Replay: Toby Anderson
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I believe that the time lapse is due to the family believing because of Toby's juvenile record that he ran away. And we were all being told he ran away. We all believed that and we all believed he would show up when he was 18. Or even when his father died, we expected that. Or when his mother passed, we expected that.

And he's never, he's never came forward. There's been no contact. He was still a child. I think he needs peace. He was a child. He just needs to be found. And I think our whole family needs to heal. And maybe that's the only way we can get whatever is in those paths is finding Toby and finding out the truth about my uncle.

16-year-old Toby Anderson had found himself in some trouble during his teen years. Toby's life wasn't easy, and he began to act out. Toby was sent to a juvenile facility in Northern California and was shifted around between different family members' homes.

Then he just disappeared, and everyone seemed to believe that he had run away. Since Toby had been in some trouble over the years, running away didn't seem far-fetched. Toby's father searched for him and contacted relatives in other states to see if he had turned up there, but he never did. Then Toby's dad died, and not much was done to really look for him as far as anyone is aware today.

Decades later, a cousin took an interest in finding Toby after learning that some of what she had been told simply couldn't be true. And what she uncovered was truly horrifying. I'm Marissa and from Wondery, this is episode 359 of The Vanished, Toby Anderson's story.

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Before we get started, I wanted to mention that this episode is more graphic than most of our stories. This episode contains descriptions of adult subject matter, including child sexual abuse. Please take care while listening.

Toby Anderson was born in Bell, Texas on December 18, 1969, to Eugene and Nikki Anderson. But Toby spent most of his childhood and teen years in Northern California. His parents split up and his two younger siblings stayed with their mother, and Toby went to live with their father for the majority of the time.

Toby's story is one that is difficult to piece together. Both of his parents have since passed away, and his siblings were quite young and disconnected from his life in the lead-up to his disappearance. But we spoke to both his sister Marcy and brother Randy. Marcy told us what she can remember about her big brother and their tumultuous childhood.

The way that we grew up was really not a great environment. My mother and my father divorced when I was about three years old. And I don't really remember Toby living with us when we were younger. My mom remarried and that man was very abusive.

And so I remember, I believe Toby mostly lived with my father most of the time when we were younger growing up, although he would come and visit from time to time. It's hard to say. Toby is five years older than I am. So I was pretty young when he was around. I don't really remember having moments where we played together. Like I said, our home environment wasn't

greatest. And so the last time I really remember seeing him was in my head. And I don't know if I'm off a little bit by age, but what I was thinking was he was around 16 and he had come to hang out and stay with us. He was there for maybe a week or two weeks. It wasn't a long time. And he was just kind of, I remember him just being very quiet. I remember my

My mom and my ex-stepfather at the time being gone and us hanging out and just watching a movie together, basically. And that's really, I don't have a lot of information. I have a lot of pictures. My mom used to dress us up all the same. I have, there's Toby and there's myself and I have a younger brother, Randy.

And we all three have the same parents. And then I have a half sister as well. I have pictures of my mom dressing Toby and myself and Randy all up in like similar outfits and Halloween costumes and things like that. And I think...

Things turned when my mom married this ex-stepfather of mine, who, like I said, was very abusive. And then things just kind of started changing after that. You know, being afraid to, like, do things in the house, you know, being afraid of getting in trouble. You know, my mom was kind of your typically abused housewife as well. So we were all kind of gun-shy to do anything. So we didn't really have fun. I don't remember ever really...

doing anything fun or playing with him. The most I really remember is his pictures and a teddy bear that I have of his still. That was his when he was little. Last time I remember, he was approximately 16 and came to visit. He was very quiet, kind of

rough-looking kid. I think he was living with my dad at the time. My dad was kind of a workaholic and had remarried, had two stepdaughters. I don't know what that relationship was for him. I don't remember going and visiting my dad much at his home. He would come and see us and

Marcy remembers this visit when she believes that Toby was about 16, but she isn't 100% sure how old he was or when this visit occurred. Her memories aren't clear, but she knows that she never saw Toby again after that.

After he left our house, I never saw him again. And I remember asking my mom about him. I remember her saying something along the lines of him getting in trouble. And from what I'd known, he had kind of been in and out of trouble. And that's why he lived with my dad. But from my understanding, he got in trouble and he ended up going into juvenile hall. And I thought he was supposed to be there until he turned 18. I remember my mom talking about it.

And then I just never saw him again. I remember thinking when he turned 18, oh, hey, we're going to see Toby again and never did. And my mom didn't really talk much about him and nobody knew where he was. Toby's brother Randy was even younger than Marcy, but he does have some distinct memories of Toby. Rio Del, which is where we last seen Toby, where I last seen Toby. That's kind of vague to me. I was wondering about that. I've been thinking about it. I don't remember if it was

When he came one night when we were living on Davis Street, I don't know if he'd come in the middle of the night and I went down to the bowling alley and he took me back to the house on his shoulders. Or if maybe a short time after that, I went to my dad's house in Ukiah where Toby and dad lived. He had a trailer in dad's yard. There was a time there when I seen him there because I didn't get in trouble, but I got Toby in trouble because I told on him for being bad.

Levita Lockhart would be my dad's sister.

And she lives in Ukiah, California. And Toby had lived with her for a time, as well as my dad in Ukiah. Her husband is the sheriff of Mendocino County, of that county. He's been arrested in that county. And he was in juvenile hall in Mendocino County before I last seen him. One of the last times I've seen him, it was about 2 in the morning and we get a call. And Toby's at the bowling alley at the other side of Rio Deli.

So mom wakes me up and in my pajamas, I start walking towards the bowling alley. Then he picks me up and carries me on his shoulders back to the, back to the house. He stayed for about two days during that time. My mother had this antique phone. Well, we thought it was antique. It was really a replica, but,

She had this antique phone, and I had dropped it and broke it all apart. And Toby, you know, slick like he was, went and got super glue, and we super glued it all together. Well, this really, nobody ever, you never got in trouble for it, never noticed it until years later, probably 2006 or so, I was at my mother's house, and she had that phone on the wall. And I'm like, you realize that that has been super glued together? And then I told her the story, and she's like, she had never noticed that me and Toby fixed it.

So that was kind of funny. He was outgoing. I think he was kind of a tough guy. The times I was around him, he was never shy around. Always had friends around him. But I think that the quality of the friends are in question. But he always had people around him. He liked that one picture that you have there, him next to that Jeep. That was his pride and joy, that Willie's Jeep at Dad's house. That was a picture I had stashed away.

He worked on that Jeep. Him and my dad worked on that Jeep. And it was just his thing. He liked cars, liked to tinker with cars, and especially that Jeep. Dad had some horses, and I remember him putting me on a horse. Sometimes when I was staying at Dad's house and he was there, he'd put me on a horse and kind of taught me how to ride the horse around the yard and stuff. Randy explained to us that Toby bounced around from family member to family member, to juvenile hall and back. His life wasn't stable.

Sometime during that period, he was bouncing back and forth between my dad and my aunt there in Ukiah and my uncle Randy, who I was named after, who was on my mother's side. So he lived with probably Uncle Randy a lot more than any of the others after he started getting into trouble. When dad tried to help him out, dad put him in a trailer out front and then he got in trouble and went back to juvenile hall or whatever.

and went back to Uncle Randy. And I know all this because Uncle Randy was probably the closest to him because they were kind of of the same character. Well, I think a lot of what happened is the family, Dad and Aunt Levita especially, kind of gave him some hard love there for a little while. They just gave him some hard love and kind of, you know, hey, get your shit together. And my dad kind of kicked him out of the place. And that's when he went back to Uncle Randy's again.

Toby, Marcy, and Randy have a cousin on their father's side of the family. Her name is Denise.

Denise is the daughter of their father Gene's sister. Throughout the story, you will notice that these families are very disconnected. Marcy and Randy were mostly with their mother and didn't have much access to their father's side of the family during childhood. Toby's father's family is also very disconnected. They lived great distances apart, some in California, some in Arkansas, some in Oregon, and others in the St. Louis area. That is where Toby's cousin Denise grew up. But

But Toby's father's family wasn't just disconnected due to geographical distance. There were traumatic events that occurred that fractured their family long before Toby ever disappeared. And this may not sound like an important part of the story, but it's key. Here's Toby's cousin, Denise.

My family was very disconnected because my mom and Toby's dad are brother and sister. They were both taken away from my grandmother at a young age because her husband was doing things that he shouldn't have been doing to those kids. And there was five other kids at home. So they were separated when they were younger. My mom went to live with an aunt. My uncle went and lived with another family.

Her husband molested and raped my mom for years until she was taken away. And that was proven. And then he molested his grandkids and their grandfather went to prison for molesting them, too.

And my grandmother knew this about my mom and her gene, Toby's dad. She knew that. I mean, before she died, she told me and my sister, my mom was a whore. And I'm like, my mom was 10 years old when she was taken away from you. How was she a whore? So that she was never much of a grandmother at all. And she not a good person.

Denise's mom and Toby's dad were close. They had shared a traumatic childhood. In adulthood, they kept in touch. Despite Jean living in California and Denise's family in the St. Louis area, Denise wasn't involved in Toby's day-to-day life, but their families were in contact. I know she always had pictures of Toby as growing up.

I remember my mom would talk to Toby on the phone. Of course, you didn't have speakerphone back then. So you had that, you know, we could say hi, you know, because we're cousins. But we never got to travel because my dad being in the CIA, my mom was blind. I had cancer as a child. So it wasn't like we ever got to go anywhere or do anything. So it was always phone calls with my family.

Toby had been in some trouble during his teen years and was sent to a juvenile detention facility. Denise knew about this, and she thinks that Toby may have been acting out after suffering abuse at the hands of his stepfather.

Toby was abused by his stepdad. We do know that. We think the beginning of his process of going into juvenile was due to some abuse from his stepdad. Fortuna, California is where he lived when he was younger. They moved around. So Toby was bounced around from family members a lot. But it was around the Fortuna area. He went to juvenile help.

The first time it was when he pulled a knife out of the kitchen drawer on his mom and his stepdad. The second time was when he took his dad's Bronco for a joyride. At some point during Denise's adolescent years, she heard that Toby was missing, that he had run away. Denise grew up believing that the juvenile facility was where Toby had disappeared from.

Toby seemed to have a lot of what they call trouble. And that's what he got put in juvenile home for. And that's where I always thought he went missing from.

As far as anyone is aware, Toby was not reported missing in the 1980s. We don't know if his father did try to report him missing and no one would take a report because Toby was considered a troubled teen or what else could have happened there. From Denise's recollection, she believes that that was the case.

When my uncle Gene, Toby's dad, came to Illinois back in 1987 to look for Toby, he had stated to us that he tried to do a police report. They would not file one because they stated he most likely ran away and he will come back home.

Toby's father did look for him. He thought that maybe Toby had gone to live with family members in other states, so he checked there. But Toby's dad passed away in 1990, and the search for Toby seemed to end there. When Denise grew up, she became curious to find out whatever happened to her cousin Toby. Did he start a new life somewhere? His home life wasn't great, so maybe he did run away. I remember my uncle visiting us in St. Louis.

saying all he wanted to find was his son. And that's his last letter before he died. If anybody ever sees Toby, please tell him I love him. When Marcy read that to me, I said, all right, Marcy, we're doing this. We're going to find him. Marcy remembers receiving this letter from her father before he passed away. And she always believed that it meant that Toby was alive and just didn't want to be in contact with his family. They had a tough life and she thought that maybe he had found somewhere safe and stable to land.

The last letter my dad sent me was relating to him just prior to him having a bone marrow transplant. And

talking about things he wanted me to have and how he wanted me to be. And then the end of it, you know, he talked about, if you find Toby, you know, please, please tell him I love him and that I wish he was here with us. And so I, at that time, I know my dad thought that he was alive and he was just missing. I thought that all this time, you know, Toby just was mad at my mom, mad at my dad for putting him in a juvenile hall. And, you

And the environment that we lived in, maybe that's why he didn't come around. Then I thought, well, why wouldn't he, you know, try and contact me or try and contact our brother Randy? And he just never has. When we were younger, too, over the years, my brother Randy was closer with some cousins that we have on my mother's side over in like Santa Rosa, the Bay Area.

And we'd have conversations over years about my brother, Toby, running off with the circus, they thought, or that he was involved with some drug deal and was shot and killed. We also heard that he was in a car accident. We've had a lot of different speculatory, you know, things when it comes to him, and none of them we know are true or not true.

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We know when it comes to finding balance, the more choices, the better. There wasn't much known about Toby's disappearance. So Denise worked with Marcy and other family members to see what she could piece together. When I got to connect with Marcy, we talked for the longest time because we're like, oh my God, we're first cousins and we never got to meet. And I said, well, whatever happened to Toby? Did you ever find him? And the crying that she did.

She just said, we don't know anything because she said she didn't know. Like he up and vanished. I'm so embarrassed because half my family didn't even know Toby existed. We did because my mom and Jean are brother and sister. So they talked all the time. But I didn't get to meet my uncle until he went and searched for Toby. It's just so sad that my family has been so disconnected.

Marcy didn't have a lot of answers for Denise. Marcy told us that she tried to look for her brother when she grew up, but her options were limited back then.

I've tried searching for them in the past, you know, like the whole 1-800 search things and nothing came about from that. So I just got like a bunch of random names all over the country. And I tried calling a few and a lot of them just didn't match up, had wrong middle names and things like that. And my family was really estranged. Like I said, I, you know, I,

I grew up in a not so great environment and I didn't know my dad's mom. Like I didn't know my grandmother on my dad's side until my dad got sick with leukemia and died when I was 15. He was 43 years old. I didn't go visit my aunt there or my grandmother. I didn't know them until my dad was sick and in the hospital. So my dad kind of kept us in the dark as far as his side of the family and the things that I

I'm now finding out happened. Denise was still working under the assumption that Toby had disappeared from a juvenile detention facility and that he may be alive and well until she spoke to another cousin of Toby's.

I had told the family, I said, look, you know, this is what's going on. I'm doing this research on Toby. We're going to hopefully find him and maybe get to know him again. I thought he was alive until she called me. And then she gave me that news. And I just was floored. And I said, wait a minute. Why was he in Oregon? He was in a juvenile home. And she goes, no, he was living with us. I said, what? You know, so then things pieced together.

So my uncle Billy was living in Oregon, in Selma, Oregon, at the time that Toby was staying with him. Getting that phone call about my uncle a year ago, I just kind of leaned down. I was at a baseball game for my bonus child. And when I got that phone call, I kind of just kneeled down on the ground crying because I thought that is not what I thought.

Not what I even I just thought all these years he ran away. He ran away and he just didn't want to be found.

The cousin who gave Denise this information is the daughter of Toby's father's brother, Almer, who goes by Billy. What she told Denise was that Toby had come to live with their family in Selma, Oregon. No one is exactly sure why, but Toby was sent to live with his uncle in Oregon in February of 1986. Again, Billy is the younger brother of Toby's father, Gene. Marcy told us that she has memories of when Billy lived in California and she used to play with his daughters.

My Uncle Billy's daughters, I remember playing with them when I was really young. I must have been probably six or seven. They lived right next to us. And I remember playing with them and just them up and disappearing one day. We played and then the next morning I went to go play with them and they were gone. And they just like up and left in the middle of the night.

As we dig further into this story, you will learn that Uncle Billy has a history of doing this, moving abruptly in the middle of the night. Randy told us that he has no memories of Billy until much later in life, when he saw him at his grandmother's funeral.

Uncle Billy. And I don't know him. I've only met him one time in my life. When I went to Arkansas to bury Grandma Desi, he was there with the police officers and whatnot. It was the only time I've ever met him in my life.

Since Billy is an uncle on the father's side of the family, and Marcy and Randy were raised primarily by their mother, that explains why they didn't really know him. But Marcy and Randy never heard the full story on what happened to Toby. They were only told that he had run away. It wasn't until Denise began speaking to Billy's children that they learned that Toby had lived in Oregon for a period of time before he ultimately disappeared.

The first story to come out about how Toby went missing was that he ran away from Billy's home. You know, I do know he was living in Oregon at the time. I know there was a fight between my Uncle Gene, which is Toby's father, and my Uncle Billy. And I don't know what that was about. I think there was something more to that fight regarding Toby. They said he ran away.

Later, in a letter to Denise from her uncle Billy, there was a different version of events that included Toby touching one of Billy's daughters. My uncle Billy in the letter said that this is what they claim. Now, I can't say it's true. But of course, if Toby did this, then truth needs to be told in order to find him. He claims that he had touched his daughters inappropriately.

Now, we don't know if this is true that Toby did anything wrong. Toby was still a minor at the time, and Uncle Billy is a bit of an unreliable narrator. We will discuss this further later on, but Billy molested other children in the family and was later convicted of raping two little girls as young as two and three years old.

and molesting a seven-year-old boy. We don't know what Toby may have been subjected to while living with Billy. Denise told us that Billy's daughters have not been able to confirm that Toby touched any of them, but they have blocked out a lot of memories due to traumatic events that occurred during childhood. Denise doesn't want to discount their trauma if Toby did in fact touch them inappropriately. She said she doesn't remember he might have touched her with his foot in a private area.

But they were sleeping in the same bed. So I just, I don't know. I don't know. He says the girls said that he touched him inappropriately. So he got in a fight with Toby and he took Toby out to the car and told the family he was taking him to the juvenile detention center. Now they said this was at night.

From what I understand from what the police had told me, there's not one near there. It would have been hours and hours. And they said he was gone. And he claims, which is a different story than what they're saying, that he drove him to the police department and dropped him off. And the cop came out and said, what are you doing? And he said, he's your problem now and drove off.

That's his story. His daughter said he came back and said, I dropped him off at the juvenile detention center and left him. Now, there's no evidence of that. And yet there was another version of the story told by Billy. He also told his family, all of his daughters, that he went and picked up my uncle Gary and had him with him because otherwise he would kill Toby.

My Uncle Gary says he never picked me up. I didn't live that close. I live in Grants Pass. So he said that never happened. I mean, he even went to Josephine County this last week and talked to them because he said, I've been searching for Toby for years because we thought he just ran away. And then Billy had told everybody Toby was on drugs.

The first time I talked to my uncle Gary, which is my mom's youngest brother, was last week. I'm 48 years old. And here I talked to him the first time. And he even said, I've been searching for Toby for years. And I just thought he ran away because that's what everybody said. Because that's what Billy told everybody that Toby ran away. And then he told everybody that he died in a car accident. Well, there's no evidence of that. I have searched everywhere.

All the West Coast for any car accident, even his mother and father, if they had a car accident and he was in it, wouldn't they know?

There seems to be endless versions of stories about what happened to Toby. Denise worked to find anyone else who could confirm that Toby had been in Oregon with Billy. That's when she found a family member on Toby's mother's side of the family, who remembered why Toby had been sent to Oregon with Billy. After he was released from the juvenile detention facility, Toby was once again shuffled around to an uncle on his mom's side of the family, until he got into a bit of trouble again.

As far as we know, there was an episode that one of the cousins on his mom's side had told me the second time he was released from juvenile, he was staying with his uncle, Randy, which is his mother's brother.

And some neighborhood kids and Toby had apparently stole one of the neighbor's Christmas gifts. And that's when he ended up going to our uncle in Oregon. His uncle on his mom's side and his uncle on his dad's side lived next door to each other. So they knew each other very well.

And they were friends. So they remained friends years later. I mean, it was years. And we did find out that her one of the cousins died.

She went with her dad when he took him to our Uncle Billy's in Oregon. That was something definitely new that we found out because we did not know how he ended up with our uncle. Now we have, you know, a statement from another family member on the other side of the family that I'm not related to who remembered driving him there.

Despite the fact that Toby had gotten into some trouble, Denise told us that she has never found any proof that Toby had a history of running away. There has never been any reports of him ever running away prior.

to what our uncle had stated. We were just told that Toby ran away because he didn't want to go back in juvenile. That's what we were told growing up. Never any reports. The only thing that was ever reported is when he took the Bronco. I do not think that was considered a runaway. In her free time, Denise began calling around to find any records of Toby being in Oregon to help narrow down the time frame in which Toby disappeared.

I've called every high school in California and Oregon and Washington. That's how I found this high school. I spend five to six hours a week on the phone with people. I look at John Doe's. I look at NamUs. There's been nothing. I did just get a case number to enter him. I can't even find a missing persons report from back in the 80s.

So, yes, I went to Josephine County and reported because that's the last known area that I found him at. I've contacted juvenile homes and I've even looked up court records and nothing. I've checked prisons. He's not in prison, nor has he ever been arrested. There's nothing on him.

I ended up calling every high school in the West Coast, found him in Oregon, had it sent to Scott Wilson, his school records. So we do know he was in Oregon. That's his last known. Even the detective gave me the address and said, here is a five mile parcel.

that the school had him registered to, do you know anything about it? I said, I don't know. My cousin said that's where they lived. So he did live there, but that's the last anybody has seen of him. So that's been it. There's nothing, no driver's license, no death certificate.

If you look up Toby's case in some missing persons databases, you will see Toby listed as missing since 1988. That's because when Denise reported Toby missing decades later, she was working off of a range of time that she had from memories of family members.

Not all of the databases have been updated or changed, but since that time they have been able to track down more information in order to narrow that range that Denise started with from a couple of years to a weekend in November of 1986. That was after Denise had called around to schools up and down the West Coast and found that Toby had attended Illinois Valley High School in Cave Junction, Oregon.

And I was thankful that the school spoke to me after I sent them his missing person file and showed them that I did report him missing, that they gave me not the exact date he was in school, but very close to the week. So we know he was in school on Friday. And I know on Tuesday, my uncle had went to school and signed him out, stayed

stating he moved to California back with his father, which that's not true. So that was the first catch-a-moment.

For me, every Monday is my Toby day that I make calls continuously. We do know for a fact that he was enlisted in school in February of 1986. His time with our Uncle Billy ended in November of 1986.

according to school records. So that is a document that we have that the school had sent to the detective stating the timeline. But the family stated it was probably in January or February that Toby had went to live with Uncle Billy. So that's a nine month, 10 month time.

After years of phone calls trying to find any trace of Toby, Denise found out that he attended school one week in November of 86. In the next week, Uncle Billy went to the school to withdraw Toby from classes, stating that he had moved back to California. But none of Toby's relatives in California ever saw him again. Once Denise established that Toby was last with Billy, and there was no trace of him after that time,

She wanted to take a closer look at Billy's history. Billy is the half-brother of Toby's father and Denise's mother. Billy's father had molested children within their household, and that's why Toby's father and Denise's mother were sent away. But Billy and his other siblings remained in that household. My mom and Toby's dad was sent away.

And those kids remained in the house. We've been told, yes, there was some abuse with the other kids too. And the other four kids remained in the house. I do know there was a conviction with that man that he had raped them.

somebody else after. He is the father of the other four children. So once my mom and Toby's dad was sent away and separated, you know, my mom kept contact with some of the other kids, like my aunt periodically. So we would know who they are and things about them. And we knew about the conviction with their father.

We don't know if Billy was molested by his father too, but the pattern continued that we often see in multi-generational abuse cases.

Billy has been accused of molesting multiple children in his family and was convicted of raping two and three-year-old girls and also molesting a seven-year-old boy in 2001. We aren't going to go into detail about these crimes because the court documents are extremely graphic and disturbing. You can find the court records online if you would like to read them for yourself.

Billy has been incarcerated since that time. These crimes occurred shortly after Billy married the grandmother of these children that he victimized.

He was eligible for parole last year. I sent him a letter and his parole was denied. I don't know if that's why he was denied. Our uncle is a convicted child rapist and that's his conviction of three kids. And I wonder deeply what has he done to his own children and grandchildren? My Uncle Billy never touched me. He's never done anything to me.

This is not a vengeance to hurt him or his family. This is the fact that I have a missing cousin and he is a convicted child rapist. Denise didn't have much interaction with her uncle Billy growing up, but she does remember her father keeping her away from him. An indication to Denise that others within the family knew or suspected that Billy was a predator.

The only interactions I had was as a 13, 14-year-old when we would go visit when grandmother, she got married. My dad just basically stated, do not be alone with him. Stay clear. You're fine with Aunt Wanda, but do not go anywhere Uncle Billy states. I didn't understand why. I did not question that. I just thought there was an issue there.

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I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours. Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. So I think listeners can expect me to be chatting with folks, both recognizable and unrecognizable names, about the way that people have navigated roads to triumph.

My hope is that people will finish an episode of Reclaiming and feel like they filled their tank up. They connected with the people that I'm talking to and leave with maybe some nuggets that help them feel a little more hopeful. Follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Reclaiming early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Denise is also deeply concerned that her grandmother may have helped protect Billy and cover up what happened to Toby. She has since passed away, but made several misleading statements over the years. To be honest, my family has a lot of skeletons that nobody talks about this stuff.

And I'm the first one to come out and say, I'm ashamed of this, that we have protected something evil in our family. My grandmother protected like I've talked to her brother and sisters who are alive. And they just said Desi was a different person and why she protected Billy over things he's done. But I think the family suspects him.

But nobody will say anything. And that just makes me absolutely sick to my stomach that he could have done this. I don't know. Is he capable? Well, seeing that report of what he did to those three kids? Yeah, I don't doubt it. I don't doubt he's done more, to be honest. Because if he's done these three kids, could possibly have been Toby. How many more kids?

My grandmother, I call her my biological grandmother, protected and even would tell the family for years, Toby, Toby was calling me. Toby did this. Well, that's not true. And that's what I'm finding out. So I've done pretty much all the investigation, the research, everything.

Because Marcy and Randy, his brother and sister, didn't know what to do. My grandmother said, oh, I hired a private investigator. That never happened. She's gone now. So she's lied all these years. And I truly think she knew what happened to Toby.

In hindsight, Denise thinks that her grandmother was actively trying to mislead the rest of the family about Toby by tricking them into believing that he was alive. It's difficult to imagine a grandmother doing such a thing, but Denise explained that her grandmother had a history of disturbing behavior.

My grandmother used the story after my Uncle Gene, Toby's father, passed away that Toby had contacted her in 1988 and requested money from her. And she told him no, and that's the last she heard of him. In 1988, my Uncle Billy, then, who was living in Arkansas with his family...

told his daughters, Toby's in Arkansas looking for you. And they were scared to death. He was always telling them, Toby's going to come get you. That was the story they were told when they were younger. Those stories don't make sense because Toby never met his grandmother.

Now, I can tell you there is something I recently found. Toby's father's obituary states that Toby was living in Arkansas at the time of his death. We believe that obituary came from our grandmother. Then I went on a huge search of Toby Eugene Anderson in the state of Arkansas.

That obituary states that he was living at that time, which there's no proof. Toby, Marcy, nor Randy met my grandmother until 1990 when their dad died.

They did not know about her. The information that my uncle has stated that Toby had contacted my grandmother asking for money when they were there and scaring the kids, stating that Toby's going to come after them, that's not true. He never knew her. That seems like a story that has continued. We didn't hear this story until years later before she passed in 2004.

She never told Marcy that story. That story actually never came out until my uncle Billy had wrote me a letter and one of the girls had stated that. So if it was true, she should have told us from the beginning and it was never told to any family members. I just remember she said, Toby ran away. Just forget about it. It was her answer.

This is all very distressing to take in. For Denise, she was never close to her grandmother and witnessed her manipulation of other family members firsthand. So this isn't overly surprising to her.

And I can tell you that the only time she came around with us is when she would visit our aunts and uncles. And my mom insisted on going and seeing her mother because my mom was, that's all she wanted was her mother. So the day my grandmother died, my mom begged for her attention. But I can tell you, my grandmother always told my mom. And I remember that Diane said,

Don't ever bring up the past. The past is the past, and you do not discuss that in this family. You forget about it. And she told Billy's kids that, too. She was closer to Billy's kids than she was with any of us other grandkids. There's a lot of us grandkids that I've spoken to since then.

And they didn't know of our grandmother either. Now, we were always told by our grandmother, and I remember this from a young age, my mom was a whore and she slept with her husband's

And whatever my mom got in life, she deserved. And she didn't understand how my mom got such a good looking professional man. She's very lucky. That's the hardest thing to take is knowing that she protected the one child herself.

that she had who was evil. And she protected him till the day she died. She was going to see him in prison the morning she died in that car accident. And she protected him. And she spent every last dime she had confirmed trying to get him legal help that never could prove that he was innocent in the charges that he is sitting in prison for. That's really hard. I love my kids. But if my children would have done something wrong...

I'm going to love them till the day they die, but I am not going to protect them. If they did something wrong, they need to pay the price for their crime. I don't know if it's because my dad was in Army Special Services and this is the way he raised us, but my dad always said several things that stuck with me throughout my life.

You find out the truth and you be truthful to yourself and your family because your family needs to come as number one. But if somebody ever hurts, you tell the truth, even if it hurts you. So if somebody ever does something to you, you find out the truth and you tell the truth, even if it hurts. And believe me, this is the hardest thing I've done with my family is telling Toby's story.

Because I'm hurting other cousins who are living, at least I feel sometimes. But then I'm protecting Marcy. But Toby's truth has to come out and we have to find him. Because I don't think we will ever heal until we do. It's a black cloud over all of us. Through her research, Denise also learned that Billy had abruptly moved from Oregon, again in the middle of the night, just months after Toby vanished.

Billy moved to Arkansas with his family in the middle of the night within less than three months after Toby went missing, stating that our grandmother was sick and about ready to die and he needed to go to Arkansas to help her. She would have been in her 50s.

Toby's grandmother wasn't sick, as Billy had stated. In fact, she went on to live a healthy life for many years following this time. And when she did eventually pass away, it wasn't due to illness. She was in a car accident. Was there another reason that Billy left so abruptly? Or could it have something to do with Toby?

In an attempt to gather as much information as she possibly could, Denise began writing letters to Billy in prison in Arkansas. He seems to enjoy conversing with others, but his stories have evolved with time. Denise also noticed that it seemed as though Billy was trying to manipulate her by saying horrific things about Toby and her mother, and Denise eventually had to back off for the sake of her own mental health.

My uncle Billy, anybody who writes him a letter, oh, he responds. He loves it. He thinks everybody's going to be his friend, and he loves the attention. There's been letters from my uncle, quite a few letters. Those letters not really saying that he did it, but he said Toby was a monster. He said some pretty bad things about my mom. I mean, I think the biggest thing is pretty much in...

Some of the letters that my uncle has wrote to us, he continuously says Toby was the monster, but he's not a monster. And he had to get rid of the monster. We're pretty sure that, you know, Toby's no longer with us. We just don't know where he's at. It's hard because this is my uncle. And he talks about...

Yeah.

because to sit there and say that our parents were lovers at five and six years old and they wanted it and they deserved it, you know, you see the disturbing point in that. He would make excuses for...

everybody, but himself, you know, blame, put the blame on Toby going missing on everybody, but himself, but it has been an emotional rollercoaster. The fact that Toby was a monster and he did what he did. That was the hard one. That was my last letter to him because hearing that I don't think Toby was bad as some of the things he did. He,

He pulled a knife on his stepdad. We don't know exactly what happened. We believe there was something going on. I know it's 16 or 15.

He stole his dad's Bronco. His dad felt he had no choice but to contact the police. Kids do that. And for him to do minor things like that and to have the life that he had, some of the letters, he'll write me and say, don't you know I'm your favorite uncle? Don't you know I tried to help you? Well, he never has. Things that he has stated. I tried helping you in your car and you wouldn't contact me back. Don't you remember Grandma had...

a lot of money. You know where it's at. You could get that money. Well, why would you tell me that? Because one, she's been deceased since 2004. She had no money. He'll put the blame on my mom, stating my mom took all the evidence of him with his current rape charges, why he's in prison. That is not correct because I did prove that with my grandma's stepson that my mom did not take anything. I actually have his

court documents, which are also online available of what he did. He does blame those children that way. He's currently in prison, that they're lying. Was he doing this to his daughter and Toby saw it? Was he doing this to Toby? I don't know, but it's emotionally hard. He seems to be like he's defending what happened. Like he's the savior. He's the best one. We should all love him.

He's not the monster. Toby was a monster. Those came from his words. He had to save his family from the monster. But remember, I'm not a monster. I'm being accused of things I've never done. I mean, in the same thing, he says maybe your Uncle Gary had something to do with it. Maybe Toby's dad killed him. He was probably hit on the back of the head with a hoe.

And he's probably buried. Did you look into that? That's the letters I get. And then he'll twist it around and say, but your mom, she loved being sexually assaulted by my dad. I watched it. Your mom begged for him to do that. After those letters, I stopped writing him because I knew he was just going to get worse.

we can't say that we fault denise for cutting off contact with billy he seemed to be trying to play games with her and wrote horrific things about the abuse that denise's mother and toby's father endured in early childhood billy sounds like a deeply disturbed individual and it must have been a huge relief when his parole was denied last year

You're probably assuming that with all of this information that Denise has gathered, that Billy has been interviewed by law enforcement about Toby. But as far as Denise is aware, that hasn't happened. At least from what we understand, I do not think he's been interviewed at all. As far as Toby's case, I do not know if anybody's ever spoken to my uncle or to any other suspected case.

Denise learned that a family member had some of Billy's belongings that her grandmother had in her possession at the time of her death. Denise jumped on this opportunity to see if there could be a clue hidden in Billy's belongings. I just paid for my cousin to mail me all of my Uncle Billy's belongings because when my grandmother died in a car accident, my mom ended up with a box of Billy's belongings.

It's just a lot of pictures, and there's a lot of pictures of kids, and it's weird. After receiving the box of Billy's items, Denise was only more disturbed and concerned.

Now that I have his belongings that I did offer his daughters and nobody took it. So I have them. And there's a lot of photos in there that concern me about other cousins. If that makes sense without stating it, there's disturbing photos in there of certain cousins that he had contact with. I still can't to this day. I don't know how to say anything because those pictures should not have been in his custody ever.

Those are parents' pictures that they take or whatever. But it makes you wonder why these photos are in the positions they are and why they're in his custody, especially knowing what he's done. Denise feels like there must be a grain of truth within these different stories that Billy has told about Toby over the years. Some of the stories are outrageous, but there are common themes throughout.

My uncle Billy has repeatedly stuck to his story, and he stated that the night that this all happened, Toby was caught inappropriately touching his younger daughters. Then there was a fight. Toby had ran outside his in the chicken coop.

Toby was taken out of the chicken pen, put into the car. My uncle sent his family away to somebody else in the family and then drove Toby to the Josephine County Cave Junction Police Department, dropped him off, and the police officer ran out to the car and

and said, you can't just leave a kid here. And my uncle Billy states that Toby had either ran off into the woods and my uncle Billy drove off. So he says he either ran off to the woods, but he's not for sure if the police officer took him. Those are his exact words. He has twisted the story around multiple times in his letters, you

You know, doing the research and finding out Toby was with our uncle, which no one in the family knew at the time until I started doing the research. He has said different stories of Toby's dad came and got him.

And he killed, probably killed him and buried him on the edge of the ranch in California. He has twisted it and said that Toby was alive and living in Arkansas. He has stated, I guess another uncle killed him, which is our uncle Gary.

And I have spoken to him since then. So he has put the blame on two of his brothers since I questioned him. But he is sticking to the point of Toby inappropriately touching his daughter. He does not ever state which daughter, by the way. He just said daughter. The daughter, she refuses to go into detail. And the only thing she has stated to me is just find the truth. They don't speak. It

except the older one who had wrote me a letter and it was not very pleasant about how I need to mind my own business. I am no longer her family. I'm trying to destroy her dad for some reason, and I'm not because I'm willing to get him the help he needs. I know that sounds strange. I'm also willing to help the girls get the help they need if something had happened. But

For not speaking about what happened tells me a lot. For somebody to say, just find out the truth, well, I can't state unless you tell us what happened that night. But when you don't state what happened and tell us what he did, if he did anything, how are we supposed to find out that is the truth? Because the truth is a hard thing to swallow.

And if you don't speak up, it makes you wonder, is that the truth? But nothing leads to Toby doing that. And that's coming from other girls in the family stating he never touched them. So I can't prove that. That story of Toby inappropriately touching the girls never came out until I reported him missing and let the family know.

Denise wonders if Billy's children know more than they have shared, but it's a tricky subject to approach with them. There has been a lot of trauma within the family, and some family members do not want to revisit that time, while others have tried to remember bits and pieces. And some of those bits and pieces have lined up with different versions of Billy's stories.

The same story I have heard about the chicken coop comes from multiple sources of who was there. Toby ran out after a fight started and was hiding in the chicken coop before my uncle took him out and put him in the vehicle. And the family did not return until the next morning. A couple of them has made a statement of she remembers the fight and she remembers Toby crying.

The older two have never spoken to me except the oldest one writing a nasty letter, which I respect. If she doesn't want to be contacted and she doesn't want to be family, I respect that. That is her wishes. I think they do know more that happened than what is being stated. We cannot prove any stories of my Uncle Billy that have any truth. The only truth

Truth that I can confirm is he was, Toby, by multiple sources, that Toby was hiding in a chicken coop. And I have contacted the people who currently own that property and that chicken coop is still there. If Billy's wife knew of anything, she never spoke up. I do know there was some abuse confirmed by a daughter, his wife, my Aunt Wanda. Aunt Wanda was a wonderful woman.

wonderful, kind-hearted, soft-spoken woman to all of us. She had passed away. I can tell you one thing about Aunt Wanda that I never realized until we got older, that she was always protective over, like if I visited, she would always say, just stay close to me, sweetheart. I think she knew. I just didn't, I didn't realize it until I'm older.

Billy claims that he caught Toby doing something to one of his daughters. But Billy has actually been convicted of crimes similar to what he was accusing Toby of. Denise has theories on what may have actually happened the night that Toby disappeared. He might have walked in that night on something. I don't know because...

Nobody says anything. There has been reports of my uncle doing stuff to his children. I can't confirm it because they won't speak, but there has been reports by others that they do know this.

but I can tell you one cousin in particular says she does not want her children knowing the past. Toby being in trouble, if there was a fight that broke out, did he run away? He could have run away. So you don't think anything happened because at that time, I don't think anybody knew of Billy's history with children until he went to Arkansas. And there has been other people came forward to me

about my uncle Billy that don't want to put their name out there. And I respect it that they had something done to them. So he was just not caught prior to that. He's really good and states he's innocent and everything from everything I've taken to him.

I didn't do that. It must have been somebody else that looked like me. I think Toby might have walked in on a situation that was going on between my uncle and one of the girls and maybe was going to tell on my uncle. And my uncle silenced him. Do I think he was buried? There's a possibility that.

He was either buried or dumped. I feel maybe he's on that property. If Toby hasn't been found in this long, my uncle, I mean, he was good because he covered his tracks very well with that case. I think with a lot of things he's done over the years, he's smart enough to know how to hide what he's done.

Since Denise began her journey, she has been seeking any trace of Toby, and she's been looking for anyone who knew him. He seemed like a ghost within his own story even before he ever disappeared. People seem to just barely remember him. Denise is still looking for people who knew Toby, but she did find one classmate so far. And even though Billy describes Toby as a monster, this classmate has a different recollection.

We have spoken to one person, a girl who went to school with Toby.

That had stated he was very quiet and reserved, but she said he really didn't talk to anybody. He would stay to himself. She goes, I remember him. She goes, he was funny when you would get them to talk. But she said, other than that, he was just kind. Like if somebody dropped a book, she said, he'd pick it up and just say, say, you know, here you go. And are you're welcome. She said that he never opened up to anybody.

Which could mean that there was the stories of the abuse of him as a child when the stepdad could explain some of the things that went on. Much of the family has remained silent about Toby, the boy who vanished so long ago. But Denise has been getting some family members involved in the search efforts.

Our Uncle Gary said he would go to Billy's house and see Toby, and he said he was a good kid. He was a hard worker. The day I told Uncle Gary about what Billy stated about him helping and maybe he did something...

And my Uncle Billy's daughter stated that she thought our Uncle Gary was involved in Toby going missing. I reached out to my Uncle Gary, and my Uncle Gary was for, I guess, a brief time in law enforcement, and he lives in Oregon. He was very hurt by those comments, stated Toby was such a kind kid and a hard worker.

And he said he just up and disappeared. And nobody knew why. And Billy just said, oh, he ran away. My Uncle Gary never even heard of this story that Billy is stating now. And they were close. So that tells me a lot about that story. The thing I learned about my Uncle Gary speaking to him.

The day I told him, the next day, him and his wife drove all the way to the police department and sat in that police department until they were able to speak to a detective. He gave a statement, and that meant the world to me. As far as other family members, I am getting a lot of support. Unfortunately, during COVID, we lost a couple of them that were helping me get a lot of information.

Marcy told us that she doesn't expect to find out one day that her brother is still out there alive. She doesn't think that it's possible. And she isn't holding out hope for that. She's realistic and just wants to find her brother. For my parents, for me, for my brother, for Denise, you know, I just,

It would be nice to know and find him. And in my heart, I know that he's gone. You know, I just know this. And I suspect that my Uncle Billy has something to do with it. I really believe that that's probably the truth of things. I just, I would love to be able to find him and put him at rest with my dad. Toby's brother Randy has similar feelings about finding Toby.

Me and Marcy were so young, we didn't really get a chance to look for him until

until recent years right now. But I think that at that time frame, like I said, the family was giving him some hard love and they really just didn't think he was anywhere but out on a walkabout, so to speak. So nobody ever filed any missing persons reports or called the cops about it or anything. They just kind of ignored it until my father came down with cancer and needed a bone marrow transplant. When he needed the bone marrow transplant, we hired private investigators to search for him. It's been 35 years. Any type of closure or

So what happened to Toby Anderson after he was sent to live with his uncle Billy in Selma, Oregon in 1986?

Denise has been able to track down school records that show that Toby was enrolled there and attended in November of 1986. Then Billy withdrew Toby from school, claiming that he went back to California. But Toby was never seen again. Billy has told several different stories about Toby. For many years, he just told family members that he ran away. Later, he said that he caught him touching one of his daughters and dropped him off at a police station or juvenile facility.

But there's no proof of that ever happening. We don't have any proof that Toby did or didn't do what Billy claims. And it's important to remember that the man who was weaving this narrative about Toby has also been convicted of raping and molesting several young children himself.

Toby's family continues to press on for answers. They have a social media page dedicated to Toby and

and hope that more people will come forward who knew him or have information about what may have happened to him. They've also been working on getting their DNA into every database out there. In the event that there are answers along that avenue, they remain hopeful that this renewed push for answers will lead them to finding Toby. If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Toby Anderson, please contact the Oregon State Police at 541-776-6236.

I think the guilt I feel is that nobody in my family

Even cousins said, who is he? You know, why didn't anybody ever say anything? Why didn't anybody know? And they would sweep it under the rug, like my grandma would always say. That's the past. Let the past go. Don't talk about it. That's how she told her kids. That's how she told her grandkids. You were molested. It's in the past. Let it go. Don't tell people about it. That was her reasoning of moving on and forgetting things.

And that's not right. And I think that's why our family is so distant and they keep to themselves and not talk hardly. And this uncle needs to be held accountable for what he's done if he's done this. And I want to find Toby, whether it's his remains and give him a proper burial, just to know what happened to him and to know what

Did he suffer? Is he alive? You know, we don't know. I want to find him for Marcy and Randy to have that peace in their life, to know that their brother didn't just run away or whatever happened. They deserve that. And I can't imagine. I lost my sister in 05 at 38 years old. And God, I love my sister and not having her in my life.

has been hard on me. So I can't imagine having a brother that's been missing and not knowing, you know, or anybody in your family and not knowing that hurts so bad and that touches my heart. I think I'm going in the right direction. I do with this. And I don't mean to get emotional. It's been hard because I think that my uncle's done more

You know, and this is my heart saying this, is I think he needed help all these years and he never got help. And I think his crimes escalated. 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.

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