wetlands and marshes, mountain slopes with caves and steep drop-offs. Looking for a missing person here makes finding a needle in a haystack sound easy. We really wanted to speak to someone who was involved in the search for Ian and knows the area well, in order to share with us what the forest feels like and looks like.

So that was one of the first questions we asked when we spoke to Inspector Christopher Whitsett of the Kittitas County Sheriff's Office, who was on the ground in the search for Ian, acting as the public information officer, disseminating updates to media and the public.

We're a county with a bunch of ground just to the east of King County, where Seattle and what we sometimes call Pugetropolis is. It's a high density, high population area with a bunch of people that come here to recreate because we have mountains and rivers and forests and all kinds of things. And so Ian was perfectly representative in this sense that he came here to hunt.

The area is to the town of Liberty, which is up there, and a recreational area, Mineral Springs, is kind of at the center of it. It's on Highway 97, which runs north from Ellensburg toward Wenatchee. As you approach Blewett Pass, I think you're probably above 3,000 feet. Blewett Pass is around 4,000. Around 3,000 feet at Mineral Springs, which is the area that this was centered at, it

It's an area that's known for recreational use like hunting and hiking. It's mountainous. It's deeply forested. The roads into it are, once you get off Highway 97, you're talking about forest service roads, which some are pretty good. They're gravel, but some of them are pretty good. And some of them are extremely rough. The ones that we ended up on for a great deal of this were some of the worst.

There are mines and creeks, which is in part because this is an area known historically for gold mining. And then also on top of one of the ridges where we spent time looking in the manhunt is a popular area for rock hounds, for people hunting agates and that sort of thing. So it's remote, it's rough, and most challenging of all, it's huge.

It's a giant cloth of Forest Service land and some Department of Natural Resource land. The difficulties in searching such a large area are something we'll come back to later. But we also heard from Ian's dad, Stephen, about what this area was like. This is a place Ian spent a lot of his time and was a peaceful sanctuary for him. So we wanted to hear about the forest from Stephen, who lives in Oregon and references the state for comparison.

It's wooded and it's most, a lot of it's not flat. It's a big area to search and it's not an easy area to search. You know, it's not flat land like eastern Oregon is a little more flat land and where he is, there's a lot of green vegetation up there and trees. There are some drop-offs up there. It's a possibility that, you know, it could have been pushed over a drop-off of some sort and be down in a

in a canyon or something that I don't know how accessible those canyons are up there. Sometimes to get into a canyon, you have to go 20 miles

up the road to actually get into the canyon from the flatland. Part of me, most of me wants to be optimistic and hope that we can get the remains back. And part of me is just, I guess it'll depend on what happens this summer if they

are able to find anything that they might think that is helpful and might get them up there and doing some more search and rescue. And in the summertime, the foliage, the trees, the shrubs, all that low-lying vegetation grows up. So it would cover up anything that was just laying there.

In the previous episode, we shared with you Ian's friend Stephanie's account about seeing someone else driving Ian's car through the forest. She told us that the group was exhausted and trying to keep up their momentum when Ian's car nearly ran them over. This is what she told us in part one. 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?

Thinking, you know, was he able to get out? And he's like on his way down, you know, like what's going on? We had pulled over to pull up next to him 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 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. 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. But we just couldn't see the inside until he got closer. Then we saw somebody else driving it. We engaged in a brief conversation with him. Like, 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, hey, how's it going? Then my husband starts asking him about the...

the front end damage on the vehicle, our friend who is sitting in the back seat of my Jeep, he says out loud, he goes, that's Ian's rig right there. 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 wave 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 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 was

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 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. Ian's friend Chandra told us that this terrifying account felt like the turning point in the search for Ian. I think we were up there for six days, seven days, and we maybe slept an hour at night, maybe. Slack of sleep. You can't turn off. There's just no turn off button at that point. You're full drive. It was scary. It's still scary.

Once one of our groups had made contact with this person in his vehicle, the police finally started to take it seriously. Because, yeah, they were putting search and rescue up there, but it was, excuse my language, I just feel like it was half-assed. Not search and rescue, but the police themselves. It just wasn't, I guess, the best experience ever.

with one of them in particular, but we kept going and going and going. You know, we weren't going to stop until we found something. And we finally did. And that is what we needed to light a fire under their asses and get them moving. Like, hey, we've been serious about this the whole time. We've been telling you, we've been telling you. Finally, that did it.

Ian's sister Stephanie expressed that she also feels as though the sighting of Ian's car was the pivotal moment that changed everything. That day was when our missing person case became a criminal case.

something is 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

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 I think it was an, oh crap moment for them. I don't think that they were blowing it off. They were taking it seriously and they were doing everything that they could

But they weren't thinking that it could be that bad, as bad as it turned out to be. I don't think that that was even a possibility for them. Then it was. Then I think that once he was seen in my brother's vehicle, then it was a, oh, no, now we have a big problem because there's a lot of people out here.

And Memorial Day is coming and it's really nice weather. Everybody's coming up here in their Jeeps and there's a lot of people out here camping. People are hunting. There's a lot of people on this mountain, but there's also a really bad person on this mountain that is a thief at the minimum. And we have a little bit of a problem.

Stephanie had remained at the hotel where the group of friends and family had set up camp, so that the police could relay information and she could act as the family representative, in the event that there was any news about Ian. She recounted for us what she felt when the group came back and told her what they had seen on the mountain.

When that news was brought back to us, when our friends got back and explained what had just went down. And of course, they're all just shaken, just just shook, just in a panic. They came come back and give us this news. You just kind of lose it a little bit because you don't even know what to think that you don't want to believe it. It's like WTF that those three words just go through your head and you just start to panic.

I had my closest friends next to me. They stayed by my side the whole time. Bless them because I was a complete wreck and I needed to have somebody be there to keep me sane because I absolutely wasn't sane at that time. And I'll admit that. I mean, I'm talking to myself. I was somewhere else. I was another person. I wasn't there. Like I was there physically, but I was not there. I mean, you look in my eyes and I wasn't there.

When that news was found out, then, you know, a call was made to my parents that they needed to get out there. I called my boyfriend. I'm like, you need to get out here because we're going out tomorrow and we're going to we're going to look for him. My brother, Nathan, was on his way out there and.

I just, I just remember, you know, we were all frantic and we were all trying to talk in a circle and it's hard to get a word in edgewise and, and everyone's talking. And I just lost it. I just like started screaming. And I was like, nobody can call my brother right now and tell him that nobody can tell him while he's driving out here that that happened. You got to wait till he gets here. And I know that that was hard for him and, and maybe he should have known and somebody should have told him immediately, but I couldn't imagine.

imagine my brother. I mean, I knew how I felt, Dan, just standing there and I wanted to pass out. I did not want him to know that while he's driving out there carrying a trailer with ATVs on it through, you know, the traffic that he's in because I knew he would frantically try to get there. And I didn't want I wanted him to make it there safe because I'd already lost one brother. And I was afraid that if somebody told him what was found that

he may get hurt on his way trying to get out there and I couldn't bear that. He deserved to know and now I feel bad for trying to shelter him from that until he got there but he was listening to the police scanner on the way out there and he heard that and he he

you found out on the way driving out there. I'm just glad he made it safely. When someone's going to give you bad news, they want you to sit down. They don't want to tell you while you're driving. They don't, you know, because you just, it affects your mental state. I just remember him pulling up and this was the first family member being out there after I'd been out there for days and just missing and under the conditions and circumstances that I was under. I loved having my friends, but I just wanted to hug my brother. That's all I remember is I just wanted to hug my brother.

wanted to hug my brother because he knew how I felt. I know it's different for my parents. It's different for our friends. It's different for everyone when you lose someone. But I knew that he knew exactly how I felt. And I just wanted to hug him. I ran to him and hugged him. And he immediately just got stuck together and went out. They went out and looked for him.

It was becoming more apparent that there was a dangerous person lurking in the woods. In order to protect the safety of the community and all of the people flooding into the area to camp, law enforcement began to limit access to certain areas, which limited the areas where friends and family could continue their search for Ian. They found my brother's vehicle along with another vehicle that was stolen near it. And then it was when they found the vehicle,

And it was very, very bad and grim and not looking good. And then they had a really big problem because he was gone and they had the car, but he was still out there. And my brother was not accounted for, even though there was a lot of evidence in the back of his vehicle that he was in danger and probably not with us. And then we couldn't search. They blocked off the whole mountain once...

They knew that there was somebody out there that was...

a criminal. They didn't know what kind. They had to make the mountain safe and started blocking off areas and kicking people off the mountain. They couldn't have people out there sleeping. And, you know, there were other things that were coming up missing from campers, you know, coolers and things out of their cooler clothing that they had hung out or, but we went around and talked to as many people as we could. There were a few times that I was able to go out and

They sent me to areas I feel like that they knew there was no possibility of me coming across them, and not flyers, just to protect me from being in the thick of it all, but also giving me something to do because they knew I was absolutely going crazy. Inspector Whitsett told us about law enforcement locating Ian's car on the same day his friend spotted someone else driving it.

When our agents or our deputies were up in the woods on the day, on May 23rd, with Search and Rescue volunteers and Ian's friends and family, and somebody contacted Alcantara driving Ian's car, and then Alcantara took off. 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, later identified as Alcantara, pops up and takes off into the woods with something in his hand that looks to them like a gun. Right.

And so that initiated our call for resources, the potential picture that came together for us during the early days of the investigation and kind of heightened our sense of the danger of what we were dealing with.

Inspector Wittset's account of this mysterious armed man jumping out at law enforcement as they approached two vehicles they believed to be stolen sounded terrifying. And it was. One of the officers who encountered the unknown man at the location of the vehicles wrote this in his narrative that we received from law enforcement. Special thanks to Tim from Crawl Space for reading this for us.

As we approached the location of the expedition, we had to come up a long hill below where it sat on a ridgetop. I could see the vehicle skylined up through the trees as we approached. We were on quads, Deputy McBride on one and Detective Bloom and I on the other. We parked the quads on the 133 Spur Road. We proceeded up towards the expedition.

which had previously been driven up through the brush to the ridge top, which was actually the very top of the ridge, or a knoll, as all sides sloped down away from where the expedition was.

As we neared the expedition, I saw something silver parked further back in the brush on the knoll behind the expedition. I then saw that it was the silver FJ Cruiser. It was parked in a very hidden spot, obviously trying to be concealed. And we were out with a stolen Ford Expedition. Combine that with the fact that someone that the family and friends do not know was seen driving the FJ Cruiser several hours prior on the 9738 road.

and we became extremely cautious about what he had just located. We took cover behind large pine trees. I called out and announced Sheriff's Office several times. If anyone was there, they already knew we were too, as you had to drive right below the site on quads to access. So I announced multiple times. There was no response and no movement from any of the vehicles. After a couple of minutes, I heard,

Detective McBride, who was off to my left or north, yelled for someone to get on the ground. He advised that someone had jumped from behind the expedition and ran off into the woods, downhill toward the northwest. He said the male had no shirt on and was carrying something black in his hands. The expedition was between me and the suspect, so I could not see him. We did not pursue the suspect as the vehicles on top escalated

had not been cleared yet, so we did not know if others were still in or around the vehicles. We knew the FJ had weapons in it, as Ian had been going hunting. It was possible that the suspect that had fled had a weapon in his hand. We had a missing person that had not been heard from in over seven days, which was completely out of character for him.

and a stolen vehicle right next to the missing person's FJ Cruiser, and a suspect that fled on foot with something black in his hands. Right after this, we heard a group of Jeeps or quads coming down the 133 spur toward us. Detective Bloom ran back to have them stop and turn around and get safely away from the area. Otherwise, they would have to continue right down the road towards where the suspect had fled.

Detective Bloom turned them around, Detective McBride notified KITCOM of the situation, and I covered the vehicles. The 133 spur appeared to be a dead end at the time, so we maintained a defensive perimeter uphill to the west to keep the suspect and anyone else that may be in the camp from coming that direction and to protect the Jeeps that had been turned around. We continued to maintain our position until SRT arrived.

We briefed SRT, they took over perimeter duties, and we rode back to the staging area until the area was secured. Once cleared and secured, we responded back up to the NOL to check out the scene further and retrieve our quads. Once back up at the scene, it was determined that tow tracks would come and retrieve the two vehicles. Deputy McBride and I then cleared the scene for the night.

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The news that Ian's vehicle had been found was a double-edged sword. Everyone was hopeful that he would be found immediately, but the circumstances indicated that Ian probably would not be found alive. Ian's sister Stephanie told us about this point in the search.

the beginning, we tried to get news people involved with him being missing in Kent and in different areas. And there wasn't a whole lot of people interested in him being missing until they got news that his vehicle was found. And then everyone wants to do an interview now because it's not just about Ian, it's about somebody else. And

We couldn't even talk to them at that point. We couldn't. There was nothing that we couldn't even form sentences. We were so in shock. We couldn't talk to these people. But at least they got the information out there and let the public know that there is a danger out there. But it just hurt that it was about him and it wasn't more about him than it was Ian. Because at that point, they had to stop looking for Ian and start looking for him. And that was hard.

Because every day, imagining where he is or if he's suffering or if he's not suffering or wherever he is was just hard to think that he was out there alone and that there was nobody that could even go out there because it was dangerous. They couldn't even send search and rescue volunteers out there. Anybody who was out there looking was law enforcement and they had just droves of law enforcement. The FBI, they had ICE, they had murderers.

marshals, I mean, fish and rescue, everybody from all areas, even Seattle. Ian's dad, Stephen, shared with us that against all odds, he continued to hold out hope that Ian was still okay and out there somewhere alive.

We got a phone call that they found his car. So we figured, well, okay, they'll probably find him. So we drove up to Cle Elum and spent some time up there with the people that were up there hoping to find what was going on. But at the same time, I mean, the police had the mountain, that area locked down pretty much. So...

You couldn't really go up in there. So we went up there and we just kind of hung out and hoping against hope because every day that went by, it was like, okay, you can survive. I mean, if you're wounded or something, you can survive for quite a long while if you have water. I mean, if you don't have food, you can still survive. So we just kept hoping against hope that things would change.

work out for, you know, that maybe somebody just stole his car. When sheriff's deputies stumbled upon Ian's vehicle on May 23rd, they were actually looking for another vehicle that had been reported stolen in mid-May, just days before Ian disappeared. According to police records, officers were operating on a tip that a stolen vehicle, a green Ford SUV, had been spotted in the forest.

In the last known area that Ian's silver Toyota FJ Cruiser had been, officers spotted a vehicle resembling the one that had been reported stolen, and next to it was a vehicle that appeared to be Ian's. As they approached the cars, a man jumped out of the brush and fled.

beginning a search for him that would go on for several weeks. But what investigators didn't know at the time was that this mystery man, who you heard Inspector Whitsett call Alcantara, and who we will discuss later on in this episode,

was the person of interest in a homicide in another city. Law enforcement wasn't able to piece this together until they located Ian's vehicle, and next to it, the vehicle belonging to the homicide victim from King County, Washington. 80-year-old Nancy Holst had been found deceased in her home on May 11, 2020.

She wasn't found until approximately six weeks after her death, when a neighbor called in a welfare check to law enforcement after they had observed that her home's door had been ajar for a while. According to police records, law enforcement entered the home and found Nancy Holst, and investigators and forensic professionals estimated that she had died around the end of March of 2020.

when the entire nation was shutting down as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to worsen, with Washington state being one of the hardest hit areas at that time.

We don't know exactly whether it was due to the pandemic conditions, the advanced state of decomposition, or the lack of any specific evidence pointing to murder at the scene initially. But officials did not rule her death a homicide and didn't think much of it until her family reported that things were missing from her home, including her car, which was later reported stolen. Due to this, Nancy Holst was cremated without an autopsy having been conducted.

For Ian's friend Stephanie, learning this information about the man she witnessed driving Ian's car was frightening. What was he capable of? If he had harmed Ian, where could he be?

We later found out that he had just been pretty much living up in the woods on his own for a couple months since March, like early March. He had been living up in the woods, stealing people's stuff and breaking into cabins and creating havoc. And then later on, we learned that there was a really, really, really strong possibility that he had killed another lady.

In another town, you know, an older lady, she was found dead in her home and nobody had found her for a while because of COVID. And so by the time they did find her, that she wasn't in any state to be really recognized or anything like that. So I think most people just wrote it off as, you know, old age. And there was no autopsy done and her body was cremated.

Ian's vehicle was found next to her vehicle, which he had also stolen, the suspect had stolen, and was going around the local area and committing crimes and burglaries. And he was just wreaking havoc in the community, just stealing people's cars and stuff.

Stealing their guns and stealing their equipment and camping gear and their food and their beer and just, you know, whatever he can get his hands on, he stole it. You know, if he thought he could use it, he stole it. Once police began to suspect that they were looking for a man who had committed one murder, and it was starting to look like maybe two murders, the search became too dangerous for volunteers and Ian's family and friends, as you had heard his sister Stephanie mention.

At this point, the police relied heavily on the support and efforts of other agencies. Inspector Whitsett told us more about that.

The work between agencies in Washington state and here in the rural middle part of Washington state especially is critical to us being able to handle an incident of anything like this scale. Six different law enforcement agencies that participated with us in the manhunt and investigation that began when Alcantara was discovered in possession of Ian's vehicle and Nancy Holstein's vehicle from Falls City. The

Cooperation happened at every stage when our call for resources and immediately we had dogs and helicopters and trained searchers and SWAT teams from neighboring counties and jurisdictions here within the county. Our own tactical response team is made up of officers from a number of different agencies inside our county. So we had local, we had

interlocal, and then within days, there were state and federal agencies that were cooperating. It was a huge effort that kind of went forward in spasms as we contacted Alcantara on one other occasion and as we found evidence of where we believed he was and as we learned more about him. The ability for us to access other agencies' reports and information was also critical as we figured out

who we were dealing with. When the vehicles were eventually seized and pulled out of the woods for processing, the Washington State Patrol sent a crime team or a crime scene response team. They are specialists in evidence recovery, so they actually executed search warrants on the vehicles to search them. They discovered evidence in the cars that then helped us to identify Alcantara

We learned more about him because of other agencies' records, and I was able to contact his family. At every stage and every piece of this, the sheriff's office was just at the hub of a wheel of cooperating agencies, and we couldn't do it by ourselves. A typical case of this kind, we would...

contact a search and rescue coordinator. If and when we have information about where the person is likely to be, we're going to tap into our search and rescue organization to try to make sure that they're not out there somewhere needing help. And search and rescue were involved in this case as well. Once it was believed that Ian did make it over to the Liberty area based on

cell phone data that was kind of mined into. They were participating in the search along with deputies and with Ian's friends and family. So ordinarily, the way it works is the Sheriff's Office oversees search and rescue by statute in Washington State. But the search and rescue, the bulk of search and rescue work is done by volunteers. And we have a great body of volunteers who they go through search and rescue training and academy and all kinds of experience in doing

doing evidence searches and doing backcountry searches. And there's mounted search teams, all kinds of specialties within this group of dozens and dozens of people who spend hundreds of hours working in these areas.

The value of using these volunteers is that they are trained to know something about what they're looking for. And they're trained to have a low threshold of what catches their notice. So that's a key piece of their training in how to search, what to search for, and to just not be afraid to say, huh, that doesn't look right. Stop and let somebody know. And that's

And that's what the role of then our search and rescue coordinating deputies, they have law enforcement training. And then they know how to actually deal with rules of evidence, how to take custody of things, how to secure the scene and call for the right kinds of resources for investigations.

Investigators did everything they could to try to obtain information from Ian's phone, even though the device was and still is missing. They sent emergency subpoenas for his phone records and GPS ping data to his carrier, and also contacted other government agencies with advanced technology in determining precise locations on cell phone pings.

In many missing persons cases, you hear us say that the person's phone died or was powered off. But with Ian's disappearance, there's a twist. He was in such a remote location of the forest.

that there was little to no cell phone signal. So we don't know if Ian's phone was destroyed, turned off, or if it simply ended up in an area unable to reach a cell tower to communicate. This is what Inspector Whitsett told us about that and how this affected law enforcement's ability to communicate during what was becoming a more and more dangerous search. With every hour that passed,

and no sign of Ian or the armed man that fled the site where Ian and Nancy's vehicles were found.

Essentially, the last town is where we know where he dropped off the map for us because the place where he was was extremely difficult to communicate. There's no cell, essentially no cell coverage out there. Even police radios had very limited range. It was a logistical challenge. Yeah, the deputies who initially found him at the stolen vehicles, their ability to communicate out was extremely restricted. They were kind of pinned.

And in order to communicate with them up on the hill, we had to set up a relay station. It was a challenge throughout the entire operation.

The lack of communication abilities between law enforcement was scary enough, but Memorial Day was quickly approaching. And even with the country on lockdown, investigators knew that the park would be busy, with people hoping to take a safe break from being stuck indoors. With no sign of their person of interest, they had to take action quickly.

We worked hard to communicate frequently and clearly with the public about what was happening, what we knew, and what we were doing. So that included work with the land managers, the Forest Service, and the Department of Natural Resources, with our county's Department of Public Works, who put up barricades. We printed a bunch of signs. I mean, we worked with media to...

tell everybody that we could reach exactly what was happening and exactly why that the area was closed because of a suspected homicide. There was suspected violent criminal. We put out the information that we had about Alcantara because, of course, we were asking the public for help. We, like I say, we put up signage at every access point to these closed areas to let people know, don't go in. This is why. This is what's happening. This is what we need you to look for. There

There are a lot of, like, second homes and cabins and recreational properties in this area, and we worked with the owners of those cabins. While hundreds of officers and law enforcement agents searched, secured the area, and looked for Ian and other physical evidence, other investigators were quickly chasing down leads about the person who was coming into clear focus as their person of interest, a man by the name of Jorge Alcantara Gonzalez.

What we learned about our suspect and the circumstances was that he knew this area intimately. His family reported to us

that he had spent something like six months here in the previous year. His brother brought him up here at his request and dropped him off in the woods and said, well, how are you going to get by? And he told his brother, well, I have stashes of equipment and supplies nobody will ever find. He told his sister about his adventures panning for gold. And so he was intimately familiar with it.

and very comfortable. And we know from evidence that we've developed in the investigation that the area that he knew well was not little. It was a huge area of the mountains. So the initial area of our search was a few square miles. And then as we learned more, the area that we felt it necessary to close to the public, evacuate all these recreational users out of, and we had to close it off from

from the hopeful search to find Ian at that time, grew eventually to around 150 square miles from the border with Chelan County to the north, deep down in Darragh County.

Law enforcement knew that they outnumbered their suspect, with so many officers on the ground. But this was a person who knew the details of the terrain and the forest intimately, and that was working against them. They learned from Alcantara's family that he had spent a significant period of time in the forest area, and several burglaries over the spring of 2020 had now been associated with this man.

The items reported stolen meant that he had a significant stash of items needed to survive, but also firearms and ammunition. This made the search incredibly dangerous, and they needed to get a plan together to make a safe arrest without risking any more lives. Here's Inspector Whitsett again.

At some point, it became a part of our strategy to take resources away from the person we were hunting. We would find little camps and take them. All the stashes of equipment and supplies that he was talking about, we found a bunch of those. And we would take them so that he would be driven out of the area and have to search. And then we worked with the owners of all these recreational properties and cabins to tell them, look,

Let us go to your place. Give us a call if you have one of these places. Let us check it and see if it's secure. And then those around the area, we asked them to continually look out for each other and for each other's properties. And that was eventually what led to the arrests.

Ian had been missing for four weeks, and the man who had escaped from law enforcement on May 23rd was still on the run. Investigators were desperate to find this man and hoped he would lead them to Ian. On Sunday, June 14th, a homeowner in the residential community of the Teen Away Forest, not far from the Cle Elum area where Ian was last seen, was out walking through their neighborhood when

when he saw a stranger inside the home of a neighbor he was acquainted with. The homeowner called 911, and multiple agencies quickly responded and established a secure perimeter around the home. In the preceding days, law enforcement had gathered intelligence that their suspect was in this area, based on evidence they found during ground searches, in the progressive closure of more and more forest land.

This had limited the areas to which their person of interest could still be, and they knew almost immediately that the uninvited guest in this home was their person of interest. The interaction could have very quickly gone wrong, but Jorge Alcantara Gonzalez was arrested after surrendering to law enforcement.

So who is Jorge Alcantara Gonzalez? We told you earlier about the other woman whose death is tied to Mr. Alcantara, Nancy Holst. We also learned that Alcantara was tied to the murder of a transient woman in Lewis County, Washington. We contacted Lewis County to see if we could obtain more information about this third murder, but they declined to share anything with us.

This is what Inspector Whitsett told us about Mr. Alcantara. Once they determined he was the person of interest that had fled law enforcement and was armed and dangerous.

His name is public information. It's Jorge Alcantara Gonzalez. He was born in 1986. He's a person from Mexico. He has history of living at different addresses, mostly on the west side of our state. And as far as we know, his only contact with our area, his relationship to our area, is this special attachment to this mountainous area around Liberty that

where he came to live and hunt for gold, I guess. When he was found, the stolen vehicle that he was found in possession of, in addition to Ian's vehicle, was reported stolen out of Fall City.

in circumstances that immediately led us to be very concerned. The woman who had owned that vehicle was found dead in her home

on May 11th, 2020, having been the coroner or medical examiner in King County determined that they believed she was deceased for about six weeks at that point. We learned later through talking to his family and investigation that Alcantara had shown up with her vehicle right about that time. And then we also learned that only days after that or within a week of that or so,

He was here in Kittitas County committing burglaries in that vehicle. So what we know is he came to our county driving a stolen vehicle that belonged to a dead one. And that we learned very early on and combined with the circumstances of that he was found driving Ian's vehicle in these suspicious circumstances led us to be

Extremely concerned about what kind of a person he was, but not shocked that he hasn't been. In terms of Alcantara, there was the suspicious death of Nancy Holst. I believe there is, in another county in western Washington, a homicide in which Alcantara has been a person of interest.

I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and I hope you'll join us for Season 4 of Dateline Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them. You will want to listen closely. Maybe you could help investigators solve a mystery. Dateline Missing in America. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

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Ian's brother Nathan told us what he's learned about Mr. Alcantara since he was arrested and his possible involvement in the mysterious death of Nancy Holst. Apparently he was living in the basement from what I heard of this elderly lady who owned this vehicle that he ended up having when he was apprehended. But I think he was taking advantage of the situation. And this woman just mysteriously, you know, she's found Alcantara.

by somebody. I can't speculate really, but the fact is that she was gone and she was old. So maybe her family, I'm sure her family thought she died of natural causes and just decided, hey, we'll have her cremated. So it wasn't until after that that all this other stuff had come to light and her vehicle was found with a murder suspect basically. And then that's too late to do any forensics on her or what her cause of death was because the family

There was no reason to suspect anything at that point, but one can only speculate if there was foul play there or whatever the case may have been and how he ended up with her vehicle on the other side of this mountain. And that vehicle that he'd taken from her was reported to have been involved in a string of robberies and, I think, home robberies. And a bunch of the stuff that was reported stolen, I believe, was actually recovered. And that's why the property crime stunt

as far as what he's in prison for right now. Though Ian has not been found, police found significant evidence to suggest that he was likely murdered in or near his vehicle in the first few hours of May 17, 2020, just before he was supposed to meet his friend Charlie. This is what Inspector Whitsett shared with us about what law enforcement has learned and believes happened. Given the terrain and the situation,

And the fact that we believe that when Alcantara was contacted on the 23rd, that was six days after we think Ian was killed. I'll just say that there's what we believe is conclusive forensic evidence in the vehicle that Ian was driving in his Toyota FJ that there was a violent struggle that happened

we believe was the cause of his death. There is evidence of gunfire in the confrontation at the car, in the battle at the car, whatever you want to call it. At this point, we don't believe that one of Ian's guns was the murder weapon. And Nathan told us what he's learned from the police, court hearings, and the media about the scenario that may have ultimately led to Ian's death.

I can only speculate. My brother was always boisterous. You know, this guy was camping out in a little cabin. I've been all over those woods and literally a block away from where the crime occurred. Everybody believes the crime occurred because the GPS shut off right there that this person had with him. And right around the time that he was probably getting up or an hour after or so to get up to go turkey hunting, maybe he had talked to this guy.

in the evening where he had seen him at the store or whatever, you know, and follow, you know, I imagine he was just walking down the road and my brother was like, Oh, Hey, here I'm up here on me. My buddy's little turkey hunting or something, you know, like,

just being boisterous. And this guy may have seen opportunity because he was the same size as my brother. Maybe he wanted clothes. Maybe he wanted his guns. Maybe he seen that he had weapons. And this other guy obviously had weapons. And I believe a .45 caliber slug was recovered. I could be wrong. There's just no actual bones and flesh. There's plenty of blood, though, and other evidence. He had my brother's wallet, his debit card, his ID, his phone.

Washington State parking permit, like he had his guns, and we're sure that the crime happened. I mean, the detectives know better than I do. I just found evidence when I was there, and I found broken glass on two different spots on the mountain that were five miles apart that was my brother's broken glass from his back window that was shot out because the stickers were still stuck to it from the ones that he had on the back of his window. And they've got lots of evidence, you know, bullet holes,

They were shot from the inside of the vehicle, one through the roof, I believe, and one through the back of his vehicle. And I believe there was bullets recovered from the dashboard that were fired from outside in through the back window. Apparently looked like he may have been standing on the side of his vehicle. The pool of blood that was in the back of my brother's vehicle was completely unsurvivable. To have that much blood back there and maybe brain matter on the back of the driver's seat

Mr. Alcantara is currently in prison serving sentences on convictions stemming from the crimes that occurred around the time of Ian's murder, including the burglaries of several cabins throughout the forest. While he has not been charged or convicted in any crime involving Ian's death specifically, the police believe there is no other possibility in Ian's disappearance.

Prosecutors have decided to delay any future homicide prosecution while they prepare their case for Ian's murder, while Alcantara remains imprisoned and the community is safe. This is what Inspector Whitsett told us about that.

If Ian had run away, it's hard to really just disappear, especially when you don't have any reason to disappear. As Ian didn't. Everything that we've learned about him from his friends and family confirms that he was tied into his life. He was tied into his work. He was tied into his friends. He was super tied into his family. And nobody thinks that Ian just ran away.

Secondly, he left everything. There's been absolutely no indication that his finances have been touched, his property has been touched, everything that he had with him. Essentially, everything has been accounted for, and there would have been a peep. If he had tried to disappear, which we have absolutely no reason to think that he would have, there would have been something that would have popped up. We definitely believe there's evidence that

Ian's disappearance was involuntary and that it was caused by a specific person and that he's gone because he was killed. Our priority right now is to find Ian.

The case against Alcantara Gonzalez is still building. We're still working at that. There's still forensic evidence is being developed, and we anticipate bringing that criminal charge. He's in prison, having pled guilty to a number of property crimes, some of which have a more or less direct connection with Ian's death, such as the possession of his stolen car.

car and gun and some of which are just other stuff. He is still facing federal firearms violations. Faced with the possibility that Ian was murdered, we asked his sister Stephanie what she believes the motive was to kill Ian. The hunting trip seemed so innocent and something that Ian did often and found so much joy in. What could possibly have gone wrong? This is what Stephanie told us that she thinks.

Things happen because somebody sees a really good opportunity. It's not necessarily random, but say, you know, you see somebody set down a $50 bill and you're a thief. You see that opportunity. You're like, I see a $50 bill sitting right there. I'm just going to whoop. So when you see a guy that's your height and your build, and I don't know,

Maybe you could wear his clothes because you don't have any and he's got a vehicle and maybe yours is dead. I don't know. This is all hypothetical. You see a guy who's six foot eight and you're five foot six. Are you going to mess with him out in the woods? I don't think so. You're going to kill that guy and take his stuff. What's the point of that? You got to try to get rid of a six foot eight guy.

No. You know, you may be thinking, I could take a guy. He's my height. He's my weight. You scuffle. I got this. That's my theory. It was a crime of opportunity. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That guy was in the right place at the right time for his benefit. And it worked out for one of them, not the other. Meanwhile, Ian's friend Chandra said that she feels there might be a mental health aspect to Ian's probable murder.

He is smart. I mean, he eluded the police for 23 days. He had random stashes all over that mountain. He had places he could go no matter what. He knew how to get away from the dogs. You know, he may be mentally unhealthy, but he's intelligent.

He is sick. But, you know, his story is it was, you know, he just came up on it and it was like he said something like something having to do with God. It was like God had, you know, given him this gift of this car.

As you heard law enforcement say, Mr. Alcantara has not been charged with Ian's murder at this time. But there is a lot of physical and circumstantial evidence that implicates him. If he did kill Ian, why did he do it? Next week, in the final part of Ian's story, you will hear from Mr. Alcantara himself in his own words. And we think you'll be as stunned as we were. Stay tuned.

The missing person that we've been talking about, his name's Ian. Okay, I don't know if you knew his name. His name's Ian. Okay, so you remember that name, Ian? I don't know. I never saw anybody. Was there a cell phone in the car? No. No cell phone? No cell phone. So that, like I said, let me do believe that he walked away to get some help. To get a charge or to get a jump start or a new battery. What we, you know, like you were surprised to find Ian's car missing.

What we really want to know is what happened to Ian. That's why we've been looking so hard. And again, just let me explain a little bit for him because you ended up with his car. And one of the things that the family, remember the three people that you said that contacted you, that shot at you? They, since you don't remember the exact conversation, one of the things that they remember you saying was, it's not what it looks like. And you got back in the car.

I don't think you intended whatever happened Jorge, but we're giving you an opportunity. I can tell you right now what the family wants is they want to find Ian and they want to give him a proper burial. That's what they want. That's what I'm saying again. It's like now you're saying that I'm responsible.

That brings us to the end of episode 293. 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 TheVanishedPod and also on Instagram. If you enjoy this show, subscribe now and leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now.

Thanks for listening.

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