Up and Vanished - S4E5: Finding Jon
Episode Date: March 8, 2024Payne and his producers beginning planning the best way to get closer to Oregon Jon, with internet sleuthing they eventually discover a trail to go down uncovering hints at how to get close enough to ...talk to him. 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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I need to stick to the facts.
I need to stick to what we know for sure.
And through that, maybe all these other things will start to make sense.
If we're sticking with what we know to be 100% true, in this case right now, then that only really leaves one person. Oregon John.
It was Oregon John who was the last person to see her that we know about. It was Oregon John
who had possession of Flo's things. Her shirt, her shoes, her jacket, and her cell phone.
He also offered no explanation as to why he had these things. He has since fled town,
and to my knowledge, has never returned. And he has a rap sheet in Gnome with 93 different
incidents on it, including sexual assault, cruelty to animals, and no matter the level
of involvement Oregon John may or may not have here. He is, without a doubt, the most
central character on the Night of Flo's disappearance, and he could very well hold the keys to solving this.
So we must talk to Oregon John.
But I wasn't feeling very confident about that. Everyone I've ever talked to has said he fled gnome years ago and moved somewhere in asia
wendy mentioned the philippines if that's the case we're in bad shape here in the police report on
oregon john that i received from the city i was able to learn his full name and so my internet
searching began and it didn't take long before I found a Facebook profile that seemed to exactly
match his physical description. I went deep back in the photos. There's no. This has to be the guy.
Good morning, Facebook.
Morgan John, a.k.a. Leigh John John.
Just another beautiful night in Kodiak, Alaska.
He's not in the Philippines.
He's right here in Alaska. From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, I'm your host Payne Lindsey, and this is Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun.
I have his Facebook.
He's in Alaska, but where in Alaska?
This is right in town, right here in between some buildings. Look at this.
Right behind some apartments. Okay, pause that. Okay, you can almost see what it says.
Damn, it's so blurry.
Keystone.
Wow, look at the power of that water.
Right behind some apartments. Wow, look at the power of that water.
Right behind some apartment.
In his most recent video, he was filming a river in some small Alaskan town behind some building complex.
Desperately scanning the video, I noticed a small sign in front of a parking spot. I'm going to screenshot it.
I can barely make out what it says.
Oh, I see it.
Keystone Chiropractic.
Nice.
Okay.
Okay, yeah, I found it.
A local business in Ketchikan, Alaska.
It looks like it's right next to an apartment complex.
If he was going to a chiropractor,
you'd think he'd be doing that in a town he lives in.
But I guess he could just be visiting.
I need more.
I feel like he was either going to the chiropractor
that day, or he was just right behind
his apartment complex looking at the river.
There's a bar across the street.
He might live there.
Yeah.
Here's the problem, though.
He's moving around everywhere, it seems like.
On Facebook, this dude is all over the map.
Seward, Homer, Ketchikan, Kodiak.
But all of his pictures are from the vantage point of a ship on water.
And it's a pretty big boat.
I mean, at least he's posting about it.
I think it's the same ship.
Deeper down on Facebook, I found a picture of the actual boat.
Okay.
And if you zoom in just enough,
you can see the name of it.
It's going to take us
two days to get to him in the first place.
We need to know
where he's going to be ahead of time.
So let's just Google the name of the boat.
Alaska?
Wait a minute.
It's part of the Alaska Marine Highway System.
The vessels transport people, freight and vehicles.
But this is also a commercial service.
It's like a cargo ship.
People have to know when supplies are coming in, right?
When supplies are coming into port, right?
This is the same ship.
Do they post the schedule of every individual ship?
Hold on, please tell me this is correct.
They do. Hold on. Please tell me this is correct. They do.
Holy shit.
If he actually
works on this ship, then
this schedule could tell me where he is at all
times. Maybe.
As long as he's not
on vacation or something,
he should be wherever this ship is
according to this schedule.
This is the only information we have to go off of.
So my idea here is to try to find out where he's going to be
in hopes of being there at the same time.
And if I can do that,
maybe I'll have the chance to approach him in person
and ask him about Florence Ocbialek's disappearance.
But these sailing schedules are pretty tight.
Four hours here, four hours there, six hours this way, eight hours that way.
And they're back to back all day.
I could be in the same location as him and he never leaves that ship.
This schedule is like months in advance.
Okay. Unless I could find a date that he's staying overnight somewhere. Okay, Friday the ship takes off at 5 45 pm and it doesn't leave again until 1230 p.m. the following day.
In two days, he's going to have the longest break on his sailing schedule that he has all month.
A full 12 hours.
An overnight stay in Kodiak, Alaska.
Which means that he's sleeping overnight on that ship.
We have to go there.
This is absolutely our best bet. I would have to assume that at some point he gets off that ship.
We can't afford to fly to a place he just left. But if we were just there ahead of time,
we could probably get him.
That's the move. That's the move.
If we're going to do it, we've got to leave now.
As I'm booking flights and looking for places to stay,
I have this anxious feeling coming over me.
God forbid he's not there for whatever damn reason.
What if we do all of this, and he never even leaves this port?
It's just a big risk.
My goal is not to just say, hey, I want to sit down and actually talk to him.
And for that to happen, I need to know he has some time on his hands.
At least with this plan, I know how much time he has.
I think.
We have to turn around and leave 7 a.m latest the next morning so we're going to be running off little to no sleep if we sleep at all
what felt like a consistent pattern the same ship with the same name the same cities over and over
and they all match the schedule on the
alaska marine highway website but what i don't like about this is that he hasn't posted on
facebook in over a week for the past seven days or so he hasn't posted anything at all
it could be nothing but on the off chance he doesn't work there anymore, something happened, anything,
this would be a total waste of time
that I'd rather spend in the right direction.
It's just a big risk.
I need to figure out if he's really going to be there or not.
Or we just got to come up with a different plan entirely.
What I need to know is where he's going to be.
Well, I don't have a crystal ball,
and I feel like I've maximized all of my internet sleuthing here.
I don't know anyone who knows this person directly,
and I know in my gut, if I just reach out as me right now,
there's no way he's responding.
When I was a kid growing up, in the summer of 6th grade, one of my best friends Jeremy
and I came up with a pact.
It was silly at the time, but we swore to each other that if we ever got in trouble,
that we'd have fake names in the back of our head to say quickly enough to somebody
to seem real.
The name that I chose was Eric Gaulding.
I know, it doesn't even sound real. The name that I chose was Eric Gaulding. I know, it doesn't even sound real. And ever since
Up and Vanished season one, I've been operating a fake Facebook account behind the scenes, just
poking around, lurking. As I sit here wondering how on earth I can physically find Oregon John,
my light bulb goes off. So I took a shot in the dark.
Okay, so I just messaged John from my fake Facebook account.
I simply said, hey John, do you miss Alaska? And to my surprise, you responded, saying,
I'm there right now. I'm only up here temporarily.
I just said, nice.
Where are you off to next?
Anywhere they pay me to go.
Anywhere they pay me to go.
He's talking to me,
and he's talking to a complete stranger,
which I think is a little weird.
He's talking to me on Facebook, but he thinks I'm somebody else.
But I still have no earthly idea where this person is on a damn map.
I tried to keep it going for a minute, but I knew that any second now, he was going to
be like, who the hell is this?
Okay, I'm going to give it a beat here before I look way too suspicious.
I feel like I'm playing with fire here, but all I want to know is what happened to Florence Akpialik.
Every person that I've spoken to brings up Oregon John.
I mean, I don't know how I can
ask him in a roundabout way
when his next off days are.
Before I knew it,
our Facebook messages
were getting friendlier than ever.
I was inching closer
and closer,
just trying to find out where exactly he'd be in 36 hours.
A big ask, as a stranger.
I'm just going to keep playing along here.
Okay, I just asked him,
do you get to explore the town at night,
or do you have to stay on the ship, or how does it work?
Well, normally my shift don't start till 11 a.m., so we'll be pulling into port in the morning.
I got a few hours to walk around.
I've been to Kodiak, Seaward, Sitka, all them places.
I think we're good. He's going to get off that ship.
Chances are he's walking off that ship, at least for a few moments.
But to be there to confront him, I'm going to have to wait for hours,
which means I need to get there now.
It depends on what time we pull into port and what time we leave.
But no, they don't make you stay on the ship.
If you're off duty, you're off duty.
So he's going to be in Kodiak, Alaska for a 12-hour period on Friday.
It seems like a sure shot.
Almost too much so.
Either way, we're rocking with it.
For the past 12 hours, John has continuously texted me.
We're talking about Kodiak.
And I'm still using my fake Facebook profile.
I don't know why he hasn't asked who I am yet.
Okay, he just said they have a really nice Class 3 gun store in Kodiak.
They sell suppressors and
full-auto machine guns. It's pretty cool.
No way.
He just sent me a video of himself.
Charging handle.
Oh yeah! Yeah! Charging handle. Oh, yeah.
Oh, damn!
Shit.
Oh, fuck, my shoulder.
Oh, fuck.
Oh!
I...
I...
Holy shit, that's a monster!
Jesus.
I want to say he's just showing it off.
He's bragging, trying to be buddy-buddy with me or something.
Okay, he just sent a picture of another gun.
Okay, he likes his guns,
and he wants to show them to me.
Maybe he just wants to be friends
with a total stranger on the internet.
Then he sent me a picture of another gun,
and another one.
But what's the message here?
Maybe we're just bonding.
My mom would say,
stop what you're doing right now.
We're definitely meeting in public,
but I have to keep going.
He's got a lot of big guns,
but there's no way they let them on the ship, right?
It's his job.
That's where he works.
Maybe in a weird way, this might be the safest place I could ever meet him.
So here's the plan.
I'm about to board a flight to Seattle, which then takes me to Anchorage.
Then I'm taking another flight to Kodiak, Alaska.
And in 36 hours, I'm going to be waiting at the dock
where his ship is going to be.
It's time to tighten up and figure this shit out.
Around 10 hours later, we landed in Anchorage.
I was trying to do as much preparation as possible.
Who is Oregon John?
And what the hell am I getting myself into?
When we got to the Airbnb in Anchorage,
we had about 12 hours before our next flight in the morning.
And through some serious digging,
I found someone who knows Oregon John better than almost anyone.
So well that I can't tell you at all who he is I swore that I wouldn't but his insight is very real and very helpful in
this moment I want to know his whole backstory who is this guy what am I
dealing with is this gonna be okay I talked to him on the phone transcribed
the call and I had my good friend Robert cotta read it verbatim this is what he said
my understanding was that he was the last person confirmed to have seen her at his tent on
i guess it was west beach he had a pattern of i mean he was a real piece of work
but he was a navy veteran i believe who had some degree of health issues that sort
of made him a little slow and awkward walking.
Still a strong guy underneath that.
He had a civil protective order filed against him from an ex-girlfriend who was also a younger native Alaskan woman.
They had some sort of like on-again, off-again relationship where he was providing her with alcohol and marijuana.
And I'm not sure how extended her stays there were.
If it was sort of just like she crashed there from time to time
and, you know, slept together in exchange for it.
But they'd broken up and gotten back,
briefly gotten back together,
like he had convinced her to come over, but she was drunk,
but accused him of assaulting her and ran out the door.
He basically called this couple, who were also much younger native Alaskans,
who he was kind of friends with because he gave them weed and asked them to come over.
Basically, they were his alibis.
You could sort of see that he had an explosive edge underneath him.
He seemed like the sort of person who could get very angry very easily.
I think he got out of town not too long afterwards.
Keep a little bit of personal distance.
He really does like to talk about himself.
He's the sort of person who's like,
creates his own reality.
As long as it's sort of not adversarial,
like if you seem interested,
he would want to tell you his story
and be so proud of his alibi
and you know how wrong everyone else is.
If he thought you were accusing him of horrible crimes,
he's the sort of guy who would, I don't know,
in all earnestness go off into just like a loud
red face rant about how he was a soldier of Christ to fight against people who do that
sort of stuff to women, not the sort of person who would do it himself.
He did other stuff to vulnerable women and wrote me into kind of helping him out after the fact. I think there's
also like a 50% chance that he's told himself a completely different narrative. And even if he was
being completely honest with you, he might not remember doing that. Be cognizant of your own
personal safety when approaching him. I don't know if he's armed at this point. He's the sort of person who would want to be armed.
Could get very fatalistic if he thinks that, you know,
he's going to finally take the fall for it.
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pursuant to any operating agreement with i gaming ontario i have one more person i plan to talk to
andy klamzer the private investigator who I spoke to a few episodes ago.
He's been actively investigating another missing persons case in Nome, Alaska. Joseph Balderas,
which is also very suspicious. Andy is a former cop in Alaska. And he knows way more about this
shit than I do. If he's willing to meet with me, I'm going to do it.
Well, I mean, the more you talk to him, the better,
because the more he talks about this and whatever he says,
all the contradictions, if he's the one that did it,
all the contradictions are going to add up in the end.
It's a gift here that he's talking this much.
If you can keep him talking about it, that is great.
And just when we thought we had a good plan here,
things took another turn.
At the Airbnb in Anchorage, something just kept bothering me.
The only thing I can't control
is whether or not he's actually on that ship.
And something about this whole scenario
made me feel like he wasn't going to be.
So I messaged him again.
Turns out, he's not going to be there.
And he's back at home where he lives right now,
in a totally different place,
in somewhere I've never looked up in my life,
Ketchikan, Alaska.
The whole plan feels up in the air now,
and this is exactly what I wanted to talk to Andy about.
I mean, it's rare that you can sit down and talk like this
with somebody who's the main suspect,
so I think you should keep it going.
I don't see the upside of coming clean with him.
I don't see any reason to do that.
If he ever finds out who I was or looks me up, he'll know that that's me.
Figure out a way to just sort of continue the friendship without seeming weird or anything.
Now I have a new dilemma.
Now I'm meeting him on his home turf.
The guns were cool and fun on Facebook,
but that's when I thought he couldn't have them in person.
The big concern is that if I pop up as Payne Lindsey out of nowhere,
it's going to look pretty weird,
given that he just met this stranger on the internet.
And all of a sudden I'm here,
and I want to talk about a disappearance
If he consented to do the interview, it's gonna change completely what you get out of him because he's gonna be guarded
He's gonna know what you're doing
There's no way he's gonna go for this now I'm entering a whole different realm here
This whole thing started with me just trying to figure out where he was.
And through that he became very friendly.
Which I still don't know what to make of.
Do I abort this altogether?
And surprise him as Payne Lindsey?
What do we think is going to happen when I do that?
Nothing good I'm sure.
Do I proceed as this Eric character? My fake Facebook, and try to meet him as his person?
Breaking it down in my head, the scenarios go one or two ways here.
If I know where he's going to be, and I pop up and say, hey, I'm Payne Lindsey, I want to talk about Florence Okbialik,
there's a pretty good chance he's going to say fuck off.
Am I trying to get a podcast soundbite?
Am I trying to fulfill some sort of personal mission? Or am I trying to figure out what the hell happened
to Florence Akpialik? Looking at all the options, my best course of action for the biggest yield
would be to meet him as this fake person.
That is, if he actually believes this person is real. I told him that I was in Kodiak
for a while with my uncle. He used to work on the U.S.
Marine Highway. I'm using his sky miles to get there.
The other thing you do is introduce another person.
If I introduced a friend, who could be with me in the moment, it gave me a huge advantage.
And who's that person in real life?
I don't know.
If I was going to go down this path, I want as much backup as possible.
2v1.
I look like I don't belong there.
Here's the reality.
I have bleached hair, tattoos on my arms.
I look and feel like I'm not from Ketchikan, Alaska.
Having another person may help me offset that.
You think you're from Alaska?
It's gotta be Cooper.
The guy who sent me this case in the first place. He's from Alaska. It's got to be Cooper, the guy who sent me this case in the first place.
He's from Alaska.
He knows this territory more than anyone, and he's with me right now.
Talk about a big favor.
The goal would be to make contact with him, to know where he is.
And you could even pitch this idea of a second person before you actually meet up with him.
The second that I approach him as me,
there's a chance he thinks that's weird.
Because it is.
We can't just assume that he's not going to think
that this stranger that I met
has absolutely nothing to do with this investigative journalist
that just came knocking on my door the same day.
Maybe it's better to spring that on him
without any advance warning.
You know, just show up with somebody.
I'm still on the fence about this.
Should I tell him that I want to meet him as his fake person?
He might just not believe me.
The worst thing that would happen is he stops answering.
The real worst case scenario is you show up at the door
and he pulls a gun on you and shoots you.
That could happen.
Well, that wouldn't be good.
That's not the way to go.
He messaged me.
Probably won't be back to work till next week if you want to come out here and check it out
and come on by and you can probably crash on my floor for a week.
I'm really just debating whether or not I go to his house.
I don't think you should. So where do I go then? I don't know. You try to draw him out.
Better to get him in town and not out there at that fucking house.
This is where all his fucking guns are.
Just tell him I'm buying him beers and shit. Help me out.
That's where he's going to start talking.
Meet him at a bar or a restaurant or a diner or something.
Bar probably is easiest at night.
You meet him for a drink or two, and you're like,
hey, I want to get into what you're doing, blah, blah, blah.
You never have to mention Noam or anything.
This is the dilemma I've never been in before.
But it made me stare in the mirror and think about what this shit's all about.
Why am I doing this?
Sure, it's a show.
It's my job.
You're listening to it.
But what's the goal?
To make some spicy clip?
To pretend like we did something to get really close and then just stop i don't think so i think this is a better way to do it you're not going to get
these comments you get in a bar drinking with him.
I think this is a better way to do it.
The other thing of this is you need an emergency situation.
I got to get out of here. You get a phone call from us, I got to go. Sorry. We're going to say that you're staying in a motel, that you're not staying.
There's no way in hell I'm going to his house.
I need to meet him in public.
The best place to do that, without seeming weird,
has to be a bar.
He messaged me.
There's a lot of bars in town.
Let me know when your plane lands
and I'll be there.
It's weird that he even responded
that he wanted to go get drinks
and everything.
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah!
Oh baby!
He just sent this to you?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, that ammunition is super expensive. It's like a dollar a round.
Yeah, he was telling me that too.
Why in the world would he do this? Why in the world would he do this?
Why in the world would he meet you?
And why would he want to form a friendship
based upon somebody reaching out on Facebook?
I mean, it's bizarre to me.
What possibilities are there?
He's lonely.
He's stupid.
He doesn't have friends.
But then it's like, is there a small part of him
that knows that he'd be playing with fire
but thinks that he's smart enough to navigate it?
I don't think so.
No?
No.
And I'd engage him on other subjects
so that you sort of broaden the...
Like, tell him you want to buy a gun for personal protection
so he's comfortable with you
because you're talking about other stuff, you know?
Charge and handle. Oh yeah! He's a weird dude.
Yeah.
What would he be thinking? This is like gonna be a great new friendship, you know? Out of the blue?
I don't know, man. What kind of person does that?
Somebody that's screwed up.
But it also, you know, could make him dangerous, you know.
I think it makes him dangerous.
Delusional, which kind of puts him in a different category.
He's also completely functional.
I mean, he got a state job.
I'm going to got a state job.
I'm going to have a partner, my friend Cooper.
2v1. Something else as just a small distraction.
Also, I'm not convinced that he just doesn't know who I actually am.
And in that case, I definitely want one more person there.
But we're not going to half-ass this thing.
We got to have a whole backstory. Where are we from what is your name why are we here we can't mess these things up this is not how this whole
thing goes down where's your car like what car did you get you driving just say it's your uncle's
key no you won't have a car no it's your car from back home yeah no you don't have a car. Yeah, you're traveling. You should not have a car. Yeah. I think your last name should be your real last name.
It was like a coincidence that you happened to be here the same time I was planning.
I knew that you'd been out here in the past, so I just texted you and you were here.
And it's my off-season, so this is the winner.
What's your favorite place to visit here?
The Golden Summit.
Is that a real place?
Yeah.
Just have one name.
That's all you need.
This is the bar that my friend went to.
Okay, perfect.
Is it still here, though?
What's it called?
Eagles Club.
It's still open?
It was here like two months ago.
Okay, we'll double check.
This is already sounding very weird and unbelievable.
The last thing I want to do is get hung up on some stupid detail,
like if this bar is still open or not.
At this point, he's beyond friendly,
and he offered to pick me up from the airport.
We can't do that.
Now I have to have a different story about my car.
So I rented a car here?
You can have a car here you're in a car you're in a car and somehow i have to bring in my other friend too
so cooper is riley i am eric and i told organ john that I want to meet him in person because I'm interested in doing the
job that he does, being a seaman. And it's just a coincidence that my friend Cooper, aka Riley,
is here at the same time. If you continue talking, those recordings would be like gold
to law enforcement. Right when I thought I felt comfortable, the real rational part of my brain kicked in big time.
Why on earth is Oregon John agreeing to meet with me
as a stranger?
Does he know more than I know?
Does he not care?
Am I just overthinking this whole damn thing?
It's time to buckle down.
I can't waver anymore i want to figure out what
happened to florence akpialik and this is the entire goal of this podcast and i'm willing to
go to links that i've never been to before to try and do that alaska is a one-party state, which means that in recording other people,
only one party has to be there in order for it to be legal. My flights in six
hours. There's no way I'm sleeping tonight.
I've been on four different flights in the last 18 hours.
Small rickety planes in the remote region of northern Alaska.
After a while, you get used to the turbulence.
The plane's engine starts to feel like white noise.
When I get here, I'm going to have to face the music.
For about a year now, I've been investigating an unsolved missing persons case,
and it's all led me to this moment, to this place,
a tiny town in remote Alaska.
I'm minutes away from what is likely the most terrifying encounter of
my entire life. And there's no escape plan. But I've mentally prepared for this
moment. I know exactly why I'm here. I know why the victim's family wants me to
come here. And I know why the police have never stepped foot here.
I'm about to meet the number one suspect in a murder case.
I know they're dangerous.
I know that they're armed.
There's no time for second thoughts now.
But what if I'm walking into a trap?
What if this confrontation goes way south?
You need to snap out of it.
Turn around.
But we both know we can't do that. I didn't come this far for nothing.
I've landed in Ketchikan,
and I'm less than 20 minutes away from meeting Oregon John at a bar.
I'm going to take you to... at a bar. What kind of tape do you have?
Hold it until it counts down.
Then it's good to go?
Yeah, then it's good to go.
Okay, gotcha.
You press record on your end.
Yeah, that's the only thing is this one,
if you don't hold it until it counts down,
it's not going to connect.
That's charged in?
Yep.
All right. Happy looking.
I'm good.
Let's do it.
We don't know what the hell we're walking into.
I found a bar that was quiet enough in the back and put as many recording devices as we could, hiding in plain sight.
Now we're sitting and waiting.
I sat there with Cooper next to me on my right,
at a table in the back of the bar that was facing the door.
He messaged me.
10 minutes away.
Is it a real 10 minutes?
Are you here already?
Either way, we're on high alert now.
Remember why you came here.
Then he walked in.
John.
Hey, man.
I was just texting.
Hey, what's episode,
go search for Talking to Death on your podcast app,
my new weekly show.
And listen to the latest episode with David Robinson that features another missing persons case.
That's Talking to Death on your podcast app and the most recent episode with David Robinson to hear a full breakdown of this week's episode.
Thank you. and Payne Lindsey. 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 Kanik-Glen,
and Eric Quintana.
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.