Crime Weekly - S2 Ep66: DeOrr Kunz Jr.: Parents Become Persons of Interest (Part 2)

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

It is every parent’s worst nightmare. You take your eyes off your child for a moment, maybe two, and when you turn around, they have vanished. Fortunately, thanks to technological advances and improved search methods, most of these children come home. But when two year old DeOrr Kunz Jr went missing in the Summer of 2015 from a campground in Idaho, he vanished without a trace, literally. A thorough search using police dogs, divers, helicopters, and hundreds of people on foot could not retrieve one trace of little DeOrr, it was as if he had never been there at all. Some wonder if he could have fallen victim to one of the hungry wild animals that prowl the remote wilderness, others believe he could have been abducted by a stranger with dark intentions, but many wonder if what actually happened is much more dark and nefarious than an animal attack, or even a targeted kidnapping. Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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It was nice seeing you this weekend. Yeah, it was. It was awesome. I drove to Rhode Island with my husband and we had some business to do in Rhode Island, but we also had fun. We can't tell you everything we were doing because it's a surprise and we want to announce at the right time, but we did have a really interesting photo shoot. We did. You guys posted some photos. I didn't know about it until after I saw them. But yeah, we were creative.

We did a couple of different things. You guys didn't see it all, but there were some fun ones. About four hours we did. Went to this really cool hotel. Shout out to our photographer, Will Muggle. He's a good friend of mine. Known him for years. Yes. Will's awesome. What'd you think of Will? He did a good job, right?

I love Will. I love Will. I can tell he's a good person. Even though half the night you were calling him like, or you called him like midway through the night. You're like, Matt. I called him Matt once. Called him Matt once.

And your husband was like, wait, who's Matt? But it was one time. I'm so sorry, Will. But it was fun. Yeah. The sorry will but it was fun yeah the hotel was cool right yeah that was cool we got some good shoots like in in the hotel itself so we did a lot of like typical stuff and then we kind of walked around and anything we saw that would be kind of cool to shoot and we did we haven't seen the photos so we don't know how they came out yet but hoping they came out good i think they came out great because he showed us some previews. But if you guys want to see the way the photo shoot turned out, don't forget to follow us on Instagram because that's probably where we will be mainly posting the videos on our

Crime Weekly Instagram page, which is... CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com or an actual Instagram is going to be Crime Weekly Pod. Yes. Crime Weekly Pod on Instagram. Follow us there so you can see the pictures because there was one, I'll tell you, where we wrapped Derek up in caution tape from his head to his toe. And then I wanted to do one where he was on the floor and we're not going to tell you why, but we wanted to put him on the floor, but he was all wrapped up. So we had to sort of like hold him in our arms like a baby and cradle him down towards the ground which was very interesting and basically they just dropped me

yeah he's happy man he's heavy and tall there was no cradling whatsoever it was just like i tried to cradle falling with like just falling lightly i did the best cradling i could with my stick arms failed i'm not strong no No, it was good though. It was a good time. It was fun. And hopefully you guys will see those soon. And as far as the other thing we're working on, it's going to take a while for that,

but it's really, it was an idea. It's becoming more of a reality as we go further in the process. And it is for you guys. So it's something that we're really excited to share with you because you guys are going to be heavily involved with it. And as far as dictating how successful it really is, we think you're going to really like

it. Yeah, we're so excited. We'll probably be telling you guys more at CrimeCon. Like when we're at CrimeCon at the end of April, we'll go live for those of you who aren't there to sort of do a little announcement. For those of you who are there, come over to the booth. We'll talk about it. Don't forget, don't miss CrimeCon in Vegas. I'm glad you brought that up because we didn't bring it up last week. It's an important thing to note because you came up with the idea. It's a great idea. If you guys have not registered to go to CrimeCon yet, whether it's CrimeCon USA right in Vegas in a couple months or CrimeCon UK, if you're going to purchase tickets and you use our code, make sure you save

that because the code is Crime Weekly. So if you go on CrimeCon.com, the website, both CrimeConUK.com, you can use this code, you get a discount, but we're going to be doing a meetup with everybody who used the code. Am I saying that right, Stephanie? You've already kind of started planning it out. Yeah. So I have started planning it out out but i obviously do need to get a number so if you've already used our code to purchase tickets to crime con in las vegas or crime con in london then send us an email to contact crime weekly podcast dot com that's right yes so send us an email let us know show us the receipt show us proof that you did that so i can add you to the list. And when I'm, you know, booking the restaurant or whatever in Vegas and in London, I'll make sure to, you know, order enough food and drinks for everybody. And then me and Derek will hang out with you guys for a couple

hours. We'll talk. We'll talk about true crime. We'll talk about whatever you want. We'll have a couple of drinks, eat some food, have a great time. I'm super excited to be able to sit down with you guys and have some FaceTime and one-on-one time with all of you. So really excited, but don't forget to do that. Send it as soon as possible so that I can start making the plans. Yeah. Again, code crimeweekly and at minimum, it saves you some money on the tickets because they're not cheap. So check that out. Use the code, save yourself some money. It's going to be a good time. Yes. So should we dive into our episode now? Absolutely.

All right. So I'm just going to pick up where we left off, which was basically the family of Dior Coons Jr. had hired a private investigator. He kind of ended up turning on them, saying that he thought that they were lying, that they knew more than they were saying, and he quit. And in September of 2015, Dior Coons Jr.'s family and extended family, they hired KIC Texas, a private investigation and consulting firm run by Philip Klein. And Philip Klein is a private investigator who has over 30 years of experience. And Klein proudly states that he and his firm do what he calls a yeoman's job, which I had to look it up, but it means that they do very good, very hard and valuable work. He said it a couple of times. So I was like, this has to be important. And I looked it up and then I was like, why don't you just say that you do you do good work? You know, it seems like a very obscure way to say we do a good job, right? Yeah, that seems a little, it's his business, right? Yeah. Market it however way you want, man. I didn't even know what that was either.

So he likes the word. If you have to look it up, it's probably not a good slogan. That's true. Right? Because that could be a good thing or a bad thing. If the slogan itself is an investigation, we're not off to a good start. It was a quick Google search, but I still didn't understand it at the end of the day, because I was like, nobody knows what that means. Obviously, some people do, but

not the majority of people. I have a good vocabulary, and I was like, what the hell does that mean? So Philip Klein, he claims that he found out about Dior's disappearance when some people in the public reached out to him feeling that the Leimhai County Sheriff's Office had dropped the ball, which he says is absolutely not true. The sheriff's office started out doing a great job. They did all the right things, but the clock was running against them. And there was this sort of social media campaign from the family of Dior Coons where they were sort of, you know, on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and stuff being like, oh, the police suspect us. But, you know, like that's not what's going on here. It's because they just have tunnel vision. They don't want to look at other options, et cetera, et cetera. So obviously people in the public are going to now start reaching out to other avenues, sort of like what happens with you because you have your own private investigative firm. When people think the police aren't doing a good job, they reach out to you and they say, hey, the police aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. Can you help? Or it just it's a matter of they feel like the police did come to a conclusion, but it wasn't one they agree with. That's we get that a lot, too.

Yes. So Klein had the vice president of his firm, Caroline Gere, reach out to the family of Dior Coons to see what they could find out about where the investigation was currently standing. But for about a month and a half, the family of little Dior, they weren't interested in KIC Texas getting involved. So from what I can tell, one of the people who had reached out to Klein was a woman named Jen Thiel, and Klein told her that he would be willing to get involved, but they needed to speak to little Dior's parents first. And according to Klein, most of the initial communication was with Dior's father, Vernal, but Dior's mother, Jessica, was not interested in speaking with Klein or anyone from his firm from day one.

That's interesting. I'm sure you could look at that a couple ways, right? Like, you know, if you believe they're involved, well, she doesn't want anybody else snooping around because they could discover something that they don't want to be discovered. The other side of it is if Jessica felt that Philip had other motives for wanting to be involved because this case was starting to gain some exposure, you know, Hey, me being involved with this case could help grow my firm. Who knows? So there's two ways of looking at it. I will tell you that whether it was privately or on breaking homicide, even though some of these cases were submitted by members of the

community, I had a strict rule that unless the family gave me consent to do it, I wouldn't touch it. Yeah. And I mean, they also had that, what I mean, from their perspective was a bad experience with that first PI, Frank Vilt. Yeah, it didn't work out well. So maybe, you know, just to be fair to her, she may have been a little biased and been like, oh, private investigators are... I'm over him. Yeah, that's very, that's a good point. Very possible. Well, Philip Klein claims that this was sort of one of the first conversations that he and his firm had in regards to Dior's case. Why did Dior's mother not want to be proactive in finding her son? Why did she not want to accept all the help that she could get? He goes on to say, quote, the parents didn't have any money and the grandfather who was involved at the time didn't have any money.

So what we wanted to do was say, look, just cover our expenses. And so we put aside a certain amount of money every year to take on a case or cases. We try for two a year that people, quite frankly, just can't afford. It's not that we're highly expensive. It's just that a lot of people can't afford private investigators, end quote. So he's saying like pay for our expenses and everything else, all those other expenses, such as bringing in experts, things like that, which there was quite a bit of those expenses they would cover as sort of like, you know, like a charitable thing. Yeah, like pro bono work where they just kind of help out. Yeah, you know, I've done it too.

I mean, we did it a lot. Even on cases for the show, if we didn't end up going forward with it, we would write reports, you know, to try to help them and guide them on where to go from there. You know, if we couldn't do it for the show, which all of those cases were done, I didn't, you know, didn't charge anything other than what I got compensated for on the show itself. Yes, exactly. So I think that's nice. I think it's a nice thing to do if you can manage that with your time and your caseload. So once Klein had talked to Vernal and his father, Dennis, and the two men decided that they wanted to move forward with hiring KIC Texas,

they had a GoFundMe set up in an effort to raise funds. The GoFundMe account, which is no longer active, states, quote, there are a number of ways you can help. Funds are desperately needed to help pay for the professional private investigators in an effort to assist the effort previously attempted by law enforcement in the area, end quote. The family could use the GoFundMe account, money from the GoFundMe account, to pay for GoFundMe account to pay for KIC Texas and their expenses. And there was also a benefit held on Saturday, January 16th at Eagles 365 in Idaho Falls, where they were able to raise more funds. So I believe overall, they raised about $29K in this GoFundMe and through these benefits. Caroline Geer said, quote,

they had a lot of support from the public. They had a lot of support from around the nation and a lot of support from their hometown city, end quote. And I do think that's a substantial amount of money to raise. You know, Idaho Falls is not like one of those. I don't know. Is it a very small town? I think it's a pretty like populous town in Idaho. It's definitely not like a small town like Lador. It's a it's a bigger city like Lador. It's a bigger city, right? I mean, your guess is as good as I'm not familiar with the area at all, but $25,000, either way you slice it. I mean, that is a lot of money. I will say even if they're just covering expenses, it could go pretty quickly because depending on the size of the team, you're talking

about travel, you're talking about hotels, you're talking about food, and you're talking about bringing in experts. Even though the private investigation company may do it for free to fly an expert in who might be someone who can tell you about a certain area you're in or some type of DNA or whatever it might be, that person probably won't be as polite. And they're going to have to pay for their flights, pay for their time, pay for an official report from them. So $25,000 seems like a lot, but it can go very quickly. Yes. And they did do this. They ended up bringing in, we're going to talk about her later. So I don't remember her whole name, but her first name's Tracy. She's a dog trainer, a dog handler, and her dog Chance, who's a cadaver dog. They brought in another woman who's one you know, one of, you know, a very good interrogator, good in interviews and things like that. And they brought these people in from Georgia. So, yeah, the $25,000 financial goal would be applied to expenses such as travel,

lodging, bringing in search dogs and other, you know, experts from other areas of the country. Philip Klein says that he never once charged that account for any investigator hourly rate or retainers paid to experts that they brought in from California and Georgia. And KIC Texas never made one dime off the case. In fact, he claims the firm put over $130,000 of its own money into the case. And this has since all been proven in court documents. So, you know, when I say he claimed, yeah, he did claim, but we'll talk about a lawsuit later on. And a lot of this came out in discovery. He did put quite a bit of money into this case out of the firm's bank, not the GoFundMe.

Philip Klein also says that he wants to put a rest to the rumors that he and his firm suspected Jessica and Vernal from the beginning, saying, quote, Remember, we don't know anybody when we come onto a case. When we come into a case, you've got to assume what people tell you is the truth from the get-go. So what we did was we took everybody on their face value, and we took Jessica and Vernal at their face value, end quote. They also added Vernal's father Dennis to the contract because he wasn't present at the campsite when Dior went missing, so it was sort of like this unbiased person who definitely wasn't involved with what happened to Dior, and they also needed

an available point of contact because Vernal, who worked as a truck driver, he was on the road a lot for work and he would sometimes be unreachable. Once KIC Texas had a signed contract, they began case prep, which included contacting the law enforcement officials who were working the case in both Leimhi County and Bonneville County, and that's the county that Idaho Falls is located in, as well as having conversations with the family's previous private investigator, Frank Vilt, who told them that he felt the parents were lying to him and they did not let him set up a reward fund. Even at that point, Philip Klein says he didn't assume that the family had been lying because he understood that sometimes it's not really that people are lying.

It's just that they can't remember correctly because of trauma that they experienced. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about that as a civilian? Because of, you know, if that detective had a bias or did something wrong and you're coming on as the new guy, if you're building your foundation on their previous work, you're more than likely going to go down the same path. So you being someone who does an extensive amount of research, do you agree with this tactic, this approach, or would you have done it differently? No, I absolutely agree with it. Okay. Because you're talking about client investigations coming on months later. So there are going to be things that the initial law enforcement and Frank Vilt would have had access to, would have been able to hear, see, etc., that you can't

months later. So, I mean, I like to consider myself to be unbiased, right? So if I'm doing research for a case, yeah, I want to talk to everybody. I want to get all the information and then sort of put it side by side and go through and see if I can decipher, like, is this true? Because it's in multiple reports, like it's in Vilt's report and the Leimhi County Sheriff's report. So it's kind of has to have some sort of legitimacy to it, right?

Or I can also weed out like the personal opinions and things like that, but I'm not going to discount the people who came before me. And if you're gonna talk to the police who were on it, why not talk to the private investigator who was on it, get all the information you can and then you make the decision as a professional what you got to try to be objective because, you know, you know how Frank feels. So you have to be able to approach that conversation with a filter and only allow the information to pass through that can be substantiated. You know, anytime he gives an opinion on something, you listen, but you got to kind of put those aside and just stick to the facts that helped him develop that opinion yeah but i mean also keep in mind like klein's coming on december 2015 it wasn't until january of 2016 that dior's parents were named as suspects so this is still you know in in the place where they're not publicly being called out yet not by police but frank at this point that

letter that we discussed at length last time, that letter is definitely out there for consumption. So he knows what Frank thinks. Oh, yeah, for sure. But I agree with you. I think as a good investigator, you should be able to take in everybody's opinion and kind of break it down and put aside the things that might be based on a personal perspective as opposed to something that is based on evidence. Yeah, because like you're a cop, right? You're going to try to solve a crime. You're not going to be like, oh, I'm not going to talk to John Doe's fifth grade teacher because she hated him and she thought he was an asshole. So I'm not going to talk to her because she's she's biased. You know, you know, you're going to talk to her and then for yourself, figure out like, is this just something that she's saying she doesn't like him or is there a grain of truth to it? And can it be verified by secondary sources? Yeah, no, I'm with you.

So Klein Investigations, they also did preliminary interviews to establish a basic timeline. On December 14th, 2015, Klein and his team flew to Idaho Falls to get their boots on the ground and begin an in-depth investigation and also interview the people involved in person. As soon as they got there, they went to Tina Clegg's home. Now remember, Tina is Jessica's mother, and they had a meeting with the whole family before doing individual interviews. They said that there was probably about 12 people here, so there's extended family, siblings, things like that. During this meeting, Klein Investigations collected the written statements that Jessica and Vernal had previously given to law enforcement. And they said that Jessica and Vernal were sitting on the love seat holding hands, but Carolyn Gere said she was a bit taken aback by the lack of emotion from Dior's parents. In his podcast, Philip Klein said, quote, it was a surreal meeting. Jessica and Vernal

were sitting next to each other. Vernal was sitting on the love seat and Jessica was sitting between his legs and they were holding hands in kind of a reverse way, but there was not one bit of emotion. I've been doing this 31 years and I can tell you there is not one missing child's case I've been to where there has not been extreme emotion in the room. With that said, Vernal's sister Tanisha was in the room and she was very emotional. She cried. She acted like there was a missing child. Tina showed a bit of emotion, not a lot, but she showed a little bit of emotion. There were a couple of men in the room that shed tears, but mom and dad didn't shed a tear. They showed no emotion. And when we got in the car, the first thing we did was close the door and looked at each other and went, oh God, we got a problem here. End quote. All right, let's take, we got a problem here. End quote.

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warranty. Tonal.com. So I understand what Klein is saying about there not being emotion, but we've talked about this before. I don't really like to judge how people act when they're in a bad position, when they've gone through trauma, they could be exhausted. I'm sure that at some point when something is painful enough, you kind of run out of tears. Like you just feel like you've run dry. You have no tears left to cry. So that could be what we're dealing with here. However, you know, it's not a it's not like a huge red flag, but it is something to sort of just file away and remember and see if it sort of goes along with other evidence or other red flags that come up. Yeah.

I mean, I haven't been doing this 31 years. I've been doing it a total of 17, almost 18. I have had situations where the parents have not been very emotional. They've been kind of despondent, I believe is the word, right? Where it's kind of like they're completely they feel like they're in a bad dream. And they're, you know, sometimes they're on medication that I'm not even aware of where they're, you know, somewhat sedated to remain calm. But I also can't judge his perception because he was in the room and they were in the room.

I wasn't. So, yeah, it would be something that I would note, but there could be external factors contributing to that. And you also mentioned something earlier, they did have a private investigator come in before. They felt like he was on their side. He was someone who was a friend of theirs and he essentially ended his investigation by accusing them of being involved. So could there be some apprehension on their part when they're speaking to this guy for the first time when like they're guarded yeah they're guarded i mean he reached out to them not the other way around so they might be asking themselves

like what what is this guy's motive what is he here for so that could explain some of the lack of emotion or it could be what he's saying which is that was that was odd and there was something wrong with it i don't know it's hard to you know to discredit what he's thinking when he was there and i wasn't yeah and sometimes it's hard to say like oh there was no emotion and you're like okay no emotion but it's different when you're there in the room like there's no emotion you feel like this weird energy there's other factors other senses that are taking place at that point that may have made him feel this was a bigger deal than it seems like at face value right yeah i've personally i won't say it's not even a bad thing but you know television i've interviewed uh mothers and fathers and i'll get done with the interview and you know

this is nothing against these guys they're great people but you'll have like the producer come up to you and go wow that you know she was really like unemotional there was really not a lot there you know i expected more because they're looking for that the crying and stuff i mean they're that's what they that's their job and i say yeah but not everyone's like that you know it's also been a few years they've they've cried all their tears now they want results you know like there's a lot of different reasons for it. But I do think people expect every time someone would talk about their missing child, that they would just completely break down. It's not to say they haven't done that a thousand times, just this time there's other things at play that might contribute to their behavior being the way

it is. Yeah. I don't personally like crying in front of people. I avoid it at all costs. I can count on one hand how many times I've cried in front of other people like outside of my immediate family. I don't make a habit of it. I can't tell you what I would do if my child was missing. Like I think I would probably be crying all the time. But until you've actually lived through this experience, you can't say how you would act and you can't really judge others for how they act. Also, the interview we played last episode, that interview that they did was very early on. It was only a few days after their son's disappearance. I mean, there was a little bit of emotion, but not really much. Not what you would expect. I mean, Jessica looked like she'd

been crying though, right? Exactly. But that was three days later and she held it together. So this is, you're talking a long duration after that. So I think based on that, if we're using that as like our jumping off point, looking at those two, then I don't think it's hard to see them months later not having much emotion with someone they just met. they talked with him for about three hours that night. Vernal came into the interview in a good mood. Philip Klein described it as happy-go-lucky. During the interview, Philip Klein and Caroline Gere were able to get information from Vernal that he had never told the police. Vernal said that while they were at the campsite, little Dior had gone to his truck, and then he had sort of looked at the back wheel area of Vernal's truck. And then he told his father that there was a lug nut missing. And Dior apparently stuck his hand into the tailpipe of the truck. And he had like black oil or something all over his hand and arm.

I don't know what comes out of a tailpipe, like soot, oil, something. I don't know. But I have such a hard time believing that a two-year-old was like, daddy, there's a lug nut missing, you know? But who knows how he was raised? He could have been raised working on cars and know what a lug nut is at two. But that's some like extensive vocabulary for a two-year-old man. Is he saying that he said there was a lug nut missing or he indicated that there was something missing which happened to be in the lug nut? No.

Like the other five bolts? He said lug nut. Oh, two years old?nut. Oh, yeah. OK. OK. Right. So now during the initial investigation, the FBI and the Lehigh County Sheriff's Office had apparently found blood in the wheel basin and on the back bumper of Vernal's truck. As far as the presence or the existence of this blood, law enforcement has never officially commented on it, but they

haven't disputed it. And it is in many different articles, like, you know, legitimate mainstream media sources where they say, you know, this blood was found there. And Philip Klein claims that he didn't even know that law enforcement had found blood at the time of Vernal's interview. And it was only later, after officials had seen the recorded interview with Vernal that they called a meeting with KIC Texas. So right now, KIC Texas, even though they're the private investigation firm, they're working in collaboration with the Lehigh County Sheriff's Office. They're getting information from them. They're sharing information with the sheriff. It's sort of like a joint effort at this point. And so when they interviewed Vernal, they sent over like the transcript and the video because all of these interviews were recorded. And, you know, the Lehigh County Sheriff's Office was like,

oh, shit, like this where he claims Dior was like about the lug nut. That's where we found the blood. And during this meeting that they set up with Klein while he was still in Idaho Falls, they were like, hey, listen, we found blood as well as bodily fluids in this area, and we had never heard this lug nut story before. So you were able to get something out of Vernal that we had never heard before. And this is just kind of another little tweak in the story, another little addition, another little change that honestly, Jessica and Vernal have become notorious for. I'm not saying they're lying. I'm not saying they're become notorious for. I'm not saying they're lying. I'm not saying they're making it up. I'm not saying they're responsible for what happened

to Dior. But what I am saying is without a doubt, objectively, they do change their stories quite a bit about what happened that day. The day after Vernal's interview, KIC Texas interviewed Jessica. They also interviewed Tina Clegg and her husband Jeremy. They interviewed Vernal's sister Tanisha and Jessica's sister Mariah, as well as Jessica's grandfather Bob Walton and Lynn Williams, Jessica's aunt, who was one of the last people to physically see Dior before he left for the camping trip with his parents. So during the interviews, they obviously go through the timeline again, and Philip Klein says that this was important to do because Jessica and Vernal had claimed that they'd stopped at Walmart on the way to Lidore. And Klein said, quote, we went through, law enforcement went through, everybody went through every single camera there is to have around and there was no Dior.

The cameras all over Walmart, all over the gas station they said they went to, everywhere between A and B, there's no Dior, end quote. Klein said that the employee who was working at the gas station that night, he was standing at the door when Vernal filled up the truck with diesel, and this employee says he never saw a child. Vernal had also told a story about a beer truck delivery driver who'd seen him at the gas station, And Vernal claimed that little Dior had even met this driver and Dior had been allowed to get into the cab of the 18-wheeler because Dior liked trucks so much. You know, his father's a truck driver. He likes trucks. And apparently this beer delivery guy was like, yeah, little man, climb up here and, you know, beep the horn

and stuff. And Vernal had even given the police and Philip Klein the name of this company that this driver worked for. But when it was looked into, it was discovered that there wasn't even a beer truck driver in that area on that date and time. And the beer company had been out of business for two years. Philip Klein did track down the man who was responsible for beer deliveries in that area. And the driver said that not only had he not been there that night, but he had not allowed a little boy into the cab of the truck. He would have been fired if anyone had found out that he let somebody into his truck. Vernal had also told Philip Klein that when they finally made it to L'Adore and gone to the stage shop convenience store, they

took Dior inside with them, and he was playing with the cashier. But that woman was interviewed and she said that this never happened. There was also a store that they had stopped at on the way to Lador in Mud Lake. And allegedly, employees of this store had seen little Dior as well. But when they were interviewed, no one could remember seeing him. At this point, Jessica says she had two witnesses in town that saw her with Dior. One was a store clerk. The other worked at a restaurant. We questioned those witnesses. They never saw a child inside that. So now we have two witnesses saying, what are you talking about? There was no child. I got to tell you, without giving it all away, there was, there is, there is still a part of me that thinks a possibility is that the parents are not very educated and are not good speakers and maybe give

poor interviews and because of their poor interviewing skills, trip themselves up to make them look guilty. But then when you start talking about things like this, that can be researched and verified. And there is, there hasn't been anything you've told me yet where someone said, yeah, no, I, you know, I saw a little boy. Sure. I remember seeing nothing. And then there's, there's also people where not only do they lie, but to try to give that

lie credibility, they'll tell these specific anecdotal details that really are irrelevant, but just make the story sound more real. And there's absolutely no truth to it. You see it with a lot of pathological liars. So maybe there's a possibility now where I'm thinking, where there's smoke, there's fire. And you're giving all these examples where nobody yet has come forward and said, no, I am not directly connected to this. And I saw Vernal with this little boy, not one person yet that I recall you saying, so not good. And as far as the back of my mind where I'm like, man, maybe this was an accident and these people are just not good at this whole process, that possibility is-

You mean it's an accident? Like he actually went missing without them having any knowledge of it or anything to do with it? Correct. Like I was talking to some of our patrons on Patreon. They message us sometimes and there was somebody who was an animal control officer in this area. And they said, Derek, when you were talking to Stephanie about bear attacks, I'm not going to get into details, but if there was a bear attack, you would know. That's what I said.

Right. However, she also said like, that's not the case for every animal. It could be a mountain lion or something like that, that would literally just snatch them up and go. So I looked it up though. Mountain lions aren't really, so that's what I, it's like bears and wolves are common in this area. Mountain lions, not so much. Not so much. Yeah. Not so much. So, so, but when I heard, when I was having these conversations with you guys, I'm thinking,

okay, keep an open mind, Derek, keep an open mind. It's still possible, right? It's still possible that this might be the situation and these poor people are just digging themselves a hole by opening their mouths. I think we should always think that, right? Because we don't know. You try. Exactly. You try. And these examples that you're bringing up now are kind of closing that door a little bit for me. And that's unfortunate in a lot of ways too, because

to think that they could be involved with what happened to him, that's really sad. So you always hope it's just an accident, but yeah, not looking good so far. After spending about a week doing this, Philip Klein and his team left Idaho Falls and they went home to start putting together a master timeline. But they returned to Idaho the following month on January 25th, 2016. When they got off the plane and switched their phones out of airplane mode, they began getting a ton of messages, letting them know that the Leimhai County Sheriff had made an official statement that the parents of Dior Coons Jr. had been named as suspects in the

disappearance of their son. The Coons family had also left messages basically demanding that they all have a meeting, and that was when they found out that Vernal had hired a lawyer. Now, when they got Vernal on the phone that evening, Klein claims that it was an explosive phone call. And the person you're going to hear in this clip is obviously not Klein. It's not Philip Klein because it's a woman. This is Klein's associate, Caroline Geer, and she's basically asking Vernal, like, why did you lie about your lie detector test? Right. Because Vernal told her that his lie detector test had come back inconclusive, only to find out now from the sheriff and the media that he had actually failed his lie detector test. Why did you lie to me about your polygraph test?

Because that's what I was told. Check. There's an interview. That's his exact words were it's inconclusive, but I'd say it's your inconclusive past. Where is the exact words to me? I never lied to anybody. Okay. Cause when we've been told something completely different, that they told you that you absolutely failed with deception. Welcome to Idaho, sweetheart. That's how this works apparently. So you're saying that you're guilty until proven innocent with everybody. We to Idaho, sweetheart. That's how this works, apparently. So you're saying that... You're guilty until proven innocent with everybody. We're going to take a quick break

and then we're going to come back and discuss that little clip from that phone call. Okay, so we're back. What did you think about the phone call? Because I'm going to tell you I did not like when he said welcome to Idaho, sweetie.

I wanted to kick him right in his face. I didn't like that either. But I do like the passion because we always, you know, I like the passion because we always come after people when someone accuses them of something and there's like very little response. It's like, hey, if someone accused me of lying when I wasn't or accused me of doing something to someone I love and I didn't, I would have a strong reaction to that. But he did lie. He did lie. The police said they never told him it was inconclusive. He failed. The police publicly announced that he failed. Well, what I would say to that, what I would say to that, and this is something I think you surprisingly will agree with me on, they said that he failed the polygraph test,

which you have said multiple times is something that you necessarily don't believe in. That doesn't matter, right? Because he's still lying. So it doesn't matter what he's lying about. It just matters he's lying. Well, he's saying that he said, I told you it was inconclusive. That's what they told me that, you know, they haven't shown anything that says they said

something different. You give me a look, but it's like they could be saying something different. Now, I'm the one who believes that lie detectors tests can be valuable. You're the one that always says, I don't trust lie detector tests. I don't believe the polygrapher, all these things. So you're flipping on me here. No, I'm not at all. I don't.

I'm not saying that they are, yeah, maybe a valid tool, but not like something that I would hang a case on solely, which is why I didn't spend a ton of time last episode being like, oh, Vernal and Jessica failed their lie detector test. Guilty as charged. It's like just one of those things that you sort of add to the pile and then look at the pile later and see if it fits in. But to me, the fact that they they clearly told him he did not pass the polygraph test, like why would they tell him, oh, yeah, it was inconclusive. Actually, an inconclusive, like leaning towards a pass is what he ended up saying to the investigator on the phone. That doesn't even sound like something. I mean, does that sound like something a police officer or like an FBI polygrapher would say? Like, yeah, it's inconclusive. But like,

I definitely think it's more like the pass inconclusive side than the fail inconclusive side. You know, he clearly, in my opinion, told KIC Texas like, oh, yeah, I passed it. No problem. Because he didn't want to look like he failed his lie detector test. And he probably didn't think that the police were going to announce him as a suspect and like air his dirty laundry out in the media. And now he's backpedaling. So to me, a reaction like that isn't passion. I'm defending myself. It's like I'm caught and now I'm just gonna get angry and wave my hands around and hope to distract you and gaslight you from that fact by calling you sweetie because if she was a man, he wouldn't have called him sweetie.

If that was Philip Klein on the phone, he wouldn't have been like, welcome to Idaho, sweetie. It's so condescending. You don't even know what you're talking about. Just like, why are you even questioning me about this? You don't even know what you're talking about. You're just a stupid girl, sweetie. Welcome to Idaho. What does that even mean? Welcome to Idaho. What is he saying? That people take lie detector tests in Idaho and they fail, but the police tell them it's inconclusive. Like what do you exactly mean by that statement? To me, that's a guilty conscience. He got caught and now he's mad. Like when your boyfriend cheats on you and you're like, you cheated on me. Here's the pictures. And he's like, why are you going through my phone? You know, like that. Okay. This is our question for the week. Let us know what you think in the comments. Do you agree with me that Vernal seems a little like gaslighting in this, in this conversation or is he passionately defending

his innocence. and they can prove that he was lying when he talked to these other independent investigators? Sure. But is it possible, and this is coming from a former police officer, that in that moment, the polygrapher didn't want to scare him or let him know that they were onto him? So he might've or she might've said, it was inconclusive, but maybe it's a pass, but then left the room and told the investigators he's lying through his teeth. No, because- I'm not saying that happened. I wasn't there, but then left the room and told the investigators he's lying through his teeth. No, because- I'm not saying that happened. I wasn't there, but I'm saying, could Vernal have been told that and these police are now saying,

oh, we told him he lied from the start. I just would like to see that interview. Because his own lawyer would later say like, oh, every time Vernal goes to the police to find out updates, they basically tell him he's lying and they try to get him to confess. So I can't imagine that they'd be trying to get him to confess and not use that failed polygraph as a tool to try and get him to confess. Yeah. And I'm not team anybody.

And he didn't just fail one. He failed several. Several polygraph tests. Yeah. Every single one he took. So, I mean, you can ask the question, but I'm not defending him. I'm playing devil's advocate

because I don't know the guy. And when I, you know, she came at him pretty hard at first as well. And I don't know, I, you know, I don't know how to take it, but I'm not looking at it and I'm being like, oh yeah, 100%. I don't like the way you talk to her either, by the way. Like, but then what are you doing, buddy? But, um, and I don't think he would talk like that if it was a man for sure. But, um, I don't know. I'm playing devil's advocate. I don't, I don't really he would talk like that if it was a man for sure. But I don't know. I'm

playing devil's advocate. I don't really care about Vernal either way, honestly, if I'm being honest. Well, I appreciate you playing devil's advocate because it makes for interesting conversations. But I do want to know what you guys think. If you're watching on YouTube, let us know in the comments how you sort of perceived that phone call. So Vernal Coons had hired Idaho Falls attorney Alan Browning, who told the media that he believed his client, big surprise, saying, quote, every time he goes to talk to the police about what they know about leads as to what happened to his son, where his son might be, they try to get him to confess to being responsible for the

disappearance of his son, where someone who is innocent of a crime will tell police exactly what they know, and if it's not a confession, then the detective will come back to them and say, this doesn't make sense. You know what I think happened was, and then they'll give him a story and try to get them to agree to it. It's known as the Reed interrogation technique, end quote.

Yeah, that was the old technique that I was trained on for two and a half years that is no longer allowed or accepted in our profession. It's a good tactic. It does work. But to the point that they're making here, it's so good it can trick people into giving a false confession. So I completely understand why it's not acceptable anymore. But there are variants of it that aren't as aggressive values as far as how they're

implemented that still are very good and don't necessarily trick someone into saying something that's not true. But yeah, the read technique is not acceptable in law enforcement anymore. So I don't even think that they were using the read technique. To me, what it seemed like they were doing was more how the investigators on Casey Anthony's case were handling it. Like, OK, like you've clearly been lying. Was it an accident? You know, like accidents happen all the time. Like, did she fall in the pool? Something like that. Like trying to give Casey an out, trying to give Vernal an out, like admit that then maybe it was an accident because nothing else is adding up right now. And also, I don't see how it's relevant to even bring this up because

Vernal's attorney isn't saying like, no, his story hasn't changed. Here's the proof. Vernal's attorney isn't saying, no, he didn't lie to the police. Vernal's attorney's like, they're using bad interrogation techniques to get him to confess. But Vernal didn't confess. So how is this relevant? It seems like more of like trying to sort of pass the buck to the police. The police are bad. The police aren't doing their job. The police have tunnel vision. It's sort of trying to enforce or reinforce the same narrative, which is basically what they've been sticking to since the beginning. Not that it would matter much, but I would be interested in knowing what Vernal's IQ was. I mean that. I'm not being

disrespectful. I would love to know his mental aptitude. How smart was this guy? I don't think he's stupid. That's why I'm asking. That's why I'm asking. I would love to see him on paper. Because that would be very interesting because you don't have to be well-educated to get a high IQ score. So he could probably score really well on it. And that would be interesting. He seems kind of like a manipulative sort of person. Right. Wouldn't that be interesting? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think he's stupid. Do you? I don't know. I don't know. That might be why he's smart because he, sometimes when he speaks, you think he's not the brightest bulb or the brightest crayon in the box but then there are other times where he's quick he's quick with his responses like he was with that female on the

on the on the call he often doesn't sound like someone who's slow moving yeah he's often quick with his responses he's always got an answer for everything you know right and that is a sign of some some intelligence to be able to be witty like that and have a quick response, even if it's not a good one, it's still something. So yeah, he does show signs of it, which would probably suggest that when he doesn't show signs of it, that might be intentional. Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. So Philip Klein claims that at this time, both Vernal and Jessica were brought back in by the FBI and the FBI talked to Jessica for over six hours. He actually said it may have been eight hours. It was quite a long time. And Philip Klein said, quote, she was right at the point, according to everything we heard, she was right at the point

to give her story, the real story. And for some reason, she clammed back up. We don't know why. I did watch the videotape of it. It was surreal watching her for the first time actually get End quote. Klein claims that law enforcement as well as his own firm had Vernal under surveillance at this time, and as soon as Jessica was done with her very lengthy interview with law enforcement, she and Vernal got in his car and drove right to an adult shop where they purchased a product called Clone My Willy. I didn't know what this was and I had to unfortunately look it up. Good thing I was using a VPN because I don't want anybody to ever know that that wasn't my search history. But Clone My Willy is a kit apparently, and it allows you to make a mold

of your penis. And it's available in a light tone, tone dark tone jet black hot pink and even glow in the dark so you had that last part in there huh had to add that last part in there because that was necessary i mean i had to do more research on it when i found it i was like how does this work what are the options you know if you guys want certain colors you know glow in the dark this is what's available that That's awesome. That's awesome. You'll never lose it. I know, right? It's just, it's a very, I didn't even know something like that existed.

So I feel like I live in a box sometimes. Apparently this is a very popular thing, by the way. Oh, yeah. Never heard of it. You didn't? Nope. Are you lying? I've never heard of it.

Oh, yes. All right. So we're both out of the loop. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing that I've never heard of it. Oh, yes. All right. So we're both out of the loop. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing that I've never heard of it. Nobody's ever suggested it to me. I think it's a good thing. Oh, nobody's ever suggested it to you. Maybe.

They've been too shy, Derek. They've been too shy to ask. Yeah, maybe that's it. They were just being nice. Nobody's ever said, wow, you should clone that thing. We should clone your willy. You know? So I'm kind of offended now.

Oh, my gosh. I'm leaving the podcast. Bye. Bye. clone that thing we should clone your willy you know so i'm kind of offended now oh my god i'm leaving the podcast bye gonna go cry if you okay i'm done i'm done i had something else to say but i'm going guys we're back on track here we are all right so klein claims that this was all captured on surveillance footage and obviously he thinks it's a little odd that like while their son was missing and they were under all this scrutiny from law enforcement and they just talked about their son's disappearance for like several hours the first thing jessica and vernal wanted to do was visit a sex shop and get like a kit that would mold vernal's penis i mean i i assume it was for vernal's penis i was about to say that you're

assuming yeah i don't know i don't actually know what the real purpose was but i feel like i want to now i'm curious as to like what their motive was like why they were there like what's going on what do you think of this that they went there right afterwards this is what throws me off it's like this isn't something that normal people would do you know that it just doesn't seem normal so it's like are they just these really demonic people um that they're just trying to hide it from everyone but this is who they really are where they're being interrogated by police about the disappearance and possible death of their son and then they're going and buying things like this at a at a sex shop i mean takes a dark person to be that passive in life i mean mean, you would think they'd

want to probably go back home after something as traumatic as that, where you're being accused of being involved in the death of your son and you're innocent. Or just having to talk about it and relive it for over six hours. I don't think I'd be in the mood to go do that at that moment. So I do know that like sometimes the parents of missing children or children who have been like murdered, sometimes they do find like the ability to like bond and seek solace in each other through like sex. Right. I've heard of that happening. This isn't really that, though, to me. Like to me, this is like this is some kinky shit that you have to

be in like the right mood and have the right energy for. Not like mentally exhausted, not after talking about your missing son who you still have no idea where he is. So it's not even like you have the closure of his death. It's like you still don't know where he is. He could be anywhere. He could be cold. He could be scared. He could be being tortured.

And this is what's on your mind. Like clone my willy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. I agree with everything you said. Doesn't seem like something that innocent people would do. Well, it doesn't. It doesn't. But it could be. They could be very, they could just be very sexual people. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I'm trying to be on bias here and it just gets harder and harder. So additionally, that same night, Caroline Gere spoke to Jessica Mitchell on the phone right around midnight. Caroline claims that she was sleeping when her phone rang and it woke her up. And when she answered the phone, it was Jessica. And Jessica, during her interview with the FBI, she'd taken

another polygraph test and she'd failed on these crucial questions again. Vernal had also taken and failed another polygraph. Now, overall, Jessica had taken three polygraphs and Vernal had taken two, and they'd failed all of them. Philip Klein said, quote, they not only failed, but they failed in the 99th percentile, meaning it's not just a little bleep. There's a scale you go to. There's the pre-questions, there's the interview itself,

and there's the test. And then when they put you on the test, they give you qualifying questions like, is your name Vernal Coons? And then they get your baseline. And then they begin to ask you the three control questions. They failed all three control questions. Vernal failed twice and Jessica failed three times. Now, this crap they put out that it was inconclusive, no, it was totally conclusive. And the polygraph examiner with the FBI was very adamant, end quote. Yeah, I mean, I know how you feel about polygraph exams, but three tests, for me, there's no doubt they're lying. There's no doubt. Really? It's like that, right? It seems like they had a proficient

polygrapher with the FBI who conducted it. I don't know if he or she conducted all three, but this wasn't like one test. And then they're using that to come to these conclusions. They gave them multiple shots at the title, so to speak, and they lost every time. So for me, in my experience with polygraph exams, although they're not perfect, I do think three results coming up the same way. And the fact that they're both failing it, um, is very suggestive that they know more than they're saying, um, doesn't indicate their involvement exactly, but just that they're lying and that they're very anxious when they're answering these questions, which is causing them to sweat more is causing their heart rate to go up. That's how they're measuring their level of truthfulness versus deception. And they're failing every time. So with that information

that you just relayed to us, no doubt in my mind, they're lying. Yeah. So you're that sure then? Three tests done by an FBI polygrapher, both of them failing. And then the 99th percentile, right i know yeah then like and there is a scale and i don't know what it is but like you can scale you can you can fail kind of bad and then you can fail really bad and it's like negative 10 or positive i forgot what it is but it can be hey he he might have lied it was pretty bad or it's like no no doubt he like did the worst you could possibly do on it and if they're in the 99th percentile, that means they basically got every single part of it wrong. So they failed with flying colors. Couldn't have lied more. That doesn't even influence me as much as the fact that

they took it three times with the same result. Because you could have one time where something bad happened that day. Or there could be outside influences. Maybe on medication or something. Yes. That played into it. But three different times, knowing that you failed on the first couple of times, maybe trying to do things differently and yet the results are the same. I think it's with a high degree of certainty that they are lying. What they're lying about, who knows? If we knew that, we probably wouldn't be here talking about this. But they're definitely lying about something. And it relates to their son. Yes, obviously. And where he is and what happened to him. Basically, I think those were the questions that-

They are not telling the truth. While Jessica was talking to Caroline, she told her the questions she had failed. And Caroline asked her, kind of like you just said, well, if you failed it, do you know where he is? Basically, if you failed it, you're lying about something. So do you know where he is? And Caroline claims that Jessica responded, quote, on the mountain. Caroline responded, are you telling me he's on the mountain? To which Jessica responded, well, yeah. And then she paused and said, well, that's where I left him last. I don't know how to take that. How do you take that? How do you take that? I don't know. So to me, of all the things, this isn't the most damning.

Once again, it's just a little note to add to remember, because, you know, if my kid was missing and I felt he had been abducted, which is pretty much what Jessica and Vernal were saying in their first interview, that they thought he wasn't on that mountain. In fact, Vernal said, like, we've searched everywhere. He's no longer there. He's nowhere. We don't believe he's there anymore. We believe he's been taken. So for her to say on the mountain, yeah, I mean, I think it's a little bit suspicious. She could have misspoke. She could have been tired. I mean, it was a long day. You had a really long interview with the FBI. Then you had to clone your husband's dick. So I don't know.

Maybe she was just tired. It was after midnight. Who knows? You had to get that in there somewhere. I did. It was killing you. It was eating you alive inside. I feel better now.

Now you feel better. Let's take a quick break while I giggle like a five-year-old. Okay, we're back and I've calmed down. So, Philip Klein's investigation firm, KIC Texas, they made the decision to send a few undercover investigators into the fray, right? They took two guys and they sent them to Idaho Falls with instructions to place the family under surveillance, but to also place Isaac Rainwand under surveillance. And if you remember, Isaac is Grandpa Bob's friend. He was the only non-family member that was on that camping trip. And basically these two guys, they like had to grow their beards out and sort of they probably had to put flannels on and look like they were, you know, from Idaho Falls. And then they basically were told to befriend Isaac to see if they could get further information from him. So they kind of just like went to bars where he was known to hang out and then sat next to him at the bar.

I mean, Isaac's so like innocent and like naive, you know. So some guy sits next to him at the bar and he's like, let me buy you a beer. And before you know it, he's like Isaac's best friend, you know, because I think Isaac's really lonely, which is why he was probably friends with Bob to begin with. I've done that. I've done that before. It's actually pretty fun. I feel like it would be so fun. I want to do it so bad.

I've done it. I've done it. When I was really young, I would do it for college cases and just, you know, grow up my hair, go into these bars, befriend these people. You were like Drew Barrymore from Never Been Kissed. Never seen that. You've never seen that either. Okay.

No, but yeah, I was her. Even though you don't know what that means. I don't know what it is, but yeah, I was her. So both of these undercover investigators, they did make contact with Isaac. They got him talking. And Philip Klein said that whether Isaac was talking to the police, to the media, or to these undercover investigators, Isaac Rainois never changed his story. Isaac did tell one of the undercover investigators that as far as he knew, when he, Jessica, and Vernal walked away to go check out the fishing holes,

Bob Walton wasn't sitting by the campfire. He was asleep in his camper. So that was new information that had never been heard before. And Isaac also revealed something that had never been mentioned by anyone else who was at that campsite, that when they'd arrived at the campsite, they'd arrived with a cooler. But when they'd left, they didn't have that cooler. That cooler was missing. You know, this isn't relating to what you just said about the cooler. I don't know what the significance would that be, but- You don't know what the significance of that would be? Yeah, not yet. I mean, just the fact that they left the cooler there, what am I missing? That maybe a child's body was in the cooler and that's why they didn't take it with them?

Are we talking about a little, wait, wait, my image of what we're talking about for a cooler are we talking about like a gatorade like sports team size cooler we're talking about like a camping cooler like that you put like sandwiches and like a cooler i'm thinking like a little for the youtube people i'm thinking like a little hand one where the top folds down where you fit like a couple sandwiches and some ice nah man like a cooler like a cooler the size of a that a two-year-old yeah like you can fit a couple sandwiches and some ice. Nah, man, like a cooler. Like a cooler the size that a two-year-old could fit into. Yeah, like you can fit a couple 12-packs in the cooler with ice. Oh, yeah. I'm not thinking that big.

I mean, but I was thinking like maybe his little cooler that he had for work or something. Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm with you there. All right. But back to what I was saying. If this was some premeditated thing that Jessica and Verna were going to carry out, it doesn't seem like Isaac was a close friend of theirs. He was more a close friend of Bob's.

It was the first time he'd ever met them ever. There you go. So, so if you're going to carry out this situation that you're again, planning on doing, you're not bringing, you know, this is a big story you're going to, you know, conjure up to try to cover up what you're really doing. Would you want to bring someone else who's not in on it? I would think not, you know, loose lips sink ships and you wouldn't want that extra person there who could spoil the whole plan, especially if they weren't directly involved. Well, it wasn't their decision to bring him. It was Bob's decision to invite him along. They'd never met him before. And I would like to and you'll see when we when I show you some of Isaac's interviews, I would like to remind you that there's definitely something going on with Isaac. Okay, like he's not at the mental state of your typical 35, 38 year old. He's definitely got some developmental issues there. He's very naive.

He's very trusting. He seems that he's very pliable. And that's probably true. What I was going to say was that we were hammering down the fact that none of these witnesses saw Dior leading up to the campground, but Isaac has always said that Dior was there. Yes. And so I just wanted to really emphasize that because I'm hammering away on them as far as like, you know, Vernal's given all these statements, you know, that, you know, Dior was inside the truck and was running up and down, you know, the aisles. And there should have been multiple people that have seen him. Phil Klein saying, listen, nobody saw him. However, a guy who was there who wasn't good friends with Vernal and Jessica, who probably wasn't even supposed to be there in the first place, has always said the child was there. And what incentive would he have to lie? He's not good friends with him. So I think that does hold weight.

It's a big question. Yeah, it's a big question yeah it's a big question um i i was always wondering if that was the case then maybe he was scared like maybe he was threatened maybe you know vernal this is just my theory i'm not saying this what happened allegedly don't come for me maybe vernal was like dude you say a word to anybody like i'm gonna have my friend come and shoot you in the head when you're asleep and you know i can do it. Like, we don't know who Vernal is. You know, we don't know what kind of stuff. He seems like he could, you know, play the good, tough guy.

Yeah, it's possible. I would say that if there was their intent under no condition, would Isaac become, I would be like, no, you can't come or we're not going or whatever we were planning on doing. We wouldn't do it in front of this person because you could threaten them all you want. But if they go tell someone you're done so i don't know it's just it's just something to bring up i don't know how i feel about it but i think that's why this story is so mysterious because well listen the way it kind of was made to be seen is like vernal and jessica and dior allegedly pull up at bob's house to like pick him up because they were going to

caravan together basically and isaac was there yeah and they kind of didn't know he was coming right so you think that would change plans because he's not in how can they change plans at that time because it all depends on what the plans were right because there's a theory that that dior was never at the campsite at all and that's that's all. And that's where I was going earlier where I said none of these people, and you played the clip of Klein saying, we interviewed those two people. They never saw him.

So that's inferring that Dior was never at the campsite. Or at least not there all the time. Not there all the time, yeah. Like he could have been there on the night of July 9th when they got there. And on the 10th, he was already gone. Yeah, when they go into Lidoir the next day, he could have been there on the night of of july 9th when they got there and on the 10th he was already gone yeah when they go into lead or the next day he's not there so as far as this cooler to get back on track you're saying this cooler that we're talking about here is probably like a regular sports cooler like three feet maybe three feet by one

and a half feet yeah like you know kind of like a big one you can put your feet up on yeah with little cup holders on top i gotcha i gotcha yeah no that would be significant right you and that's a big ass cooler to lose yeah so but that's just what isaac said okay okay i don't know if it's true so in march of 2016 jessica and vernal sat down with kmvt reporter chelsea brenzel and uh philip klein claims that you know i believe he was there for this interview and he had been talking to chelsea uh you know in the past and working together and he claims that, you know, I believe he was there for this interview and he had been talking to Chelsea, you know, in the past and working together. And he claims that at one point, one of the video cameras stopped working and they had to go and switch the battery. But Chelsea told the other camera to keep filming. And while they were taking a break,

Vernal looked at Jessica and said, quote, don't talk in past tense, talk in present tense. They'll find out. And then Jessica rolled her eyes and shook her head. Now, I listened to a podcast interview with Philip Klein, and he says this and he's like, we put this footage out like you guys have seen this. And to be fair, I cannot find this footage anywhere. However, I did find a link that appeared to lead to that footage. And when I clicked it, it said like 404 error, like it wasn't available anymore. And it does appear that Philip Klein had posted like 30 hours of interviews with Vernal, Jessica and Bob Walton that he had done. He had posted those on YouTube and those aren't there anymore either. So these things may have been removed once lawsuits and things became involved. So I can't find that exact clip, but he claims it's there. He claims it exists. He claims he has shared it on social media know, you're putting it out to, you know, millions of people. We have to take that all down.

What I, these PIs, this case, man, why would, why did he put it? Are you going to explain why he put all of his investigation on, on the internet? He didn't do it initially. He did it after he was fired. I don't want to, I'm not by any means the, you any means the top PI in the world, but this is just craziness. So look at it from his point of view, okay? Okay. Technically, the family's not his client because they're not paying him, okay? That's right. He says, the public's my client. They're the ones who supported the GoFundMe. They're the ones who contributed to the GoFundMe. And they are the ones who are paying me. And I'm not here to be like the Coons family defense attorney or, you know, their biggest fan.

I'm here to like find out the truth. And that's what he was doing. And he felt he owed the public, you know, the information that he had received from his investigation because they were the ones who had paid for the investigation. So I guess I see it. I do think it's a little unprofessional, but I'm glad he did it. Thank you. Because I'm glad to have that information now. Oh, yeah. I mean, for someone from the outside, I'm glad. But I'm glad you said that. I mean, if you're working, if you're if you're privy enough to work with the police department where they're sharing stuff with you, I'm assuming if he would

have asked them first off, like, hey, listen, I'm no longer working with the family. I'd like to put out the 30 hours of footage that I have that I've also given to you. Is that okay? I'm assuming they would have said, we'd appreciate it if you don't do that. I honestly don't think the police had a problem with it. I think it happened after the lawsuit. Oh, I mean, if I was the investigator, I would not want that out there. But I mean, you're right. I don't know what they would say. I'm not them. But I would say, no, I'd appreciate it.

It's not going to help us by you putting that out there. So, you know, please don't put it out there. But, you know, does it hurt them to put it out there? I mean, because it's something that now if it's tried, if you try to use it in the courts, was it manipulated? You know, was it? I don't know. I mean, it doesn't help because he gave all that interview footage, the raw footage after he took it to the police directly, because remember, they were trading things back and forth.

I never thought that you and I, I never thought we'd see the day where you would be defending the PI over me. No, I do see it because you have this view of yourself that you're infallible and above approach and I would never do this. So nobody else ever should do it. It's okay. No, it's because I was a police officer and i know like what what's wrong and what's right you don't put your case and it was kind of former cop no oh he worked with um equal search texas

search for a long time he helped recover some missing children things like that i gotcha okay obviously is his pi license and everything like that. That makes more sense to me. Okay. All right. That makes more sense. So he's not, he's not, he wasn't trained that way where, you know. Okay. Was Vilt a former police officer? Yes. He worked with the U.S. Marshals for a long time. Yes, that's right.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I still, I don't have a problem with Vilt, man. I, Frank Vilt, I support him putting that out there. I support him putting them on blast. I don't even care. Yeah, I know.

You've made that clear. Yeah, well, then you've made your point clear. I'm interested to see what people say in the YouTube video. About Philip Klein or Frank Vilt? Frank Vilt, I think, is going to be more even. I think Frank Vilt, it's going to be a 50-50 thing where people might think it's fine and some people might not. But it's a common theme. These PIs get fired and then all of a sudden now their ethics- No, I mean, he called them out before he got fired. He got fired because he called them out, basically. But he didn't put all the information out. He just, well, we're going to get there. Okay, hold on. We're going to get there. Can I ask one question though? What did he put it on?

What did he put what on? All the footage. I believe it was on YouTube for a little while he put on facebook was it monetized no wasn't monetized okay well that's good that's good i mean to me like i get what you're saying i really do but to me from the person who wants to know everything i'm happy he did it you keep saying let's move on and then you but i'm saying like i know because we're gonna get your other questions but i'm saying like i understand what you're saying from like a professional standpoint, but I don't give a shit about that right now because I want to know everything and then

decide for myself, is this bullshit? Is it like just bias, et cetera? Like, I don't want somebody to choose for me what I get to know. I have. I'll say no more. So on March. You got this. You win.

On March 2nd, KIC Texas got correspondence from Vernal Coons' attorney that they no longer wanted the private investigator's service. And like, I don't know if he's being sarcastic when Philip Klein tells this story. He said that what he did was he's got a fax. And in the lawyer's handwriting, it said, Klein, you're fired kind of facts. And I don't know if he's being like, you know, if he's he's just being exaggerative or making a joke, but pretty much it was it was very like cut and dry. And the next day, Vernal Coons filed a lawsuit for libel against Philip Klein. So the family apparently wasn't happy that Klein had been making public statements about, you know, the changing stories and the fact that he believed Dior's parents weren't being honest. Vernal's attorney, Alan Browning, claimed that Klein was being fired because he'd expressed public opinions on the case. And Vernal's father, Dennis Koons, said, quote, I hired Mr. Klein to find my grandson, not to make public statements concerning his opinion on this case, end quote. To that, like I said, and I was talking to you

earlier, Philip Klein said, listen, like you're not my client. You didn't give me a cent. The money came from like the public who want to know the truth. And so I'm telling the truth. Like I'm not hired to protect you or defend you. I'm looking for the truth. And basically Klein was fired the day after he made the findings of his investigation public. Just a small amount of his findings. He went a little harder later on. So he made his findings public and then they fired him. He didn't make like all the findings public, but he was like, this is like the, you know, the conclusion of what I feel now about this. Yeah. So he made them before. Okay. All right. I'm not saying anything more about PIs on this case. You can say whatever you want, man.

I'm not saying anything else. That's up to you. I'm above reproach. You are above reproach. I'm above reproach. Get yourself up on a pedestal pretty high. I like to think that my ethics would always supersede any personal or financial feelings that I'm having.

Why do you think this is unethical? Because I think that there's a wrong way and a right way to do it. And as long as the case is still open, regardless of what I'm- You think it's unethical as far as the police- You keep asking me a question, but you cut me off. As far as the police investigation goes, you think it's unethical. But now when it comes to the family, right? Well, repeat that again. So you think that it's unethical when it comes to the police investigation and compromising that, not necessarily when it comes to like the police investigation and compromising that not necessarily when it comes to like hurting the feelings of the family oh forget the feelings of the family okay then we're on the same page with that yeah forget the feelings of the field i'm no no concerns about vernal anybody none but i think also even with philip even more when you're

brought into the fold and you're sharing of information you're developing your investigation on information that's being shared with you by the police, and you decide to go public with that information, I'm not saying I'm the authority on PIs, but I wouldn't do that. And I know a lot of PIs that wouldn't as well. He didn't go public with information

that the police had given him. He only went public with the results of his investigation. He's talking about stuff the police told him far after this, years after this, when he's like recalling the case after the lawsuit came out, after discovery was come out in the lawsuit, you know, where he has to defend himself to say like, I believe this. And I said this because I knew this. And then you have to prove how you knew that. And that's when, you know, he's not allowed to talk about these things because it already came out like in a

court of law. I know our viewers are probably saying we spend too much time on this, but one final question. Is it fair for me to say that he came out with his conclusions the day before he was fired, right? Yes. Is it fair to say that his assessment, his conclusions may have been on his own independent investigation, but also based on some of the information that was relayed to him by police. Yes. But he didn't specifically share that stuff. So what does it matter? Regardless, you're inferring a lot of it. It's now public. Yeah. But again, we were different, different strokes for different folks that let that be the question. I mean, that's probably why I wouldn't be a PI because to me it would be more important. Like these people are lying. I

think they had something to do with this little two-year-old boy going missing and I want to call them out. I want everybody to know that they're lying. And that's something you and I talk about a lot where public information goes out. There's two different goals. You want them to be held accountable in the court of public opinion, but you also want them to be found guilty in a court of law. And things like that can absolutely, as you know better than even I do, affect the ability to charge them later. Yeah, I agree. And that's the problem. So you held them guilty in the court of public opinion. Now they go to court and they get found, they're acquitted. And if it's due to something you did, I think anybody, including Phil, would feel bad about that. But what's the difference between that and an investigative

journalist who's putting stuff out that- They're usually not working directly with law enforcement. Okay. See, that's more my speed. I could never be a PI because my emotions would override it, and I'd be like, this is about Dior, not about you or you or you. And I want everyone to know that you're lying, and this is why you're lying, and this is why I think you're lying. And to clear the deck, I may have some personal feelings about this because I have tried to work with law enforcement on certain cases. And I go in there as a former law enforcement officer with, as a, and now as a licensed PI, and they refuse to work with me because of situations like this.

And it makes my job harder because they don't trust me because they feel like, because I'm not held to the same standards that they are, they could share information with me. And then if I have a tiff with the family, I could decide to go rogue and put out information that could hurt their case. So I've seen it. Some people will hit me up on breaking homicide and they'll say, it's so terrible that the police didn't work with you. You did more in a week than they did in 10 years. And I'm like, I know it's so frustrating, but these are the types of things that make my job harder. To be fair to you, I will say that I believe the current Lehigh County Sheriff is not a super big fan of Philip Klein. I don't know Philip, so this isn't personal, but maybe that's why I'm

taking it personally with these because it does make I've had situations where cops go. We can't we can't trust you. Yeah. And to me, it's like, is it is he a scumbag for doing it? Like, is he a super up and up guy? I don't know. I can't make that judgment. I don't think he's a scumbag.

I don't think he's a scumbag. He might be. I mean, he might have been doing this for publicity. He might have been doing this for attention and to get his name out there. But if the information is accurate, which it seems to be, considering that he was sued and the judge was like, nah, he didn't do anything wrong. He has a backup for everything he said. It doesn't matter to me at the end of the day what his motives were. Okay, fair. And I apologize for me at least, because I've spent way too much time on this and I know you guys are going, come on, move on, let it go. So Philip Klein said that he

approached the investigation in three phases. And the first phase was to basically build the case from the ground up with zero influence from law enforcement or the family. And this is what you were saying earlier, like before he even talked to the private investigator, Frank Vilt, before he talked to the police, he did go ahead and reinterview the family. And they interviewed over 150 witnesses and they received over 300 tips. Now, Klein claims that both his firm and law enforcement interviewed Vernal nine times and none of these nine stories matched up. And Klein said, quote, that is very disturbing for us as investigators. He's given us a story. And when we go out and try to prove simple things, the timeline falls apart quickly.

End quote. Jessica spoke to law enforcement five times, and each time her story varied as well. And Klein said, quote, That's very disturbing to us. We can't even verify basic information that Vernal tells us, and neither of their stories match. It's not even close, as a matter of fact. End quote. Klein said that every time they interviewed someone to corroborate Jessica and Vernal's story, the people would be like, we don't know what you're talking about.

That never happened. And then Klein would go back to the couple and be like, hey, they don't know what you're talking about. And then Vernal and Jessica would be like, oh, yeah, that's because and then they would change their story to sort of make it like fit. And then Klein would go back to those witnesses and be like, OK, what about this? Did this happen? And those witnesses would be like, we don't even know what you're talking about. And it was kind of a back and forth like that to the point where Klein was like, you're sending me on a wild goose chase like you're sending me in circles. This isn't adding up. And it's unproductive because no matter what story I bring to these witnesses that you

claim saw you or you claim talk to Dior, no matter what I bring them, they still don't see things your way. Like they still don't recall the events the way you do. Yeah, there's no doubt. I mean, regardless of everything we just spoke about, there's no doubt they're lying. There's something they're not telling us. Allegedly. Allegedly, you know, and that's not me saying it.

That's the polygraph exams. I mean, the something is not adding up. I don't know what it is, but something they're relaying to us or to the polygraph examiners is creating a level of anxiety where it's causing the machine to flag it. Well, Philip Klein feels that all the stories of the people who were there, they begin to break down at 8 a.m. on the day Dior went missing. And he said, quote, everything cannot be verified between 8 a.m. and 2.26 p.m. when the 911 call was made. We can't verify anything. I mean, nothing, zero, donut hole,

end quote. So is this our last break coming up? This is our last break. We're going to take our last break and then come back and really start digging in hardcore. All right. So we'll see you in a minute. Okay, so during the investigation, Philip Klein brought in Tracy Sargent from Georgia. Tracy Sargent has over 28 years of dog training experience, and she is a certified canine search specialist. Her cadaver dog, Chance, is highly trained in search and rescue, as well as trained in human decomposition and human blood pathogen decomposition. Tracy and Chance hit on five different locations in and around the Timber Creek campsite once they were given Dior's scent. And also, obviously, Chance is going to be looking for signs of human decomposition. Chance hit on a tree that people refer to as the

diaper tree. So this tree is called that because when Jessica's mother, Tina Clegg, was asked if she was sure Dior had been at the campsite, she said she was sure because after Dior had gone missing, she'd come to the campsite and she'd found one of Dior's dirty diapers hanging in the tree. And this diaper had evidently come from the night that they'd arrived at the campsite when Jessica changed Dior's diaper before they went to bed that night. Philip Klein said that Chance hit on that tree, that diaper tree, 10 different times. They brought the dog around a bunch and he kept going back to that tree. Chance then went to the area where the fire pit was, kind of around that area, but he didn't indicate on anything until he was about 10 feet

east of the campsite, allegedly where Vernal's truck had been parked. Law enforcement dug there and apparently they uncovered the body of a dog that someone else had buried, so they were like, maybe that's what Chance was smelling. It's very possible, obviously. Chance also hit on an area 139 feet east of the campsite, and apparently Chance was very eager to get to this area. He sort of like ran. He was very active, signaling a lot. And a bit over two miles away from the campsite, there was what was described as like a perfect square of loose gravel by a fence near the ravine. And law enforcement did excavate this area. They took soil samples, but they haven't really released whether or not they found anything of interest.

But Chance's handler, Tracy, told KIC Texas that this could have been a potential holding area for a body because Chance reacted very strongly to the top layers of the soil, but not like the deeper layers. So it didn't seem as if somebody had been buried there, as if like maybe a body had been buried very deeply, as if there was supposed to be a permanent place for it. But maybe it had been hastily put there, covered up, and then moved after. Based on what we're hitting here, that maybe Dior was killed at the campsite or somewhere around there. We talked about the other scenario where Jessica was having some issues. Maybe she gave Dior up.

Now we're talking that this might have been a premeditated murder. Or an accident. Or an accident. So you're saying it could have still been an accident. Maybe something happened. They weren't being attentive. He fell down, hit his head. Who knows? I've never understood why you would lie. If that's the truth, right? Like if it's an accident and it's an honest mistake, as horrific as it is, why wouldn't you just say that? I don't know. This case does not add up. It doesn't make sense. You follow what I'm saying? Like, you know, what would be the point?

Yes. I mean, but people do, you know, people do that still. They do. Yes. No, you're a hundred percent right. They definitely do. And it never makes sense to me. Usually in these cases, there's something nefarious about it that makes you want to cover it up because the body would tell you that this wasn't an accident. Right. So this is a whole different level. Right. Like they there's a lot more going on here where there was some digging.

And I mean, again, it's always possible, but it just seems like really far from what we initially thought could have been the case. You know, was this a kidnapping? Was this a prearranged thing where they gave him up, you know, due to finances or whatever? Now we're talking either an accident that resulted in death or a murder. Well, the sheriff said that when he said they were suspects. He said the only option I can see is a homicide.

So he apparently the sheriff doesn't even think like an accident is possible. Like whatever the sheriff knows leads him to believe this. This wasn't intentional. That's why I said in the last episode, I would love to know what they know because from what we know, I'm not seeing it, but they know a lot more than us. That's for damn sure. What's also interesting and what you need to know is I believe it was less than six months after

Dior went missing, Jessica and Vernal broke off their engagement and they both started dating different people, new people. And I mean, I believe within a year they were both remarried to these different people. So that's interesting. And apparently the apartment that they were living in in Idaho Falls, it was abandoned after Jessica and Vernal had failed to pay the rent for several months and then they were evicted. But when they moved out, the couple had left a lot of their things behind. The landlord had contacted them and he was like, hey, come and get your things or I'm going to throw them out, like come by this date or else they're going to get thrown out. And when Jessica and Vernal did not return by that date to collect these items,

he called KIC Texas because he knew they were on the case. And he said, listen, like, I'm putting this stuff out at the dumpster today. If you want to have a look, you know, that's where it's going to be. So KIC Texas brought a cadaver dog into the apartment of, you know, Vernal and Jessica and where Dior had, you know, lived and was raised. And the dog didn't react to anything. This was still chance. But when they went through the items left behind in the apartment, the stuff that got thrown out, they did find some interesting things.

They found some matchbox cars that had belonged to little Dior. And Philip Klein claims that the cars described to his firm and to law enforcement, the ones that Dior had been playing with on the day he went missing, they seemed to have been in the apartment of Jessica and Vernal, not with Dior, wherever he was. Now, obviously, like, I find this very hard to prove. It's not possible to claim that these were the exact same cars. But even if you can't prove that they were the exact same cars,

you know, Klein makes a good point to say, like, why would, you know, Dior's parents leave anything of Dior's behind when he's missing? And like, they love him and they want him back. Like, you'd think that it would be so difficult to throw out anything that your child had once touched and played with and loved. A blanket that belonged to Dior was also found, and apparently it was, you know, really dirty as if it had been heavily used and very loved. And Klein brings up that in the interview Dior's parents had given, they claimed that the blanket left at camp when Dior went missing was the only one he ever used and it was his favorite. And Klein and his team were able to locate pictures of Dior, which showed him with more than one blanket, including the one that was found in the trash pile from their apartment. In a box, they also found many items of little boy clothing, including a camo

jacket, very much like the one Dior's parents had claimed he was wearing when he went missing. Now, unfortunately, there's no pictures of Dior on the day he went missing to compare if the jacket was the same one. There's no pictures of Dior from the campsite at all because even though Jessica was an avid picture taker when it came to her son and she had taken multiple pictures of Dior on the way to Lador, she'd taken none of him at the campsite at all. And she said it was because she didn't have service and she just wanted to relax and enjoy camping. Now Dior's parents did release a picture of Dior wearing a camo jacket from a previous date, like the picture was from a previous date, and they claimed this was the

jacket he was wearing when he went missing. And KIC Texas and Philip Klein, they say like this jacket that was in the picture is the same one they found in the garbage from the apartment of Jessica and Vernal. I mean, that's interesting. Let's talk about the interviews that KIC Texas did with Vernal, Jessica, and Robert Walton. So these interviews were all recorded. Like I said, I believe the full interviews were on YouTube and Facebook at one time, because people on Reddit and web sleuths and stuff say they were, but I can't find the full ones anywhere. However, Philip Klein has spoken openly about some of what transpired during those interviews, and he allowed KTVB to use clips from these interviews in the series they did on Dior called Little Man Lost.

Klein said that Bob Walton, whose grandpa, he's Jessica's grandfather, he cooperated and he agreed to be interviewed, but he was very evasive with certain questions and he behaved oddly when asked certain questions. During the interviews, they explain how Dior vanished very differently. We all probably got a different story. So I don't know what happened. That's all there is to it. Do they ask you to watch Little Dior? That's what I hear. Okay, that's what you hear? That's what there is to it. Do they ask you to watch Little Dior? That's what I hear.

Okay, that's what you hear? That's what I hear. That's what you hear from them say? That's what I hear. I don't know whether I heard it or not. They said that. Okay. This is one of the key differences in their stories.

Jessica says that she asked her grandfather, Bob, to watch Dior. But Bob won't confirm that Jessica asked him that. what does your gut tell you what i mean we all have a gut what i mean what does your gut tell you i don't really know you seem to be close to jessica yeah but were you like affectionate with with the baby or no i don't pick kids up and stuff like that okay give them the kisses like the women no sure give them kisses like the one i kiss my kids man you know like are all the men in idaho falls just like super chauvinistic like that was weird i don't give them kisses like the women give a kid affection that's women's work do you put a lot of do you put a lot of stake into what he's saying in that interview? I think he's acting weird.

Yeah? Yeah. I think he's not intelligent. Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, clearly. Clearly, he's got some backwards thinking. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I think he's of low intelligence and I think these investigators could probably run circles

around him and that makes it easy to kind of make him look really bad. I don't know if he's being deceptive or not because I think he's, I mean, just based on his, the response, the last thing he said, I mean, that's a very disrespectful thing to, I think, say. Oh, you think that's disrespectful? Wait till you hear this, right? So Bob said something that apparently really infuriated Philip Klein. Philip Klein said he was so mad that he slammed shut his brand new laptop and

threw it across the room. So Philip Klein thought that Bob was being very cavalier about little Dior's disappearance. And when Klein confronted him about this, he said Bob responded, quote, what's done is done. They can always have another child, end quote. And Caroline Gere, who's, you know, Klein's associate, who was also there during the interview, you can hear her talking in that interview with Bob, she confirms that he said this. And at that point, Bob said he needed to take a break, and Klein realized that Bob had urinated all over himself and the chair. And Klein seems to take this as like, oh, he was nervous and that's why he did it. But like the dude's clearly ancient.

You know, he's on oxygen. Like he probably doesn't have a super good control of his bodily functions at this point. So it could have just been that. Yeah, I don't think he pissed his pants because he was nervous. Yeah, I think he pissed his pants because he's old. The guy's twirling his oxygen tank hose.

But I do think though what's done is done. They can always have another child. That's like cold, man. Oh, it's horrible. Disrespectful. But that just goes to show you that this guy has a complete lack of self-awareness based on the comment he said in the previous clip. Him saying this comment.

I think he's of low intelligence. But I don't think based on what we saw so far that he had you know they had him in such a corner that he peed his pants no but like he doesn't seem too nervous i wouldn't leave my kid with somebody like that oh no no absolutely not not someone talking like this right like oh your kid your kid fell off a ravine just go go make another one you know forget about those dildo kits use the real thing go make another one. Forget about those dildo kits. Use the real thing. Go make another one. Yeah. No argument there. So they interviewed Bob again at a later time. This time they were at home at his house, so he would feel more comfortable. And Bob revealed

something else that broke from the initial narrative. Bob said that at the time of little Dior's disappearance, he had been asleep in his camper, not sitting by the fire at all, as Jessica and Vernal had claimed. So it would be pretty hard to ask Bob if he could watch Dior when he was asleep in his camper. So that whole story kind of falls apart because remember Isaac, he said something similar to the undercover PIs that he didn't think Bob was at the fire. He thought he was asleep in his camper. Now, the P.I.s who interviewed Bob, they said, although, you know, his physical health was obviously not great, he seemed to be fine mentally. He was able to follow the conversation like he wasn't confused. He knew what the date was, who the president was.

He knew what was going on around him mentally, but like obviously physically, he's not great. Now, in their interviews, both Jessica and Vernal mentioned that they possibly suspected that Grandpa Bob may have known more than he was saying. I believe Bob knows more than what he's telling. It is my fault for allowing Bob to watch my child. But I will never forgive Bob for letting my son get out of sight. I will never forgive him. Do you trust Jessica 100%? When it comes to my son, I did.

When it comes to, like, I did. When it comes to any life decision, no. The only thing that I ever thought was maybe she knew something about Bob and was worried about Bob, spending what life he's got left in prison, and that was eating at her. My mind tells me, at first my mind told me, at that time, this killed my son, this had something to do with it.

Why would you and your husband leave that little boy up there with a guy that's not awesome? Just because you've done it before? Because he was tired and I knew that he wanted to hang out with grandpa. I don't care if it's my grandpa. I don't care. Like, I just want my son back why does she give me Casey Anthony vibes man you know I'm just looking at it

from like the dynamic of how this could have went down I'm addressing this from that point of view like okay if it's if it's Bob who's responsible then you would think that Jessica and Vernal would be on the same page but then if you were to think and I think this would be more Jessica and Vernal would be on the same page. But then if you were to think,

and I think this would be more likely that Vernal and, and Jessica were involved, not Bob, right? You would expect them to, to be on the same page. And one thing that I haven't normally seen in cases that I've done, if you have co-conspirators, right? And they're either one of them could break at any time. You usually don't have one of those individuals accusing the other of possibly doing something to the child or being responsible for what happened to their child because that could cause that person to flip on you. They could show them that interview. So you usually don't see that happen because that dissension could result in you getting caught, right? When you're calling out the other person. So that's a little weird to me. But not really, because if Bob's asleep in his camper,

he doesn't know what the hell's going on. And Jessica and Vernal are having each other's backs. Right. That's what I'm saying. But in that interview, Vernal didn't have Jessica's back. He said he trusted her with his son, but not like life decisions. See, I wouldn't say any of that. But again, to each his own, I wouldn't talk any crap about her that could piss her off and maybe implicate me in my opinion he clearly just doesn't respect women he just okay all right so he's like i mean i mean he he said something remember last episode he said like oh you know she's never even held a job for more than six months like he kind of talks down to her i

think that's just his baseline if you will okay and as we've talked about before, although the stories of Jessica, Vernal, and Bob did change and vary over time, Isaac's never did. Yet, in their interviews with Philip Klein and his team, all three began to sort of shift the blame onto Isaac. The family all called out Isaac in these recordings. That got the private investigator asking questions. From day one, Jessica and Vernal kept trying to steer us as investigators to Isaac. Well, you know, Isaac's a weirdo. Isaac, you know, does this. Isaac does that. I never really got a feel for him.

Like, his personality, he really didn't talk to us. Really kind of of just odd they keep bringing up Isaac and he's creepy and he's I don't you know he's weird and he's odd I said when you came walking up to camp did you see my son did you cut across paths the response I got pissed me off because he said and I quote, I don't know. I looked at him and I said, when is the last time you've seen my son? And again, I got, I don't know. And I said, you better start knowing something real fast.

Do you trust Isaac? But for what? Would you trust him to spend the night in your house? No. Would you trust him to watch your grandson? No. Do you trust him to not steal your money? No.

Why are you friends with him? If you don't trust him why would you well you know what that's a hell of a question i had my eye on what was going on all the time and that's the way it is yeah they definitely have their uh they definitely have their suspicions about isaac or at least they're portraying that they do, right? I suppose, yeah. Or they're just trying to shift the plane.

That's what I'm saying. I mean, they're all on the same page where they're making it appear that something's sketchy about Isaac. You know, investigators should be looking at him. I mean, they should be looking at everybody, obviously, right? Like, you know, nobody should be off the table. Isaac, Bob. Yeah, but he's like the only person who just kept telling the same story over and over again and he wasn't even there like remember he went down to the fishing hole and then he continued on to go fishing while this all went down right he was gone fishing when they're that

they had already noticed that you know yeah or was missing and then you got vernal acting like a tough guy over here he's like well you better you better start freaking remembering what the hell happened you know like did isaac leave the campsite before they left to go to the fishing hole what do you mean did he leave like he left with them correct he left with them yeah that's what i'm saying so he left with them there was never a point where isaac would have been alone with dior correct just to go back to that because that was part one early in the beginning there was never a window where isaac you know was at the campsite for even a few minutes with dior before leaving and going to

the fishing hole and then when the parents came back he was you know dior and isaac were gone that's important to note so there wasn't a window where he could have done anything without them being present allegedly yeah yeah okay so after the initial date of little Dior's disappearance, Jessica and Vernal, they made some inflammatory statements about Isaac Rainois. In some media interviews, Jessica has made Isaac seem very creepy and even rude. She claims that when they all went on this camping trip, Isaac had seemed to not want Dior there, asking, like, why would you even bring a baby on a camping trip she also claims that Isaac had no interest in talking to her Vernal or little Dior and he was pretty much unfriendly to them the entire time and Vernal made it seem as if Isaac wasn't interested in helping them look for Dior after he went missing and he even commented like we just saw that he'd run into Isaac and he'd asked

if Isaac had seen Dior and Isaac was like evasive and acting weird. But according to Isaac, he did help look for Dior and he didn't like run into Vernal while he was coming back to the campsite. Can you say 100% for sure baby Dior was up there? Yes, I can tell you that much that he was up there. Okay. What were your thoughts that night when you were like when you were trying to fall asleep what was going through your mind out you know thinking about the days of every was you know I told he's gonna get if he's gonna be sick if he's okay that's what I was going through my head did you ever feel accused by them? Did they ever confront you? I don't know

for say how I just you know I just kind of felt that way you know just the way. Okay you had that impression that maybe. I felt like I had that impression, that I was being scapegoated or, you know, maybe partially accused, you know. So when you say scapegoated, do you mean, like, are you saying, like, you felt like they were using you for the fall guy? I can't, you know, it's kind of felt like that, but I don't, you know, I don't really know. Yeah, I'm not saying that's a fact. I'm just curious what was going through your mind. Right. But you felt that way? Kind of, yeah.

You don't have anything to hide then? No. And you cooperated with law enforcement that night when they spoke to you? Yes, I did. You told them everything? Yeah, I told them what everything was going on. So you said you noticed Bob pacing. Kind of.

What did he look like to you? Was he stressed? He looked like he was kind of stressed or worried about something. And so that's what made you think to ask him what was going on? Right. And he said... That little Dior's missing. And your reaction was?

Well, where did he go? I better start helping look for him. So then what do you go? I've better start helping look help look for him. So then what did you walked up to the bank? And started and I talked to Bob a little bit more about where where they might where he might be and we started looking in the campers and everything for We looked in the camper we Looked all around the area, we looked underneath the vehicles.

We went up in the hills. I went up in the hills, up there to where the reservoir is. I went up there and looked around. I must have worn out by myself for probably about a half an hour, an hour looking, trying to find Dior, and I couldn't find him. So was Jessica and Dior, no Jessica's boyfriend or fiance at the time, were they at the campsite when Bob told you Dior was missing? When he was pacing on the bank and you walked up, were they at the

campsite? When I went down there to talk, when I went up there to talk to Bob, no they were already out looking for him so you didn't see him they were right they were out so you and Bob searched the immediate area we involved search the media immediate area right there for a little bit his mom came from I don't know she was out in the sagebrush looking and she came back to count I talked to her a little bit and I said what's going on here like he's missing did she seem upset yeah she seemed pretty upset I couldn't really look at you in the face or anything. She hadn't been able to do that for what I don't know for what reason. Do you so did you ever have the impression before law enforcement or

search and rescue out there did you ever have a thought that maybe he was someone took him? Did you ever think that or was that something that came about when he just couldn't be found i thought maybe he got lost or somewhere and sat down okay that's what my impression was or you know do you or the just because you don't say you know where he went did he was he in the truck or did he on was he on foot he was on foot for a while and then he was also in the truck. He got in the truck too to go down by the cattle guard to go look for him down there too. Okay. But you stayed busy then? Right. I stayed busy looking, going up the hills, all over, yeah.

Was Dior Sr., did he get, was he angry? Did he get aggressive with Bob? Did he say, like, you know, he was here last. Like, was there frustration? I think there was a little bit, but he didn't seem to get too angry at Bob, so. So, Dior, did he ever appear frustrated or anything that Dior, did he tell Bob at the time he I left him here with you did he ever say anything like that did Vernal Dior

Jessica's boyfriend or fiance he left the campground did he leave the campground in his truck to go call 9-1-1 or do you know far as I know he left the campground in his truck to go look for little Dior by the cattle guard. But other than that, I don't know if they left or if they called it from there with one of their cell phones. I don't know. Okay. Was Bob continuing to look, too? Could he get up and down the hills very easily?

He had kind of a hard time because he had the oxen machine and the tubes. So what do you think about that? That's the first time you've really seen oxygen machine and the tubes so well so what do you think about that that's the first time you've really seen isaac talking and seen him and was that a bullet in his hand i sent you a message in squad cast when i was watching yeah he was uh he was like spinning around like a 223 round like a rifle round so what do you what do you think of his mannerisms does he seem to be telling the truth or does he seem to be legit? He's comfortable. He's not closed off. His arms are open. He's relaxed. I mean, he's got a little bit of anxiety because he's spinning the bullet around, but that could be a normal thing. He's a lot like you described throughout the last two episodes. And when I

say this, by the way, I'm not saying this to be disrespectful to anyone, Bob or him, but someone again of low IQ and someone who just kind of tells it, the first thing that comes to their mind, they're not really calculated in what they're saying. So usually that means that they are going to be more truthful. And if they do try to lie, it's going to be very obvious. Question for you, who was the interviewer? Oh, it was just somebody from East Idaho News. Okay. Okay. But let me ask you a question. Did you feel, because this is the impression I got, it felt like he almost kind of wanted to say something negative about the others,

but he didn't really want to. You know what I mean? He was like, were you being accused? Did you, well, I mean, kind of, but I feel like I was being scapegoated, but that's just how I felt. I'm not saying that happened. Yeah. I mean, he's probably been he's probably been hearing some things around town, too. Right. And, you know, but maybe he just doesn't want conflict or he doesn't want to be accused of, you know, bad mouthing the parents who have just lost their children. Who knows? But he does seem like he there are moments where he's like stretching his neck out.

It could be because he's anxious. It could be because his attention span is wearing thin. I think that's it right there. Like, he's tired and bored. Yeah. He's frustrated maybe a little bit. I don't know. But yeah, he did seem like he was, you know, as much as I say he wasn't calculated, but he was maybe possibly at moments holding back and not trying to speculate. And he seemed like he was trying to be truthful with the interviewer. He seemed like he was trying as much as he could remember. I felt like he was being honest. And that's probably what keeps him from changing his story where maybe Vernal and Jessica, when they're asked questions,

they just sort of like talk instead of not wanting to speculate, instead of not wanting to say things unless they're 100% certain of it. Whereas Isaac is like, I'm not going to say anything unless I'm 100% certain because there was a lot is like, I'm not going to say anything unless I'm 100% certain. Because there was a lot of times he said, I don't really remember. I'm not exactly sure. And that's okay to say that. Like, that's how you should handle an interview

with the police, especially. If you don't know, don't guess. Because then you're going to look like you're lying, right? Yeah, we always say that. Don't tell me what you think. Tell me what you know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you know, it's a different interview, right? Like Vernal's a lot more, like we had said earlier, a lot more quick with his words. And if they are involved, they had time to prepare for this. I still think it'd be difficult. I don't, you know, I guess it's possible if they left. But here's my thing. I'm trying to go with the timeline. I'm trying to kind of separate what they're saying in these interviews and go off what they're all saying, which is that Vernal, and stop me if I'm

wrong, Vernal, Jessica, and Isaac left together. Yes. So remember Isaac said that when they started walking toward the fishing hole, he and Jessica were walking together and he saw Vernal and little Dior walking together behind them, sort of following them. Right. So they're walking together and he saw vernal and little dior walking together behind them sort of following them right so they're walking together bob's at the campground allegedly they you know dior is left behind i you know vernal says you're gonna stay with grandpa bob no problem so at that point i'm assuming i don't see in this interview but they can didn't continue down the trail the path whatever it was the three of them together. They continued down and then Isaac sort of like strode off on his own.

On his own? Yeah. Like they went down, he brought them to where he said he was going to bring them. And then he just like continued on because he was going to fish and that's what he was going to do. And then we don't really know what Jessica and Vernal did. Apparently Vernal saw some minnows and he thought Dior liked them and then they went back. Do we know how much time? I know we got estimates from Jessica and Vernal and they're kind of all over the place, but anything from Isaac to say,

you know, how much time transpired, how much time passed from the moment he left them at their location to when he arrived back at the campsite and was informed that Dior was missing. There is a time given. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was a serious length of time. It was a decent amount of time. Yeah. Enough time where if something, if Vernal and Jessica had decided to go back on their own and whatever happened, there would be enough time where it wasn't five minutes.

It wasn't 10 minutes. It was over an hour. Okay. All right. So there was a point where you could potentially have Isaac at the fishing hole, Bob sleeping in the camper, and Jessica and Vernal with you're alone. Yes. Okay.

That's what I take away from all this, by the way. That's what I, that window. A lot of talk about Vernal leaving in his truck. Did he go to call 911? Isaac's like, I don't know. I think he went looking in his truck? Did he go to call 911? Isaac's like, I don't know. I think he went looking in the truck. And there are people out there who think maybe this was Vernal not going to call 911, but going out to drive somewhere where he would then leave Dior's body. But I'm just saying that's what the speculation is. Yeah. And we're not convinced that Bob was

sitting out at the campfire when they left. I mean, even Bob's not convinced of that. Right. And so you have this window where realistically the minute Isaac leaves them at that location, they could have walked back immediately. I think it's crazy that they can't agree on a simple thing. Like, did you guys ask Bob to watch Dior? You know? Yeah. I don't know if they did. It doesn't sound like they did. It doesn't sound like even if they did, Bob would be able, you know, would be, you'd have to literally be like three feet from him and be like, Hey Bob, question. Um, for everyone on audio, I'm waving my hand. Like you'd have to be like, Whoa, Bob, you there? Yeah. Hey, Dior, he's right here. Can you see him? Yeah. All right. He's your responsibility. You cool with that? It wouldn't be something where it's like, Oh, just walk over to Bob, uncle,. He's not in that physical condition or mental condition to do that. You'd want to

make sure he knew, hey, tag, you're it. You're responsible for him. Exactly. Well, then Jessica said something in her interview that, I mean, basically, without coming right out and saying it, suggested that Isaac Rainwand had something to hide. Apparently, Grandpa Bob always had a shovel in his vehicle, and this shovel was spotted by Search and Rescue while they were looking for Dior. In the middle of Jessica's interview, she starts telling a story about Isaac and a shovel. Listen to this. When they picked the shovel up out of the ground, because it looked like it had been used recently, like it was kind of muddy,

and at the very tip of it, there was a blonde hair that was like the same color as little man's. When the cops asked Isaac about it, they took him away from the campground, asked him questions, and he came back, and he ran his hands up and down the shovel. And I'm like, if somebody asked me about this shovel that might be involved with something, why would you, I wouldn't go put my hands all over it. Like I wouldn't even want to be near that. And the hair, uh, when the guy picked up the shovel,

I went to go grab it and the wind blew and blew it right off the shovel. And so we lost that. So what do you think about that story, man? The hair that blew away. The hair that she spotted and she went to go grab it and it just flew away in the wind and it was lost forever. I swear she gives me Casey Anthony vibes and I feel like I cannot be unbiased about her, but that's a Casey Anthony story, man. The hair that blew away and police never confirmed that the shovel, they asked him about it. Did Isaac ever say anything in that

interview? Did this come out afterwards? This is the first time we're hearing about the shovel. Law enforcement's never said anything about the shovel isaac in his interview was asked about the shovel and he was like yeah grandpa bob had a shovel but i don't know it just seems like it seems like a made-up story to me especially how are you going to see a blonde hair like clinging to a dirty shovel it doesn't sound very honest to me sounds like you know and the fact that like if it blew it's not gonna blow away like up into the clouds it would blow like probably a few feet and then you can go run and catch it and i don't know i mean i mean if it's evident enough that you can see it on a shovel from afar yeah one single hair you'd be able to trick exactly which is bullshit to me to me it's like exactly i mean he's he's a

little boy he's you know got longish hair but not not long where you'd be like, oh, look at that hair from 10 feet away. Let me grab it. And it's gone. I just don't believe this story at all. And that leads me to the next question. Why would she say it? Well, yeah.

I mean, if it's to lead you down the wrong path, that would be a great reason to say it, right? Indicate that he's involved. But it could also be her just trying to throw him off the scent i mean i think it's a stupid story to tell because anybody with two brain cells to rub together would be like you saw a hair on a shovel and then just right when you were gonna go grab it it blew away and weren't the police weren't the police there when this hair yeah and apparently isaac's rubbing his hand on the shovel and she's i think she's trying to suggest like oh he did he wanted to explain why his fingerprints were on that shovel so he but like he could explain why his fingerprints were on that shovel anyways

he's bob's friend bob always had the shovel in his truck isaac does work on bob's property like gardening and stuff for him like that's easy enough to explain why your handprints might be on that shovel. You don't have to in front of everybody go and like stroke the shovel to make a point. I mean, so for their story to work, if like, if that's what they're trying to convey there, if they're for their story to work, they're basically suggesting that Isaac drops them off at the fishing hole at their location. He doubles back to the campsite without their knowledge in a spot that they probably can't notice.

And that gives him the window where he can do something to their son when no one's around. What window is that? Jessica said they were gone five minutes. Vernal said they were gone 15 to 20 minutes. Right. So what kind of window is this? Yeah. But other than that, Isaac would have never been alone with Dior.

That would have been the only time. Yes. So, I mean, that would have to be the story they would have to put forward that, you know, we believe he brought us to this location to distract us, keep us somewhere away from the campsite so that he could go back, take our child, bring him somewhere and do something to him. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense.

It's like we wanted to make you suspect him, but we have no other evidence or support of how he could have done something when he could have done something or why. Like there's no means, there's no motive, there's no opportunity. It's just like we don't want you to suspect us. So let's suspect this guy who clearly isn't all there and might be an easy patsy to pin it on. Yeah, that's a very plausible scenario. So after Philip Klein's investigation was complete, Klein gave his opinion that there was no evidence that Dior was taken by wild animals, something law enforcement agrees on. Klein also said there's no evidence that there had been an abduction, something law enforcement also agrees with. In his report, Klein said, quote, We believe that the parents, being Vernal Coons and Jessica Anderson, are deceptive, with the intent to cover up a crime. We now have no evidence other than the testimony of the four persons on the site to indicate that Dior Jr. was on that mountain at all,

end quote. And they're using Jessica Anderson instead of Jessica Mitchell because she was remarried at the time that this came out. A time distance study was done, which failed to verify either Vernal or Jessica's timeline. And a cell phone impact study was done that was able to determine Vernal's testimony about driving a mile and a half away to call the police was fabricated. This is according to Philip Klein and his investigation. So it sounds like the cell phone impact study may have looked at the pings of Vernal's cell phone to see, did he be verified, or could not only not be verified, but physically, according to their statements to KIC and law enforcement, the events as they were portrayed could just not have occurred. Like, and I think we're on that same page where this

timeline doesn't make any sense. Klein's message to Vernal and Jessica was, quote, enough of lying, enough of trying to mislead investigators, not only on our side, but the FBI, who you don't mess with. You have to be honest with them. Enough of going on Facebook and Vernal Coons and his father Dennis did file the lawsuit claiming breach of contract, infliction of emotional distress, libel, slander, and fraud. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed after District Court Judge Bruce Pickett found no wrongdoing on the part of Klein or his company. Klein called the lawsuit frivolous and claimed it was a discovery hunt to prepare for a criminal defense on the part of Dior's parents. So I think what he's saying here is they sued him so that they could find out what he knew and what the police knew so that if they did have charges brought against them, they would have sort of like the inside look into what law enforcement had. They also tried to sue

Klein for $20,000 that had been raised through the GoFundMe, to which Judge Pickett responded, quote, the plaintiffs fail to demonstrate economic damages resulting from the alleged breach. Plaintiffs attempt to claim the $20,000 that was paid to Klein from a GoFundMe account that was donated by members of the general public. But to award the plaintiffs $20,000 that they did not pay would be to grant them a windfall where they did not suffer actual damages, end quote. So like, first of all, $29,000 was raised. According to Philip Klein, $29,000 was raised. He got like $20,000 of that. He says he doesn't know where the other $9,000 went. But now, yeah, now Vernal Coons and his father, Dennis, they're trying to sue Klein for that $20,000, even though they weren't the ones to

give it to him. And this is an issue because when you're trying to garner sympathy and stuff from the public like this and you've got GoFundMes going, there does have a scent of a financial motivation to do that. Some people maybe feel that this was the motive, that they wanted to get rid of their son so they could start a GoFundMe and have people who felt bad come forward and give money? Because these people were clearly going through some financial hardship. They couldn't pay the rent on their apartment. Jessica couldn't hold a job. So some people wonder if the motive might have been financial. Definitely could be financial. And it's interesting that a lawyer would go forward with this because as the judge laid out, it wasn't their money. They didn't lose their own money. It was the individuals who donated to the cause. I think those individuals or even GoFundMe could have had some type of legal case against Klein if they wanted to. But yeah, none of the money that

was donated or a very little of it was from Vernal and his family. So why would they be entitled to that? None of it was from Bernal and his family, not one cent. Yeah. So there you go. So there you go. So they're trying to claim money that was never theirs. It was for the investigation. I'd like to know where that 9,000 went though. Yeah. Well, no one knows where the 9,000 went, but it didn't go to the rent on their apartment. So. Okay. Yeah. Let's finish up with possible theories. This will be quick because we're going to talk about how likely we think each one is. And I think after all we've learned, not super likely. But the first theory is that little Dior was the victim of a wild animal attack. Now, like I said, it does seem that there's, you know, black bears and wolves in that area. But in this case, it seems unlikely that Dior

was attacked by an animal. The 200 plus searchers found no sign of an animal attack, including blood or any items connected to Dior. You'd think that if Dior was grabbed by an animal, his boots, which were two sizes too big, they would have fallen off. But they were never found. Additionally, in her interview with KIC Texas, Jessica also doesn't seem to think her son was attacked by an animal, stating that it was, quote, a different kind of animal, end quote. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. See, she makes these statements like she knows something, but then never elaborates on that. And I mean, I suppose it's still possible.

I just don't see like a bear or a wolf gently picking Dior up and making sure his boots stayed on and like bringing them off to a cave to kill him. You know, in general, bears have very poor eyesight. And although they are carnivorous, only a small percentage of their diet is actually made up of meat. And that includes fish, insects, and other mammals. But they like vegetation and stuff too. And bear attacks are actually a lot more rare than the media would have you believe. They can be unpredictable, bears, but they usually only get like super aggressive if their cubs are threatened. And bears who live near areas where humans camp, they're usually

familiar with people like that dynamic and they sort of keep their distance and mind their own business. I just don't see a bear like galloping into the campground and snatching Dior up within a five to 20 minute window. Like Dior is just sitting there all alone for some reason because Grandpa Bob's in the camp or sleeping and Dior's parents and Isaac are at the fishing hole and Dior's just completely alone sitting by the campfire and a bear just lumbers up and he's like, hey, little man, you're lonely.

Come to my cave and we'll have some honey together. Like I just, I don't see why the bear would do that, especially if there's a campfire going, you know, which there allegedly was. So there's two things. And I thought about this when we were talking about this whole animal attack situation last episode. So there's two things you have to look at. If Dior was grabbed by an animal and dragged away, it's a quiet area. You would assume he would scream. He would cry. Someone would hear that. That's number one. So then if you say, okay, well, what if he was killed instantly? Well, if he was killed instantly, then there would be some signs of him being killed

at the campsite. And there's an absence of that. And he would have been killed instantly if it was some wild animal. That's what they usually do. Bears will just maul you. You would think. So if you're in the belief that he could have been dragged away, I would think that he would have screamed or you would have heard something because they're out in the middle of a remote area, regardless of where they were, Bob or someone would have heard him crying, screaming. And nobody has claimed that. So I'm with you where it's, you can't say 100% it didn't happen, but highly unlikely based on what we've been told, which I'll get into that in a little bit. Because you said something in the first 10 minutes of this whole series that I think really just ties into what we're looking at. Well, the next theory is that Dior was abducted from the campsite, not by a bear, but by a human. Now, remember, there's only one road that goes in and out of that campsite.

It's seven miles long, very rough and rocky. And anyone coming up that road in a vehicle would not only be spotted long before they reached the campsite, but you would hear their car. And there's a lot that would have needed to go right for the kidnapper or if he or she approached on foot. You know, they would have had to have like followed Dior there. They would have had to have known that Dior's parents were going to leave him alone with Grandpa Bob and they would have needed to know how long the parents would be gone long enough to get down there and steal away with Dior before anyone noticed. And would this person have just snatched Dior? You know, you think if that happened, Dior would cry out. And like you said, this cry was never heard. Or did this person just

sneak up, like covered Dior's mouth with their hand while Grandpa Bob snoozed by the fire in his camper? And if they did grab him once again, you'd think at least one of his boots would still have fallen off. And I don't see the kidnapper like stopping to put the boot back on Dior if he's just trying to get in and out and steal this kid and then why like what's the motive did he see Dior in town and follow them all the way to this campsite like it's a very remote area that people aren't just wandering about in and it seems like a lot of work to kidnap this one kid and then leave nothing or no trace behind yeah no foot tracks no tire tracks nothing like that and then as you said a couple seconds ago and we said it last episode um how would this

individual know what the intentions were of vernal and jessica where they he he or she would be able to say this is my window of opportunity they're about to leave him at the campsite with Grandpa Bob, who is passed out in the chair. And I know they're going to be gone for at least 20 minutes. So I have plenty of time. How do they know they're not turning? They're just going up to five feet to get some firewood and coming right back for s'mores. I don't see how that an individual would know when they could get into that campsite undetected and get out again undetected. That'd be impressive. I don't see it. I don't see it either. I think the animal situation is more likely than that. I'll say that. So that's not saying much. I agree. Yeah. I think out of those two, yeah, I'm going theory number one if I had to pick. Yeah. And I will say that it's still possible that Dior wandered off on his own. Let's say that Grandpa Bob was asleep in the camper. Which I think is likely. Yeah. Yeah. Because he said he was, right? And so did Isaac. Yeah. I think it's likely. Let's say that Vernal and Jessica were gone far longer than they claimed to be, right? And Dior would possibly have

time to get further. It's very unlikely. Once again, he's two. He's wearing boots that are too big for him. They searched thoroughly. But let's say he managed to get like two, three miles out of that search area somehow. I don't know how, but somehow he managed to. And maybe he like found a cave and hid in it and starved to death. And he's just never been found. I think that's more likely than an animal attack and a kidnapper. And I still think that it's very unlikely that a child of that age wearing those boots, not knowing the area, being so attached to his parents that he doesn't ever leave their side. I don't think it's really a possibility. But it could be a possibility. I guess it could have happened.

I think it's a fair thing to say because as unlikely as it may be, if they were gone for 35, 45 minutes and two-year-old little boy gets disoriented and everything looks the same to him, he could be thinking he's trying to get back to the campsite and walking further away. And very unlikely, like you said, the boots, no sign of him anywhere. But could he have been, like you said, in a cave or fallen off something? But the grid that they searched was pretty large. Over two miles, yeah. And you would think that they would have saw something. But is it possible they missed a spot? Of course. Of course it's possible. I mean, there's cases where you have law enforcement divers in a lake for months and then this private group comes in. We've seen it on YouTube and they find the person in their car in like a day. You know, law enforcement and their grid searches are not perfect. You think he might have been in the water then? I think that would contribute to the inability to find him. Okay. Yeah. I'm not saying, I don't even know the geography out there. I don't know what's in the other location. We know that they searched the creek extensively

and it wasn't even that deep. And the reservoir. Yeah. So that's highly unlikely. But depending on what direction he walked, is it possible? Like you said, of course it is. We can't sit here and say with the information we have that you can rule it out with 100% certainty. I mean, there's no way. So what if there was an accident like Vernal accidentally hit Dior with his truck? That might be an accident you'd want to cover up. Like maybe he backed into him, like he wasn't thinking. There was some allegations that there was drinking happening um and then they say no we weren't drinking yada yada but then isaac's like yeah there was you know there was alcohol there but bob doesn't drink alcohol he just has alcohol in case anyone else wants to drink it so is it possible vernal

had a little too much he gets in his truck to to go into town and get some more beer or something. Dior's standing there. He backs right into him, runs him over. And then they're like, shit, because at that point, that's vehicular manslaughter. You're going away regardless. I mean, yeah, just like anything else, I sound like a broken record. It's possible. But I would think in that.

So let's say Vernal did it, right? So Vernal's the one, if anybody. That's not a crime, by the way, it's a horrible accident, but- If you're drinking, it's a crime. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a crime. Yes. I know. I was trying to get there. If he was drinking and there's some negligence, absolutely. However, there's nothing on the part of Isaac. And so again, for Isaac to be consistent constantly, even though

he now knows he's being thrown under the bus by these same people, I would think that would influence him and maybe have him say, hey man, they're insinuating I had something to do with it. Vernal hit him with the truck. What if Isaac doesn't know? They went to the swimming hole. Isaac kept going fishing. Jessica and Vernal go back. So it all happened in that small window? I mean, that's not a small window. Isaac was gone for over an hour and apparently Grandpa Bob was sleeping. So they come back to the fishing hole and he accidentally says- They come back from the fishing hole and then Vernal's been drinking. He's like, ah, I'm out of beer. I got to go get more. Gets in his truck, backs up. And at this point, he's thinking, not only am I going to go to

prison, but like I'm losing my job. My livelihood is a truck driver. If I can go to prison for running my child over while I'm drunk, there goes my CDL. Like I'm not a truck driver anymore. That's my livelihood. That's everything. Absolutely. That would be some motivation to cover it up. And I guess in that case, Isaac would be still telling the truth because he wasn't there. So obviously that brings us to our last theory that Dior's parents had something to do with his disappearance, whether he was killed intentionally or accidentally. We talked about no one in Lador remember seeing Dior either of the days his parents claimed he was there. The only four people who remember seeing Dior at the camp were his parents, Grandpa Bob and Isaac. And even though Isaac never turned on Dior's parents and he kept his story the same the whole time, once the heat

was on them, Vernal, Jessica and Bob all began throwing shade at Isaac, which to me suggests a guilty conscience. Because if you have nothing to prove that this poor guy did anything, you should stop insinuating that because he wasn't even there when Dior went missing. He wasn't even at the campsite. And some people wonder if they felt that Isaac, who seems to be very naive and, you know, like we said, maybe a little developmentally challenged, was the perfect patsy to deflect suspicion off of them. Now, law enforcement does believe that Dior was at the campsite at some point, mainly because Isaac is so sure of it. But they don't believe that he was attacked by an animal or abducted. And Jessica and Vernal have since moved on with their lives, moved out of state.

They've remarried to different people. And to this day, they still claim they have no idea what happened to their son. And they had nothing to do with whatever happened to him. Tragic story. I don't think we're going to ever be in a situation where we're going to find out what happened, unfortunately. And it's something that goes back to what you said in the first like 10 minutes of introducing us to this case, which is it's like trying to it's not solving a puzzle with some of the pieces missing. It's like trying to solve a puzzle with all of the pieces, but they constantly change. And what I mean by that is as an investigator, you're trying to look at this case and evaluate the circumstances, which most of them are being delivered to you through people who are probably lying. So we're really starting off with a shoddy foundation. So how do you investigate a case when you don't even know where to start because you might've been fed bullshit the entire time? And I think the only reason law enforcement has come to the conclusions they have come to is probably because a combination of the polygraph results, the inconsistencies in

their statements. And then more than likely based on what you've uncovered, there probably is some evidence that suggests blood, you know, on the vehicle that's human. And, uh, I don't know how much further than that they would be able to go if there was blood and they could tie it back to Dior specifically, they might bring charges at that point. So I don't think they were able to do that. Um, but there's gotta be a decent amount of evidence for them to come out publicly and say, hey, forget the PIs, forget all these other things you're hearing. We're telling you based on what we found, we believe the parents are involved. So will they ever share that with

the public? No. Probably not. I mean, they've broken up by now because you think if they were going to turn on each other, that would be the time. Yeah. But they've completely parted ways. Like they don't, it seems like they don't even really speak to each other anymore, which I think is also kind of odd because you'd think that having this child and losing this child would be something that would bond you together forever. Whether you're still together, you'd still have some sort of like sympathy for that person. You'd still want to reach out sometimes maybe on Dior's birthday and, you know, sort of like reminisce. But they've completely kind of lost contact.

And I think that if one knows, I don't think one person knows. I don't think either Jessica or Vernal knows. I think they both know what happened. And allegedly, I think that but they will they will take that to their graves because at this point they've implicated each other. They've lied so much. If one person comes forward and is like, this is what happened, then, you know, you've been lying for all these years. All of these searches, all the money spent, all the time and effort, law enforcement, FBI, everything, all of this because you lied and let everybody on a wild goose chase for years. And nobody wants to have that sort of put at their front door. The one thing that's confusing to me is, let's say the scenario about

the drinking and the accidentally running Dior over. That would be one person driving the truck. And let's just assume for the sake of this conversation, it's Vernal. Where Vernal was drinking and he accidentally hits Dior. Well, I would assume Jessica would be pretty upset about that. And maybe in the moment, out of love, decides to cover for Vernal because she doesn't want her husband to go to jail for something that was an accident. However, they're not on good terms anymore. So what would be the reason for covering for him still i don't know i just said because you've lied for so long this time and now like people are going to

say you know people are going to be pissed not only that but law enforcement's going to be like all these hours spent all these man hours all these searches we brought the fbi in we brought like people from different we hired all these different private investigators like you put everybody through the ringer to protect your lie and now you're coming clean like yeah i suppose they might offer her immunity that's what that's what i'm going but it's over like no one ever looks at you the same you're that person forever your life is ruined yeah it's your son you know it's your son i would i mean as and you're the woman who stood by her man at that time. No, you're never going to get over that. You're never shaking that.

If I'm the detective and she comes forward, I'm going to the AG or the, you know, if it's a DA and I'm saying, give her a deal. You know, if she's going to tell us that her husband or ex-husband at the now, you know, was responsible for this, we want to get them. You know, it sucks because we spent a lot of money. Like you said, everything you just said, a lot of money, resources, and a lot of manpower to come to this conclusion, which could have been solved in 20 minutes. But that's your legal immunity. How do you look your new husband in the face?

How do you look your kids, your kids that you have with this man now in the face? I would like to think her son would come first, but you're probably right. It looks like she, like in recent interviews, it looks like she's got scrubs on, like she's a nurse of some kind. Like how do you go to work after that? It's better to just lie and lie and deny and deny. Yeah. I don't think we'll ever know on this one. It's sad to say it, you know, and there's nothing to take away from this one. Like we can have something where it's like, we can give some advice, you know, don't be an idiot. I don't know how to say like these people are don't leave your kid with grandpa bob yeah don't leave your kid with vernal or jessica for that matter don't do that you know um but i mean all of them it just seems

like uh kind of not the best situation for dior to be honest with you and uh you know that does happen i've seen it before where you go into a family environment and it's like you feel bad for the kids. And they definitely at minimum were not taking care of Dior. As a two-year-old, he should have never been left alone, especially with Bob. And if this was some tragic accident. He would have been better off with a bear, honestly. Yeah, not good. Not good. And I will say, I don't like to judge people, at least out loud. All right. But my kid goes missing that I love. He's my best friend. Like Jessica said, she's with him every day. I'm not throwing out an article of his clothing or any one of his toys because I said, oh, we're going to find you. We're going to bring you back home. I'm not going to leave behind his clothing and toys at an apartment like garbage and then just let it get thrown out. Nothing that my child ever touched

or played with or loved is getting thrown out. His room is going to stay like a monument to him until he comes home. And that's just the way I would handle it. But it just seems a little cold how that happened. Well, this was going to be be close i don't know what it's gonna be when it's edited but it's over two and a half hours for sure so if you're still with us which i'm assuming you are you were very quick to tell me the last time i made a comment like that you're all putting your hands up saying we're still here so i'm assuming you're all still here so thanks for sticking around for three this is a this is a record for us. It's now almost 1.30 in the morning. And you were very tired today.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I was. And we still got to get this all rendered and sent over to the editor. So I'm just going to go. Let's close it out. I'm just going to go drink a bag of sugar. Thank you guys so much for being here. We'll see you next week for a new case. And don't forget to follow us on social media. Derek, tell them where. You can follow us on Instagram, Crime Weekly Pod, or you can go to our website, crimewweeklypodcast.com. Oh my God, I feel so bad for you. You look like you're about to pass out. I'm quite, I'm ready to go. Let's do part three. Thanks, guys. We'll see you next week. Bye. Night.