Someone Knows Something - S6 Episode 1: Mother’s Day

Episode Date: May 11, 2020

On Mother’s Day 1995, Debra receives a distressing phone call from her son, Donnie. Crying and upset, he asks her to wire him some money. After what sounds like a scuffle and a scream, the phone goes dead. Debra never hears from Donnie again. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sks/someone-knows-something-season-6-donald-izzett-jr-transcripts-listen-1.5558068

We Built This City is a collection of stories from Mississauga, capturing the rich history, culture, sports, music, and incredible individuals who have shaped Mississauga into the vibrant city it is today. This brand new series, created by Visit Mississauga, celebrates a city 50 years in the making, paying homage to Ontario's vibrant, diverse, and dynamic third largest city. Tune in to Visit Mississauga's brand new podcast, We Built This City, This is a CBC Podcast. There is a crawl space underneath this house.

It's fairly high. You can't stand up, but a person can go in a good ways. Would like that checked underneath there. So just the immediate area or are we spreading out how far? I think we can start right here and just work our way back down. Okay. You want to start? Okay. You want to start? Okay.

Tell me what happened from the beginning. Your beginning. Wherever you think the beginning of the story is. Oh, Lord. Like, starting from when he actually disappeared. Is that what you're... I'm a nervous wreck. I'm not looking forward to this at all. I guess because this time I know I'm being recorded.

Did you check the cross? But this area is the one, I would say, you know, you could bring dogs back, let's take a shovel and kind of... Because if an animal's digging, he may be looking for bones. Be careful of all these thorn bushes getting out. It was on May 9th, 1995. Donnie came to the house. He was living on campus at

Frostburg State University and told me that he was going to go. He was taking a break and he was going to go on vacation. And I didn't want him to. And anyway, he wanted to go. And I heard from him by telephone on May 14th, 1995. The last time I heard from Donnie was Mother's Day. And right away, I realized he was upset. And he told me he needed me to wire him some money, and I said, where are you at? And then there was a scuffle,

a something, and I'm not sure what it was, some odd noise in the background, and then a scream, and the phone went dead. And did you think at the time it was odd that Donnie didn't call back and explain what happened? Absolutely. Absolutely, I do. It had to be less than a month after I spoke with Donnie on the phone.

I sat straight up in bed, and I told my husband at the time, I said, Donnie's dead. I said, I know he is. I don't know how to Episode 1, Mother's Day. Just on my way to see Debra. Debra Skelly, Donnie's mom. Down here in Maryland where she lives. There's Debra. I can see the neon orange. I almost went in that house.

I had a fluorescent pink t-shirt on earlier. How are you? I'm going to give you heck. Why? Well, a couple reasons. I've been working with Debra since June 2018 when she contacted me seeking help on her son Donnie's case. Deborah leads me through a fenced-in front yard toward a small, two-story tan house,

while giving me her version of heck for not texting her back quickly enough. So then I messaged you back after I realized, and you still didn't answer me. Donnie Izzett went missing in May of 1995 while on a trip that spanned several states in the USA. He was 19 years old. And Deborah's harrowing account of everything that has happened since Donnie's last communication with her, the Mother's Day call where the phone went dead, has compelled me to try to help however I can. So this house, how many years have you been here? Probably eight, ten maybe. This is not the house Donnie grew up in. Deborah lives alone here, having divorced her husband Donald Izzet Sr., Donny's father,

in the early 1980s. Deborah's mid-50s, blonde, and moves with some difficulty after years of racking back pain and surgeries. She prefers neon pink or yellow t-shirts, and hands out purple Team Donny wrist bracelets to everyone she meets. This house looks like it was built by the Amish. I pretty much made all this. It's like an Amish dollhouse.

This is a nice place. Inside it's an immaculate exhibit of barn board, wood carvings of people and other animals and black and white photos of the Amish. Deborah isn't Amish, she just adores their lifestyle. Oh, hello. What's this friend's name? That's Kingston, it's my one-eyed bandit.

Her place is also full of rescued animals, like Kingston, a fluffy marmalade cat with his right eyelid sewn shut, sleepily presiding over Deborah's red plaid couch. I rescued him from North Carolina. He was just a baby and I had to have his eye taken out. No sooner than I got it, don't take it, no. It's okay, I take my shoes off in every house. And there's Kaylee and Nicole, but you probably won't see Nicole.

And then I have a dog that's out on the deck. She's going to take me downstairs. Deborah rescued three newborn kittens and their mother by breaking into what she calls a neighborhood crack house when she thought nobody was there. She'd seen an undernourished mother cat going in and out of the place and wanted to take action, so she did, quickly. After using a credit card to open the back door, creeping through the house and digging around upstairs in what she calls piles of human feces and garbage,

she found the cats in a space underneath a pile of rotting mattresses. I had a great big picture of Donnie that's like life-size. It's like this big. It doesn't take long for Debra's attention to gravitate to its natural center, back on Donnie, a photograph of him. And it just, I've tried to bring it up here, but it just takes your breath away. It's just so, I just couldn't. The portrait is in the basement, grouped with bundles and boxes of Donnie's belongings Deborah has held on to.

In a few seconds, Deborah is downstairs in the furnace room looking through boxes and piles of old clothes. I don't know where anything is. There's shit everywhere. But this here goes way back in. See that big picture right there? That's Donnie right there beside the guitar. Oh, yeah. Ooh, it's going to fall apart when I pick it up, though.

A large picture is poking out of a stack of other wall hangings. I reach for it, but the frame has come apart under its own weight, and it has to be held together using both hands. It's a studio photo, lightly airbrushed to perfection. Donnie's a slim six feet with brown eyes and hair parted in the middle, dark eyebrows that focus attention on his soft-featured youth and a thin, wide smile. The image has that sense of a before-he-made-it-big photo to me.

I carefully slide the broken portrait back in place, and we return upstairs. What are you going to show me? A poem that Donnie wrote for me for Mother's Day. So is that the original? Yes, he... It's his writing. On the wall in front of us, in a simple wooden frame and matted in purple, a carefully handcrafted letter.

Donnie has written the words in calligraphy, and it's this 1993 poetic letter of his own, gifted to Deborah on Mother's Day two years before he disappeared, that to me gives the best and most direct sense of who Donnie was. Dear Mom, Charles Dickens once said, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. This quote certainly applies to us and our 17 years together. As the last pages of this first chapter in our lives are coming to an end, we can reflect on the stages of my upbringing, changing my diapers when I was an infant,

fixing my bumps and bruises when I was a little boy, teaching me about the birds and the bees before my teenage years, and now helping me plan for the future, wanting nothing but the best. During these 17 years together, we had many arguments, fights, and we both have done things we wish we had not. Through all of this, the love and caring we have overshadows the negative things. You're more than a mother to me, but also a friend through all the pain and suffering we have endured together. And on this day, your 17th Mother's Day Day, I say thank you and I love you.

You may not think so, but you do have a great influence on my life. You've helped me tremendously through my successful high school career, and yes, I would not be where I am today if it were not for your advice and encouragement. I'll always be there when you need me, come hell or high water. You will still be in my mind and in my soul. I could never repay you for all you have given me. Thanks for everything. Love, Donnie. That's lovely.

I got married very young. I had Don when I was 16. He was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky. We've moved over to the couch and Debra is speaking while gazing off across the room as if her past with Donnie is being projected there like a movie. There's no other way of saying it. We grew up together.

I was very, very protective. Very, I did everything excessive like to get him dressed to go outside. It was cold. It would be too much my mom kept saying you can't do that i mean it's just i can just remember it like like it was yesterday because of we left about it years later but um he was a very happy baby um he was sick a lot he had he was born with asthma and he was in the hospital a lot with asthma attacks.

Deborah takes a metal vape from a side table and begins rolling it through her fingers. Even in the hospital, he was just a happy baby. He went to a Catholic school for six years. He was very active. He was in track, cross country, he was in drama plays. And when I started college, as a matter of fact, my son helped me through college, my first couple semesters, because I had been out of school for so long and that kind of thing. He loved to stay home, and he was all about books.

He was always, always reading. And he was a good kid. Donnie's young life seems ideal, and Debra's recollection of that time, well over 20 years ago, is infused with a clarity of love and loss common amongst victims' family members. Also common is evidence of a kind of survivor guilt, why them and not me, and Debra's relationship with Donnie had a few extra layers in this regard. About a year before Donnie disappeared, Debra says they had a brief but intense falling out. Our falling out, I guess, was, I'm trying to think of, was it 94?

When Donnie came out that he was gay. And how I found out was, I think, more upsetting than the fact that he was gay. Because I thought we were really close and we could talk. And I got a phone bill, and it was like $800. And I was, what the heck is this? It was all these numbers. So I called these numbers, and it turned out to be a sex hotline, gay hotline hotline or whatever and that's how I found out it was Donnie and I asked him all kinds of questions like how did you how do you know have you ever been with a girl no if you've ever been with a guy no and I was I mean

I'm not going to it was bad and I hate myself, but I said some pretty really, really bad things. And he didn't understand either because I had friends that were gay, but they were female, so it was like a double standard. And I kept telling him, no, I want you to go to college, I want you to do this, and you can be a doctor, and just even tried to go through counseling. Seriously, I even wanted to go to counseling because he was gay. You tried to get him to go to counseling?

Like, gay conversion? Tell me. I don't know. I can't even believe that I did that. I mean, seriously. I mean, it was bad. Did he go? No. No. He never got that far.

Someone asked me if I was going to bring this up, you know, talk about this. And I said yes, because it would be dishonoring him if I didn't. Because he may have left because of that. He's dead. And I carry that. Deborah does carry it, even though Donnie's disappearance came about a year after he came out to his mother, when they were on regular terms again. The reality of it, from my point of view, is that he was a man and wanted to live his life. Deborah's best friend Carla Haynes knew Donnie and has worked with Deborah on his case.

Carla lives in West Virginia, a pleasant drive through rustic country from Deborah's house. I'm just a country person, you know. I love the outdoors. I just love to be outside, animals, anything like that. Carla's wearing a maroon hoodie and jeans. She's about the same height as Deborah and it's clear by their shorthand interactions that the two have weathered many stressful times together. We're walking through some tall grass in a field on her property. I don't feel that she forced him out of the house in any way, shape, or form. And I think he was going to go on and explore and find his life.

And I think he would have done that whether he told her he was gay or not. You know, I mean, he was 18, going on 19, and he was going to be who he was going to be. She's a very independent person. He grew up watching her assert her independence, and I think he was going to do the same thing. Carla and Deborah met while working at the nearby Bayliner boat factory. I met Deborah I guess in 1986 when I went to work at the boat factory. Of course we worked there not very long

till we decided she and I both that we didn't want to do that forever so we started going to college and we would take classes and we took as many night classes as we could. That was back in the day before there were online classes or anything like that. But we spent a lot of time. We'd leave work, go to her house and get cleaned up, get ready for class. And, of course, I was around Donnie the whole time. That kid, he was a doll baby. Just a really good kid.

Funny. Oh, he just would have me in tears laughing. He was really a good kid. He was quiet until he got to know you and then he would let loose. But he was so smart and you didn't have to be around him very long to realize how bright he was. I always knew without him even saying anything the wheels were always turning. Right. He never ever wanted to make her unhappy as a kid. He would be what he thought she wanted him to be. He worked hard in school not that she forced it on him that was just how he was he he done something that she drastically did not approve of.

But I do feel like she tortures herself and blames herself and won't allow herself to be happy because of what happened to him. I know that she called him, I guess, a queer, or I'm not sure exactly what the verbiage was. In his later teens, Donnie did assert his independence, and in July 1993, at the age of 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve and was based in Florida for training. His reasons given, he wanted money for college and to make his mother proud.

But just over a month later, he found a loophole to get out. Because the base was over 100 miles away from his home, he could be discharged. In his wistful letters to Deborah at the time, it is clear that Donnie missed home and his mother and grandmother and couldn't wait to get out of the service almost from the beginning. Then, unbeknownst to Deborah, several months later, Donnie re-enlisted in February 1994 with the Air Force. But again, less than a month later, he was discharged in March. At first, he had pretended to have a problem with sleepwalking, but then admitted he was lying in order to get out. Then he told the military he was gay, and due to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell legislation in place at the time in the USA,

the Air Force discharged him under a neutral designation. And how did that all play out? I received a phone call from somebody, his commander, and asked him if I knew that he was gay, and I said yes, and he said, he asked me if I had a shed, a building out back of my house, and I said yes. And he said when he gets home, he said,

ma'am, I think you should take him out there and kick his ass. And he said because he used the service to run, and then when he got there, he used it to get out. And then when he came home, that's when he started going to Frostburg State. He went to college then. What did he go to school for? Journalism. And he went through the whole program? No, that's when he so-called went on break.

Deborah has always said Donnie went on a spring break that May of 1995, but that would have been over for Frostburg College in March, so it is more likely that Donnie's trip was unrelated to his school schedule. So you didn't hear from Donnie after that Mother's Day call? Correct. I reported him missing right away, but they wouldn't take it. Deborah says she went to Maryland State Police after the Mother's Day call. So you reported Donnie missing in May?

Yes. On or around that time, a Maryland State Police lieutenant assessed that Donnie Yes. Deborah had been enrolled in a criminal justice program at the time Donnie disappeared and later graduated with a degree in it as well as psychology. She's found over the years that what she learned has helped her in dealing with Donnie's case. They wouldn't take the case for the longest time. It took a friend of mine, Captain Morley from the city police. He was not only a friend, but he was an instructor at the college that I was attending, majoring in criminal justice. He knew myself, he knew my son well.

And he called the state police and said, look, what do you have to lose? First of all, I know Deborah, I know her son. He wouldn't do this. I always called my son a nerd. He was extremely, extremely intelligent, but zero common sense. And that was along the lines of what Captain Morley had said to the state police. The first record of Maryland State Police involvement that I have seen is dated July 17th, 1995. But nothing seems to have really happened until a month later

in August, when Deborah succeeded in motivating police to officially file Donnie as a missing person. I never heard anything again until a few months later. I received a citation in the mail from Buckeye, Arizona. In October 1995, Deborah receives a letter in the mail addressed to Donnie. It was saying that he was going to be arrested because he didn't appear in court for citation, a traffic speeding ticket he received. Donnie got the speeding ticket eight days after the Mother's Day call on May 22, 1995, while driving through Arizona. At last, a location to go on, a starting point for Debra. So I called the magistrate there in Buckeye, Arizona, and told her she was the first link to my son.

And she told me that he was driving a car registered to a George Gunther. And she told me that the car was registered in Macomb, Mississippi. So I then called information, and they gave me the number to the Gunthers residence, and I called. Another location, this time Mississippi. Deborah says the woman who picked up the phone at the other end was in the small town of Macomb, Mississippi, in the southern part of the state.

And her name was Sue Gunther. I told her who I was and how I came about getting her number and all that. I told her that the last time I heard from Donnie was on Mother's Day and the conversation that took place. And I can just remember, like, you know, crying and saying, you know, I don't understand. I just want to hear from him. I have this really bad, overwhelming feeling something's wrong. You know, he wouldn't do this.

He was very close to his grandmother. And she said she did know he was close to his grandmother, that he had talked about that. So Sue had met Donnie. Yes. I had no idea who George Gunther was at the time. And Shane, I didn't realize it was the same person. Okay, so George and quotation marks Shane. So Shane, is it part of his given name or is it a nickname? A name that he took himself. His real name is George Thompson Gunther. George Gunther, Sue Gunther's son, had changed his name about a year before so that at the time,

in 1995, he was going mostly by his new first name, Shane. Sue told Debra that her son, Shane Gunther had been with Donnie. In fact, Donnie had been driving Shane's two-seater green Mazda Miata when he got the Arizona speeding ticket. Sue Gunther also told Debra that Donnie had been at her house in Macomb, Mississippi. And she told me that yes, the donut was there and that he and Shane had gotten to a huge fight. They left, and she said Shane returned and Donnett wasn't with him.

Her exact words were to me was, Shane told her that Donnett wouldn't be accompanying him back to California and that the passenger in the car was missing. The fight was in the driveway, and Debra says Sue thought there might have been a third person standing there, but gave few details. Honestly, I don't remember saying goodbye. I'm sure it was, I mean, it wasn't a,

she wasn't rude or disrespectful to me in any way, nor I to her. It was, thank you. Please, if you hear anything at all, you know, here's my number because I don't, I was so struck with the fight. And she said that Shane had come back without the passenger seat. I didn't understand, and she told me that he was transporting some puppies to California. So Donnie left Maryland on a trip, was driving in Shane Gunther's green Miata in Arizona, and was seen in Mississippi with Shane sometime after that, according to what Deborah says Sue Gunther told her. And Donnie and Shane had had a fight. music, and incredible individuals who have shaped Mississauga into the vibrant city it is today. This brand new series, created by Visit Mississauga, celebrates a city 50 years in the making, paying homage to Ontario's vibrant, diverse, and dynamic third largest city.

Tune in to Visit Mississauga's brand new podcast, We Built This City, to learn more. Available now on CBZ Listen. Oh, that coffee smells good. Can you pass me the sugar when you're finished? Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you doing? That's salt, not sugar. Let's get you another coffee. Feeling distracted? You're not alone.

Many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with mortgage payments on their minds. If you're struggling with your payments, speak to your bank. The earlier they understand your situation, the more options and relief measures could be available to you. Learn more at Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from the Government of Canada. So after you hang up with Sue, what happens? I made this phone call from work and I worked a 3-11 shift at a girls group home. I don't know if it was that day or the very next day, but I took the information to Maryland State Police.

Can you remember how you reported it? Took the citation with me and gave them that and told them how I had talked to Sue Gunther and so forth, and they weren't very happy with me that I had done that. It was an ongoing battle between myself and the Maryland State Police. Deborah says police told her not to call Sue Gunther again, and they wouldn't give her any contact information for Shane. So Deborah had to sit on what she'd heard from Sue,

but that didn't stop her investigation it was hard but I didn't reach out to Shane I didn't do any of those things so in the meantime while you're waiting for a police or trying to get police to do something what's happening in your life and how are you proceeding I knew with all my heart that my son wasn't alive. And, you know, he could be a John Doe and nobody aware of this.

Because back then we didn't have the natural clearinghouse for the DNA. That didn't exist. So it was a matter of phone calls, sending flyers to them. So we did that for years. We were sending stuff out. Hoping for some kind of feedback. Yes. for years we was sending stuff out and hoping for some kind of feedback yes several john does did come back to deborah from around the usa one of the more plausible from georgia a man who officials felt might resemble donnie had died and remained unidentified. Police took Deborah's DNA to compare,

but the unknown victim wasn't Donnie. Donnie seemed to have fallen off the map, with Arizona and Mississippi being Deborah's only signposts for the last places he was seen. And then I was writing, you know, the governor, I mean, everybody that you could imagine, saying something needs to be done. Let's focus on the case. Let's fight by side.

Over time, Deborah wrote several complaint letters to the state police and other public officials. Each time, police would initiate a case review of themselves and find that they had investigated every avenue available. Cynthia Smith, commander of the Western Region Maryland State Police, said all appropriate investigative resources and techniques have been brought to bear in this case. I felt it was more of a battle with them because they'd be upset with me that I would do something else.

And it was just constant fighting. And a lot was my own fault as well because I would do something else. And it was just constant fighting. And a lot, a lot was my own fault as well, because I was hot-headed. For 20 years, there was no apparent progress, and police reassured Debra they had done everything they could. And Debra still kept what pressure she could apply on. I would have to track down who was the so-called investigators this year because people retired, they left, whatever. And it changed so many times and finally, I mean, it took months and months. Eventually, by January 2016, an officer named Chastity Blades, based in Baltimore, took over the case. Chastity Blades said that she would work on it to see what she could do, and I drove down

there and we spent the day down there going through the file and she said anything I wanted out of it I could have. Officer Blades wouldn't give Debra any of the original photos from the file, but allowed her to take pictures of them with her cell phone. Officer Blades would give Debra 334 pages copied from Donnie's case file. Immediately, Debra began poring through doing some of her own investigative work. All on my cell phone. My computer crashed right about the same time that I got the case file. And I've been doing it all on my cell phone. Just when I got the case file,

I started going through and kept thinking, why did they give me this case file with all that information? Do they know that they set me up knowing I'm going to fail and I'm going to do something illegal, get myself in trouble? I want to say that she is like any other mother, but she's not. Deborah's friend Carla on her West Virginia farm. Deborah is like any other mother, but she's not. She is one of the strongest women I've ever known in my life. If there is a way, she will find it. She will work until she drops.

Some of the things that she's done in the case, I would think, oh my gosh, you're crazy. But then she gets it done. She gets an answer. Even the day that she and I went down there to get the case file, all she had asked for was the picture of Donnie with Shane and they ended up giving us the entire case file of course you know we went through that with a fine-tooth comb and she just took it and ran with it. Within hours of receiving the file Deborah read through her own interactions with police that were recorded over the years. She saw notes officers took about her last call with Donnie,

about the Arizona citation, the call Debra had with Sue Gunther in Mississippi, her complaints and the various police reviews of the file, and two lie detector tests she took and ultimately passed with the police assessment, Debra is being truthful. She also saw that police had interviewed Shane Gunther and there were also notes taken from interviews with people Debra had never heard of before who seemed to have knowledge of Donnie. Police had evidently done some

work but that work seemed to have ended. The case file started in July 1995 and ended in 2006. They left Donnie's case with no clear conclusions. What did Shane tell the state police that happened? That they went to New Orleans and Donnie met somebody and Shane describes this guy and stays there with him. So Shane leaves and comes back home. And the next day they get back together, but then decided they need to part ways or something along those lines. I had many questions for Debra about the file,

but I was anxious to learn more in particular about Shane Gunther, the man his mother Sue had told Debra had had a fight with Donnie in Mississippi. Shane first met Donnie in the Georgetown, Washington, D.C. area in March of 1995, and then they took a trip together in May 1995. And then Donnie disappeared. Shane gave him the information, yes, Donnie was in Mississippi, yes, this is what we did. Shane Gunther's story takes up the most space and is a focal point in the file.

But saying that, it appears that police only spoke to Shane twice on the phone and to his mother Sue perhaps a few times at most. I've summarized the basic version of what Shane Gunther tells police in October 1995. In his interview, he calls Donnie, Donald. Shane says he and Donald were moving to California. They drove the Miata from Washington, D.C. to Santa Barbara, California, and stayed there for a week. Shane says that he made Donald call his mother from a dorm room in California. This would likely be the Mother's Day call Deborah received on May 14, 1995. Shane says he needed to pick up his dogs in Mississippi, so he and Donald drove back to

Macomb, Mississippi in May at the end of the month. From Macomb, they drove down to the French Quarter in New Orleans, where Shane says he and Donald went to the Oz Bar on Bourbon Street. Shane then says that I'm still trying to understand why he left with another guy. The interviewing police officer asked Shane to describe the fellow he says he saw Donald with, and Shane says the man was of Italian descent, between age 23 and 25, 5'8 to 5'9, with dark curly hair, large nose, regular build, and medium complexion. Shane didn't know the man's name. Shane says that he left Donald with the Italian man and went to his brother's house in nearby River Ridge. And then Shane...

He said he spent the night with his brother. Shane continues, I did not go back to the hotel because I did not want to be there if Donald and the Italian man were there. I stayed at my brother's until morning. The next morning he went to the hotel, the Chateau Motor Hotel located in the French Quarter, and picked Donald up.

Shane then says he and Donald drove from New Orleans back to Macomb, Mississippi, to his mother Sue Gunther's house. After spending the night there, he says, he and Donald had a long conversation and they decided to separate. It was decided, Shane says, that he would take Donald back to the French Quarter. Shane says he dropped Donald off about two blocks from the Oz Bar at night. Shane then tells the officer he returned to Macomb and stayed with his mom, and hasn't seen Donald since he left him in the French Quarter around the end of May 1995.

Shane concludes by saying that if Donald contacts him, the first thing he will do is contact Donald's mother. Shane doesn't mention the argument in the driveway that his mother Sue relayed to Debra, but he does say that he and Donnie had a long conversation at his mother's place in Macomb that led to what Shane says was a decision to separate, and then the drive to New Orleans to drop Donnie off. If Shane was one of the last people to be with and speak to Donnie, he could be an important witness. If I can go and talk to him, I mean Shane may talk to me and say yeah we had an argument,

he may give me that whole thing. Turn left, then take the second right. Normally I would wait until I had spent much more time researching, but with all the information from and about Shane in the police file, and the proximity he says he had to Donnie in the days before he disappeared, I think I should simply start with him. It's just early evening here. I've not yet been able to find or speak to Shane. But I'm just going to pass by his house to see if there's any light on inside. Would Shane tell me any more details that might help understand what might have happened to Donnie?

I'd have to go to the west coast to find out. Washington State. Turn left and take the second right. I don't see any signs of light in his house, so I don't think he's in there. I think I'm just going to call it a night here. It's early the next morning after I spent the afternoon and evening trying to ascertain whether Shane Gunther was at home. Now I'm just going to go knock on his door. That's the easiest way to find out if he's home. Knock on his door.

So we'll see what happens on this Sunday morning. Usually I would try to hold off until I knew the person I was wanting to talk to was present. But with my limited time here, I figure I have to make the best of it. So we'll see what happens. He's coming up on Shane's place here now as I drive up here I think of Debra's years of anguish and guilt

and horror losing her son, not being able to find him and I think of all the work that Debra has gone through to look for her son and I wonder what the story is. Check, check, check. I'm approaching a white bungalow along a sidewalk when I come to a path that cuts across an immaculately kept lawn. I turn in, passing a locked mailbox on a post.

Walking toward the front door that's hidden from view behind an enclosed entry area, I notice security cameras in the corners of the house, pointing in the various directions of approach, one centered on the front door area. All the blinds are pulled down, and there's no sign of anyone around, but there is an additional different vehicle in the driveway next door this morning. I climb a few steps and ring the bell. Tommy! Oh, good morning. Hi.

The man who opens the door conceals most of his body as he peers at me through the slight crack he's allowed in the front door. He seems about 5'10", 40s, ruddy-faced with bedhead as if he'd just woke up from a nearby couch. The room behind him is dark. Are you Shane? Yes. I'm from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I'm working on the case of Donnie Izzet.

Yeah. And I wanted to know if I could just talk to you a little bit about that case because you had been the last person who had seen Donnie or one of the last people who saw him. And my attorney told me not to comment. Okay. And you're aware of the severity of the... Yes. And what do you think of that? I just told you, I can't make any comment.

Okay. I'm sorry. I'll just leave you my card, if that's okay. Yeah, I got two deadbolts on both sides. Okay, so if I put that just right here, you can get it later? Yeah, that's fine. Thank you. Do you remember anything about the... Hey, I just said please, no more comments, questions.

Okay, thank you. If you could call me if you can remember anything, that'd be great. My card's right here. Thank you. Not much to take away here from Shane. Man, I wish I was there. Did he look like that picture that I sent you?

He looked exactly like it. The thing I would come away from that is that he didn't look too concerned. He looked, he didn't have to answer the door, he didn't have to talk to me, he didn't have to say anything. That doesn't necessarily indicate anything other than, you know, he he didn't seem concerned it was early so I think I woke him up so you know there's also that but 8 30 on a Sunday morning you know I'm knocking on your door I'm kind of the last guy you're going to want to see it somebody with a big microphone I'm just I don't even know how to explain how I feel I understand you know I just I don't even know how to explain how I feel. I understand. You know, I just, I don't get it.

Well, we'll keep working our way on this. Exactly. Thank you so much. Yeah, well, you know. The thing I always say is that this starts the relationship with him. Like, now I have a relationship with him of sorts. Like, he knows who I am. I can try to call him again and see what happens.

He may say, look, I told you that this is my third time, you know, but he may actually start talking. Who knows? So I'll try again, and maybe I'll go to his lawyer. All right. Thank you for everything. I appreciate it. Yep.

I will talk to you again, Debra. Okay. Take care. I appreciate it. Yep. I will talk to you again, Debra. Okay. Bye. Take care. Bye-bye. Be careful. Bye. The fact that George Shane Gunther might have been one of the last people to see Donnie alive but doesn't want to talk to me on the advice of his lawyer doesn't mean that he had anything to do with the disappearance of Donnie Izzet. It's disappointing for Debra and I that Shane said virtually nothing,

but there's still a whole lot of people to talk to. And Debra found something else in the case file within two weeks of receiving it from Maryland State Police that may be of some help. Not some thing. Someone. that may be of some help, not some thing, someone. They never told me anything about Kyle, and I knew it when I got the file. And I still, I cannot get over, every officer that ever had that file said, this Kyle person, he needs to be interviewed. He needs to be interviewed. For

years, I don't understand. How could he have not been interviewed? In case files, some of them review documents generated by one or more of Deborah's own complaints, this Kyle is highlighted by at least one reviewing officer as someone who could be the key to finding out what happened to Donald Izzett. But for some reason, over the 20-some years that they had the file, and many officers who held carriage of the case, police never spoke to Kyle

from May 1995 to January 2016, when Deborah obtained her partial copy of the file. And as Kyle, his name kept coming up, so I had his name, driver's license, I had everything. In the course of Sue and Shane Gunther's interviews, fleeting mention is made of this man named Kyle. Shane says Kyle is his roommate from school and that he came to New Orleans about five days later after Shane and Donnie separated. Sue Gunther confirms in one of her conversations to police that Kyle flew into New Orleans and that Shane picked him up at the airport and the two of them came back to Macomb. Kyle stayed for a few days and then returned to California. One of the photos Debra

took on her phone from the file shows Donnie standing arm in arm with a shorter man in shorts and a striped golf shirt. Both are smiling. The photo was marked Donald and Kyle, and other information in the file could position Kyle in the timeline to have possibly been in the area around the same time Donnie was there. Maybe this Kyle knows something. But will he talk? Hello? Mother's Day. Visit cbc.ca slash sks to learn more about the Donnie Izzet case. You can also join our Facebook

group and follow us on Twitter at skscbc to discuss episodes with others and discover exclusive content. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by me, David Ridgen. The series is produced by Eunice Kim,

Chris Oak, and Cecil Fernandez, with help from Mikala Rana and Emily Cannell. Tanya Springer is our senior producer, and the executive producer of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. Our theme song is I Once Was a Bird

by Justin Bird. Down the dirt road The theme song is I Once Was a Bird by Justin Bird. I was not blue and the earth did not I could not fly anymore I once was a bird The mountains I climbed Were billowing white I was Prince of the Sky