Dateline: Missing In America - MISSING: Logan Schiendelman

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

19-year-old Logan Schiendelman was last seen at his grandmother’s house in Tumwater, Washington on May 19, 2016.  Logan’s car, a black 1996 Chrysler Sebring, was found the next day, abandoned on Interstate 5 just south of Olympia. His phone, wallet and driver’s license were in the vehicle. Dateline’s Josh Mankiewicz speaks with several of Logan’s loved ones and Lt. Cameron Simper of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office. Logan is biracial and has black hair and brown eyes. He’s 5’11” and weighed 160 lbs. at the time of his disappearance. If you have information about Logan’s case call the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office at 360-786-5519. Get more information and see pictures of Logan Schiendelman here: https://www.nbcnews.com/datelinemissing

May 20, 2016. 63 degrees under mostly clear skies in Tomwater, Washington, just south of the state capital, Olympia. Around 3 pm that Friday, traffic on Interstate 5 was zipping along at 70 miles an hour. That's when something alarming came into focus. A black convertible, top up, was definitely not following the rules of the road. The head started rolling and actually rolled across three lanes of pre-weight. The 1996 Chrysler Seabring was drifting diagonally from the far right southbound lane toward the median. Other cars had to speed up or swerve to avoid hitting it.

Then, after a few dangerous seconds, the Sebring stopped. Finally, I'm packed it on the center barrier. And that in itself is sort of unusual. That's Mike Ware. He wishes he'd been at the scene that day because he has strong opinions about what happened. And not just because of the 39 years he's spent in the local sheriff's office. Or because of what police were about to find in the sea bring. Mike has a lot to say because what happened on the highway that day

was something much more personal to him. It was the beginning of a mystery that shattered his own family. The convertible disrupting traffic on the freeway belonged to Mike's 19-year-old nephew, Logan Shenlamon. Only Logan wasn't in the car. No one was. And Logan has now been missing for more than seven years. I'm Josh Manquets, and this is Missing in America, a podcast from Dateline.

We first featured Logan's story in our digital series in 2016, just weeks after he vanished. In this episode we'll take you deeper into his literally baffling disappearance. This is the story of a teenager who was wrestling with questions that many 19-year-olds grapple with. Plus a few that many do not. It was almost like he was afraid to talk about it. It's also about the people who loved him fiercely. Sometimes I'll hear music that and think about him. And, you know, the tears just flow.

I really miss him. I want him to still be alive. I know you do. Please listen closely, because you or someone you know might have information that could help solve this mystery and maybe give Logan's family the answers they've been waiting for.

One of the questions they have is who or what was on Logan's mind, the week he disappeared, and whether he felt he was in danger. He told his grandmother, I'm not going to make it. Jenny Shindleman is Logan's grandmother, but that title doesn't tell the whole story. You're really his mom in terms of his life and raising him. Yeah, it wasn't a grandmother type relationship. When he lived with me his whole life. Fresh from the hospital, newborn Logan came home to Jenny's house, where he lived with

his sister Chloe and his single mom Hannah. Logan's dad wasn't in the picture, and then Hannah moved about 40 minutes away, closer to Seattle, without her children. Logan was too. His mom left him behind, left him with you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

She went up and lived with her boyfriend up there. And it was also she was working up there. Logan saw his mom from time to time, but it was Ginny who did the 24-7 parenting. She says Logan was a bright little boy full of surprises. When he was really little in learning to talk, I was trying to get him to say cinnamon, and he tried a couple times and then he quit. And then about three weeks later he came back

and he said, cinnamon, totally out of the blue. And I thought he's been working on this. He was just a smart, funny person. The cute kid grew into a handsome teenager with an engaging smile. At Tom Water High School, he made good grades and was on the varsity football team. He played defensive back for the Thunderbirds, Jersey number 29. And he was popular. Logan liked to turn his camera on his friends.

Sometimes when they weren't expecting it. He tried to record one video on the slide in the school cafeteria. You're video TVing and I know. You're different faces. You're all bunch of different faces. LAUGHTER I don't know anybody that did not like Logan. That's Mary Ware, Jenny's sister and Logan's great aunt. She and her husband Mike, that retired sheriff's deputy,

have a small farm about 20 minutes from Jenny's house. I'd have him mowing the fields or cleaning a barn. He was always ready and willing. If we went to his house, he would open the door and say, come on in, how are you guys? Well, he's like the rotary club compared to a lot of other kids at age. He was.

Friends and family were equally surprised when Logan enrolled at Washington State University after high school. It was more than a five-hour drive from Tomwater and none of Logan's friends were going to be there. With more than 17,000 students, Logan wouldn't know a soul. Still, as he always did, Ginny says Logan made friends. Maybe too many. He was asing his social life. But ditching his courses. Did he tell you why he wasn't going to class?

You know, he shrugged. Yeah, I'll do better next semester. Spoiler alert. He didn't. And by the end of the academic year, Logan had flunked out. The school won't let him back because he didn't go to class. They basically, they've done this before. So you're not ready for college.

Sounds like they were right. Yeah, they were right. So Logan came back to Tomwater, moved back in with Ginny and his step-grandfather Bill to regroup and figure out his next steps. He found work, mostly a series of low-skill jobs. Fast foods, you know, a laundry that didn't laundry for hospitals and nursing homes. What was falling up his life? Um, relationships, marijuana, alcohol, video games? There was always some video games.

Some pot, some alcohol. You know, he had friends. He'd leave at night and go visit people. Doesn't sound like you were worried though. I wasn't, no, I wasn't laying at night worrying about it. It's not uncommon at Logan's age to stumble on your first steps into adulthood. 19 is a time for self-discovery,

sometimes with a dash of melodrama. On Wednesday, May 18th, He walked into Ginny and Bill's kitchen and told Ginny he had something to tell her. He came in and sat down and said, I might be gone for the weekend. I said, what are you going to do? He said, well, I had an epiphany. I was going to go to the hospital and I was might be gone for the weekend. I said, what are you gonna do? He said, well, I had an epiphany. I said, okay, what was your epiphany?

And he said, well, I can't really explain it. So then we had to go to work. I said, well, let's talk about it when I get home. Except when Ginny got home from work that Wednesday around 5'30. Logan wasn't around. Should he be there? We had sometimes, sometimes not.

So I didn't worry about it. He wasn't home the next day either. So Ginny checked a tracking app she had on her phone. That told her Logan's phone was in Olympia, Washington, close to where his mom lived. I thought, well, maybe he went over and stayed with his mom. Said happened once in a while. Then the next day, Friday, Ginny still hadn't heard from Logan. So she asked Logan's sister to call their mom to see if he was there.

And your granddaughter said he's not with mom. Right. So where'd you think he was? I had no clue. Jenny wasn't exactly panicking. Logan had told her he'd begun for the weekend. Even so, on Saturday, she gave the Thurston County Sheriff's Office a quick call to see what they could tell her.

The office was closed, so she and Bill drove over to Olympia to look for Logan themselves. We drove all over near where his car, you know, his phone had been. That sounds to me like you're getting worried. Yeah. Ginny and Bill didn't find Logan or his car. And by Sunday night, when there was still no word from Logan, Ginny's worry was now bordering on panic. She didn't know it then, but police

had been getting calls about Logan's car. And people who'd been seen near it. Some of them were acting very strangely. They called reporting that they have seen a man wearing no pants. On Monday morning, May 23, 2016, Jenny Shindleman drove to the Thurston County Sheriff's Office to report her grandson missing. She hadn't seen or heard from Logan in four days. And now she was panicky. She thought if she filed the report in person, deputies would take her concerns seriously.

How'd they react? Well, you know, he's over 18 and people are allowed to leave if they want to. And so this isn't necessarily a crime or anything we have to really worry about. Right. That is something families of the missing here from police all the time. And they tell us it's maddening. Ginny's gut was telling her she should be worried. And she knew Logan better than anyone. It's also true there hadn't been any evidence Logan had run into trouble.

That was about to change. Just a few hours after she left the sheriff's office, Ginny got a call from the deputy who'd taken Logan's missing report. She told her they'd found Logan's car. It had been impounded by state troopers three days earlier. So the vehicle was found on interstate five? That is Lieutenant Cameron Simper of the Thurston County Sheriff's Office. The original detective on the case has retired and Simper agreed to review the case file for us. Remember

Logan's Chrysler seabring caused quite a commotion on the freeway. And it turns out, three different drivers called 911 to report what they'd witnessed that Friday afternoon. All of them described the vehicle basically as rolling across all lanes of travel before impacting the cement barrier. As if there was no one in it or whoever was in it,

wasn't gebased at it. That's correct. And one of the 911 callers said he'd caught a glimpse of something else. We did have one of those callers that indicated they saw somebody in that vehicle on the shoulder of the freeway. On the passenger side of the vehicle, before it started rolling, unoccupied across the freeway.

As if they got out and then the vehicle started to move. That's correct. According to the 911 caller, that person had run into the woods next to the freeway. And when state troopers went to check out the car, no one was inside. A sheriff's deputy told Ginny to go pick up the seabring from the lot where it had been sitting all weekend. She and Bill drove there, not sure what to expect and full of questions. Was Logan the person who had abandoned the car on the highway, or had someone stolen it?

And when you pick up the car, you find... His wallet and the registration in the glove box. And his ID in there and his debit card and his phone on the car seat. Was there money in the wall? No, no. There was a bag on the floor with some leftover sandwich wrapper and there was like $15, $20 in the bag. Los Bills, an ID card, a wallet.

Those didn't strike Jenny as the kind of things a random car jacker or thief would leave behind. Anything else unusual about the car when you found it? He had stuff in the trunk like a blanket and some clothes and some DVDs, just kind of weird movies. But if he was going to be gone, thought he was going to be gone for a couple days, it kind of made sense. Ginny had no idea where Logan had been headed.

The sheriff's office checked Logan's cell phone data and it revealed something intriguing. In the hours before his car was ditched, Logan's phone had gone on a road trip. Cell Tower logs showed the phone traveled about a hundred miles south on I-5 from Olympia down to Vancouver, Washington. Then it turned around and headed back to the Olympia area, where at around 3pm it rolled

into the median at mile marker 92. I guess the big question is whether Logan was with that phone when it made that 100 mile journey. Right, we know that the phone was recovered in the car. So we have every reason to believe that that vehicle traveled with the phone from Olympia, down to Vancouver, and then back up to Olympia. But who was at the wheel and who else was in the car, you know, no? Right. Lieutenant Simper says the detective checked with hospitals and spoke with law enforcement

in the counties where Logan's phone connected with cell towers. There were no sightings of Logan in any of those places. The phone did reveal something else. For several months, Logan had been texting with a young woman. They'd met on a dating app, and she lived in Portland, just across the river from Vancouver. The detective tracked her down. Was that who Logan had been on his way to see? Apparently, not. Speaking with her, she hadn't met up with him, and she says, she didn't see him that day or any other. Correct. The sheriff's office learned something else

about the woman. Logan might not have seen her, but he did communicate with her right before he disappeared by text. And the text he said her was reminiscent of something he'd said to Ginny in their last conversation. I hope to survive this week. And he didn't explain why he didn't feel he was gonna make it through the week. I've certainly said things like that when I've had a tough, difficult week.

Does this sound to you like he meant more than just, I'm having a miserable time or it's tough right now or I can't wait for the weekend? It's hard to know exactly what he was referring to. Investigators wondered what exactly had been going on in Logan's mind before he went missing because there was another bizarre thing that happened just hours after Logan's car was ditched on the I-5.

At 105 a.m., about 10 hours after the car hit the median. A 911 caller reported seeing a man walking along a road close to that same stretch of freeway. Near the woods someone was seen heading into, and that man didn't have any pants on. The caller did not get a good look at him. You think that was Logan? I cannot confirm that that was Logan. Still hard to ignore. The Sheriff's Office set out search teams, and there was no indication of anyone being there. Not a single trace of Logan, just a puzzling string of clues.

A man with no pants on, close to where Logan's car was found. Logan's troubling conversation with Ginny and that strange text was all of it pointing to a breakdown of some kind. Logan's grandmother reported that Logan did have some mental health struggles, that he had been battling depression, that he struggled with his identity.

Recently, the genealogical intricacies of Logan's life had become an issue. While Ginny is white, Logan's grandfather was African-American, and his dad, whom he'd never met, is from Saudi Arabia. And when he was growing up, Tom Water was more than 80% white. Logan stood out. Was he aware that he didn't look like everybody else? Yeah, but he wasn't really, he wasn't worried about it that he told me at all. And he had a lot of friends,

so I don't think that was a problem for him. That was true until something happened toward the end of Logan's senior year at high school. Something that clearly was a problem. He'd been to a party and things hadn't gotten well, and he was upset about it, because somebody was making remarks to him, and his friends didn't stand up for him. Logan told Ginny a girl at the party had made racist remarks about him. He was so upset he called Ginny to pick him up. It's not normal for him to call me to come get him from someplace.

And that's when, without a word, Logan cut off all his friends, ghosted the whole group. That was the reason he'd set a last-minute application to Washington State University, instead of going to college closer to home with his old friends. This is about how many people he's turning his back on after that one incident. Probably about six really close friends and then the whole group that they all hung out with. That's a lot of people that cut loose because of one thing. Yeah, it is.

You talked to him about the wisdom of doing that, about whether or not that maybe was too rash. Yeah, we did talk about that, but or not that maybe was too rash. Yeah, we did talk about that, but it wasn't going to go anywhere. He'd made up his mind. He'd made up his mind. And he was really, really hurt. Suddenly Logan Shindleman was a young man, reeling, unmoored. And that's when Ginny's mother, his great-grandmother,

introduced him to a complete stranger. Someone Logan had never met before. Someone who was also strangely familiar. It was love at first sight to see him because he looks just like my brother at that age. Her name is Tina Roberts-Craery, and she's Logan's great aunt on the African-American side of his family. Jenny and Tina disagree about the reasons why, but there's no denying this. Logan didn't meet Tina, or any of his black relatives, until he was 18. And when he did, it clearly made an impression. He saw it immediately.

He was just, he wasn't, he was not, he was just amazed. He, of course, it just feels so good to see someone that looks like me. Tina pulled out her photo albums and gave Logan a crash course in her family's history. She says he soaked it up. You could tell he's listening to every word you're saying. Was he struggling with some kind of racial identity?

I know that before he left, he was questioning who am I? What's my next step? What do I do? Tina says she stayed in touch with Logan through Facebook when he was in college. She says he might be struggling and sent him encouraging messages. Then, after he flunked out and came back to thumb water, Tina says she didn't hear from him again. No responses from his, from texts or Facebook. I know I invited him for Thanksgiving.

I didn't hear back from him. And so Christmas New Year's, nothing. Nothing. The detective investigating Logan's disappearance wondered if Logan had now cut off the rest of his family, too. No question Logan had a lot to sort out. Maybe at 19 he felt under pressure over his confusion about his identity, the break with his friends, his failure at college.

Maybe it was all too much for him, and he'd walked away from his old life in tumwater, to start over somewhere new, or worse, maybe he'd gone somewhere to end it. Well, here's the thing. Those who knew invest say that would never happen. I don't think he was in crisis. He wasn't, didn't come across as angry, but as really in thinking about what he wanted to do. I felt he was depressed, not in the sense where I felt he was depressed, not in the sense where, you know, he would harm himself, but I felt that he was just, he was dead.

Logan's great aunts, Tina, the one he'd just met and Mary, whom he'd known forever, had a theory of their own about what happened. It involved someone very close to home. They didn't get along at all. I think he felt unsafe. Sometimes a sunny day triggers a memory of her missing nephew, one that marry wear treasures. Logan is in the fields outside her house. He's riding on a lawnmower, earphones cranked, listening to his tunes.

In her memory, he's smiling, happy to be knocking on some chores at his aunt and uncle's farm. It's like there is a movie running in the back of my head 24 hours a day of Logan and him being here and all the things that have happened. It just runs in my back of my head. Mary says she couldn't believe it when Ginny texted her to say Logan was missing. I woke up Mike and had him read the text and I just looked at Mike and said he's gone. He's gone. Mike, the retired sheriff's deputy and Logan's doting uncle, was sure of one thing about his nephew.

There's just no question in my mind. He would not disappear on his own without letting somebody know. You have to have developed some police instincts over those years. Alarm bells start going off in your head a little bit. Well, when we found out the circumstance of how the car was discovered, was abandoned, yes, there were some questions pretty immediately. The obvious question was, why would Logan leave his car on the freeway with all his stuff in it? My own personal feeling is that he came into conflict with somebody.

I don't think he left on his own. Which is why Mike and Sheriff's detectives too were interested in one more thing that someone had seen driving by Logan's car that Friday afternoon. Remember, there'd been three 911 calls. One of the callers had seen someone run into the woods. I asked Lieutenant Simper about that. And does the description of that person match Logan?

No, it doesn't. What was that description? They described that person match Logan? No, it doesn't. What was that description? They described that person as a white male and we know that Logan is mixed race. Did somebody ever show them a photograph of Logan and say, is this the guy you saw? Yes, and he indicated that it was not the person he saw in the vehicle.

A couple of things you should know about that 911 car. He was a truck driver, sitting high up in a semi, traveling north on I-5. Toward the sea break, which was in the southbound lanes. He only saw the guy for a couple of seconds, but the truck driver seemed convinced that Logan had not been in the car. So what does all of that say to you? Well, based on that single report, if it was not Logan in the vehicle, then it would lend to there being foul play involved in this incident.

If only Logan's Chrysler Sebring could talk and tell investigators who was driving at that day. Sometimes cars do give up secrets, but in this case that did not happen. Remember, state troopers impounded Logan's car and it sat for three days in a to-lot before the sheriff's office told Jenny to come pick it up, the seabring wasn't dusted for prints until six days after it was abandoned on the freeway. Mike knows from his 39 years in law enforcement what a delay like that can cost investigators. What gets lost when they don't process the car right away?

Anything that might be in the car could be disturbed or misplaced when it goes through several hands, what you did in this case, fingerprint evidence, anything relating to DNA, all of those things could be affected. I asked the sheriff's office about the delay. Lieutenant Simper says they didn't learn about the tips that suggested possible foul play until after Ginny had retrieved Logan's car. And one of Detective went to Ginny and Bill's place and dusted the sea bring.

No Prince were discovered as the vehicle was dirty and there were very few smooth surfaces. Any signs of blood inside the car or any other kind of struggle? There was something that was noted by the grandfather of a seat that had been damaged, that he believed was new damage. But no obvious signs of a struggle inside the vehicle,

no signs of obvious struggle inside the vehicle, no signs of obvious injury inside the vehicle. The detective turned his attention to Logan's personal life, his family and friends, and any possible enemies. And Mary had something to say about that. Because one of those movies she played back in her head now included one that troubled her. The memory of a phone conversation she had with Logan, months before he disappeared. Turns out when Logan moved back in with his grandmother after he flunked out of college,

there were new faces in the household. It wasn't just him, Ginny and Bill, and his half-sister Chloe anymore. Chloe's boyfriend at the time had moved in, and his young children sometimes stayed over. And I said, is that a problem? And he goes, well, yeah, I asked, well, is it the kids coming there to visit? Is that the problem? He said, yeah, and then he stopped and said, well, no, no, it's him. He's the problem. What was the issue there? Logan never said. It was almost like he was afraid to talk about it. Of course, five adults living under the same roof are bound to get on each other's nerves occasionally, even if two of them aren't half siblings who don't always see eye to eye. Logan is Chloe's slightly younger brother. In a lot of families, that's a formula

for the two of them to battle. You have some sense that this is worse or that this somehow has something to do with Logan's disappearance? No, no. I don't think that does. I just think that I think it was the fact that her boyfriend was also trying to live in that house and I think that he had something to do with this. I mean I'll just be Frank, I'll just be honest the way I feel. Chloe's boyfriend was 26 and he had a rap sheet including convictions for domestic violence and assault. We looked into that and I spoke to him at length multiple times. Lieutenant Simper told us the lead detective zeroed in on the tensions between Logan and his

sister's boyfriend early on. According to the case file, when questioned the boyfriend denied he and Logan had issues. He also denied having anything to do with Logan's disappearance. But his story was inconsistent about where he was on the day Logan went missing. The detective asked him to take a polygraph and Chloe's boyfriend passed it. He was cooperative with us and he could have very easily said,

no, I'm not taking a polygraph. And we'd have been left at that, but he willingly did that. And according to our polygrapher's opinion, he was not being deceptive. The detective ruled out Chloe's boyfriend as a suspect in Logan's disappearance. What do you need to solve this case?

We need some tips that can help us break this. Lieutenant Simper says in the seven years since Logan Shindleman disappeared, tips have come in from across the country, but none has led them to Logan. The case is open, but cold. Logan's family has not given up hope that they'll find the answers they've been waiting for after so long. Mary has set up a Facebook page called Logan Shindleman is missing.

She's asking for leads, which she then passes on to detectives. And Ginny wonders if maybe she already had the biggest lead all those years ago. She regrets not asking Logan to explain the epiphany he mentioned on that May morning in 2016. Ginny has tried to solve that riddle on her own. I even checked UFO conferences that were going on in Nevada to see if maybe his epiphany had taken him down to that sort of a road, but I haven't ever found anything. I feel like it's more likely his epiphany took him to somebody who killed him.

I hope you're wrong about that. Jenny still lives in the house in Tomwater where Logan spent much of his childhood and where he returned after college to figure out where his life was headed. Where I'm driving home from town and go past this one stretch of the road to get home. And I don't know why that particular stretch causes me to come apart at seams, but that one does. You associate that with Logan in some way? Some way. Yeah, but I haven't figured out why. I just do.

Logan's aunt Tina, who waited so long to meet him, struggles with losing the chance to get to know Logan better, at the sea where his searching would take him. I felt cheated. I felt very wrong. I finally made this beautiful young man that he had so much in front of him, so many things that he could do. And he's gone.

Mike and Mary Ware say the unsolved mystery of what happened to the nephew they still adore is something that hangs over them every day. It's a constant source of stress. It doesn't go away and will not go away. I think it's called ambiguous loss. It's what I was told. You're kind of stuck in the middle, kind of in purgatory. Because you don't know whether they're missing or they're dead. Yeah, you can't grieve them because you don't know if they're dead,

but you know they're dead. And you can't grieve them if they're alive. Here's where you can help. Logan Shindleman was 5.111 and 160 pounds when he was last seen at his home in Tomwater, Washington. He has black hair and brown eyes. If you saw something or if you know anything call the Thurston County Sheriff's Office at 3.6.786-5500 or call Crime Stoppers at 1.850-.6.0, 7.8.6, 5500, or call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-8477. Logan's family is offering a reward for information that leads to finding in. To see photos of Logan, and to learn more about other people we've covered in our Missing an America series. Go to datelinemissinganAmerica.com.

There you'll be able to submit cases you think we should cover in the future. Thanks for listening. See you Friday's on date line. On NBC. Missing in America is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Kate Vidak is the producer of this episode. Brian Drew and Bruce Berger are the audio editors. Keanu Reed is associate producer.

Liz Brown is senior producer. Adam Gorfane is executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes is Senior Producer. Adam Gorphane is Executive Producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes is Technical Director, Sound Mixing by Bob Mallory. you