Criminology - Karlie Guse

Episode Date: August 29, 2021

16-year-old Karlie Guse disappeared from her Chalfant, CA home in October 2018. She had just moved in with her father and stepmother a couple of months prior to her disappearance. Karlie's stepmother, Melissa Guse, claims that she woke up to find Karlie gone early on October 13th. But, she has told differing stories to different outlets leading many, including Karlie's mother, Lindsay, to suspect that there is more to the story. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance of Karlie Guse. It has been reported that Karlie was acting strangely the night before she disappeared. Three different eyewitnesses claim to have seen Karlie walking near a highway clutching a piece of paper in her hand on the morning she disappeared. The police conducted searches but the area is fairly remote and it's not known how far the searches extended. There are a lot of rumors surrounding this case and many people question whether those involved have told the truth, or at the very least, the full extent of what they know. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodont. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics.

Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 172 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morph, what's going on with you, buddy? Not too much. I'm doing pretty good. How about you?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm doing good. You know, I can't believe it's, uh, you know, we're coming into, uh, September already. It kind of blows me away how fast. how quickly this year is rolling by. Yeah, it seems like every time I look at the calendar, it's like the last week of that month and I'm planning on the next month and what's going on then. Well, I know you probably remember when you were younger,

let's say talking to your parents or probably more specifically your grandparents. And you would hear people say time flies, right? The older you get, the faster time goes. well, I think you and I are now of an age where we're seeing that happen. It really does happen. That wasn't just people, you know, making stuff up. It kind of works that way. It's, it's scary.

Well, someone put it into perspective with a meme they posted the other day that I read. It says, 1980 is as close to 2021 as 1980 was to 1939. And I'm like, that really puts it into perspective. Wow. Yeah, you just blew my mind with that, to be honest with you. We are where we are and we keep going. We keep moving forward. We got some great new Patreon support. So let's give those shoutouts. We had Debbie McKinney, Jordan Wilson, May Seeger, Candice Wolf, K.M. Hudson, Linda Huckabee, Vicki and Dana Gilman. So again, that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Thanks so much for taking the time to support us. It really means a lot. And if anyone out there would like to, they can go to patreon.com slash criminology and sign up to help support us as well. Don't forget about CrimeCon 22. It's happening in Vegas, April 29th through May 1st. So that's only about eight months from now. And we continue to have people that reach out to us saying that they're going to go and they want us to hang out with them or say hi. And we're excited for that. as we mentioned, these tickets are going pretty fast, so don't wait to get yours if you're thinking

about it. Yeah, no doubt. They are definitely going fast. So if you want to be there in Vegas with us, go to crimecon.com to score your passes to CrimeCon Vegas. And at checkout, use our promo code criminology to save 10% off your standard badges. So morph now that we have all that out of the way, it's time to jump into this episode. And we're covering the missing person's case of a a 16-year-old girl named Carly Guse, who vanished in October 2018. Carly Gusei was born on May 13, 2002, to her parents Lindsay and Zachary Guse. Unfortunately, things didn't work out between Lindsay and Zachary, and they divorced when Carly was very young.

Zach went on to remarry to a woman named Melissa, and they eventually had two sons together. Carly shared time in between homes, but lived with Lindsay, who had actual custody. of her. Carly was a bit of an introvert, but she had a lot of friends and dated like most teens her age. She had a part-time job as an escrow assistant working alongside Melissa. Things were going well for Carly, but in the summer of 2018, Carly's mom Lindsay decided to move from Bishop California to Nevada. Like many teens her age, Carly didn't want to uprood her life. She wanted to stay with her friends. She was a junior at Bishop Union High School, and she didn't want to be the new kid, starting at a new school so close to graduating. So Carly told her mom that she wanted

to go live with Zach and Melissa in Chalfont, California, about 14 miles from Bishop. In August 2018, Carly moved into the home with Zach and Melissa. The town of Chalfant, where the Gusez lived, is located in Mono County, California. This isn't a very populated area. The desert town boasts a population of less than 700 people. It's along the Inyo County border, and the Chalfant Valley area as a whole has a population of less than 5,000 people. This is an area without a lot of stores, and where a lot of people go in order to get out nature to hunt, fish, or rock climb. You could imagine that this might be the type of place where a teenager could get bored with. But Carly was making the best of her new life there, and it wasn't far from her friends and Bishop.

her junior year was upon her and Carly was looking forward to the next chapter in her life. Things seemed to be going well for Carly until October 2018, just two months after moving in with her father and stepmother. On October 13th, a Saturday, according to Melissa Guse, she awoke at just before 6 a.m. in Carly's bed, somewhere between 545, 550, she opened her eyes, to see Carly lying awake next to her in bed. The two had stayed up late together for reasons we'll get into, and they had fallen asleep sometime after 3 a.m. Melissa turned over and went back to sleep.

When she woke up and got out of bed between 7.15 and 7.30, she noticed that the front door was open and slightly ajar. When she looked around, there were no signs of Carly. Now, this account from Melissa is believed, to be what actually happened. But this may not be what Melissa originally stated to police. Once they became involved, something will explain. She may have told them a different version of what happened that morning. Melissa later appeared on the show Dateline and mentioned on that show that show that she had woken her two sons up at 5.45 a.m. to get ready for school the day Carly vanished. The

problem was it was a Saturday. There was no school. So I think this immediately raised some red flags. She also told Dateline that she looked in Carly's room and she was gone. In reality, Melissa had slept in bed with Carly that night. Later when Melissa appeared on the Dr. Phil show, she admitted that she had lied about some of the details on the Dateline show, but it's unclear. If she lied to police early on, or if she did that just on the Dateline show. What is clear is that, according to Melissa, after she found Carly gone, she became concerned enough to tell Zach, and they went out driving around looking for Carly. Initially, they felt like Carly may have went for a walk, perhaps to think or clear her head,

but after driving around the dusty roads in the desert area for two hours, without finding Carly, they began to worry. That's when they made the decision to call Carly's mom Lindsay in Nevada to let her know what had happened. Lindsay, being over 150 miles away, understandably felt helpless. She immediately told Zach and Melissa to call the police. The call from the Gusez to police came in at 9.35 a.m. Police came out to the Gusei home to check the scene and to take statements. There were no signs of a struggle or forced entry into the home,

and all of Carly's belongings appeared to be undisturbed in her room or elsewhere in the home. These are things that you would think Carly would have taken with her if she planned on being away for any length of time, including her eyeglasses, cell phone, and some cash that she had saved up. Morph, you and I mention it all the time. Most teenagers today, they're connected to their cell phones. It's their lifelines to their friends. to social media. So when this cell phone was found, that likely had to be alarming to investigators. It seemed to indicate that Carly had stepped outside and had every intention of coming back, but she never did. One good thing about the phone being found was that police later combed through

it, looking for anything that could shed light on Carly's disappearance. But evidently, they didn't find much of value. As we just mentioned, we don't know exactly what Melissa told the police when they took statements from her. The things Melissa told datelines seemed to clash with the official timeline established by police. The police think things unfolded as follows. That morning, Melissa awoke at just before 6 a.m. in Carly's bed. She saw Carly awake in bed next to her. But then Melissa rolled over again and went back to sleep. She finally awoke between 7.15 and 7.30 and spotted the front door partially open. So more if I think it's important to point out here that this timeline, depending on what sources you research, it varies quite a bit. But the consistent thing that is

mentioned is this 545 to 6 a.m. wake up. We talked about it. In one account from Melissa, she woke up to find Carly awake in bed next to her before falling back to sleep. In the other account, Melissa said she woke up at 545 to get her sons ready for school, which we know is a lot. Now, we can speculate on why Melissa changed her story. There are a ton of questions you can ask, right? Was she covering something up? Did she simply get mixed up or misremember something? We just don't know.

One thing that we also don't know because it's not been widely reported on are the actions of Zach and their two sons that morning. It's not clear just exactly what they told police early on. Investigators canvassed the neighborhood and spoke to local residents, and they actually found three different eyewitnesses who thought they saw Carly walking south near Highway 6 with a piece of paper in her hand. At least two of these eyewitnesses knew Carly, and were positive it was her that they saw. The third witness's description of the girl they saw matches up.

neighbor Richard Eddie reported that between 6.30 and 6.45 a.m. Carly walked by, looking at the sky, and she was acting sort of odd. At the time, he thought it was kind of strange. Another neighbor, Kenneth Dutton, also saw Carly walking with a piece of paper that morning. Carly was apparently last seen by the third witness walking, as reported by police, quote, approximately 30 yards east of Highway 6 and 100 yards south of Sierra View Road. there's been a lot of speculation over what this mysterious paper was that Carly seemed to be carrying. People who knew Carly have reportedly speculated that this paper was from a counseling session of some sort, but really have not put forth any further details or elaborated on what kind of counseling session. Others believe the paper was something she had been writing the night before she disappeared. This is a good time to discuss the area where Carly was last seen. It's essentially all desert. There is one housing tract in the middle of nowhere at the base of the White Mountains. The nearest homes in Chalfant Valley to the north

of the Guse's home were about three miles away. And the homes and businesses and Bishop to the south were about 10 miles away. And Carly was on foot. There's nothing but wilderness, desert, and mountains to the east and west of the location where Carly was last spotted. Highway 6 heads north through Chalfant Valley and then bends east through Nevada and continues all the way to Provincetown, Massachusetts. This definitely seems like the kind of area where you wouldn't want to get lost or get hurt. And the authorities didn't waste any time starting an all-out search for Carly. They used helicopters, sent dogs, and police officers to scour the area for a week.

but on October 25th, with no sign of Carly, the search was officially called off. Police set up a checkpoint on Highway 6, hoping to ID any drivers who may have seen something on the day Carly vanished, but no leads or information came from it. It was after this search was called off that the relationship between Carly's mom Lindsay and her father, Zach, and stepmom Melissa, began to sour, and it became publicly contentious. Lindsay Fairley believes that Melissa Guse knows much more than she has seen. saying about Carly's disappearance. She publicly stated that she believes that if Melissa didn't have something to do with Carly's

disappearance, she knows what happened and isn't saying. So as a mother, you have to imagine that Lindsay's mind raced to all different types of possibilities while she was wondering where her daughter was. Lindsay has even entertained the idea that Carly could have overdosed on drugs on October 12, 2018. The night before she vanished, she later alluded to this theory during an interview on Dr. Phil, implying that Melissa may have found Carly's body in the morning and panicked. Melissa, for her part, has denied that, saying this is absolutely untrue, but Lindsay's drug theory isn't completely out of left field. In the weeks before, Carly's disappearance, like many

teenagers. She had started to experiment with drugs like marijuana. Her grades started to slip and Carly started acting odd. According to people that knew her, her friends recall her having what they called episodes of paranoia and erratic behavior. Carly feared that she was being tracked through her cell phone. But it seems as though none of Carly's parents, her biological mom and dad, nor her stepmother ever noticed any of this erratic behavior. The evening before she disappeared, Carly asked for permission to attend a football game at her high school, but she went to a party at someone's house instead. Around 8 p.m., Carly received the call from Melissa, making sure Carly didn't need a ride

home from the game, and she assured her stepmom that her boyfriend Donald would be driving her home. Just after she hung up, people at the party noticed that Carly was panicking. witnesses said she was inconsolable. Donald stated that she acted like she was afraid of the music that was playing at the party and that she was even afraid of him. At 8.30 p.m., just 30 minutes after she spoke to Melissa, Carly called her back. She explained that she did need a ride after all and that she was scared. But she didn't say what or who she was afraid of.

Melissa rushed to pick Carly up, but when she got to the house, Carly wasn't there. Apparently, Carly and Donald had been walking to his house when she became terrified, and she suddenly bit him when he tried to hold her to calm her down, and she took off running. In the darkness, Melissa saw a small light. It was Carly running down the street, holding her cell phone. When Carly saw Melissa's truck, she quickly got in, and there was no doubt. She was clearly terrified. Melissa remembers Carly's pupils being dilated. She talked about being afraid of being killed by the car on the ride home. Carly was afraid the car would hit her.

Now, it's unclear if she meant after she got out of the car or while she was still actually inside the car. She kept changing her seat during the ride home. When they arrived home, Carly admitted to Melissa and Zach that she had smoked pot at the party. At first, they were relieved. To them, it made sense as to the way that Carly was acting. They felt she was safe at home.

and that she was just paranoid from smoking the marijuana. They felt that maybe Carly could use this as a learning experience in the future to help her turn drugs down. It seemed that there was no need to take Carly to the hospital. Instead, Melissa filmed Carly on her cell phone so that she could share exactly what her behavior and experience was like when she was sober the next day in case she didn't remember. That night, Carly's odd behavior continued. She tried to eat a salad and Melissa and Zach thought,

that maybe some food could help calm her down and sober her up, but she spit it out and said it was the devil's lettuce. Later, it seemed as if Carly had calmed a bit. Melissa and Carly spent time in Carly's bedroom. They painted their nails as they talked and read the Bible. It was then that Carly started doing some writing on a piece of paper. Perhaps the paper that people recall her carrying the next day. at 127 a.m., Melissa texted Donald, please pray. Around 3 a.m., they finally fell asleep together in Carly's room. And then the next thing Melissa knew it was 5.48 a.m. At 548 a.m.

An incredibly specific time, Melissa remembers waking up and seeing Carly awake still laying next to her. The specific time of 5.48 a.m. is mentioned by Melissa, coupled with a third witness setting of Carly standing inside the barbed wire near Highway 6 by 7.30 a.m. meant that Carly could have left her home any time over a roughly 60-minute window and had at least a mile's head start by the time Melissa woke up again. When they set out to look for Carly, Zach and Melissa found one footprint in the driveway that they thought was hers, and that's when they thought it was likely Carly had just gone for a walk. I think more, if this is where Lindsay's suspicions about Melissa and maybe Zach too, knowing more than they have shared come into play, Zach has admitted to coming home from work to night before his daughter vanished and to drinking some beer before Melissa and Carly got back home for the night. So maybe his judgment or memory of events wasn't the best. Lindsay wonders why no one took Carly to the hospital.

after hearing the way she was speaking and acting, Melissa only filmed an audio recording. You can't actually see Carly in the recording. And Lindsay wonders why. She wonders why her reaction to a terrified and disoriented child would be to audio record them instead of actually helping them. When you hear the contents of the recording, which have only been described, they haven't been released, it's hard to imagine just going to sleep. when your child is acting that way.

Carly's voice is reportedly shaking. She says she's terrified to fall asleep, thinking that if she does, she won't wake up. She cries. She says, I love you to Zach and Melissa multiple times in between saying that she was afraid of them.

She said she wanted to read the Bible. She talked about going to church. She even reportedly asked Melissa, if something were to happen, would you call 911? Lindsay firmly believes that Carly should have been taken to be examined by a medical professional that night and that something was clearly wrong with her physically or mentally. So, Morph, let's talk about this for a minute.

You know, the first thing that jumped out at me was Carly smoking marijuana. Okay. I don't really want to tell on myself too much, but let's just say that I went to college. Okay. I understand the fact that marijuana does make some people paranoid. Some people extremely paranoid. I get that. But could smoking some marijuana really do all of these things that we've described related to the way that Carly was acting that night? As, you know, everyone has talked about, I don't know. Maybe it could. I don't know that I've ever seen it. I don't know. I've ever seen it. do some of these things that we're describing in the way that Carly was acting. And then I think the second thing is you have to look at or talk about what would you do as a parent, right? Your child comes home.

They're acting very strangely, extremely paranoid. Do you just write it off to her having smoked some marijuana? Or do you take it further? I mean, I think it's a question that, you know, parents would wrestle with. Obviously, we know what Lindsay believes. She believes that Carly should have been examined by a medical professional that night. What do you think? Well, I guess, first off, in regards to marijuana, obviously it's used quite a bit for different medical problems and issues.

So I think overall it's safe, but one of the issues I know that can happen is that. is you can get something, especially if you're not buying it from a reputable medical source, you're getting it off the streets in place. Things can get laced in that marijuana that can cause problems. I went to high school with a guy who was pretty intelligent, star athlete, had a lot going for him. And I want to say it was his junior year, if I remember correctly, he smoked a marijuana and, as I recall, had angel dust in it.

And he was never the same. He couldn't play any sports. He was failed, I want to say one or two grades. And as far as I know, he was forever affected. His mental, his thinking capabilities all were changed. His personality was changed. So I know firsthand that there can be things that are put in marijuana that could cause someone to change and have some kind of break from their normal selves.

Again, not saying that. That's what happened to Carly, but I could certainly understand why her mom would be concerned about something like that. I think as parents, we sort of know our kids. And if it was me, I think I'd notice that, hey, this just isn't right. My kid's saying stuff that just isn't making sense. And I, if I was in that position, I think I would have gotten, I would have brought my child to the doctor to let them determine if there was something. going on there more than just being a little bit paranoid from smoking some marijuana. But that's, I guess every parent has their own, they've got to make their own decision there. But that's just me.

Yeah, well, you bring up a really good point, right? We're thinking that this was just straight marijuana. And if it was, then you would expect people to act a certain way. I mean, there obviously are outliers. but I think most of us, let's be honest, have been around people who have smoked marijuana. You kind of understand the different things that people do and go through. But if there was something else laced inside of that, and you talked about angel dust, that is something that's on a completely different level. You know, when you're talking about angel dust, PCP, things like that, well, you're going to have some very strange reactions.

It's not going to be, you know, the normal marijuana reaction that we saw at parties back in the day where, you know, people get the munchies, they get silly. They have the laugh attacks and things like that. I don't know. To me, it seems like there's something more going on here. Again, we weren't there. We can't speak to it firsthand. We can only kind of judge the situation from what's been. reported. And I wonder, too, if it's just possible that the marijuana sort of camouflaged the real

problem. Maybe she was having some kind of mental break or experiencing some kind of mental illness. And it just so happened to coincide with that marijuana, which, again, that's maybe we're, an examination by a medical professional might have been able to determine what was going on. But again, that's like playing Monday morning quarterback. You know, we weren't there. We don't know what the mood was and what the determining factors were for them to not bring her to the doctor. Yeah. And on the flip side, I can see where a parent would say, okay, she smoked a little grass. She'll sleep it off. She'll be okay. Right. You're not going to be happy that your child did that, but are you going to take it to that next step of saying, we've got to go to the hospital because she's

she smoked a little bit of marijuana, I think a lot of people would say, no, she's going to be fine, she needs to sleep it off. So again, there's a lot of things at play here. Susan Eads. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible.

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Moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries. gateway to gripping well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. I think it was this lack of medical attention for Carly that's fueled theories that maybe

Zach and Melissa realized too late that Carly was actually in danger. Or maybe they didn't realize until they found her in the morning, and they panicked and played some role in her disappearance. Some people feel that the two hours they reportedly drove around looking for her was actually time when they could have been hiding her body. The area that they lived in only had so many roads in areas that they could drive on and had access to by car. And a lot of people think that it would take a lot less than two hours to cover those areas. If something did happen to Carly overnight and her father and stepmother decided to cover it up,

what would they have done with her body? And why wasn't she found by the searchers early on or in the years since she went missing? I think more if in fairness to Zach and Melissa, this theory of them covering up Carly's death wouldn't explain the three different sightings of her that were reported near Highway 6. Again, at least two of these witnesses knew Carly. But that is not stopped some people from speculating that it was, really Melissa walking down the street trying to look like Carly. And again, you know, is this a theory that adds up? It doesn't seem like it is. Carly was very slim with long straight

hair, very obviously a teenager. Melissa was taller, looked considerably older and her hair was shorter and thicker and was even a different color. If there was just one siding by someone who didn't know Carly. Or if Carly looked more like Melissa, this theory might hold a little more weight. While we're sort of defending Zach and Melissa from these theories, we can't forget that Melissa may have lied to police early on, saying she was getting her sons ready for school on Saturday. You would hope and think that if she mentioned getting the kids off the school that day, when police took her statement, that they would have caught that and asked her about it. So it could be she was honest with them and then later lied for whatever reason on the date line show.

Lindsay recalls that when Zach called her to inform her that Carly was missing, he told her Carly was quote, gone. And this is a word that Lindsay views as a red flag. Melissa's please pray text is also pointed out as being very suspicious. She asked the question, what was going on with Carly at 127 a.m. that needed prayers, but not hell. Carly's boyfriend Donald also visited the house after Carly was reported missing. And he has claimed to have seen her cell phone by her bed. But Melissa said it was on the kitchen island the whole time and hadn't been moved. So I think this is the bottom line more.

If you have some changing stories, you have what appear to be a number of discrepancies, no matter how small they are, what they do is they make some people think that Melissa and Zach know more than they've admitted to knowing. When the families appeared on Dr. Phil, the Gusez appeared to be keeping Dr. Phil from hearing the recording. They even told him that his team had the recording already when they didn't. Finally, Melissa told Dr. Phil that he could hear the recording, but just not on the show. Michael Boone, a private investigator and former homicide detective, calls the audio recording Melissa made proof of life and sets the last time Carly was known to be alive at 10.30 p.m. on October 12, 2018. Melissa did a few Facebook live videos where she tried to explain the situation and talk about Carly's disappearance, but they didn't help clear up anything. While it may be true that Melissa and Zach failed to get Carly medical attention, the night.

before she vanished, that's still quite different from actually harming her and covering it up. One thing that may point to Melissa and Zach having nothing to do with Carly's disappearance is that as of July 2019, the Gusez had reportedly spent $20,000 on private investigators in the search for Carly. So, I mean, I think based on that, you can ask the question, right? If they didn't want extra people prying into the case and they knew that Carly was dead. Why would they spend all that money to bring in additional people who could possibly uncover the fact that they had something to do with it? Now, more, some people would say that you could look at this, you know, on the flip side of it being a smokescreen, right? We're spending all this

money to show people that we had nothing to do with it. Look at us. We are, you know, trying everything we can to find her. It seems to me like no matter what these people do, it's going to be looked at one way or the other. Either they're helping or they're trying to put up, as you put it, a smokescreen and people are going to use it to support their theory. If they think that her dad and stepmom had nothing to do with that they're going to say, hey, look, they wouldn't be doing all this. But those people that want to keep looking at them with a suspicious eye are going to just say, they're just trying to cast suspicion elsewhere and away from themselves. But I think if I was in that position, again, I'm not trying to say they did anything to her.

But if I was involved in some kind of crime and I didn't want somebody digging, I'm not going to go out and try and bring someone else in to help dig up stuff that might point back to me. It just doesn't seem like a logical thing to do. Well, and I think, though, you see this in a lot of cases, right? Regular people looking at the circumstances, let's say making comments on social media or whatever it is, you can look at every facet of a case or everything that happens. and depending on what your point of view is, you can spin that in one direction or the other. You see it all the time.

I think the bottom line, though, is that it's all speculation because we don't know. If Carly did make it out of her home that day as it seemed and walked toward Highway 6, then we have to consider that she caught a ride from the area or that she met with foul play. Or maybe she got injured someplace that hadn't been searched in some. come to her injuries. If she did get a ride, she could have been taken out of the area and could have gone anyplace, and perhaps is alive. While it's awful to think about, she could have been held captive. We know that kind of thing has happened many times. J.C. Degard, Elizabeth Smart, Gina DeHasus, Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, are just a few of the cases over the last decade or two

that made headlines when those women bravely escaped their captors after being held against their will. Many people who discussed this case wonder whether Carly had some sort of psychotic break. And the marijuana she last smoked has been a topic of hot debate on sites like Reddit and web slews. Some believe that it could have been laced with something and that it caused this mental break. I think you kind of alluded to that more as a possibility. people have pointed out that even smoking marijuana without it being laced can trigger mental illness and psychotic symptoms in some people that can be permanent even after any drug use is completely stopped. It's not real well known, but there is something known as cannabis-induced

psychotic disorder. Researchers still can't figure out if marijuana causes the psychotic behavior or schizophrenia itself, or whether people who may not have developed problematic symptoms or being exposed to marijuana that does create kind of like a perfect environment for the symptoms to develop. One thing we haven't really talked about is the possibility that Carly left on her own and decided to start a new life someplace. The issue there is she left everything behind, her phone, her money, eyeglasses. it seems as if Carly just had the clothes on her back.

Her friends don't recall Carly giving them any kind of hints that she wanted to run away or that she was in any kind of trouble. She really seemed to have just vanished. Why and how she did is anyone's guess. And Morph, I think this is a question that comes up in quite a few disappearance cases. You know, could the person have left on their own? Could they have wanted to disappear and did so? You know, to me, the kind of leaving everything behind, especially a cell phone for someone

Carly's age, money. Why would you not take money? Why wouldn't you take your eyeglasses? All that really kind of points, at least to me, to the fact that it just doesn't seem that logical, that you would take off with essentially nothing at that age. Yeah, I think even if you just took the cash itself, because you don't want to take the phone, maybe because it would be traced or could help find you, the cash seems like a no-brainer to want to have on you.

And it also makes me wonder, okay, was this foul play? Did she leave on her own? If she left on her own, she could have arranged a ride or just hitchhike, we don't know. But for foul play, you know, one of the possibilities is she just happened to meet up with a dangerous person out there at 7.30 that morning, what are the chances of that? It's a small area. There's not many people around, you know, the witnesses that saw her said she was alone. So I think it seems highly unlikely that there's just some dangerous predator out there waiting for that caught her. So I think we have to sort of decide, did she get out of that area on her own or was she taken out of that area?

And I think another possibility is maybe she somehow had an injury or something like that and needed help. And during the search, she was somehow missed. I think this area is, again, full of tumbleweeds and kind of desolate. So I think there's a lot of places out there where someone could easily just not be spotted. Carly's behavior before her disappearance is reminiscent of two other cases where people have disappeared in July 2014. 28-year-old Lars Mittank disappeared in the woods near Varna Airport while on vacation in Varna, Bulgaria.

In the days before his disappearance, he told his friends he had been assaulted by four men in a bar. He suffered a jaw injury and a ruptured ear drum from whatever had happened. He was advised not to fly due to the eardrum rupture and prescribed antibiotics. Lars told his friends to fly home without him and that he'd be fine. After this, he was noted to be acting erratically and seemed paranoid and afraid. He even called his mother and told her in a whisper to cancel his credit card because four men were going to kill him.

The day he planned to fly home alone, he was at the airport getting examined by the airport doctor to make sure he would be fine to fly when a member of a construction crew, walked into the office. Lars then got up and left the office and the airport. The last sighting of Lars is on the airport's CCTV, showing him running away from the airport, jumping over a fence, and disappearing into a field of sunflowers near the highway. He was running as if he was being chased. But in the footage, no one is seen behind him. In October 2018, just days before Carly disappeared, and about 14 hours north, 26-year-old television production assistant Terrence Woods Jr. was on location in

Idaho as part of a 12-person crew shooting the Discovery Channel show Gold Rush. Dave Turned lost mine. On the evening of October 5th, after the shoot wrapped for the day, Terrence told a local woman helping out on the set that he needed to use the bathroom. Right after this, Associate producer Simon G. saw that Terrence's radio was on the ground. It appeared. he had dropped it. He then saw Terrence was running down a cliff and headed into the forest. Terrence disappeared among the trees. The crew and locals searched the rough terrain for him, but returned with no luck. Their clothes torn and bloodied. G. recalled Terrence running faster than he had ever seen anyone run before. Searchers on the ground, including dogs, as well as helicopters,

using heat-detecting technology, found no sign of Terrence. In this case, his parents believe that Rawl TV, the production company that he was working with, or covering up the truth about what happened to him, because people on the set had claimed he had a mental breakdown and had been struggling mentally throughout the shoot, but they later retracted those statements. His parents also recalled being told about the crew's disappointment with Terrence's performance before being told the circumstances of his disappearance. His parents also state that he had never had any signs of mental illness in the past. So both of these disappearances involve young men. under the age of 30, which is commonly thought to be the prime time for psychotic disorders to develop

and be diagnosed. They also both involved the last sightings of these men being of them running into the forest and disappearing and they both happened very suddenly. This calls to mind Melissa, searching for Carly at the house party, only to find her running down the street. Melissa was only able to find Carly because she had been holding her cell phone, which had a light in the desert darkness. Without that, Carly may have continued running that night. If she did wander away from home, just walking south and never stopping, this could have been a continuation of whatever had been compelling her to run the previous night when Melissa picked her up from the party. Adding to the public suspicion surrounding the case, Zach Gusey was a

arrested for domestic violence-related charges in February 2021, leading many to speculate once again that Zach and Melissa may not have been as squeaky clean and believable as they wanted people to think. The Mono County Sheriff's Department, however, has noted that Melissa and Zach have both been cooperative throughout the investigation. People continue to search for Carly, even though the official search was called off in October 2018. In December of 2018, someone found a pair of bloody underwear and coyote scat and collected them for testing, but they were sent to the California Department of Justice, not one of the laboratories that can perform the needed tests. Authorities never thought that the underwear were related to Carly's disappearance, so they have remained

untested. So I think this brings up more, maybe another possibility. You know, we talked about the remoteness of the area. Okay, if Carly went for a walk, let's say she was distraught, she wanted to clear her head, is it possible that she encountered a predator of a different sort, right? An animal was hurt, was killed, was dragged off. I don't know. I think you have to throw that possibility into the mix. Yeah, that's a very frightening possibility to think that she may have been attacked by wild animals. I think I'm not a coyote expert, but from what I understand, they usually will hunt in groups and they will target small animals like dogs. Occasionally, it's been reported that small young children could be targeted, but it seems

unlikely that someone that's older, teenager, or an adult would be the target of coyotes. Yeah, I don't know about coyotes, and I don't know what. other animals, what other predators could have been out there. But you could run through the gamut of possibilities, right? Maybe bitten by a poisonous snake and then some other animals came and got her. I don't want to get too gruesome. But I think, you know, you kind of have to run through all the different possibilities that exist. Yeah, I think that's what's so frustrating about this case is you've got lots of different possibilities, just none that have any solid evidence backing them up. Police are treating Carly as a missing person, not a runaway, but also not endangered either.

It doesn't appear that authorities suspect foul play at this time, even stating they were keeping the details of their investigation confidential. Because should this turn into a suspected crime at some point, police do not want their investigation to be jeopardized in any way. According to Sheriff Ingrid Braun of the Mono County Sheriff's Department, it's an open investigation until Carly is located. Authorities have released the things they carry, a 12-part video series interviewing Carly's family, the community, and investigators who have worked the case, many of whom call Carly's disappearance the most puzzling case of their career. Watching these videos, you can get a sense of just how vast and empty the area. surrounding Bishop, California really is. There are huge swaths of land with no roads,

really only accessible by foot or some type of off-road vehicle, tumbleweeds still rooted in the ground prior to tumbling or everywhere, providing hundreds, if not thousands of places that Carly's remains could be concealed. Many people are losing hope that Carly will be found alive, if at all. Their online reports stating that Carly called a suicide. hotline in September 2018, and these reports claim that the Mono County Sheriff's Department confirmed misinformation for the news agency. But police haven't made any public statements about this. But even if suicide was the outcome in Carly's case, where's Carly's body?

Carly would be 19 years old today, just a few months away from her 20th birthday when Carly was last seen in October 2018. She was 5'7 and weighed between 100, and 110 pounds. She has blue eyes, fair skin, and at the time, had long straight brown hair. Her left nostril is pierced. The FBI has set aside a $5,000 reward

for information leading to the discovery of Carly Lane Guse. If you have any information about the disappearance of Carly Gusei, you can contact the Mono County Sheriff's Office by email at Carly Gusey Tips at Monosheriff.org or you can call it in at 760-932-5678. Anonymous online tips can be submitted at tips.fbi.gov.

Like Carly, Lars Metank and Terrence Woods Jr. are still missing. If you have any information about their disappearances or feel you may have spotted them, you are encouraged to call authorities and report your text. tip. So, morph, as we wrap up this case, you know, you just said it. This is, you know, one of those that, you know, it's just really tough to figure out what happened. I mean, obviously, we don't have enough information, right, to figure it out ourselves. I think one of the things I do want to talk about is the suspicion that has been cast on Carly's stepmother and dad. You know, it's, it's, It's sad, obviously very sad, if they didn't have anything to do with their disappearance,

but it's kind of normal. It's kind of what we see in a lot of these unsolved cases. The suspicion gets cast around at various people. A lot of times it's often family members. It's kind of hard to avoid. But you feel bad for them if they didn't do anything wrong. Now, obviously, you're not going to feel bad for them if it turns out that they were involved in some way. Yeah, I think what's really unfortunate is the riff it's caused between them and Carly's mom, because rather than be allies to help advocate for her case and to help spread awareness and get the word out there, the attention they're getting is for all the wrong reasons. It's for the sort of infighting and the mistrust of each other.

and I think that's sort of a detriment to the case. Well, I don't think there's any doubt that Lindsay has a lot of suspicion with her ex-husband and his wife. I think that's pretty plain from the research. Since authorities did an organized search and never found any sign of Carly, it may be a tall order that they'll find something of her remains after all this time, although it's not out of the question. You know, we hear cases of someone just being out in the desert riding a dirt bike or something and they find a skull or things like that.

But, you know, we talked about it. Animals scattering remains, you know, dust blowing around covering stuff up. The tumble weeds, it seems like it would just be hard to find her if she's out there. So should they focus there on looking or should they expand the search area and look elsewhere thinking that maybe she got out of there? Yeah, I mean, I don't know how much they have searched. I mean, meaning how wide of a net they've cast in their searches. I think for me, when we do these types of cases, you know, one of the questions that I always ask myself is what are the chances that this person is alive? Could Carly still be alive after what, three plus years or however long it's been?

I think in most of these cases, I normally set that as unlikely. Unless somebody actually willingly left because they wanted to, you know, get away and they found a way to live off the grid, which is much harder these days, right, than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, she didn't take any money. So unless she met up with someone who. had money and was going to be able to, you know, get her out of the area. I don't know. I think that's kind of always in the back of my mind a little far-fetched.

It's not impossible, but it's not the first thing that I really gravitate towards. I think as time passes and individuals don't come back, sadly, I lean towards something happening in the realm of foul play. Now, it could be an accident like you and I talked about. She could have went for a walk. She could have been bitten by some type of rattlesnake. And then, you know, I don't want to be gruesome, but scavenged by animals and scattered. I mean, things like that happen.

And then obviously there could be a much bigger conspiracy. That's always possible as well. I think it's the lure of these unsolved cases is that. there are quite a number of possibilities. So you get to digest all of the facts as they're known. Obviously, it's always less than what we know in a solved case. But you know, you get to kind of look through those, analyze all the facts, and then play amateur detective.

Thanks goes out to Sunny Landon for writing and research assistance in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done. done so yet. Please take a minute. Go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review as well if you want, but keep telling your friends, the word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So Morf, that is it for our episode on Carly Guse.

But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike. And Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.