Katherine Hammontre Sundquist
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Going through all these different theories and talking to this person over here or this person over there, you generate all these different stories and scenarios and then it's always a dead end. There's always another question. There's always something that doesn't make sense or doesn't fit. And you end up right back at the same place of just not knowing. I'd like to think my aunt's alive and well somewhere. The likelihood of that is slim.

How come, you know, there's no trace of my mom or the dog? You can't tell me Tootsie didn't go to the bathroom up there, but I guess they didn't find anything. At some point she had said, well, if I get bit by a snake, don't come looking for me because I won't be there. And to this day, I mean, five years, every single day I think about my mom and I go over this whole scenario over and over and over in my head. And that always pops up and I think, okay, something happened to her. You don't just disappear.

In April 2019, Katherine Hammontree Sundquist embarked on a hike with friends and her beloved dog, Tootsie, in a national park near San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico.

Their destination was a picturesque waterfall. However, just days before the hike, Catherine had injured her foot and not long into the trek, she mentioned to her friends that her foot was hurting. Cat decided to stay behind at the first set of pools with her dog, while the others continued on. From that point, it would have taken the group roughly 50 minutes to make it to the waterfall and back to where Catherine was waiting.

By the time the group returned, both Catherine and Tootsie had vanished. Despite extensive searches of the area, no trace of Catherine or her dog have ever been found. After word spread about Cat's disappearance, rumors began to swirl around the community of San Felipe. People were pointing fingers in every direction. But more than five years later, the mystery of what happened to Catherine remains unsolved.

I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 470 of The Vanished, Katherine Hammond-Tree Sundquist's story.

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They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

By the spring of 2019, 68-year-old Katherine Hammontree Sundquist, a native of Seattle, had long since left the Pacific Northwest behind.

and settled in San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico, located on the eastern shore of the Baja California Peninsula, about 125 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. San Felipe is a coastal town known for its stunning beaches. This move marked a new chapter in Kat's life, one she fully embraced by immersing herself in the local community and embracing its culture. Katherine's daughter, Desiree, shared her insights into her mother's decision to move to San Felipe.

and what her life was like in this new place. My mom, Catherine Hammontree, she moved down to San Felipe, Baja California, about 25 years ago, maybe close to 30. It originated as a small fishing port. She comes from Seattle, was born in Montana, but she's always wanted a place in Mexico. I remember actually her taking me down to San Felipe when I was about

six or seven, I believe. I'm not sure exactly how she came about finding San Felipe, but she had traveled down there when I was a child. And what made her move down there, as a matter of fact, she went to one of those seminars, timeshare or something. And

actually won a raffle or something, won a piece of land down there. And so her and her boyfriend at the time had traveled down there and just fell in love with the town and decided to go into the town because the plot of land that she had got was a little bit out of town. They found a little house right in town, three or four streets from the ocean, which was pretty cool, and decided to buy it.

She had been living there ever since and opened up one of the first internet outlets to San Felipe and managed it called The Net. And you could come in and check your mail, send emails, print stuff off. And there wasn't any place other than that at the time in San Felipe for internet.

or whoever that were seasonal residents down in San Felipe to check their mail. She managed it for many years and then also had a blog on the website, Cat's Corner, that basically had information about San Felipe and the

town news. So tourists, if they were kind of wondering what was going on in town, she had her little blog. And she also did some virtual touring on her site as well. My mom really loved San Felipe and she promoted San

the safety of San Felipe because San Felipe really is a great little town. It's not too far from the border. And that progressed to her building websites for a lot of the local hotels, businesses. It was kind of a different path. She was a paralegal for many years in Seattle and

and in California. So she's always been very computer savvy. I mean, everybody knew Kat. They called her Kat or La Gata Loca, which is the crazy cat. Because my mom was a little crazy, but everybody loved her. And she also did a lot for the town. I mean, she worked with the Rotary Club and Las Amigas. And these are organizations that do stuff locally for the town. She also taught

She taught at UABC, taught English to Spanish children, and then taught Spanish to a lot of the adults around town. She did two different classes. She was very involved. She and the rest of the town really considered her a local. She did eventually get dual citizenship.

After Catherine left Seattle, she rarely returned for visits. Desiree was still quite young when her mom made the big move, and more often than not, it was Desiree who traveled to San Felipe to spend time with her mother.

I think I was about 22. Well, initially, I made the trip down there. She really wanted me to come and check it out, and I was all for it. My first trip down, I took a Greyhound bus, 36 hours. And then so as years progressed, yeah, I would make trips to go down there. And she came up, oh, a handful of times. She loved San Felipe so much, she'd rather stay down there than come back up to the States. I made more trips down there than she made back up to Washington.

We also spoke to Catherine's niece, Sarah Jo, who shared her insights into her aunt's life before the move to Mexico and highlighted the qualities that made Catherine truly stand out.

To know and love my aunt, you have to kind of know a bit of her past, which was not an easy one. I didn't have an incredibly close relationship with my aunt because she struggled with alcohol. And I guess to clarify, she was always around and I loved her dearly and she was the fun aunt and all of that. But I think that my parents' precautions was, you know, you don't have her around as much. But...

But as a teenager, once she got clean, she changed her life around. I started seeing a lot more of her. But she was always the fun aunt and down to do whatever and hang out with the kids and had a sense of humor that was out of this world.

a great laugh. And I was incredibly close with her daughter. She was my best friend growing up and still is. She did a lot of everything. She worked for a law office for a long time. She also did some radio over in Eastern Washington prior to that. And then...

When she moved over to Mexico, of course, it was a bit of a surprise. It was a big jump. You're moving out, not just away from your state, but away from your family and everything you've known. But I think that she was ready for a change. And she had a man in her life that was willing to take care of her, essentially.

and let her kind of do her own thing. And she was happy. It was a different lifestyle. I think that part of her moving away is that she needed to get away from things that reminded her of her past. She immersed herself in the culture and taught herself to speak Spanish and was fluent and very much a part of the locals and their lifestyle. She was part of the community, a thread in that community. Once Desiree...

Her daughter had children too. She would come and visit quite often and she'd come for holidays here and there. I never made it to Mexico. I wish that I had, but we stayed in contact via Facebook messenger or email. I would say every few weeks we'd drop each other a line or two, catch up, pass a joke along. That was kind of the nature of our relationship was how much we would joke around and had similar humor.

When Catherine relocated, she had been in a relationship with a man who later passed away. In more recent years, she began a relationship with a man named Warren. Desiree explained that exactly one year before Catherine disappeared, the couple decided to tie the knot.

The gentleman that she was with when she first came down to San Felipe had since passed. And so her current husband, Warren Sundquist, he's still married to her. She had known for some time he volunteered at the net. They were together for about

two or three, I believe, but just married for a year. So I don't know Warren all that well, and I don't know too much about the dynamic of the relationship, except for just what my mom's told me. He did live there for quite some time. He was married, actually, when my mom first met Warren, and his wife had actually died of cancer a few years prior to

my mom and Warren getting together. But he retired from Safeway, but I also know, I believe he was in the military and him and his wife had moved down to San Felipe, I believe in the early 2000s. She had her home in town and Warren lives a little bit out of town in El Dorado, which is a big campo. It's quite large. She opted to go move in with him or he asked her to move in, I'm assuming.

She basically spent the majority of her time out there. And so she had an ex-coworker from the net, Luis, move into her house in town to kind of maintain because she had a beautiful yard, take care of the place. Warren and her had come up to Washington one time to visit me. We only got a couple of days to spend with each other. So I kind of got to know him in that aspect. And then also when I went down there to aid in searching for her. But unfortunately, I don't know him very well.

Desiree admits that she didn't know Warren well, as their in-person interactions had been limited. However, she shared her perspective on the relationship between her mother and Warren. My assessment of it, to be honest, was Warren's kind of a quiet person, and my mom usually isn't. So, I mean, I guess that worked out for them, but he was different, I think, than most of the men that my mom had dated or married.

He's a far bit older than she is, but what I could tell from their relationship, at least from my perspective, was that she was changed a little bit. My mom had been married a few times, and when she married Warren, I think she kind of knew she had to change because this was it. She was going to marry Warren, and that was going to be who she was going to be with until her last day, or maybe so she thought. Yeah.

It seemed like a decent relationship. I never saw them fight or anything. He kind of had a slight short temper. One time we were going over the border and I don't like anybody upset, the long lines. And my mom just kind of was like, okay, Warren, settle down. It seemed to me that he maybe influenced her to be a little bit more calmer or not so hesitant.

Headstrong. And they seemed to get along. They would play cards together and go on walks together, watch Family Feud together, things like that. So on the outside, yeah, it seemed like everything was going okay. Leading up to her disappearance, Catherine was diagnosed with cancer. And Desiree said that the last time they visited, she noticed the toll it was taking on her mother.

She had gotten diagnosed approximately a year, I think, prior to her going missing. They had found some lesions on her liver, I believe it was, and had gone in and lasered a few off or something to that extent, thought they had gotten everything and they didn't. And so at that point...

She opted to discontinue getting treatment. She just said, I don't want to go through chemo. I'm not going to do this. I'm just going to let nature take its course and just kind of live the rest of her time, which could have been long, could have not been long. She wasn't necessarily sure. She did mostly keep a lot of it to herself. And I know that's partially because my mom and I had talked about it.

when she does go, because one of her little sayings was always, I'm not long for this old world, you know? And I'd say, I don't want to talk about it. My mom was most definitely my best friend. I told her everything. My mom was just so super cool. The thought for not being around was just quite a bit more than I could even process. And so every time the subject would come up, I'd say, nope, nope, nope. I don't even want to talk about it. I don't want to hear about it. I just, I cannot process that. And so her knowing that, I think she did

tend to keep the details of her illness and what was to come from me. What she did share with me was just that the last time that she'd come up to Washington before she went missing, she had mentioned, this might be the last time I'm going to be able to come up here. And I said, Mama, don't talk like that.

I want to talk about it. And she, of course, started crying and was like, no, we need to talk about it because it's serious. And I think she kind of knew and knew that I knew that it was serious, more serious than maybe she led on to believe. So this would have been around a couple months before April when she went missing. She did seem a slight bit deteriorated physically, but honestly, I think more mentally. And then she also got pneumonia.

Coming from San Felipe up to Spokane, where I was living at the time, and how cold it was up there, she ended up getting sick and having to go home early, which really bummed me out. But I could tell that her immune system was down. She was skinnier than she had been before. And my mom's a very energetic, strong lady. It seemed like the wind was blown out of her sails. That was concerning. But I mean, I guess that goes hand in hand with getting cancers.

Earlier, Sarah Jo mentioned that Catherine had faced struggles decades earlier, but had completely turned her life around. Desiree believes that after her cancer diagnosis, her mother resumed drinking. With the uncertainty of how much time she had left, Catherine wanted to make the most of it and enjoy herself.

My mom had been sober from alcohol for over 30 years. I mean, before she went down to San Felipe, she quit drinking, which was a good thing because my mom was not the best drunk. But when she met Warren, Warren drank. And my mom has been around people who have drank and kept her sobriety. But I think when she got diagnosed, I

I think for her, it was more quality of life. Hey, I'm going to go out. I'm going to have a drink if I want one. And who am I to say anything? I knew that they were both kind of drinking. There's a San Felipe brewery on their way to where Warren lives. And so they would stop there now and again and say hi to their friends and have a couple beers and then head home.

In the days leading up to Catherine's mysterious disappearance, she emailed Desiree about an argument she had with her husband, Warren, revealing that they had broken up. Desiree believes that Catherine's return to drinking played a significant role in the tension and turmoil between her mother and her new husband.

I think that part of their relationship either sparked issues or something because I know prior to her emailing me and telling me about their breakup, I know that was kind of an issue because I knew Warren drank far more than my mom had been drinking, at least at that time. She only would have a drink or two, and I think he was drinking a slight bit more. And so that was obviously hard for her.

Like I said, I don't know Warren very well. I didn't really get to experience to see their relationship much. So it's hard to gauge that. If my mom and I couldn't reach each other on the phone, we would email each other. It was just kind of easier. And so I had gotten an email from her. I think it was three or four days before they went on the hike that her and Warren had broken up and she was very upset about it.

It's funny because at the time I had just broken up with my boyfriend and I said, no kidding. I just broke up with my boyfriend too. What happened? And she goes, oh, I'll talk to you about it later. Just wanted to say hi and let you know what was going on. I said, well, I hope everything works out. We

we kind of left it at that. What I had heard through her friends was that, I guess, she had gone to the neighbor's house and he didn't know it. She didn't leave a note to let him know where she was. He felt disrespected and was very upset about this. And he really just wasn't having it. And so he broke up with her and told her and her dog Tootsie that they had to find someplace else to stay or sleep or something along those lines.

She had emailed me, I think, one other time. So it was two days before the hike that she emailed me back and she said that, oh, we got back together. And she just gave me a little spiel that I didn't leave a note to let him know where I was, but we're working it out real short and sweet.

Me thinking about that situation, knowing my mom, that's why I say that I think he influenced her to kind of change a bit because my mom, she always would do what she wants to do. She's not one to be the Susie Homemaker type. He wanted her to make sure that she told him where she was going. And my mom would always just be like, well, you know, this is what I'm doing. I'm a grown adult. She was very upset about them breaking up.

moved all her stuff out of his house and moved back into her house down in town. And then, like I said, two days later, and Warren told me she had called him and said, well, do you really want to end it this way? And he said, no.

I think Warren had mentioned something along the lines of, well, I think we should maybe cut our drinking down. I'm assuming he's assuming that the reason she didn't come home or leave a note was because she had been drinking. I'm not positive on that. So she came back to Warren's but didn't bring all of her stuff. I think she brought her camera and her jewelry. Two days later, they went on the hike.

Another significant event that occurred right before Catherine vanished was an injury to her foot, which would later become a key factor in the circumstances that led to her disappearance. When you live in San Felipe, you just live in flip-flops for the most part. And when it gets touristy down there, there's people everywhere and people are pulling coolers and riding ATVs. Somebody had rolled over her toes with their cooler full of beer and ice. She had a couple of toes that were broken on one foot and

and I think one on the other foot that might have been sprained or something. And that just happened, I think, maybe a week prior to the hike, which I thought was odd. But she's a diehard. I thought, why did she go on a hike if she got some broken toes? But she wasn't going to miss it. She was going to go, and she wanted to basically take her dog up to the pools.

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They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer.

who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder.

Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. On April 11th, 2019, Catherine had plans to go on a hike with her husband and a group of friends. Desiree told us more about what she knows of these plans.

A group of my mom's friends, they're actually her friend, Nicole's friends, mutual friends. They had met a few years prior. They had come down to San Felipe. They were renewing their wedding vows. My mom was part of that party down on the beach. They were hanging out a couple of days prior and

and wanted to get one last scenic trip doing something. And originally, they were going to go down South Baja, south of San Felipe, to some other place. And I'm not even sure where that was. But that morning, Nicole had said, you know what, why don't we take them to

Diablo to the waterfalls. It was decided that morning before they got in their trucks and headed out that they were going to go up there, Canyon del Diablo. And so it's about 50 miles or 50 kilometers from San Felipe going towards the border to the mountains.

Canyon del Diablo, which is Devil's Canyon in the Sierra Medir. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right. It's, I wouldn't say rugged, but first of all, the trail that you take isn't marked necessarily. You can see where people have walked the trail. The whole party, there was eight total and a few other people that had been on the hike like Nicole

had been up there a couple of times and kind of knew which way to go. And from what I'm also told, because of the terrain out there or the topography, I guess you could say, you could see somebody 20 feet from you, but you can't hear them. The winds bounce off the mountains.

And in that month, it's not too bad. It's actually kind of a perfect month to go anywhere out into the desert. It's July and August that are the really treacherous hot months. April is fairly nice. It was a nice sunny day. I believe there was fairly clear skies.

The group set out for the national park on the morning of April 11th. However, Desiree explained that once they arrived, Catherine's husband Moran and another man chose to stay behind in the parking area while the rest of the group headed out toward the scenic waterfall.

There was Nicole Coffer, David Coffer, and then Kevin, Kim, Rick, Kelly, and Dennis, and then Warren, of course. But Warren and Dave stayed behind. From what I was told, there was three vehicles, Warren's Jeep, David's truck, and then another vehicle, which I think was Rick's truck. I can't be sure on that. When they finally got to the parking area, and I mean parking area as in a spot where

There's no boulders, not like a paved parking lot. It's just an old dirt road that somebody knows to go to to get up to this waterfall. They all pull up and I guess David's truck had been not running so well. Warren, because I believe he's got bad knees, decided to stay behind with David to work on the vehicle while the rest went up on the hike. And my mom had Tootsie.

Not long into the hike, Catherine's injured foot began bothering her. The group had reached a set of pools, and Cat told her friends that she would stay behind and wait for them to return. With her dog Tootsie by her side, Catherine planned to let her swim in the pools while she rested until the group returned from the waterfall. They decided to start hiking up there. My mom had a Dos Equis beer and a cigarette, and this was kind of odd to me, and I'm sure it had to do with her resensitivity.

recent discovery of cancer. My mom always had cigarettes with her, a cigarette and a lighter, probably a tube of lipstick. That's just my mom. For her not to bring her cigarettes up was kind of off for me a little bit, but I also know because of the cancer, she probably thought that was best. Didn't have water with her, no lighter, nothing. Starting out on that, you don't think about, oh, well, what if this happens? I should have this and that and the other. So they started hiking up and Kevin, who I spoke to after the fact, I

a nice guy. He kind of stayed behind because my mom was walking a slight bit slower than everybody else due to her toes. He had said that she was her normal spunky self. They had some pretty good laughs. Her foot was hurting. And so he stayed kind of behind and walked with her until they got to the first pools, I believe. She said, hey, I'm going to stay behind. My foot's killing me. I'm going to stay here with Tootsie. And

And he had said, hey, I'm going to stay with you. And if you know my mom, she was like, F you, which my mom's got a funny sense of humor. But if you know her, it's kind of like, look, I'm fine. Don't pity me. Go on, do what you're going to do. I'll be fine. And so he, he did.

The group reached the waterfall and then turned around to hike back. When they arrived at the pools where Catherine had said she would wait, she was nowhere to be found, and Tootsie wasn't there either. But the other members of the group didn't panic. This place where she had stopped was close to the parking area, where Warren and another man had stayed behind to work on a vehicle. They all assumed that Catherine had simply walked back down to join them.

They said, look, we'll be back in about 50 minutes, somewhere around there. She said, I'll be fine. It's only a 10-minute hike from where my mom was back down to the vehicles where Dave and Warren were. So Kevin, he said, I figured she could have made her way back. She had her dog with her. No worries. I guess that was the consensus. And also she had a cigarette and somebody lit her cigarette for her and then she...

she handed the lighter back so she didn't have a lighter or anything with her and then they headed up onto the hike. As far as I know, she was near the water. She was going to let her dog Tootsie splash around in the water and this was probably mid-morning, 10 a.m., somewhere in that time frame. On the return, the

They came to where they left my mom and she wasn't there. Not really thinking anything of it. They thought, oh, well, she probably just walked back down to the vehicles. When they got down to the vehicles and had asked Warren and Dave, well, where's Kat? Warren had said, well, I thought they were joking. Like, what do you mean, where's Kat? She's supposed to be with you guys. And she goes, no, she wasn't there where we left her. And so then that ensued, the panic and getting a hold of authorities. From what I was told, it was about, they said, 90 minutes, give or take.

90 minutes doesn't seem like much time, especially considering Catherine's injured foot. Desiree explained that everyone was immediately thrown into a panic, scrambling to find her. They quickly sought help, but despite extensive search efforts, no trace of Catherine or Tootsie were ever found.

So as soon as they got back down to the vehicles where Warren and Dave were and realized that, look, she's not here, we need to start looking for her and calling for her. And so that's exactly what they did. Kevin happened to have a drone with him. It only had about 30% battery, but he did send it up. That area had gotten a lot of rain prior to that season. And so there was a lot more growth, shambles.

shrubs were a lot greener and there was a lot more of it. And so from an aerial perspective, it was very hard to kind of see things. Everything kind of blended in together. It was difficult to see is what he's told me. They also hiked back up. I was told that there was a small cave area that

that they hiked up to to see if maybe she was in there or just kind of fanning out, trying to search to see if they could find her. Honking horns and yelling her name and all that and nothing, nothing, not the dog, not anything. They returned to the vehicles and they didn't have much water. So after searching, they said, okay, look,

Warren said he'd stay there. The rest were going to go into town because there is no service out there. She had her iPhone with her, but you have to go back towards town to get service. That's what they did. Warren stayed up there and they went back into town. And there's a place called Pete's Camp. That was the first area that they could get service. And that's the last place my mom's phone pinged was at Pete's Camp. They got to town and called and said, look, we've got a

got a friend missing up in the canyon and we need to get some help." And I believe that it was the Bomberos, like the fire department sort of organization, they got a hold of just about everybody you can think of. Red Cross staff, the Mexican military was contacted, dozens of civilian searchers. They searched about five kilometers around the area where she went missing, far further than they thought that she could have walked or

or got to on foot. And there was the Insar Ensenada Search and Rescue Organization volunteers, hundreds of hours and dozens of people that volunteered to go out there and search on ATVs on foot to no avail, unfortunately. On the day that Catherine went missing, her friends were uncertain about what to do next. Desiree mentioned that Warren chose to stay at the trailhead that night and wait for Catherine.

My mom and these friends of hers were the only people out there that day. Now, that evening, when everybody went back into town, except for Warren, who had stayed out at the area, Warren had said...

He stayed in his car and fell asleep in his truck. And at some point, a group of people had shown up that were going to hike up to the waterfall. He said he had spoke to them and kind of informed them that, look, my wife and her dog are missing. If you see anything, please aid her back down this way. But other than that, I don't know that he got their names or anything. And I don't know how many people were in that group. I think it was just a handful of kids from Mexicali.

When Catherine vanished, Desiree was back home in Washington. She had been emailing with her mom in the days leading up to her disappearance and had no indication that anything was wrong, except for that argument she had with Warren that caused the couple to break up and later get back together. It wasn't until a couple of days later that someone finally contacted Desiree with the news that her mom was missing.

So I finally got called. I think it was the second day. I mean, I was in shock. I still really haven't even honestly processed it very well, but I had actually gotten a Facebook message from my friend Barbie who lives in San Felipe. She said, look, you need to call Warren right away. And so I did. That's how I found out. Talk about getting punched in the gut. Of course, I'm coming down there. I'm going to help find her. But I also have two children. My son is autistic and

and my daughter, trying to get a friend of mine that I trusted who lives in Montana to come over to my house to care for my children while I went on this trip down to San Felipe. And my cousin, Sarah Jo, put up a GoFundMe to afford this trip down to San Felipe. And through many very generous people donated, and I was able to get a flight by the time everything came together and I was able to get down there, it was day five.

The day I arrived into San Felipe, which was just, I mean, gut-wrenching. I wanted to get down there so much faster, but that's just the way it kind of happened. The logistics of international travel delayed Desiree's arrival in San Felipe, but she felt it was crucial to be there to help search for her mother. Desiree explained how the search efforts unfolded after she had arrived in San Felipe and what she experienced in the days that followed.

The day that I arrived to San Felipe was the day that they officially called off the search. It just kills me. But the state directive of civil protection had announced on the 15th of April, the day I arrived, the attorney general of the state initiated that the search was going to be called off, which killed me. But it initiates ministerial investigation to locate her, which is from the attorney general of the state, which is the attorney general of the state.

which is the PGJE that I worked with at the police station there in San Felipe to start investigating it because we couldn't find her. There was some crazy talk that, oh, is she really even on the hike? Because there wasn't a trace of her or the dog. Everything just seemed kind of weird.

So that started the investigation. Unfortunately, the investigation did not last very long. When it comes to Mexico, you kind of have to stay on top of them. Otherwise, I hate to say it, but it gets kind of swept under the rug. And then there's also a slight language barrier issue. There was also kind of a warning alert.

If you're a group of people wanting to go out and search, this is the protocol. You have to be very, very careful for many reasons. It's not necessarily safe sometimes. So there were a few groups that were going out and searching. The day that I arrived, I had gone to Warren's house. He was out searching with a group. Warren had come back.

They were exhausted, of course, and had searched, unfortunately, to no avail. But they did have a few things that had happened, like coming across, I believe it was a small campo of some sort. Luckily, the people in the group with Warren, one of them was ex-military, and he knew to look for disturbed dirt and anything that something had just been buried. Well, they had found a couple spots.

They dug it up. Luckily, nothing was underneath of it. But just looking around for things like that. There were other people, friends of hers that she's known for years that also spoke to news crews like I did. I spoke to San Diego, Channel 7, The Seattle Times, Telemundo, because we

Because we were trying to get some bloodhounds down there to search for her because one of the organizations were getting cadaver dogs at that point because they were figuring after so many days, she's probably not going to be alive is what they had said. They suggested cadaver dogs to do a search and the cadaver dogs didn't find anything.

But bloodhounds will search for the scent of a person. One of her friends was trying to get some bloodhounds. It didn't work out, unfortunately. When I went down there, I went down there by myself, which was my first mistake, especially being as emotional as I was.

When I got to town, and like I said, I've lived in San Felipe before, and I knew all these people, but I just felt like I couldn't trust anybody. I didn't know what to believe. Something, I felt like something was up. Something is not right here. This is my mom. And she just, poof, there's eight people up there, and she's the one who goes, it just seemed really bizarre to me. So I really kind of didn't trust anybody and just kind of, I don't know, was trying to process it and take it all in and figure it out. Like I was Nancy Drew in it.

Catherine was surrounded by the stunning landscapes of San Felipe, and she loved to take it all in. Desiree clarified that her mother has been mischaracterized in some articles as an avid hiker, but that's not true. While hiking may not have been something that Cat did too often, she was a fighter with a strong survival instinct, capable of navigating the wilderness.

That was mentioned in quite a few articles that she was an avid hiker. No, she didn't hike very much. She liked to go out into the mountains. She loved the beautiful desert of San Felipe. She'd go on dune buggy trails. It's not like she would say, "Okay, well, we're going hiking this weekend." Just if it came up, sure. She did sort of know the area. She had been up to that area before, but she wasn't versed in hiking in that area. I think it was the second or third time she had been up there.

She's a smart lady. She had gone through a survival course a few years prior through the university, what to do in any kind of survival situation. So she knew not to wander. She said it in her videos that she's posted. If you're ever out in the desert and you get lost, do not wander because you're just going to be getting more lost.

stay where you are. Eventually they will find you. And if you have the means, start a fire so that there's smoke. She knew all that kind of stuff. However, she was directionally challenged. She had gotten lost, not exactly in that area, but not too far from that area. She'd gotten turned around, but she had her dune buggy and her iPhone and a couple of survival things. She said, I'm not going to wander. I'm going to make camp for the night and I'll find my way out of here in the morning. And I've got a couple of the videos. She makes a little video with her iPhone. You

You can see where she's at. And she said, well, I've gathered some wood. I'm going to make a fire. And she goes, gosh, it's beautiful out here. It's fine. I'm not scared. I'm sure there's animals out here, but it's their territory. Who am I? And so she says, well, I've got some potable water that her brother-in-law had given her. One of those emergency tinfoil NASA looking blanket things. She had her lighter. She had, I think, her sweater. She was going to curl up on her little dune buggy during the night because of spiders and snakes. She

She says, well, and if I don't make it out of here, Desiree, I love you, which of course killed me. She'd been lost before. She kind of knew what to do and what not to do, but she had a lot more resources that time than she did this time. And the situation was completely different. Where she was at was a lot more flat land and a dune buggy where she was at this time was a lot different. Like

Like I said, she's directionally challenged and she had a beer in her hand, so maybe she was a little buzzed. I'm not sure. And out there, I can see where it's easy to get turned around. That boulder looks the same as that boulder and there's no real pathway to show you. I mean, it's not really worn down.

To complicate matters further, some members of the group were from the U.S. and had to return home shortly after Catherine disappeared. For Desiree, this made it incredibly difficult to track them down and compare notes on what had happened.

Communication was very difficult. I did not realize at the time, because I was talking to this person and trying to get travel plans ready, that my cousin Sarah Jo had spoken to some of the people that were on the hike. And I had not been able to correlate with her, who she had spoke to, what they talked about, those sort of things.

At one point, I was like, look, I'd like to get the names of the people. I kind of expected them to get a hold of me like, hey, this is who I am. If you have any questions, you'd like to talk about what happened that day. But I can't expect that.

When my mom went missing, they all had to get back up to their lives into the States, which is understandable. So it was like three days after my mom went missing, they all had to leave town. And so they submitted statements to the police about that day. I understand that. However, I was a little upset only because I know that Nicole and Dave and Warren were all, I mean, I'm not going to say interrogated, but definitely went down to the station and were questioned by the police. And right

Rightfully so. I don't care who you are, where you are, states or Mexico. You need to be questioned. As far as I'm concerned, everybody's a suspect. You guys are the last people to see my mom alive. If you're innocent and you've got nothing to hide, then there shouldn't be a problem. That's how I was seeing it at the time. But they had to get back to their lives. So they submitted statements to the police, being as emotional and in shock through

through it all. Yeah, they were very forthcoming. I mean, I jumped the gun quite a few times. In that situation, sometimes you speak before you should. But once I did get a chance to talk to them, like Kevin, Kevin and I messaged each other and said, look, I'm sorry for kind of jumping the gun. So I just kindly said, listen, Kevin, if you could just tell me what happened that day in your words, I'd appreciate it. And he was very accommodating, very kind.

All their stories were the same. I had to also talk to Kelly. Kelly Harris was very detailed in her description of what had happened that day. And she had mentioned one thing that nobody else had told me that I thought, oh my gosh, it's a breakthrough. When they were coming back down from the hike around this cave, they had seen

sticks made into an X and then another spot that was in a K. And they said it was very deliberate that it was not there when they went on the hike, implying that my mom had made this pointing down towards this cattle watering station from the farm or ranch that was down the road. However, I think Nicole was the only person who didn't see that. But yeah, Kelly said that it was definitely deliberate that they had not seen it on

on the walk up. And so I was like, oh, I didn't hear about this. Gosh, that's my mom trying to say, hey, I went this way, K, and then an arrow this way. I mean, I didn't see it myself, so I can't be sure. She had let the authorities know. She told the cops in her statement about it, but it was never mentioned until I had talked to her via Facebook. Kevin also had mentioned the acoustics, like I was mentioning earlier. You could be out there and see somebody 10 or 20 feet

from you, but you couldn't hear them because of the wind. He said, you know, if somebody was out there watching us, we would have never known. I think he just meant if there was somebody, let's just say, the imagination, believe me, keeps me up at night. All the crazy things, like the hills have eyes type of weird stuff or cartel or whatever in the canyon out in the desert. It

Him saying that, I just kind of thought, well, why would they single my mom out though? Sure, she had a website and a blog and talked about this and that, but she knew her P's and Q's. She knew what to say and what not to say. And she was very cautious of that. And so I can't imagine it was something she had said that made her be singled out and her dog. I mean, that just kind of seems crazy, but you never know.

Beyond the group of people with Catherine that day, we wondered if anyone else might have been in the area who could have posed a threat to her. Desiree shared what she knows.

I was also told after the fact that on their hike up there, quite a distance from where they were, but you could see it in the distance, is a cattle farm of some sort. And on the way down, they had moved the cattle and there was some rusty vehicle, some rusty truck or something in the distance that wasn't there on their way up. I know when they were all searching for my mom before the group left and Warren stayed behind,

I guess Warren had taken the drive down to the ranch, talked to whomever was there to inform them about his wife being missing. Kevin had said on their walk down, they had noticed the cattle had moved and there was some vehicle down there that they had not seen prior. I guess when they were driving out of there, they had stopped and talked to the people in the vehicle and they said, no, they had not seen anything and they seemed pretty normal and not nervous like they were hiding something. When the search ensued,

There was some marijuana fields that were found from the Mexican military helicopter. So it was said that, oh, well, maybe she made it there and something happened there. Well, highly doubtful. From what I was told, it's far too far for her to have gotten to, especially with broken toes. But dire situations. People can really surprise you.

on how far and how much they can do. I'll tell you straight up, my mom's super cool. And she did smoke marijuana. I mean, a lot of people down in San Felipe do. It's just, it's herbal, it's medicine. But she also spoke fluent Spanish. If they did see her, she could say in Spanish, hey, I'm sorry, I'm lost. She's not going to bother them. And I think if they were concerned, if she had walked up upon them, she could tell them in Spanish. She could rattle off, look, I'm just lost with my dog. I'm trying to get back to my group.

And she would not tattle. But also, let's just say, hypothetically, she does stumble across this field, okay? I can say, oh, she can rattle off Spanish to them. The reality of it is, is it's Mexico. And if it is cartel, they don't mess around. Who am I to say what they would do or how they would react? It could be a lot worse than I could imagine. And it could be just no problem.

But the thing that bothered me, and I ended up asking a mutual friend down there who was involved with the cadaver dogs going out on the search. I said, were the cadaver dogs ever taken to see what was up there? I got a reply of, they were taken everywhere. Now, were the cadaver dogs taken and searched that pot field? I am not really sure that they were. I'd like to think that they were. If that was a possibility, then that should have been extensively looked at.

And my mom didn't have all her jewelry on. She did have her wedding ring and a gold chain around her neck. Is it possible that somebody that was driving around down there saw her? She hitched a ride to get to somewhere and something happened? I mean, possibly. Or somebody just stumbled upon her up in the canyon and was like, oh, we're going to kidnap this lady? I don't know. Where they're at, I mean, there's not too many

roads or areas that you can get to that spot without seeing a vehicle or seeing dust flying up over the mountain or over the hill where there are vehicles driving around. It's few and far between. It is sort of a one way in, one way out per se. You could get to where my mom was around a different way, but you'd have to park and hike a lot further

just to get to where they're at. You're not going to find anybody just wandering around. You're going to have to have a vehicle. It's quite a distance from the highway. You'd have to have an ATV or a horse even, for crying out loud, to get up and in there. So if she had gotten picked up, I figured they would have seen a vehicle or something, but they didn't see any vehicle at all. And like I said, the one vehicle, I guess they did stop and talk to them

Sarah Jo shared an additional detail about something that occurred in the immediate aftermath of Catherine's disappearance, which only further complicated the search efforts for her aunt. Interestingly enough, about two weeks or so into the search and rescue, Naked and Afraid was being filmed in the same place that my aunt went missing. So they cleared out the park and they weren't allowed to do any more search and rescues.

And they fenced it up. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of really bizarre things that happen that just you don't have answers to and they just create more questions. Hello, ladies and germs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with Tis the Grinch holiday podcast. After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts on an open fire.

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One of the most perplexing aspects of Catherine's disappearance is that her dog Tootsie also vanished and was never found. We wanted to learn more about Tootsie. Was she the type of dog to run off on her own? And if something like that had happened, would Catherine have gone after her?

Tootsie, I mean, she just adored that dog. It's funny because Warren had taken every Saturday to go to this dog training class with Tootsie because I'm just going to flat out say Tootsie is not the brightest dog. She hadn't had it for very long, but was very, very much attached to Tootsie. And as far as I know, when she went on the hike that day, Tootsie had a collar on, but I do not believe she had a leash on Tootsie. Normally, I mean, yeah, the dog would kind of hang around, but I think out in an

an area like that, if Tootsie had seen a bunny scurrying around, I think that she would run off and try to get the animal. But I think because of the training classes, I'm assuming, you know, if my mom called her back, it was mentioned that, oh, maybe Tootsie took off running after an animal and my mom went running

running after Tootsie. It's not really a running type of area. So I don't think Tootsie could have gotten really that far. And if she did, my mom would not have been able to keep up if she had gotten lost up there and died somehow. Instinct, Tootsie would have stayed with my mom. I mean, dogs will do that with their owners. They'll stay as long as they can until needs water or food. The fact that Tootsie has never been seen is just kind of really weird. You'd find dog feces. How come

There's no trace of my mom or the dog. You can't tell me Tootsie didn't go to the bathroom up there, but I guess they didn't find anything. I thought Tootsie'd lead her back down to the cars, but I guess that wasn't the case. The dog can hear for a distance. And so that's another reason why I thought it was just so odd. They were screaming my mom's name and honking the horn. Can't tell me Tootsie didn't hear that, all that noise. She would have heard them, I feel like, but I guess not.

It is strange that Tootsie was never spotted. In other cases that we've covered of missing persons who disappeared along with their dog, the animals often reappeared later. Yet there are no reports of anyone seeing a dog in the area, not even a single sighting of Tootsie. Could it be possible that both Catherine and Tootsie were attacked by a wild animal, leaving no trace behind?

There's coyotes. There are mountain lions. They're rare out in that area, but there have been sightings of mountain lions out there and snakes. I think coyotes would probably be your main animal that you would find out there. They'll smell the dog and they'll find their food somewhere else.

they're not going to mess with you if you've got a dog with you. If there was a predatory animal out there that had gotten her and the dog, I mean, you would find evidence of that. You would see blood and torn clothing or drag marks or something, dog hair, whatever. And there was just absolutely nothing like that. Now, if it was possibly a pack of coyotes, it's rare, I believe, for them to hunt during the day, first of all. Now, if she had

wandered off to a deeper area where there might have been a den of coyotes or something. I mean, sure. However, I mean, Tootsie's going to try to fight off as much as she can. My mom, of course, would probably try to grab some rocks, doing whatever you could to defend yourself. And I think if you do that, they kind of scurry off. And like I said, you'd find evidence of struggles.

The complete absence of evidence of Catherine and Tootsie on the trail has led some to question whether they were ever even there that day. However, Desiree firmly believes that her mom and Tootsie were there. She doesn't think it's likely that eight different people would tell the same story to cover up something else.

I mean, that's asking quite a bit to have eight different people all have the same story and corroborate. That's a little much, I think. I truly believe she was there that day. I mean, there's no motive to anything of why they would lie and say she was there and she's not.

However, I do understand where a lot of people were coming from because there just really wasn't any evidence that she was there. When they searched twice as far as she could have gotten on foot, the dogs didn't smell or catch up my mom's scent or the dog's scent. The only real piece of evidence that they had were their word. And then there was one picture taken of my mom when she was up there. And you can see Tootsie's shadow in the background. So

So they had to produce that picture to prove that, look, she was on this hike. So that was kind of ruled out. There's no conspiracy there, at least. The search for Catherine has taken some bizarre and unsettling twists. Desiree was contacted by a man who said he wanted to help, but things soon took a darker turn.

My mutual friend, Barbie, had been contacted by this guy named Roberto. Didn't know Roberto from Hide No Hair, but said to get a hold of me and just mentioned something about Google Earth and that he had some ideas on helping me. And I was just all for it because I really didn't get many people really wanting to collaborate with me in trying to solve this thing or figure this thing out.

I called him and we talked and he really made me feel like, oh gosh, this guy's really going to help. He said he had friends in the FBI and he's the only person except for Warren and my friend Cesar down there that had my cell phone number. I think it was the next day or the day after that, I got this text on my phone. Me and my men have Kat. We want $5,000. Don't go to the cops. Don't be stupid or we'll kill her.

My stomach went up into my throat. Oh my God, I'm getting a ransom text. It took me off guard very much. And so we're texting back and forth. And I said, okay, look, no problem. No problem. I'll get you some money. But can you send me a picture of my mom so I know that she's alive? First, he wanted me to send gift cards or something like that. And actually gave me a name and a town, Tulsa, Oklahoma. And it was supposedly his son-in-law or something that's going to college in that town. And I just thought, well, this is kind of bizarre. Who does that?

gives the name of whomever and I thought, okay, it's probably fake.

I'm calling the cops. And I get a hold of Warren until I figured this whole thing out. I mean, I was just beside myself. I just thought, oh my God, she's alive. They've got her. She's being held somewhere or something, right? And then I noticed that the person texting me, first of all, kept calling my mom the poor woman. Okay. God, where have I seen that before? And I looked at the messages from this Roberto guy. And in one of the messages, he called her the poor woman. And I was like, wait a minute.

It's this guy, Roberto, trying to extort me, basically, to get some money out of me. I just lost it. He had actually tried to extort Nicole Coffer, who was on the hike with my mom. Her mother and this Roberto guy scammed her for like $5,000.

six or seven years prior. So I messaged him back and said, you know, you're a POS. How could you do this? I know it's you. We just spoke on the phone. You made me feel like you're going to help me try to find my mom. And then you turn around and send me some texts. You've got my mom. If I don't send you this money or something, it was just twilight zone. But what an awful thing to do to somebody who's lost someone to get their hopes up

I told Warren and I guess Warren, a group of his friends or whatever, went out to where this guy lives and confronted him.

The absence of clues and answers in the search for Catherine has led some to speculate that her husband may have been involved in her disappearance. After all, they had just broken up and then reconciled. Were the issues in their relationship more serious than Catherine had revealed? Desiree admitted that when she first learned of her mom's disappearance, she initially entertained this possibility. But upon reflecting on the circumstances, she feels that it doesn't add up.

Initially, and maybe it's just because I watched too many crime shows, the first suspect is always the husband or the spouse. If the wife goes missing or the husbands go missing, whatever, you always look to their significant other. I mean, it's just how it goes. Being that I knew that they had gotten in an argument days prior and it was their one-year anniversary, which was really quite ironic initially,

I just want to choose my words wisely. There were things that happened after my mom went missing that I still question. Warren falling asleep in his vehicle the night she went missing. I'm sure you're tired. You want to take a little senior nap or something. But if it was my wife missing in the desert, there's no way I'd be falling asleep in my car. I would be still honking my horn or freaking out. And I was very put out that he wasn't, or at least not at that moment. The day that I got down there and they called off the search, when Warren showed up,

He shows me this picture on his phone of this makeshift cross that he had made, put it at the base of the trail, kind of started crying and gave me a hug and said how he was sorry. And I appreciated that. I thought that was a kind gesture, but at the same time, it was

So that's it. You just put a cross up there and we're done. Being the daughter, of course, it's going to bother me and I can't help that. And then also he had told me before I had left, it hadn't even been a month that my mom had been missing. And he had told me he was ready to get back out to water volleyball. Part of me gets it because he's old and he's had a wife before my mom who passed. I know he is probably thinking, well, I don't have much life left. I'm going to try to live it as best I can. So I kind of understood that part. It just broke my heart a little bit. There

There were just a lot of key factors that made me kind of cock my head and go, huh. Then I really kind of settled down and thought, okay, now wait a minute. Let's look at the facts. What would his motive be? Well, I don't think there would have been any motive unless it was a crime of passion. Something happened and there was a bad outcome to it. She didn't have a life insurance policy or anything. My name is on the deed.

as far as her home is concerned, and he's got his own house. There was about 90 minutes when everybody else went up on the hike, and let's just say, hypothetically, my mom made it down to the vehicles where Warren and Dave were working on the truck. First of all, Dave would have to cover for Warren had something have happened, which, okay, that's not completely outlandish, although highly doubtful. So then he's got so much time to do something with her body if something had happened. But the PGJE had done dehumidification

DNA swabs of his vehicle. There wasn't any blood. There wasn't her skin underneath his fingernails. Clues that would lead to believe that there was some altercation of some sort. And like I said, motive. Sure, there's crimes of passion, but I mean, I just can't see Warren. I don't think that he had anything to do with it. I mean, I don't know for 100%, but I really don't think that he's the type to off my mom and the dog.

I also know that they came out to his house and probed the sand around his home, took my mom's laptop, took his laptop, and they couldn't get into my mom's laptop because it's a Mac, of course, and it's impenetrable or something, but took his laptop and looked all through that. He was pretty good about trying to get updates from the PJGE and all that. And I know he had heard how I had felt in the beginning that I kind of thought it was him, and a lot of town did.

There was a lot of clues that made it suspicious and weird. And so when they had this little gathering for my mom, it was supposed to be like a memorial, I guess, or some sort. Warren is up there with Nicole. It was supposed to be about my mom. And really all, in my eyes, my opinion, they just were debunking all these rumors. Like, yes, you know, they got in a fight, but couples get in fights. Okay.

There wasn't really anything mentioned about my mom. He started talking about how he was supposed to go on this date with this other lady, but she got sick. And so my mom went on the date with him and then they got married and that was it. After my mom went missing and it had been, I don't know, maybe a month or two, he started dating that lady. And it was just weird. Why would you start talking about you should have dated this other lady? Why?

When you're supposed to be having a memorial for my mom, I just thought, how classless. Maybe it's just me being in defense, of course, of my mom. I wanted him to be as upset as I was. And I just kind of didn't see that. At one point, I was really trying to delve into my mom's case because I just wasn't feeling like I was getting anywhere. And I was feeling very hopeless that I really wanted to try to get into it. And so I had asked Warren to please send me a copy of the police report.

He goes, well, it's like 50 pages. And I said, that's fine. I'll pay the postage, whatever, if you could send it to me. And so he did. There were a couple of things that I still don't understand. Everybody's statement that was on the hike that day, except for Dave, Nicole, and Warren, all the other people's statements were not in the police report. I didn't see them anywhere. I don't know if Warren took them out or if they were ever even in the police report when Warren got his copy.

And so I found that upsetting. But I also noticed there was a page that one of the detectives had written that said fake tears on one of the pages for Warren's statement. That's interesting. They thought Warren was producing fake tears during their questioning, I guess. I mean, at some point, I understand because you put so much effort into finding your loved one and...

point where you have to say, okay, there's nothing I can do. I have to continue to live my life. For me, I felt like his was too soon. Anytime we were trying to communicate, I felt like it was me initiating the communication. At the time, I didn't really understand. I wanted him to want to reach out to me and want to talk to me and

He was the closest thing that I had to my mom at the time. He got to spend a lot more time with her before she went missing than I did. And so I wanted to have that connection with him, but I also didn't really realize that he had heard or knew that I kind of thought he had something to do with it.

So I could understand that a little bit, but I felt like he just washed his hands. He was ready to be done with it. But I don't want to think that he had anything to do with it. And he probably didn't. But to be honest, I really don't know. There's no real evidence there. I care for Warren, so I want us to remain friends. So if he didn't have anything to do with it, somebody did. Something happened to her. You don't just disappear. They did so much searching and there's just not a trace of her. It just seems weird.

Sarah Jo admitted that she didn't know Warren well, but there was something about him that didn't sit right with her. Some of Catherine's friends reached out to Sarah Jo with their own theories about Warren, but she wasn't sure what to make of it all.

What I could gather from what I did, I didn't care for the guy all that much. My aunt at first seemed to be incredibly happy with him. They both seemed to be happy. So I don't know what the turnaround was at the end. And when she did go missing, there was so many conspiracies going around. I had to filter through hundreds of emails from her friends.

what people thought and who they thought and all of these things. And Warren was at the top of that list for an immediate look to of like, this sounds really fishy. There was apparently a falling out. I've heard rumors about what it was. My aunt apparently had started to pick up drinking again is a rumor that I heard.

And that she was hanging out maybe at a house that people weren't fond of the people. But again, these could all just be rumors. There's no proof of this. But apparently she had asked Warren for a divorce a few days prior to her missing. Their anniversary was on the day that she went on that hike. Also, my aunt was very independent and she marched to the beat of her own drum. So if she didn't want to do something, she wouldn't.

She would be very fine to carry on independently without the help of a man. She's been through a lot and she's survived a lot and she was very strong. And for her to move on from a relationship, well, that wasn't surprising either. There was something innately instinctual for me watching him talk about my aunt. It lacked empathy. When they had her moment,

memorial, if you want to call it that. It was a gathering of her friends there. It was at a bar. It had zero feelings at all. It was on a Facebook Live. And the words that came out of her husband's mouth was so insincere and emotionless. Warren has separated himself from us because there was a lot of accusations thrown his way. And we wanted answers. And he was the first point of contact for us.

He was so nonchalant about it almost. Removed. And I don't know if that was his own way of dealing with the grief.

But we may have alienated him a bit. Supposedly, he was cooperative and did all the things of turning over his laptop and letting them come into his home and doing the interviews and all of that stuff. But it just struck me odd to think there was no track marks anywhere of a vehicle leaving and they searched everywhere. It was a huge search and nothing. It's hard to believe somebody wasn't involved that she knew.

I guess is what I'm getting at. She was familiar with the desert and what to do and what not to do. There's literal videos of her out there where she got turned around and she stayed put.

and had a fire out there and waited until morning because you can get turned around and lost. It seems like the perfect plan. You've got Warren and one guy down at the foot trail and then at the other group, and then she stays in the center. So Warren doesn't know that she stayed in the center. And then this other group that continues on the top, I don't know, nothing makes sense.

Desiree had traveled to San Felipe after her mom disappeared. But back in Washington, Sarah Jo was determined to do everything she could to help. Recognizing the challenges of searching for a missing person in another country, she turned to social media, reaching out to local community members in San Felipe for any leads or information that could aid in the search.

I was part of a Facebook group that she was in that was called San Felipe Chatter, something like that. And it was a Facebook community group in that area of town. It went bananas. When she disappeared and I started messaging all of her friends on that website, it just opened the floodgates.

As soon as people found out I was family, then everybody was messaging me constantly. I mean, I went down so many rabbit holes of conspiracies and whodunit kind of thing. As suspicions grew and fingers were pointed, a divide began to form between Catherine's family and some members of the local community.

So some of the locals were telling my cousin that it wasn't safe for her to join search crews, that people get hurt and disappear. There was just a mix of things going on. It was a mess, but the language barrier was extremely difficult. It just went cold.

There was no answers. Apparently they had taken Warren's computer and gone through it and didn't find anything. And I spent three months straight every day receiving emails and messages from

from her friends. I mean, all day long, I was consumed by it, going through all these different theories and talking to this person over here or this person over there asking. And that's the thing is that you generate all these different stories and scenarios, and then it's always a dead end. There's always another question. There's always something that doesn't make sense or doesn't fit. And you end up right back at the same place of just

not knowing all of these different theories of who's involved, who's a good guy, who's a bad guy, who knows what, who's really her friend. I got out of the group because it was viewing me as an outsider, but also they just, a lot of them, not all of them, of course, I don't want to umbrella them into one big group, but a lot of them are small town gossipers.

And you got to wonder, were you actually my aunt's friend? Who's being truthful? Who's actually your ally? It's hard to say because they're so far away and we're removed. Where you can't immerse yourself in it yourself. I think that it would pan out differently for us if it were here. Desiree, I get the feeling that she was not well-respected amongst the locals. I had some pretty shitty DMs that

That's her mother. I've always protected her. I always will. And she needs that. But she has such a big heart and she loved her mother. I mean, more than anybody on this planet. This has just broken her to pieces. Desiree, unbeknownst to anybody else, she had just been diagnosed with cancer and

and was having to feel that too and not make that the issue or tell anybody. And also, what do you do with that? You find out that you have cancer at your age. It was devastating. It was a

a lot going on for her to take in. I don't think that she was treated fairly by people in the community because she went there and met up with one of my aunt's dear friends, Barbie, and had a beer and was seen in town having a beer. Then the rumor was that she didn't help out. Some of them are lovely people, but it seemed like a very negative place.

I just didn't want to be a part of it anymore. They knew my aunt for the last 20 years in that small town every day. I don't believe that anyone is actively looking for her. I think that it has become a situation where they feel like that's really unfortunate and I always wonder what happened to her. It goes away. It goes cold.

At Warren's house, surveillance cameras captured Catherine and Warren preparing for that fateful hike on the morning of April 11, 2019. Desiree said she watched the footage and couldn't help but wonder if something her mom said in the video was a cryptic message or just a coincidence.

At Warren's place, they have surveillance video. You could see about waist down my mom and Warren, but mostly my mom going back and forth from the house to the vehicle, getting things ready to take off that morning. But you could definitely hear them both. At one point, Warren said, I'm going to leave you here and head out there. And she said, like hell you are, or something. Because I'm sure she was taking a little bit too long, like women do. But

At some point, she had said, well, if I get bit by a snake, don't come looking for me because I won't be there. To this day, I mean, five years, every single day, I go over this whole scenario over and over and over in my head. And that always pops up. And I think, OK, I know my mom and I know she's a crafty lady. She's very, very intelligent. I don't know if she said that because maybe she knew that I would hear it or somebody would hear it.

Is it a secret kind of type message? Maybe I'm looking too deep into it. But also, what does that mean? I just want to ask, what are you talking about? If you get bit by a snake, don't come looking for you because I won't find you. That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard.

I went over it in my head. And initially, I thought, oh, she's just kind of saying that. She's just talking shit, so to speak. But then at the same time, I thought, what an odd thing to say. Saying that and getting bit by a snake, I mean, don't come... I don't know. I can't figure it out. When I got down there, Nicole had picked me up and she had asked me, she said, is your mom the type of person, I mean, would she not want to be found because of just everything, her cancer and...

We had lost her sister, my aunt Paula, a couple of years prior to liver failure. And it was just kind of a horrible way to go. And it really affected our whole family. I knew my mom did not want me or anybody she knew and loved to watch her suffer like that because she had decided she wasn't going to do the treatments. And so it was brought up.

Nicole said, would she take off and just go somewhere deep into Mexico and live her days? And I said, you know, yeah, she would, but she wouldn't do that to me. That's just kind of a sentence of torture for the rest of your life. If she was going to do that, she would have let me know. I'm just going to go live the rest of my days in Cabo or whatever. I just know my mom would not ever do that to me, 100%. Not only that, she didn't have her passport. She didn't have her bank card.

How is she surviving if she's off somewhere not wanting to be found is highly unlikely. She has got no way to survive. I thought, oh, maybe that's what's being covered up. I think she was down. Her hormone had broken up, the cancer thing. I don't really know truly because my mom had started drinking again what her state of mind was that day. However, I knew that she wasn't planning to off herself. We had a family reunion coming up that

that we were both very excited about family in Montana that I've never met. And my mom had a plane ticket that she was going to fly up and I was going to meet her and we were going to go to this family reunion. So she had plans after this day. So originally when I had thought, well, maybe she doesn't want to be found. I know if she didn't, she'd take Tootsie with her. I

And that's why I thought, well, maybe she took off because where's Tootsie? But she wouldn't harm herself out there. We'd find Tootsie. It's not like she's going to off Tootsie and herself. I mean, that's just crazy. If it was just some random person that robbed and killed her, let's just say, I don't know how much that person would give a shit about the dog, to be honest. I better kill the dog too so nobody finds the dog. You know what I mean? If something did happen, I felt, well, maybe it would have been personal. They knew her and the dog. They would know, okay, well, if...

We're going to do something to Kat. Got to do something with the dog, too, because if they find the dog, they'll know that she's missing. If they just both disappear, then maybe it's less of a flag or something. It's hard to assess the mentality of situations. Sarah Jo also questions the role that her aunt's cancer diagnosis may have played in all of this. And with so few clues to go on, she's uncertain of what to make of it all.

around that. My aunt was pretty, she was vocal about it. She told me about it, but she didn't harp on it. What we gather when we heard that she had been starting to pick up drinking again, we wonder if she just decided, you know,

you know what? I'm going to go out doing whatever I want. We don't know. And she never admitted to us that she was drinking. But supposedly there is a photograph of her in front of a tree the day that she went missing. Now that is according to everybody that was on that hike. Supposedly what her friend had said

One of the people on the hike was that in the picture of her standing by the tree where she went missing, that she's holding a beer bottle behind her back. If that's true, who knows? It's speculation at this point, and there's a lot of that. That picture of her, she looks great.

So I think that it was just something that she knew was coming, but she didn't talk a lot about it. I don't think that she would take a dog with her like that. And I don't believe that she would ever, despite what was going on in her relationship or the status of it,

with her daughter. She would never just often do that to her family. I just don't believe that. She loved her animals. But yeah, it was out in the desert and there were no bones, no nothing was ever found. Not even footprints, not poop, nothing. Another rumor, or maybe it's not a rumor, maybe it was true, but there was a weed farm that was somewhere around out there. Then there was speculation that maybe she

uncovered the wrong weed farm and they took her out. They've killed for less. So it's hard to say. Maybe just going there and being at the wrong place at the wrong time

I had reached out and had said, how could I get involved? Boots on the ground and help out. How can I get involved? And I was essentially told, don't bother. It is not safe for you to do that. You're an outsider. It's dangerous work. If people turn up the wrong person.

it can get scary. That was the temperature I was gauging from everybody that I spoke with was just a lot of times law enforcement doesn't get involved with things like that because it can be a dangerous thing for them and their family or that

Cartel is part of the law enforcement. I mean, it's deeply threaded. There has been a ton of people, specifically in the Baja and in San Felipe, that have gone missing over the years without a trace. There's just too many questions. It really makes no sense. The only logical thing was that somebody that was hiking with her knows something, but they all claim to not.

Since Catherine vanished in another country, the search efforts have been significantly complicated for her family members back in Washington. This ongoing struggle has been particularly difficult for Desiree. It's crazy. When I was down there, I was at the police, the PGE, if not every day, every other day. I was there all the time as much as I could be trying to get information, give them leads on what to look at and what to do. Gave them my email, my Facebook information.

information and they said that they would get a hold of me so that we could correlate, which I never heard from them again. I did, however, get a message that I was to contact one of the main detectives. And so I emailed him and I got one of those emailed failure things that never came about, which was very frustrating. And I've called down to the police station down there numerous times. And my Spanish is not great, but it's not too shabby either.

But never had any luck with anything. They take the detectives off. They rotate them out every six months. And so the detectives or the people that were working my mom's case at the time are no longer on the case. And her case has been closed, mind you.

for some time now. And I have been trying to get her case reopened and to get it reinvestigated because I think there were a lot of things that they overlooked and didn't do that I think should have been done. Unfortunately, it's been very difficult. I have friends down there that I have asked my mom's very good friend, Leonor, her comadre, to go and ask and get information and they won't give it to them. It has to be a family member.

And Warren initially was very good about trying to get information from the police and doing his part in everything.

So what happened to Katherine Hammontree Sundquist on April 11th, 2019? We know she set out for a scenic hike with her husband and a group of friends. Kat had recently injured her foot, and just minutes into the hike, it began to bother her. She told the group that she would stay behind with her dog at a set of pools, asking them to continue on ahead, and assuring them that she would just wait there for them to return.

We also know that her husband Warren and another man stayed back at the parking area to work on a vehicle. When the group returned from the waterfall, both Kat and her dog Tootsie were gone. Initially, they assumed she had hiked back to the parking area, but when they arrived, only Warren and the other man were there. No one had seen or heard from Kat or Tootsie. Extensive search efforts followed, but no trace of Kat or her dog were ever found.

In the aftermath of Kat's disappearance, rumors began to swirl and suspicions ran high. Some believed her husband must have been involved, while others speculated that a nearby marijuana farmer could have been responsible. Some even wondered if given her cancer diagnosis, Kat had chosen to disappear and live out the end of her life on her terms, or if she had chosen to take her own life. However, her loved ones don't believe that she would have taken Tootsie with her if she planned to harm herself.

Another theory is that she could have simply gotten lost and was never found. More than five years later, Kat's disappearance remains a haunting mystery for those who loved her. She was an energetic, vibrant force in the lives of everyone around her, and she's deeply missed. Desiree continues to hold out hope that by keeping her mother's story alive, the answers will eventually come. You can follow Desiree's efforts on social media at katherineisstillmissing.

I'm very, very grateful. I want to also mention to all the people and the donations that I received during this time to help me financially to get down there and get back home. And just all the love and support that I got from people in San Felipe about my mom, because they all loved her too. And they're all hurting as much as I am. There was a lot of good, positive support that I received and received.

I very much tried to make sure that I was very vocal about that on my Facebook or whatnot to say thank you to everybody who did hours of their days in the hot sun searching for my mom or whatever they did to try to help out. I was very, very thankful.

Apparently she didn't exit the trailhead and there was nothing, not a cigarette butt, not a piece of clothing, not footprints, nothing that indicated that she was there or took off. I think that's one of the biggest things. I mean, you can't out there in that desert area, you really can't get around unless you've got a 4x4 out there. It's almost like someone picked her up and got her out of there. But the weird thing is, is there was absolutely no marks.

But she knew what she was doing out there. She was not dumb by any means. The fact that she had a dog and there's no sign of a dog, either that or she was messing around, I don't know, and fell into some kind of a crevice.

That brings us to the end of episode 470. I'd like to thank everyone who spoke with us for this story. If you have a missing loved one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a case submission form at thevanishedpodcast.com. If you'd like to join in on the discussion, there's a page and discussion group on Facebook. You can also find us on Instagram. If you like our show, please give us a five-star rating and review. You can also support the show by contributing on Patreon, where you can get early and ad-free episodes.

Be sure to tune in next week. We'll be covering a case from Indiana. Thanks for listening. If you like The Vanished, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go.

This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy.

You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.