Up and Vanished - The Vanishing Point: Episode 2, End of the Road

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

From the Up and Vanished team comes The Vanishing Point. Episode 2: The last confirmed sighting of 35 year old Emmilee Risling’s was on a cold Autumn day in October 2021. She was standing on Pecwan bridge but several reports place her at “the end of the road”; a remote area on the Yurok reservation. Our team travels to the end of the road to speak to the man some say knows more about Emmilee’s disappearance than he leads on.  Follow on social @thevanishingpointpod 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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please check out The Vanishing Point, a new series from of Up and Vanish this January, please check out The Vanishing Point, a new series from the Up and Vanish team. This podcast is absolutely free. But if you want to listen to it ad-free, subscribe to Tinderfoot Plus at TinderfootPlus.com or on Apple Podcasts. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or

individuals participating in the podcast and do not represent those of Tenderfoot TV or their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. I've learned a lot over the last seven years of looking into missing persons cases. And one of the biggest takeaways I have is to follow every lead. Because you truly never know what you're going to find. In episode one, our team spoke to the family of Emily Riesling, who disappeared.

Now it's time for them to talk to other people who might have some insight into her disappearance. She stayed with me for about six to eight months before she vanished, I guess, and we just became really good friends. And she's gone through some stuff, but aren't we all? In the weeks leading up to her disappearance, Emily was staying with her close friend, Tech West McCovey. Tech, who was also a member of the Hoopa Valley tribe,

was the first person to realize that Emily was missing. Can you walk us through the moment that you knew that Emily was missing? It had been a couple days since I had seen her. I usually am able to track her down or whenever she'd just wander off or whatnot. And I finally asked one of my co-workers if they had seen her. They live towards the end of the road there, because the last place she was seen was down there. So anyway, my co-worker told me

yeah, she had seen her down there standing on the bridge the morning before I asked, so I got off work and immediately just drove down there. I waited there probably till like 3 in the morning or something, she never surfaced or anything. But I mean, I always just went back down there to go look for her, wait for her to show up there, you know. I must have put over like 3,500 miles in my car looking for her from White City on down to Klamath to wherever they thought she might have had a sighting. Emily vanished in October of 2021.

While the Sheriff's Department last placed her on Highway 169's Pequon Bridge, many of Emily's loved ones suspect she most likely went to the highway's end, a spot she visited often. This location, just 30 minutes north of Pequon Bridge, is known as the end of the road. We're going to actually go there. Yeah. What should we expect to see? All trees and a few houses and the river. It's kind of a really, really small place.

The nearest store is like 30 miles from there. Everybody kind of lives up in the mountains or up the hill. But once you get to the end of the road, there's a church and a cemetery. Right when you get to the end of the road, it'll kind of go up the hill. And there'll be a straight house where that's where the Hunsuckers live. And then Frank's right on the turn right there. He lives right when you get to the end of the road. I'm Slesia Stanton.

This is The Vanishing Point. Thank you. A friend of Riesling's, Tech West McCoby, 42, has also been plagued by local whispers regarding Riesling's whereabouts. Riesling lived with McCoby on and off in Hoopa for around eight months before she disappeared. Everybody just kind of turned their back on her. And she just wanted to be loved, you know? She just wanted to have somebody that's not going to judge her for the stuff that she was going through. Like we talked about in episode one,

after the birth of her daughter, Emily's life began to spiral out of control. She was grappling with the effects of postpartum psychosis, a severe mental illness that affects one in 500 mothers. Unable to access the resources she needed, Emily began self-medicating. And as her friend Tech West remembers, Emily had begun surrounding herself with folks who hindered her chances of recovery. When I had first met her, some people that she were hanging out with, I guess,

had taken her car and all her belongings that she had, you know, were in there and stuff, and went and ditched it way out in the mountains somewhere, and so she never did get it back. So that was kind of a hard thing for her. Her daughter recently just gotten taken from her. She had just broken up with her baby's daddy. He was kind of not very nice to her either.

Had a lot of domestic violence, I think, there. We also heard this from Emily's mom, Judy. She felt that, in many ways, the domestic violence her daughter experienced set off a cascade of effects that isolated Emily. She was just kind of lost. I mean, you know, she needed somebody. She just felt like she was alone in the world. Tuck says she wanted to make sure that Emily didn't feel alone during these hard times. But the reality was, even though there were moments of clarity, Emily's mental illness continued to decline. It all led to mounting challenges. took her into a facility, she would just get right back out. But there was, like, several accounts of them just dropping her off at my house because they didn't really want to deal with her. You know, they were kind of tired of just having calls about her walking around.

I was at the end of the road, and the officer said, the police force were actually, like, getting tired of, like, reporting to the calls that were about Emily. They were kind of, like, flipping coins on it. Like, who's going to do it this time? After being spotted on the bridge, days passed with no signs of Emily. Worried, Tech launched an exhaustive search for her missing friend. In Laura's article for the Two River Tribune, Tech spoke about her efforts. McCovey has spent time talking to the locals

in an area called the End of the Road, just past Peck One Bridge, where Riesling was allegedly last seen. McCovey believes the small group of people who live there know more than they're saying about Riesling's disappearance. The folks down at End of the Road were all acting really weird after Riesling disappeared, McCovey said.

She explained that she went down there to look for Riesling after she failed to return to McCovey's house. I've known these people my whole life. They're a very tight-knit community. I think everyone down there knows something, but they're not coming clean with it. They take care of each other. At the end of the road, Tech quickly gathered accounts from residents, many of who say they saw Emily around the time of her disappearance. One resident's statement in particular stood out. One of the neighbor guys that lives down there, Frank, he comes over and talks to me. The end of the road is a small community, and Frank is one of its few residents.

Tech, who spoke with Frank periodically about Emily's disappearance, says he initially denied even knowing Emily. It was an admission she found strange because Emily had dated Frank's son for quite some time. But then his story changed. And his story changed. He's telling me that Emily has walked down to the river bar and is going to go float down to Appa Village. Appa is a small village located next to the Klamath River, a place the locals have deemed a spiritual ground. Its isolation means the only way to get there is by boat or river float.

I was like, well, that's not good because she would do that. She was always at the river. Like, when she'd be upset, she'd just go down there and holler around. That's where she would go when she needed to get a reset or, like, some kind of clarity. She'd just go down by the river and talk to the water. The river at that time was not very safe at all. And so I got back to cell service and I contacted her mom and I was like, I think we need to report her missing because these guys are all saying they seen her

down there two days ago, but she had apparently walked off down the river with no clothes on, no shoes on, and was heading towards Otpaw Village. Frank told me the last time he'd seen her was down at the river bar throwing rocks into the water and he said well we asked her and I was like so we who's this like you and who else you know like who's the other person that you're speaking of when you say we asked her this or you know and but they're a pretty tight knit community they all kind of acted funny I mean from how I know them to be you know I don't know it felt like to me like they were hiding something.

Have you spoken to Frank lately? Not like recently. I mean, I've seen him, you know, periodically here and there and stuff and it's kind of weird because as soon as I said that, you know, you might want to talk to him about Emily, he just starts crying and starts talking about these, I don't know, he said that her spirit had visited him in jail while he was in there and just a bunch of other things. It didn't make no sense to me, but he just gets really emotional about it.

According to Tech, getting a straight answer was hard, but she kept following every lead. Next thing I heard, you know, somebody sighted her down in Klamath. I was kind of crazy for her to be able to make it from point A to point B within just less than a day. You know, walking especially, barefoot with no apparel on. So anyway, I ripped over to Klamath and investigated all around there, talked to people that I could and asked if they'd seen her, and it turned out it wasn't her.

I have several theories, but then after talking to everybody and their different sightings and their different stories, I kind of think something bad might have happened with her, and they're just all trying to cover it up. We had, like, a deal. I was like, if you've just taken off, or at least you've gone more than two days, contact me. You know, if you need me to come pick you up,

or anything, bring you clothes or something, just call me, and I'll come do it. If she would have made it somewhere, she would have contacted me. Do you think there's foul play involved in Emily's disappearance? I don't know. There's, like, several different things. Like, I found her purse, belongings and stuff,

like, scattered about the road down there in one area. It was a little bit after somebody said they had stopped and helped her out of the road. And I was like, was she just laying in the road? And they said, yeah, she was kind of just laying there. She had her sweatshirt kind of pulled over her face, and they thought that she was dead or whatever, and that were the case. And she looked like she needed help. Why didn't you give her a ride? And I was like, oh, she didn't want to get in the car.

She just wanted to head back down towards the end of the road. What purse belongings did you find in the road? Well, it wasn't too much. There was just, like, little things of makeup. They were all smashed and, like, ran over and stuff. I knew it was her purse belongings because there was an itinerary for my uncle's funeral that she always packed

around with her. Do you think somebody knows? I think, yeah, definitely somebody knows something more than they're saying, you know? Do you think more than one person? Yeah, I do. Thank you. Rakuten, you can. You can earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. If you've ever bought electronics, home decor, fashion and beauty, or booked a trip, well, you could have got cash back. But don't worry, it's not too late. It's free and easy to use, and you get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check. Earn cash back at stores like Sephora, Old Navy, and Expedia. It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at Rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N.ca.

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Chanty was going to take me on a trip to the place he's from. From the producer of Megan, Five Nights at Freddy's, and The Black Phone. Alice! Alice! Alice! Get out! Now.

Many kids have imaginary friends. Ready or not. Just because you stop believing in them doesn't mean they're gone. Here he comes. And they're angry you left. Imaginary. Now playing only in theaters. Hi, my name is Greg O'Rourke. I'm from the villages of O'Rourke, Notchco, and Kepo. It's along the Klamath River. from the villages of Moorock, Natchicoke and Quepo,

it's along the Klamath River. I am the Chief of Police for the Yurok Tribal Police Department, and I am also a member of the Yurok Tribe. As a Yurok citizen with 23 years of law enforcement experience, Chief O'Rourke has deep ties to his community. And while tribal police functions vary nationwide, Chief O'Rourke's force is cross-deputized with Humboldt County.

This means that in addition to enforcing tribal law, Yurok police may also enforce state law. So it sounds like you being Native helps build trust with the families. Yes. I'm not just a Native police officer, but a person who's grown up, you know, being part of our culture,

and then moving into law enforcement. One of those unofficial roles that I kind of took upon myself was to be that liaison between our Native communities and law enforcement. And so based off of my own experiences, there's times that I will get cooperation from somebody by the nature of who I am. And that community is not going to give that same level of cooperation or trust to a deputy, you know, who's non-native. I can't tell you how many times in my career when

I would respond to a scene or call for service and the person would go, oh, Greg, I'm glad it's you. So I knew Emily personally. She babysat my daughter's. And that Emily was the one that everyone fondly remembers. I didn't deal with Emily professionally after she started her slide, you know, into her mental health and her substance abuse. But because of her erratic behavior, the community here was becoming resentful. And I don't, I actually, I can't say that.

That's speculation. I don't know. But, you know, what I believe is that Emily was basically burning bridges and hoop on, so she was going to a new area downriver. She needed help. I know one of the things that the family is resentful towards is when Emily was arrested, they were relieved because she was finally in a safe place. As we mentioned in episode one, shortly before her disappearance, Emily was arrested for starting a small fire in a local cemetery.

They knew where she was. They were hopeful that she would get clean, get fed, and then have potential resources to help her. But from a criminal justice standpoint, Emily didn't need jail. She didn't. That was the last thing that she needed

was to be incarcerated. But there's nothing in place up here. There's no infrastructure to be able to help address when someone's in crisis. And that's what Emily was going through when she got arrested. She was going through crisis.

Chief O'Rourke expressed concern about the limited number of mental health resources available to the community. In fact, the only mental health hospital in the region is an hour away. But even if you can get there, getting in is its own challenge. The facility has only 16 beds available. But as Chief O'Rourke told us, these challenges are often the tip of the iceberg. I didn't have the resources or the capacity to be able to conduct both the investigative portion of it and a search and rescue portion of it. I elected to go with investigation and put my resources there to be able to try to track down leads.

And unfortunately, that left the search and rescue portion on the reservation or the area that she was last seen unfulfilled. I can confirm that the last place that she was seen that we can corroborate was on Pequon Bridge. And it was a Monday, and I believe it was October 13th. And she was seen naked on the bridge. Chief O'Rourke told us that clothes had been recovered in the area. But with the rainy weather they had had at the time of Emily's disappearance,

forensic teams couldn't obtain the biological evidence needed to definitively prove the clothing was hers. With few leads remaining, the case went cold. The family and the community are result-oriented when it comes to a missing person. For law enforcement, we have to be evidence-oriented. And so we have to be able to conduct a search and the investigation with the potential of prosecution afterwards. And that's oftentimes in direct conflict with what the family's looking for. They want their loved one back. I don't blame them. You know, and unfortunately, that's one of the things that the family just couldn't hear. And it put law enforcement kind of in the crosshairs

of that misunderstanding. The sheriff's office has taken a lot of heat from the family, and I don't think it's necessarily been founded. This was a very in-depth investigation, and it spanned multi-agencies, us, the sheriff's office, and Hoopa Tribal Police. So any lead that came in or any tip that came in, we followed. So it really was an issue of three law enforcement agencies working together towards the same goal, sharing information. According to O'Rourke, the investigation is still ongoing. We still try to follow any lead that could potentially open this up. What I can say is there is no indication of foul play,

but we also have to consider the strong possibility that she drowned in the river. And without any indicator of foul play, then the likelihood of that possibility becomes stronger. then the likelihood of that possibility becomes stronger. So it sounds like you think most likely she drowned on the river and will never be able to confirm that. I don't want to say never. There is a possibility that remains, go out into the ocean and then hit that current, that north current,

and potentially run Oregon. You know, it's definitely possible. But I pull a lot of bodies out of the Trinity River. The Trinity will tend to give her bodies back. The Trinity's not greedy, but the Klamath is greedy. She tends to keep her bodies. I'm Samantha Cole, host of the new season of Understood,

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She disappeared in a place with a lot of known convicts. Frank, he lives in the, right when you get to the end of the road. When you see the end of the road, it's going to make you scared. Inside Chief O'Rourke's squad car, our team began the hour-and-a-half- long drive down Highway 169 to Pequon Bridge. It was time to see the end of the road for themselves.

Can you imagine driving this, Jamie, just regularly? It's beautiful. The narrow road twists through the mountains and trees, the Klamath River occasionally peeking through. The forest feels both breathtaking and ominous. This road, it turns out, is the only way in and the only way out. Can you tell us a little bit about the river and like how rough it is? Well, I mean, as pretty as the Trinity is and as the Klamath is, it's, you know, it's water. Water is a very, very powerful thing. The river is very powerful.

And with the rocky river bottom and the wooded terrain, there's a lot of strainers. If you're unfamiliar with river strainers, think of them as a snag in a river's flow, like a fallen tree or clump of debris. River water and small objects will tend to filter through, but large items, they'll clutter in the snag, creating a perilous trap. And people end up getting a foot entrapment

or get caught up in a strainer. And if you don't respect that river, it will take you. Our team ventures deeper into the woods. The distance between houses growing as the minutes pass. Do people live out here? Oh yeah, absolutely. It's a small community. And in regards to Emily, I think

oftentimes people in the Downriver community kind of get a little bit offended at some of the implication that's been going around of people Downriver hiding Emily. How in the world did Emily get here? Probably hitchhiked or walked. Would that be common to walk this? Yeah, actually it is. You wouldn't think it, but quite a few people will still walk the roads.

So is there any idea of what Emily would have been walking or hitchhiking down here for? Don't know, and we haven't been able to kind of uncover that. What we do know, though, based off of her prior behavior, is that she would often camp out on the river bar, you know, as part of her transient lifestyle. Just then, Chief O'Rourke pulls to a stop. Pequon Bridge. Pequon Bridge.

Pequon Bridge is a stretch of steel connecting one side of the valley to the other. Against one of the railings, a weather-beaten flyer clings to the metal. It's a missing persons poster. Emily, her hair a choppy brown, smiles up from the paper. In bold print, it lists a $20,000 reward for information on her disappearance. So this is the bridge that we can confirm where she's at, standing in the middle of the bridge, naked. And who's the person that can place her on the bridge?

The school bus, the whole bus. The whole bus saw her standing here? Standing on the bridge. The middle of the bridge, the side of the bridge? On the side of the bridge. Must have been cold. Yeah. Yep.

The Trinity River meets the Klamath River under Pequon Bridge, a dividing point between what feels like two worlds. On the Trinity side, the water looks shallow and rocky. The Klamath, on the other hand, is dark and murky. You cannot see the bottom. And it flows much faster. The unsettling truth is that on this side of the bridge, there's no way to tell if anything might be stuck under the rushing current.

So this is a pretty high flow right here. So, you know, there's a lot of water coming down. It's coming down fast. And you can see just, you know, like those willows and the trees just kind of hanging down. If you get caught up in that and the weight of the water is pushing on you especially with this type of you know strength i mean if you can't bench 300 pounds you're not going to be able to push yourself off against your strength yeah this looks pretty powerful it is powerful could someone get swept away in this oh easily very easily so what else does maybe tell you? Maybe she floated downriver. What does that mean?

So, I mean, if I'm up and, you know, around there, I'm going to float downriver to get here. What would people float on? Inner tube and frickin' board. In October? Well, yeah. You know, cold wouldn't be smart, but it's possible. You know, hypothermia would set in pretty quickly.

I mean, the odds are, you know, she didn't do that. But... Did people say that she looked like she was wet or anything when they saw her? Uh, no, not on the bridge. You know, a couple statements from the community people is that she was going to go down to a village further down a river, you know, by a river. And she was very adamant about that.

Do you know how long after she was spotted on the bridge your officer was able to respond? The next day. So it was on a Monday, and so the next two days, he was down in this area looking for her. Again, the last known spot that we can confirm was here, but yet a couple miles down the road is where she was last reported seen, and that's where the family wanted us to do a search.

But it's just too big of a stretch to be able to do that search with our limited capacity here in the county. Our team sets course for the end of the road, but before they leave, something on the bridge catches their attention. All right, guys, ready? Greg, did you see this graffiti on the... Yes. Written on the bridge are messages, some of which feel like echoes of teenage rebellion. But then, there are other messages. Ones that carry a much more haunting tone.

Isn't that a tribute to her? Did you see this one? Oh, I see this one? Oh, I think this one says Emily. What's it say? That bitch you'll always miss. Just 30 minutes down road, the blacktop abruptly ends. So now we're at the end of the road.

So you talk about, you know, the paved road. See, it just goes right into a driveway. And so this is one of the houses that Emily was, you know, reported to have stayed at. The people that live here came across her naked and brought her in and gave her clothes and food.

And what facility is this right here? This is the firehouse, the Yurok tribes' firehouse. And this is where we had our operational center for the search. So this is the river. And then right down here is that Poxell Road. And this can go all the way down into Klamath. So this is also a potential route that she may have went.

But it didn't fit within what her prior pass was by the river. So we operated out of this building for three days and then rotated out 10 different dog teams to be able to conduct the search. You know, obviously we can't go on a private property, but we can bring the dogs around curtilage to see if they pick up any type of remains. Chief O'Rourke is referring to the search

that was funded by the John Francis Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to wilderness safety education and search and rescue operations. After months without answers, the John Francis Foundation stepped in and offered their services to the Riesling family. During that search, cadaver dogs hit on decomposition in an area where someone had died from an accident years back. But there were no other hits for Emily. Okay, we're good. Let's do it. At the end of the road, there's a broken down trailer on the riverbed. Across from it is another trailer.

This one with smoke spewing from the chimney. Someone is home. A gate surrounds the property, and an old blue payphone sits at the entrance. And maybe it's never had service. We'd heard that this area had only gotten access to electricity recently. There's also a rusted, broken-down truck and a few dogs running around. Are you knocking on Frank's door? No, I don't want to.

Now that we're here, the team is a little hesitant to just go knocking on doors, particularly after some of the rumors they've heard. You don't want to? It's right there. Oh, I think one or two people could go over there and it wouldn't be too intimidating. Yeah, I think that. I just don't think it's appropriate for all of us to be there. Well, we would not walk up there with all of us. I wouldn't go either. If you want to walk on there, we're here. He's not going to do anything.

No, I... Yeah. All right. We're going. Laura from the Hoopa Paper and Jamie from our team volunteer to go. They walk up the driveway through a maze of old machinery and abandoned items. A few res dogs greet them on the creaky porch. Okay. Okay. Looks dirty enough to... Okay.

We'll see him. Hey. Hey Frank, it's Laura, the journalist. There were a lot of rumors swirling around about Emily's disappearance. And with his inconsistent statements, Frank was at the center of many of them. What did he really know about Emily's disappearance, if anything at all? That answer needed to come from him. Next time on The Vanishing Point. There's a lot of stories in connection with the illegal marijuana industry that was, for years, people would go missing,

and that was almost an accepted fact. I've... I've heard a lot of things about my mom's disappearance, and everything has ended with murder. And those stories are hard to hear. And what's even more crazy is that person who ever did it is probably someone we know.

We all know here. And they're just walking around. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Vanishing Point. This six-part series is released weekly. Absolutely free. But if you want to listen to it ad-free, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts.

The Vanishing Point is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Celesia Stanton is our host. The show is written by Meredith Stedman, Alex Vespestad, and Jamie Albright, with additional writing assistance by Cilicia Stanton. Executive producers are Donald Albright and myself, Payne Lindsey. Lead producer is Jamie Albright, along with Meredith Stedman. Editing by Alex Vespestad. Additional editing by Sydney Evans.

Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Additional production by Laura Frader and Allie Hosler. Research by Laura Frader and Taylor Floyd. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Mix by Dayton Cole. Thank you. Thanks for listening.