Up and Vanished - S4E10: Mile 44

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Payne dives further into the interview tapes Andy Klamser gave to him and finds out as much as he can about Joseph's co-workers, their relationships, his phone messages, and further dives into how one of the last people to have seen Joseph had to wipe their phone the day after Joseph went missing. Follow the show on Instagram: @upandvanished Subscribe to Tenderfoot+ for ad-free listening, exclusive bonuses and early access. {apple.co/upandvanished} To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is released every Thursday and brought to you absolutely free. But for ad-free listening and exclusive bonuses, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts. Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is intended for mature audiences and may include topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder. The names of survivors have been changed for anonymity purposes. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not reflect the views of Tenderfoot TV or Odyssey. Thank you so much for listening.

Do you have any suggestions for people I should speak with about what happened to it? Well, we have a former employee that left. Her name is Christine Piscoia. She was the one who last saw him, supposedly. She sensed there was something wrong with him, too. Did she tell you that? No. Really? Really.

I talked to her for a long time. She said he was perfectly normal. When did she tell you that she sensed that something was wrong? As soon as he disappeared. Did she say any more about that? What she told me, they went out for a night. Mm-hmm. At the bar.

Mm-hmm. He came down to the beach Saturday afternoon. She said he seemed different. She told me that she got a sense that something was wrong. Why she'd tell you this, I don't know. And Joseph and I had many conversations about her. I warned him, Joseph, I know you want to be friends with her. You tell me there's nothing more but friendship.

You better not play the game, cause she will fall for it. He said no Camille, she's just my good friend. Said then don't play her. Do-dun-dun-da-dun-dun-da-da-dun Do-dun-dun-da-dun-da-dun-da-dun-da Da-dun-dun-da-dun-da-dun-da-dun Andy Klamser was hired by Joseph's family in the summer of 2016 to investigate his disappearance. Joseph met Christine at the Nome Court where she worked. She left the court, but they remained friends and would socialize frequently. It was a little murky to me about whether or not Joseph and Christine had a relationship at one time.

He conducted over a dozen interviews, starting with some of Joseph's co-workers. Are you aware of any women that Joseph had been involved with and known, even if it was just a casual one-night thing? I suspected he was involved with Christine, if it was just a casual one-night thing. I suspected he was involved with Christine, but that was just a suspicion. I think something's going on between those two. They spent too much time together. Multiple people had speculated Joseph and Christine had some sort of romantic relationship, at least at one point in time.

They may have been involved at one time. It sounded like they probably did, but they were no longer involved. It switched to just being close friends. They socialized frequently. Andy asked Christine herself about her relationship with Joseph. So were you and Joseph ever in a romantic relationship?

No, we were just friends. Do you remember Joseph ever talking about anyone that he was having problems with and knowing? He never said anything but I don't he's not I don't think he's the type of person to be have someone to be mad at him because he would if there was an issue he would ask him about it or you know I don't think he was that type of person to have anybody mad at him. What are your gut instincts about what you think happened to him? I don't know. I mean, I still have hope that he's somewhere and I just

don't want I just have a feeling that he is somewhere. He's got to be somewhere because he can't just up and leave. And I haven't given up on, I haven't lost hope. I think about him every day and keep wondering if today's the day that somebody will call me and tell me that he's found or something, but I don't know." Joseph's last communications on his cell phone leading up to his disappearance are a crucial piece of evidence in this case. We have his cell phone records,

but Sprint was unable to provide the contents of his phone's text messages. All we can see are the times and the phone numbers. There are numerous texts back and forth between Joseph and Christine, Friday and Saturday, leading all the way up to the moment he drops off the grid. Because Joseph's cell phone is also missing along with him, our only hope in finding out what him and Christine were talking about in those final moments is if Christine provided those messages herself. But the day after Joseph went missing, Christine completely restored her iPhone.

My brother had picked up my phone because I was in one of the races. He was wanting to record it, so he flipped up and took a picture or recorded it or something. And then my brother is a jackass who likes to fuck with things. And so he punched in my password and disabled my phone. And so I had been trying my passwords that I thought I changed it to, and by the time I got to trying to get it,

it would lock me out in an hour. And then it finally said, connect to iTunes. It was making me wait an hour, wait 60 minutes, or, you know, wait this long. All the versions of this story that Christine told police, the first private investigator, and Andy Clamzer are so damn convoluted. Her brother wanted to film something on her phone. So did he?

Because you can do that without unlocking it. And did she pass her phone to her brother? If so, why not just unlock it for him? Regardless of why or how Christine restored her phone, this was extremely detrimental to the investigation. So I just reset it to a new phone, and then when I tried to look how to back up from a previous, it wouldn't give me that option. So I had to restore it as a new phone. Have you heard any rumors about what might have happened to him?

I don't know. They were saying maybe he could have been eaten by a bear. Maybe he could have fallen. I don't know. Joseph's truck was found on Monday, June 27, 2016, after he didn't show up for work in the morning. His truck was found at the mile 44 marker of a road called Gnome Council Road. Mile 44 is pretty far out there, a decent trek from Gnome proper, at least a 45 minute

to one hour drive from the beach in Gnome where Joseph was allegedly last seen with Christine. Joseph's truck itself is one of the only physical pieces of evidence we have left to analyze. Law enforcement has the ability to seize vehicles and process them for fingerprints. But the Alaska State Troopers dropped the ball on that one. That was not done. They basically just didn't explore any of that.

I think they became wedded to the theory that he was a victim of an accident. There are multiple sightings of his truck, but some of these sightings appear contradictory. Let's start with the very first sighting. Around 3 p.m. on Saturday, a witness said they saw the truck with a man standing behind the open driver's door. They saw a man standing by the driver's door. The first private investigator that went out

interviewed the witness. Tell me your story. I was coming from my camp at town, so it was like Saturday afternoon, 3 o'clock or so. Truck was parked there, kind of in an unusual spot. So I slowed down just to see if anybody needed help. I slowed down, looked over at him. And you saw somebody standing next to the truck?

Yes, he was standing right next to the truck when I went by. I should tell you, somebody was standing next to the truck. Because I don't know him from the curl. So was this actually Joseph? Or could it have been someone else? He said that he couldn't identify the person that he saw standing there. It was just too fast and he was behind the door. A man with dark hair, that's about all they could provide.

So there's that. Was he leaning against it or 10 feet away from it or what do you mean? Driver's door is open. He's standing two or three feet away from the car. And so the door is partially blocking him, but I still see him standing there and something in his hands, looking down at his hands.

However it was, the driver's door was open. He was standing behind the driver's door, looking down at something in his hands and he didn't even look up, didn't weigh me down or anything. So I figured he was all right. This man claimed to have seen Joseph's truck at 3 p.m. on Saturday. But if Joseph left the beach at 3 p.m. in Nome and it takes nearly an hour to get out there, how could this even be possible? Either he's mixed up on the time someone is mistaken or lying about when Joseph

actually left town or this wasn't Joseph at all. And it was somebody else standing by his truck. On Sunday, several people said that they drove by and saw the truck various times during the day Sunday. Trooper Sergeant Cross saw the truck at one o'clock. According to the Alaska State Troopers Report, Sergeant Cross saw Joseph's truck early in the afternoon on Sunday, June 26. At this point in time, Joseph had been out of communication with everyone for nearly 24 hours. He was specific that he saw it at 1 p.m.

This is a very rural area. This is a gravel road in the middle of nowhere. If you know the way cops operate, he's going to remember it. I think that's a very credible observation." The first private investigator interviewed as many witnesses as he could. He found a convoy of two vehicles that had seen Joseph's truck at the same time on Sunday. They were brothers, in separate vehicles, driving their families to a wedding.

This might be our most credible account. June 24th, 2016 was a Friday, the 25th was a Saturday, the 26th was a Sunday, and the following Monday would have been the 27th, okay? Right, okay. All right, you are coming back from council on what day? The 26th, Sunday the 26th.

Our family friend was getting married that day, so we were coming back in early. Louie and I were in the same vehicle coming back, and we left council at 10 o'clock in the morning. Does council have a mile marker? It does. What is it? It's right around 74, 75. That's right in there.

So to get to 44, you'd have to travel 30 miles? Yep. Do you think you left right at 10? It was very close to 10. I remember looking at the clock. From Council to mile 44, about how long does that take? I would say probably 40 to 45 minutes, I would say. We pushed the speed limit pretty good

because I've been driving on it since I was 15. So I mean, we go a lot faster than just average person would driving on that road. We're talking about leaving just right about 10 on the dot. And we're talking 40 to 45 minutes to hit mile marker 44. Dan, you believe it's between 1040 and 1045 or 1040 and 1050? 1040, 1045. The reason it 1050. 1040, 1045. The reason it stood out, I mean, he was right on the edge of the road. When you're going to go park off the road and go do something,

you pull off a lot further than he was. He wasn't pulled off very far at all. Hasty parking job. So at 1045 AM on Sunday, June June 26 Joseph's truck was at mile 44 It was sticking out in the road at a bizarre angle as if it was parked there in a hurry The angle in which it was positioned it almost appears as if the truck was coming from the opposite direction Saturday the 25th we drove down to. And I can't remember seeing it there, but I can't say that I did.

Can't say whether it was there or not, but it seems like when we were all driving down on Saturday afternoon, if it was there, it seems like we would have seen it. If he's hurt an ankle, break a leg, whatever, he's gonna be on that ridge. A helicopter in 20 minutes is gonna find him. A helicopter in 20 minutes is gonna find him. A helicopter in 20 minutes is gonna cover more than he can cover in hours of running.

Ruling out foul play, I don't think he got lost. And if he's in that area, it'd have to be like an animal attack, I guess, you know? And man, I just really don't see that either, you know? There's gonna be something. Yeah, there's gonna be something. In every one of his pictures, he's wearing a hat. When you get mauled by a bear, your hat's gonna fly off. Yeah.

There's gonna be something. And when they kill and eat stuff, it's a mess. Yeah. I mean, it's bears swiping away. There's gonna be parts and pieces that the bear is not interested in. They're not that efficient whenever they're like wolves It'll leave half of a carcass. So wherever the bear got him at there'd be some kind of evidence, you know lay in there. I guess that's my problem with the bear deal. There's tons of bears. That area was searched so good and there's so many things that don't make sense.

It just feels like a foul play deal to me. Nothing makes sense. Either he doesn't wanna be found, or someone doesn't want him to be found. I know the helicopter pilot, he's awesome. He worked that whole ridge over, back and forth, five foot off the ground, 20 foot off the ground. There's a piece missing somewhere.

If it's a girlfriend that had an argument with him on the phone, another girl in his life that's in Nome that isn't his technical girlfriend, a roommate that had a fight with him or something. Things get botched, investigations. Just simple stuff wasn't followed up on. Zanya Ivanov, a lady watched her walk down the street and get into a cop car and drive away. She called it into the cops twice.

Maybe I better not say anything more to the cops. She just got into a cop car the night she went missing. I'd just work everybody over. I just got into a cop car the night she went missing. I... I just worked everybody over. Okay. The search for Joseph Balderas was the largest operation the city of Nome had ever conducted. His truck was found less than 40 yards from a natural stream, visible from the road. If he actually went out there to go fishing, how far could he have possibly wandered away from his truck?

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with dogs. Maybe there was foul play involved. After everything and after all the things that I've heard and seen, I think the most likely things are that it was human involvement. Somebody either intentionally or accidentally killed him and we didn't look in the right place. On a conference call, the first private investigator recalled a bizarre incident that occurred while they were out searching. Kevin Pascoya, he is Christine's uncle. 20-year veteran of the Air Force Base. He retired from it after 20 years, came back to Nome. He worked at the Nome Police Department for a very short period of time, about three months. For whatever reason,

did not work there anymore. Kevin Pescoia, he's not talked about that much, I think because he's an ex-cop. But he did some fuck shit. Kevin Pescoia, he's not talked about that much, but I think because he's an ex-cop. But he did some fuck shit. Kevin Pescoia, an ex-cop in Nome, and the uncle of Christine, exhibited some weird behavior. Kevin Pescoia went around in a side-by-side and ran over all the tracks.

They screamed, they yelled, what are you doing? Why did you do that? Footprints and you just ran over them. That's bizarre behavior for somebody that has law enforcement training. Took his ATV down it and just ripped up the trail and ruined the scent. They were all like, why the fuck did you just do that? The cops don't really question him, I think because he's an ex-cop. He might just be a dumb-dummy.

Yeah, just a dumb-dummy, yeah for sure. You don't even have to have law enforcement training. Just a normal person knows that if you're following a foot track, you don't go run over it. A normal person knows that. But for a cop that has been trained in the collection, preservation of evidence, that's really abnormal. He is Christine's uncle, which Christine is important because she's the

last person that we know saw Joseph alive. A few months after Joseph went missing, Andy Clamzer interviewed one of his co-workers and known. I actually went to lunch with him the Friday before he went missing. There was the actual Friday before that weekend. Mm-hmm. And why I remember that is we had a visiting judge here who'd been coming here off and on for several months, filling in while Joseph's boss was out on sick leave. Mm-hmm.

I remember that we went to lunch Friday, and I remember at that lunch being annoyed with Joseph for looking at his cell phone while we were at lunch with the judge. I thought that was very rude. And it was kind of unlike Joseph. He had enough people skills to know that was rude. But he kept doing it, and then finally he said,

oh, my roommate. He went over on the Internet usage, and he was annoyed with that. He must have got some notification from his Internet provider saying that his roommate had used it all up, and he was really annoyed by that. He had rented a house that was right downtown, and within the last four or five months, before he disappeared,

had a new roommate, a local young man. I understand from friends that there had been a little bit of tension between the two. The roommate was younger, and there was some partying. Joseph wasn't comfortable with that. Just a few days after he went missing, she made contact with Joseph's roommate, a man named Jake. She was desperately trying to gather all the facts and build out some sort of timeline. So she texted his roommate Jake about the last time he remembers seeing Joseph. I texted him once on Monday, June 27th at 1120 at night.

I'll read you what I typed. He says, hi, Jake. Surgeon rescue needs to double check. What day and time did he last see him? What did Jake tell you? Jake responded, it was about 1 o'clock p.m. on Sunday when I saw him leave. The hallway was too dark to define what colors he was wearing.

Sunday. Sunday. I texted back immediately, positive Sunday. He says positive Sunday. He says he saw him Sunday at 1 p.m. If the roommate, Jake, saw Joseph in town at the house on Sunday, that changes everything. Could I take a picture of the text? Mm-hmm.

Beep. The roommate was interviewed right away, told the troopers he was gone Saturday night with friends, but that he saw Joseph the next morning walking down the hallway in the house. Sunday morning, after Joseph had stopped responding to anyone. He's the only person who claims to have seen Joseph on Sunday. Joseph's last text to his fiance was around 10 a.m. on Saturday. So,

did Joseph drive back to his house in Nome, then go back out again the next day? And if so, why wouldn't he respond to his fiance, Megan? It just doesn't make any sense. If Jake was the only one to have seen Joseph on Sunday, then that would mean Christine is not the last person to have seen Joseph alive. Jake is. Jake is also cousins with Christine. Christine, Jake is her cousin. The guy that lives with Joseph is her cousin.

I don't like it. I kind of get a creepy feeling about it. Is there anything there? I don't know. I have not been able to interview Jake. I set up two interviews. He's never showed up to either one. I stayed an extra day there to try to interview Kevin Piscoya.

We ran over the trail. I just know that something's not adding up right with that. Upon learning of Jake's alleged sighting of Joseph on Sunday, his family became increasingly concerned. The timeline, which was barely making any sense in the first place, was now a complete clusterfuck. The family felt that someone was lying. They met with the state troopers at their office in Nome.

— I know that the timeline doesn't make sense to you, and we know that his roommate says he saw him. People are mistaken. It could be that. It could be that he came back in, forgot his phone, that there's all these theories, but I don't have the answers. Nobody does. — The roommate's Sunday. Do you know what he said about that?

Like, yes, I saw him. I spoke to him. I saw him driving away. What level of commitment do you think? — They passed each other in the home. Inside the house on Sunday. Guys, I'll be happy to go talk to Jake again. On July 3rd, one week after Joseph went missing, the Alaska State Troopers went to Joseph's house to interview his roommate. This is the actual tape from their interaction. It's just really important for us to get this timeline figured out. I mean, we don't think that This is the actual tape from their interaction. I give a damn about a beer bottle. I don't care. It's just really important to have the facts. I just want to know.

I need to know exactly what happened so I can fill that sequence because it's just important for me. You've got to understand that we're trying to help you pin this down because when we leave here and we don't have answers, everybody's gonna say, what the hell? With a homicide investigator

and a technical crimes investigator here, people know why we're here and they're like, holy shit, these guys are serious. Why are they here? They don't call us in for these for just whimsical things. During this interview, Jake remains almost completely silent, saying as little as possible. The troopers asked him about his alleged sighting of Joseph at 1 p.m. on Sunday.

They too found this suspicious. On Sunday. They too found this suspicious. there was no communications, there was no contact with anybody on his cell phone or anything after Saturday. And I guarantee the family is going to be asking questions. And they sure did. One of the many issues with Jake's sighting of Joseph is that it contradicts two other sightings of Joseph's truck. The two families driving to a wedding, 10.45am. Trooper Sergeant Cross, 1pm.

Something seems very wrong about this. No matter how weird Jake's story is, he's stuck with it. But some of the details and exact times have shifted in nearly every version he's told. Initially he said, I saw Joseph, we said what's up to each other, then he left. But then later he changed. Actually I didn't see Joseph, I just saw his backpack and I assumed it was Joseph. And then later he was like, no, actually, I just saw a silhouette of a person. I didn't even say hi to them. It's like three times he changed his account of when and where

he saw Joseph that day. Ultimately claiming that he couldn't actually tell for sure if it was Joseph because of a glare from the sun. So if it wasn't Joseph, there's just some random ass dude in your house? That's even weirder. It is possible that Jake may have his days mixed up that weekend. Regardless, he's continued to claim that it was Sunday that he saw him, 24 hours after anyone else had seen or heard from him. Why would he say he saw him on Sunday? I don't understand why he would come home Sunday, afternoon 1.30 p.m., after never getting back to his wife.

He doesn't, what's that message her? It's strange. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the whole thing just seems like a mess now. Why is it that the last two people to have seen Joseph alive, allegedly, or his roommate, and a woman who was rumored to be romantically involved with him, not to mention their cousins,

these are the last two people to see Joseph alive? What is at least significant here is that Christine is the only person who allegedly knew where he was going. Really, he drops off after he meets Christine at the beach. Unless Jake saw him Sunday. Christine's either trusting Jake's word because that's her cousin or going with the lie. Let's go back to Christine's story for a second. On Friday night, June 24th, she was at the bar with Joseph and her sister Kim until the wee hours of the morning.

She claims that they're best friends and they're together all the time. She keeps doing all these weird things, changing her story. Her story is inconsistent with her sister's accounts of what happened Saturday night. By the places that they went, by the things that they did, the stories just don't match up. Christine's sister, Kim, is like, oh yeah, I kind of thought they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Christine and her sister Kim have conflicting accounts of which bars they were at for how long and when. But there are two facts that remain consistent.

Both Christine and her sister Kim claim to have been at the bar with Joseph first at an establishment called Polaris and then a place called Breakers. And that whole story about her phone being factory restored, to me it was a lie. Joseph's friend Cyrus expressed his concerns on a conference call. impossible to have happened in that way. 100% impossible. Going through the thousands of pages of documents given to us by Joseph's family, I stumbled upon an old email exchange from that summer in 2016. I'm not friends with Christine on Facebook, so I can only see limited posts, but Selena is her friend and can see more.

It seems like she's proactively covering her tracks to me. She mentions her phone being locked out repeatedly. That is not normal. It's also odd she forgot the content of the last two messages Joseph sent. She claims to have looked at them but can't recall what they say. For someone that's clearly in love with Joseph, I find it highly unlikely she forgot." You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon,

or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that road trip bucket list? Get after it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. I'm Dan Tbersky. In 2011, something strange began to happen

at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls.

With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down-low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating.

Is this the largest mass hysteria since the witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical. Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus. I just noticed a picture with Joseph on Christine's Facebook. It's at the bar and it says it's from mobile uploads. Wouldn't that mean for a matter of fact this came from her cell phone? Scrolling through Christine's Facebook, they noticed a photo she posted on June 28, 2016, three days after Joseph went missing. And it's in the mobile uploads tab. It's a selfie photo of Christine holding her phone at the bar with Kim and Joseph right behind her.

Maybe I'm just hoping for things, but I feel like this has to be a gotcha moment. Dude, this is a selfie. It's Christine, Kim, and Joseph all at the bar. Does this not look exactly like the night she's describing? We gotta figure out what bar this is. The caption on Facebook says, this was taken about three weeks ago. Feeling concerned. Well, me too. This is Breaker's Bar. If she factory reset her phone,

then how on earth does she have this photo? Somebody is lying. with Odyssey. Your host is Payne Lindsay. The show is written by Payne Lindsay with additional assistance from Mike Rooney. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Lead producer is Mike Rooney, along with producers Dylan Harrington and Cooper Skinner. Editing by Mike Rooney and Cooper Skinner with additional editing by Dylan Harrington. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan.

Additional production by Victoria McKenzie, Alice Konick Glenn, and Eric Kintana. Artwork by Rob Sheridan, original music by Makeup and Vanity Set, mix and mastered by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group. Special thanks to all of the families and community members that spoke to the team. Additional information and resources can be found in our show notes. For more podcasts like Up and Vanished, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app,

or visit us at tenderfoot.tv. Thanks for listening.