
#574 - Murder Selfies - Lucin, Utah
This week, in Lucin, Utah, a genuine mystery grips this extremely rural area, when a young man, trying to farm some remote land, disappears into thin air. There are a few suspects, including a local criminal, who walks the area with no shoes, and a big gun. There's also the local squatter, who seems to have had trouble with everyone. Eventually, some very incriminating pictures, from a retrieved cell phone solve the whole thing!!
Along the way, we find out that land in ghost towns is super affordable, that rumors & gossip seem to be more ridiculous & spread faster, the smaller the town, and that you should never take a picture of yourself, with the victim's phone, while covered in blood!!
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay, choo-choo! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy.
Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo.
I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman.
Thank you, folks, so much for joining us all aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station. We got, of course, a crazy one small town murder and of course small town murder express we're gonna stuff 10 pounds of murder in a two pound bag and we really have that this week because we have some of the most information we've ever had in a case in this one there was a freedom of information act thing that just has every document every police report it's a lot to go over So we really stuffed it into here.
It's going to be a wild story. Before we get to that, very quickly, shutupandgivememurder.com.
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Oh, yes, for sure.
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This week for crime in sports, we're going to talk about the 2012 Miami Dolphins bullying scandal that they had, which is really weird. And some new information just came out about that.
People are talking about it now.
So we'll find out more.
Then for Small Town Murder, the Amazon Review Killer.
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Small Town Murder, your stupid opinions, all of it in there.
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And you get a shout out at the end of the show as well.
At the end of the regular show, Jimmy will mispronounce your name horribly while dying to get it correct.
That's our credo.
That's it.
So that said, I think it's time.
Speaking of our credo, here is our credo.
I think it's time, everybody, to sit back, clear the lungs.
Let's all arms to the sky.
Let's all shout.
Shut up and give me murder let's do it everybody okay let's go on a trip shall we we are going to utah this week what a place we're going this place is really some kind of place yeah this is lucin utah l-u-c-i-n no and if people have never heard of it it's because
it's a ghost town at this point yeah especially after what happened here it's even more of a ghost
town now so right yeah we'll talk a little bit about it not a lot of stats but a little bit of
some weird shit here it's in northwest utah over out over there about three hours to salt lake city
about three and a half hours to pleasant grove utah, our last Utah episode, which was Dr. Serial Killer.
That was a good one. This is in Box Elder County.
Box Elder. Box Elder.
Two separate words. I don't know.
Elder has something to do with Mormonism, I'm sure, because they call each other elder. I don't know.
So a little bit of history. This town was founded in the late 1800s, originally about 10 miles north of its current location.
And it was only here to provide water. It's a water stop for railroads to replenish their steam locomotives.
That's the only reason why it's here. Then in the 1903, the town moved.
They moved it to its site now to serve as a stop for the Lucen Cutoff, which was another railroad thing there. The town's population consisted mainly of employees of the Central and Southern Pacific Railroads back in the day.
In 1936, the town was completely abandoned and then resettled by a group of four retired railroad workers and their children they they decided we're going to start a town again here we like it we're not going to stop it they came back about 37 so the next year then there was people there until 1972 and then no one lived there anymore. Wild place.
Then in 1997, a guy named Ivo Zdarsky, who was an aviation engineer or entrepreneur and manufacturer of the Ivo prop, which is a plane propeller. He invented it.
He bought it and moved there. He bought the airport.
He bought like the whole town, not the whole town, but like the airport and a bunch of land basically. So he did that as of 2016, except for intermittent people stopping people we're going to talk about in this show because they were there and all of that kind of thing.
And Zdarsky, there really wasn't anybody there.
Like it was just maybe five people.
This Zdarsky lived alone in an airplane hangar.
That's it.
That's what he did.
When they asked him why he moved to the desert, he said, quote,
I escaped from Czechoslovakia, then I was in California, and then I moved here.
Okay.
In broken English, I'm sure.
Yeah, it is. It doesn't talk very much here why are you here i escape escape and come and then i'm here he bought 400 acres for 99 000 that included why he moved yeah that included the lucia the lucerne airport as well yeah i would too if i had a little bit of cash no need to do anything that.
That's awesome. Problem was the airport was just a runway.
It wasn't even there wasn't even a building. Yeah, there's no like Cinnabon in there or anything.
None of that shit. It's just a runway.
That's it. So he he made a hanger.
He built the hanger, a 50 foot steel hanger. No, no windows, no anything like that.
He just lives in a metal box in the middle of the winter cold and
summer's hot absolutely um so he says some people drop by when they're exploring because they don't know you know like oh someone lives here what is this he says you always run into people and they said well how often is always out here and he says if you define seeing people by seeing a car driving by maybe once a week.
So once a week he sees a car drive by and he says if you define seeing people by seeing a car driving by maybe once a week so once a week he sees a car drive by at least a car he says that's always seeing people you always run into people you know every week there's a person as they fly by at 75 miles an hour i consider that a relationship i i assume a society is going because i saw a car last week. It's so wild.
He said that the post office won't deliver there, but UPS and FedEx will deliver there. So he can get shit delivered.
Stamps are useless. You got to.
Wow. He used to get delivery from the Schwann's food truck.
Oh, yeah. Which makes those little frozen pizzas.
Yeah. And they'd bring him prepared meals, but he canceled it because he gained too much weight, he said.
He was gaining too much weight. Couldn't do it.
He says he's got great internet speed out there. He said, so I'm on Amazon ordering stuff, and then UPS will bring it to me in the middle of nowhere.
Wow. That's got to be a driver's nightmare, seeing that that address amazing uh very quickly i have to talk about it's called they call it there's an oasis in the desert because approaching there you see a you said you can see a clump of lush green trees about three miles to the south and southwest and apparently um a small four-inch pipe originating in the Pilot Mountain Range to the southwest supplies water there.
Wow. So there was ponds.
There's ponds here, too. There's the Lucent Pond and everything else.
So, yeah, there's also some telephone booths there. Really? That are like old, old abandoned telephone booths.
You can close the door and shit. You can get land there, Jimmy.
Look at the pictures of this land.
Show me this.
Oh, boy.
It is nothingness.
There's nothingness.
That one's cool.
That's got a mountain in it, at least.
That's a good view.
You can get.
The rest of it's just desert.
80 acres for $46,000.
80 acres?
80 acres.
500 bucks an acre, basically.
Oh, my God.
10 acres, 10 grand.
And then here's one, 640 acres, 500 bucks an acre, basically. Oh, my God.
10 acres, 10 grand.
And then here's one, 640 acres, 320 grand.
That's unbelievable.
That is so cheap.
There's nothing there, obviously.
Speaking of that.
How far to Salt Lake?
Three hours.
Okay.
Yeah, not commutable at all, no.
Things to do here. Well, not much, honestly.
Popular stop for people that look for rocks. Rock people.
Apparently, there's an apple green chert-like phosphate mineral varicyte that's in this area. They look for that.
Apple green. There's no apples.
There's no apples. It's just the color of the rock.
If you see that, it it's not an apple and there is a large artwork here that actually plays into our story a little bit here it's mentioned called the sun tunnels which was created by an artist named nancy holt 1976 look at what it's just concrete tubes in the desert sun tunnels look at this remember those things in school did they ever have those on your playground they had those on our playground they were buried half buried it's just like a big water pipe this is like there was a kid that ran into one of those and fucking capped herself she oh wow peeled the top of her fucking head off it's they look like things that people would hide in from like prison dogs that are chasing them except these are just out in the deserts. They're not underground.
Or the cheap school district puts them in the playground. Yeah.
Hiding those, you fuckers. It is fucking wild, man.
So that said, let's talk about a murder here. This is May 31st, 2022.
Oh, so recently. Jesus.
So recently. It just happened.
8.30 a.m. here.
Okay. A detective is called to about a missing person reported in this area in the lucerne utah area so they have to drive all the way the fuck out here there's no police station in lucerne so police station shows up i believe it's the county the box elder county sheriffs or whatever um so the box elder county search and Rescue had already responded to the area and they were requesting police assistance.
So this detective arrived and talked to some people and found out who was missing and what was going on here and found out that it is a 19-year-old young man who's missing named Dylan Rounds. He's 19 years old and he's got a weird story.
He seems like a kind of a cool kid.
He's from Rigby, Idaho, originally.
And at this point in 2022, he's living by himself in a camp trailer where he farms grain
out there.
How old is he?
19.
19.
19.
It's his dream to have a farm in the middle of nowhere where he makes grain or grows grain. Tough kid.
Yeah, that's what I mean. That's an interesting dream for a kid.
And he owns land. Wow.
Like he and his father and grandfather chipped in and bought this piece of land so he could like farm it and all this type of thing. It's pretty interesting, honestly.
Very cool.
His mother said Dylan was out building his life.
His lifelong dream was to have his own farm.
He spent the last two summers ripping out and redeveloping that ground on his own.
He got his water rights.
He did everything.
And this year his grain was finally coming up.
He finally got a crop.
He got his pivot up.
It was a fully functional farm. Okay.
So cranking. Dylan doing great.
Now he's missing. Not good.
Yeah I mean it seems like he could have just wandered off but you could see people for like eight miles in every direction. You're not going to miss them.
You could see your whole land if you got 680 acres. Yeah you could see it all.
So apparently the original This Is The Cop gets here, the detective, he gets filled in and he's told that Dylan spoke with his grandmother on the phone on the morning of May 28th, this day that they were called out here. And he was told that he told his grandmother he's going to be parking his seed truck.
He was on the phone and he said, oh no, it started raining. So he had to take his truck to park it in the shed, basically, a grain shed where he kept his shit there, which is a couple miles away on this area.
So he's got to go park it there. So he said he had to stop working and go do that on the property.
Now, the shed is where a guy is squatting, by the way. There's a guy named James Brenner who squats in the shed and, like, squats.
That guy's story. Oh, man.
He's got an interesting story. Oh, I believe it.
He needed to come out here because he was not doing well in regular society. I believe it.
Yeah. Too many people, not good for in regular society yeah this guy shouldn't be around many people here so um i guess then he said i'll go i'm gonna go put the truck away and then i'll call back i'll call you back is what he said so that's on his cell phone here um but he never called back and then nobody could get in contact with him in any way so people came out to look for him he.
He wasn't there. They called the cops and this is what happens now.
So this detective was told by the police station here that Dylan's phone had been pinged and the last location was returned to a little over a 15-mile radius because there's not a lot of cell towers out there. Holy shit.
That's a big radius. If you're in a concentrated area, there's cell towers everywhere.
They can coordinate it more. But if you're out there where there's one cell tower, anywhere in this— Service is 15 miles.
That's it. So they were trying to figure it out.
The distance of the radius, they were like, there was no direction in which to search. A 15-mile radius is huge.
Yeah. Pick a spot, go 15 miles away from it, and then do a circle.
That's great. It's so big.
It's so big. It's such a big area.
So it's not a good – if you have like three cops, it's going to take you a month to search a 15-mile radius. For sure.
It's going to take forever. So they can't really do that.
So they said there was a shelter on a section of land owned by Box Elder Land and Livestock that was adjacent to this property here, I guess. So Dylan is doing all this.
I guess this James Brenner was using the storage shed to sleep in, hang out in and to store stuff. Both of them lived in off the grid trailers.
I guess he had a little trailer to James Brenner, but he was also sleeping in the shed sometimes for some reason. Doesn't make any sense.
So this guy doesn't make a lot of sense. James Adrian Brenner, who was 58 at the time in 2022.
So way than dillard i mean totally three generations away just starting and like uh this is this is a 19 year old's lifestyle not a 58 year old's lifestyle yeah to me this is like a 41 year old's lifestyle for me look i'm i'll be 44 in a second a 19 year old i can't do this for more than two days. No, no, no.
But a 19-year-old running his own farm seems odd also. Yeah, that part's nuts.
It seems weird. But if it's a small grain operation, it's not so bad.
Now, this Brenner is considered a family friend of the Rounds' here. They know him.
He's considered just a guy of the area. They open him out.
Yeah, one of those guys. He's got a decent little criminal record on him.
He's got a record that includes malicious wounding, malicious shooting, multiple convictions of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Alright.
He had a shooting charge from 1986 and at another separate occasion he was charged with and accused of beating a 70 a 70 year old man with an aluminum chair oh he went full fucking wwe f fucking extreme he went full ecw on a 70 year old man when he was like 40 worked him over with a chair so man born in the 60s like He was a teenager teenager in the 70s. He's going to have some criminal shit, but that's heavy.
I have the arrest report for his 1986 shooting arrest. It is real fucking interesting.
First of all, it says no fixed address on there for him, which says a lot. Even as 1986, he was a drifter it was that long ago uh back there it was 510 160 uh he is listed as an under employment unemployed aluminum siding hanger so i hang aluminum siding where well not right now currently i've i've've hanged aluminum siding, say.
How's that? And if more pops up, I'll hang it. I will hang it again.
So this took place at a 7-Eleven store, all right? Which makes the whole thing way trashier immediately. So it says the above defendant was arrested after he was involved in a shooting at the Costa Regional Park at approximately 1,750 hours.
The defendant was sitting in his truck at campsite number four. I guess it's near a 7-Eleven at Costa Regional Park.
He was visited by Mr. Danny Weir and Mr.
Michael Spro, who had stopped to discuss a new job offer for him. Hey, there we go.
Get some siding up. The defendant had been laid off earlier in the day by mr weir okay now they're back he was laid off we've got work for you and now we're back with work the defendant allegedly uncovered a handgun from under a blanket in the truck and reached for the gun as he did mr weir reached for his arm meaning this guy's arm to stop him mr weir stated that as he reached for the defendant's arm to push the gun away from his chest area, the two struggled, the gun discharged, and the bullet shot him in the thigh, in the right thigh.
God damn it. The bullet then passed through the right calf of Michael Spro, who was standing behind him.
Holy shit. Shot two guys, one bullet.
Who were trying to fucking get him a new job. Yeah.
He then stated to Mr. Weir, quote, I'm going to kill you, you motherfucker.
You cost me my job. As the two struggled for the gun, the defendant attempted to cock the gun for another shot.
Wow. Holy shit.
At this time, Mr. Weir was able to gain control of the gun and give it to Dwight Kastaborder.
The defendant then ordered his dog, a German shepherd, to attack Mr. Weir which it did.
That's a good puppy. Damn good dog.
Mr. Weir received several bites to the leg and numerous scratches to his chest there.
What a bad day. With the help of witnesses at the scene, Mr.
Weir got the defendant off of him. At the time the defendant approached Mr.
Cast Aborder and demanded his gun back. When he did not receive it, he fled in his truck.
A lookout was issued by Officer Wright to all area police agencies. The defendant was stopped at the 7-Eleven.
That's where that comes in. This is in Maryland by Prince George's County.
He was transported to
Clinton Station, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The defendant was processed and interviewed.
He stated that he did not remember
any of the incident and that he did
not own a gun.
I don't know what you're talking
about. Certainly, I don't have a gun.
I don't know what you're talking about.
The gun described as a 44 caliber
Ruger 6-inch barrel. Holy shit! He shot him with a fucking dirty harry gun for christ's sake holy shit wider piece keeped his thigh yeah revolver black powder model yeah holy shit that's a real ass gun man wow this is fucking crazy then later on he stated that he does keep the weapon in his truck.
He admitted to it. In a box.
Wow. It has like a seal on it that says Peacekeeper.
The Peacekeeper. With a picture of a mustache on it.
Yeah. It's fucking crazy.
Big mustache. So in 2012, he served two and a half years in federal for after a conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm another gun so and that happened all the time from the 80s on so this guy is a fucking trip he's a party he lives in the wind on the land he needs a weapon for nature he does the the gut the cops don't want him to have it.
No, he needs to not have a gun for any nature or anything else.
So now there's a little background here.
Apparently, Dylan James Brenner and a guy named Don Hately, who is a next door neighbor to this whole event.
He has the property next door.
He works the property next door.
I'm not sure of the ownership status. They were in Idaho approximately June 20th, 2020.
So two years earlier, related to the purchase of several hundred pigs. Now people involved in the deal with the pigs were Brenner, Dylan, Ed Harshberger, and a guy named Larry.
So Jim, Dylan, Ed, and Larry are going to go in on some pigs here. Larry explained that the pigs were part of a venture where Dylan was attempting to make a profit from the slaughter of pigs purchased from the Midwest during the COVID epidemic.
So that's what he's doing. The pigs were purchased for pennies on the dollar.
The deal resulted in approximately 500 pigs being delivered to Larry's property in Idaho with an eventual plan to move the pigs to Luce in Utah. Now, initially, Larry estimated there were only to receive approximately 100 pigs.
However, 500 were eventually delivered. That's way more pigs.
That's so many pigs. I went to a place, they gave me an extra pizza.
And they were like, oh, we made an extra one. You can keep it.
That's fine. 400 extra pigs.
I be like i don't have what what we accidentally made 400 pizzas james please we accidentally made 399 extra pizzas i don't know if you want these or not so moving the pigs from idaho to utah required approval uh required approval by a vet in idaho larry indicated the veterinary clinic was upset with the number of pigs requiring approval. Yeah, they didn't want to look at them all.
Yeah, I'd be upset. That's going to take us so long.
You said 100. This is way more than that.
This is five times the worst. Holy shit.
It was at this vet clinic where Dylan was seeking approval to move the pigs, where the initial altercation between Brenner, James Brenner, and Justin, who is Dylan's father. Justin shouldn't be anybody's father.
No one's father should be named Justin, number one. It just doesn't work.
It's weird. It's very bizarre that there are people named Justin that are old enough to have kids.
Yeah, that's just true. Someday there's going to be Grandpa Justin.
We can't have that. It's just weird.
We're going to Grandpa Justin's is a strange thing's a there's a professional football player named aiden right now and it drives me nuts every time they say his name yeah you sound like a tiny white child why are you in the nfl with like like a hemophiliac with all sorts of allergies you should be sick somewhere yeah you should be like staying away from pets because they make you break out in hives. He's like one of the best players on the Lions, too.
And every time they say his name, I'm like, no, just call him by his last name. I can't do this.
You can't deal with it. So Dylan's father and Brenner got in an argument here.
At the time of this incident, Justin mistakenly believed that James Brenner was Harshberger, a totally different guy. He had him confused.
That's why they were arguing.
Justin was angry with Harshberger, believing that Harshberger was responsible for Dylan having an interest in farming in the Lucent area, which they didn't want him to do.
Justin angrily confronted Brenner at the veterinary clinic and told Brenner to get off Larry's property where the pigs were being kept.
Despite Justin mistaking Brenner for Harshberger, Brenner told Justin to meet on the lane outside the property adjacent to the house of Larry's father. This was a residence where Brenner was staying while he was working with Dylan.
Okay. Brenner arrived.
He's like show up for a fucking throwdown, basically. Yeah.
So Brenner arrived at the lane with, quote, his six gun on his hip and his holster.
That's from a police report.
An actual revolver.
It's 2020, fucking 2020.
COVID is going on.
This isn't the fucking Dodge City.
This man's wandering up for a fucking shootout.
This is not tombstone.
This is crazy.
Larry believed that Brenner retrieved his gun from Larry's father's house. Justin arrived at at the lane he apparently knew it was up he showed up with an ar-15 so he wasn't fucking around either oh this is crazy there's like four people in the whole town hundreds of miles get away from each other what are you doing and they're all strapped and hate each other this is crazy fuck so larry somehow was able to de-escalate this situation so that No one shot each other.
I don't know how you deescalate this situation, but he did it. So Brenner and Justin were approximately 100 feet apart and were pretty angry.
Brenner was walking up the lane with his gun. Brenner was angry with Justin and told Larry that.
Brenner stated something to the effect of, I hate that son of a which larry described brenner as having a short temper which it sounds like um while brenner was on the lane waiting for justin justin went to his house got the ar-15 larry explained that justin can get pretty loud when angry and was either pointing his finger at brenner or had poked brenner in the chest prior to that's what caused the showdown he p poked him chest. So we're showing up with our guns.
Neither pointed their gun at the other. Larry believed that if either would have pointed their gun at the other, someone would have gotten shot.
I think so, too. Brenner relied on the good nature of Dylan and Larry for survival during the winter.
Because during the winter, it's harsh out there. Oh, yeah.
I mean, yeah. Larry pointed out that Dylan drove to Idaho from Lucen in order to collect firewood from Larry so that Brenner would be able to stay warm during the winter.
So Dylan's doing him favors. Rounds also believe that it's likely that Brenner's temper played a part in the disappearance of Dylan.
That's what Justin said to that and indicated that if Brenner were to provide information of the location of Dylan's body, Larry would be interested in Brenner receiving a break in any potential charge or sentence. So, they already have him, he did it, and he took him somewhere and did something.
Yeah, they got him assumed as the bad guy. Hey everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit about our safest sponsors, Simply Safe.
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Thrivemarket.com slash smalltownmurder.. Now from all we can assume here, it seemed like Dylan and James Brenner got along though.
So that makes it's interesting. So the family, Dylan's family hires a private investigator, which already there.
Well, they did it right away. Cause I'm not sure.
I don't think they have a lot of confidence in this police department going out in the middle of the desert and really following through on this shit, even though they do. Yeah, doesn't seem like they're doing much out there anyway.
So I don't know. Yeah.
Versed in how to do this. That's the thing.
And I read. I'm telling you this.
Like I said, there was a Freedom of Information Act release of all the files in this case. Yeah.
So I've read. I read 30 police reports.
I read all this shit.
I saw everything they were doing, and they were following up on things.
They had to drive out to the desert a lot.
Trying their best.
A fucking lot here.
So this guy went on a YouTube channel to talk publicly, the private investigator.
He did all of that.
He reported that Rounds has been farming in the desert town of Luce in Utah during the summer months over the past few years and all of that sort of thing. So Rounds, Dylan reportedly told his grandmother that he was doing the seed truck, and that's how that goes.
So now he was last seen on May 26, 2002. People talked to him on the 28th.
He was last seen in a cafe in Montello, Nevada, which is close by on the other side of the border there, where he ate before going back to Utah. So they found out that that's a thing, so they're going to figure that out.
On May 30th, now this is his mom, Dylan's mom and Dylan's stepfather here apparently apparently, traveled out to Lucen from their residence in Ohio and Idaho because Dylan hadn't been heard from. So on the way to Lucen, Candace is his mom and his stepdad stopped in Park Valley, Utah, where they were able to get cell service and call Don Hately, the neighbor there, and then call the Box Elder County Sheriff's Office to report that Dylan was missing.
During the call to Hatley or Hately, Candace asked Hately if she should call the police to make a missing persons report. And Hately told her, yes, I think that that would be okay to do now.
So Candace and the stepfather drove from Park Valley to Lucene and met Hately on the road into Lucene where Hately's turnoff into his property was. Hately told the mom that James Brenner was waiting for him there, waiting for them to talk to them.
So, Candace and the stepmom continued to the property where James Brenner lived. Hately waited near his turnoff so that Hately could direct others arriving to look for Dylan
as to where to go because there's people showing up looking for him.
They pull their truck into the property.
Candace and the stepdad are met by James Brenner.
They park by the grain truck, which was parked in the grain shed.
So they park back over there where he was last going.
So after their arrival, James Brenner mentioned that Dylan needed to learn how to use a gun. What? He said that he kept the gun on one side of Dylan's truck and the ammo on the other side, and that Dylan would be better off learning to throw a gun as opposed to shooting it as a means of self-defense.
Because he's got the gun and ammo separate. Exactly.
So he had them separate. So they said that's interesting, and they reported that to the sheriff's department that he said that.
He also repeatedly, James did, made mention that Brenner had been in the grain truck in order to reposition the truck because the truck had been backed in too far. He said, I had to move this truck because he backed it in way too far.
Like frustrated though. So he also told them that whatever happened to Dylan, Dylan likely left out of the front gate of the property because there were small dually tire tracks leaving out of the front gate.
Okay. So they're searching all over the place.
Within the first few days, volunteer teams logged over 300 hours searching, covering over 3,000 miles. Wow.
Yeah. They said they've been searching around the clock every day.
Detectives have already 6. 3,000 miles.
I don't know how you even do that. Yeah.
That's a lot. That's a lot.
They spent over 650 man hours investigating the case. They've got canines, drones.
They've been on horseback.
They flew planes over this thing.
I mean, everywhere.
They said the surrounding areas on the Utah and Nevada border is full of old mine shafts, caves, and tunnels.
That's what the mother said.
So she said a professional cave diver volunteered to help search some of those spaces for them.
Because you've got to know how to do that shit. So you can't just go fucking walking into a cave.
That's crazy. Parents also offer a $20,000 reward as well.
And they also said there's a number of false rumors and fake fundraisers circulating on social media. Oh, isn't that fun? Isn't that great? So on the initial day of May 30th, when they're looking around and searching, they found a pair of Georgia work boots.
Georgia. That's the brand.
Yeah. That belong to Dylan.
And they're on the property behind the grain shed where the truck was backed in. The boots were being described as located directly west of James Brenner's trailer,
and they looked like they were just thrown into the brush,
like they weren't lined up next to each other sitting there,
like someone took them off.
Now, James Brenner claimed that Dylan must have thrown them away out there in the trash pile.
So Brenner asked the police officer if he had found any blood on the boots,
which the cop was like, pardon?
What?
That's a weird question. You didn't find any blood on those boots, did you? What now? Thought you didn't even know they were there.
What's up with that? One of the boots appeared to have a dark spot on them consistent with some type of blood. and speaking with the sergeant that was there brenner detailed to him that on the 28th day of
may when he arrived home he he noticed Dylan had parked his grain truck in the shed. And James said that he went to the shed where he had a pen set up for his chickens and horse and that he was mad that Dylan had knocked over all the pens in parking his grain truck.
It's hard backing trucks in, you know? So anytime and somebody goes we were i was mad at that guy i was mad at him by the way did he have blood on his shoes yeah how about that i got bracelets for you you might like so it's real interesting here they said the original meeting place was at the location where dylan parks his grain truck um the land on the location is being being occupied by James Brenner. They made contact with Brenner and talked to him about this shit.
Now, his original statement, he spoke with multiple individuals, Brenner did, and had been making the statement that he knew that someone had driven up and taken Dylan. So he's been telling everybody.
And that Dylan wasn't just simply missing, he was taken. He was kidnapped.
Kidnapped. So Brenner said he believed that this is what happened because his gate was open and Dylan never leaves Brenner's gate open.
Brenner also stated that when he noticed the gate, he saw there were tracks at the gate and also he identified the tracks that were there in a way that they appeared to stop and that's where Dylan was taken, he figured, right here. He detected it all up.
Yeah. I've already found the Dooley tracks at the gate, so he left.
I just fucking Jerry Orbached the shit out of this thing. It's good.
We're done. Get out of here, guys.
This is my land now. Take off.
Yep. The cop said as he spoke with Brenner, the cop learned that what he was reporting to everyone was simply speculation, and he had no actual knowledge of Dylan being taken.
This is just your theory? Your amateur detective guess? And he was like, well, yeah. They were like, okay, so that's useless.
Great, thanks. But just because I'm not wearing a badge don't mean it didn't happen.
I guess not, no. So the boots that they found turned out to be a big deal because the mother said, those are the only pair of boots he has, Dylan.
Yeah, and a farmer's not getting rid of his boots. No, his mom said at that point it should have been treated as foul play.
You just don't see someone's boots in the desert that's missing. We knew the first day we got out there when we saw Dylan's boots, what happened to him.
That's what the mother says. The mother knew already.
Mother said his boots are there. He's gone.
This is fucked up. He's dead.
He's dead. Yeah, found his dad.
He just died with his boots off. That's all.
So they follow the trail here. They go to Montello, which is the town over the Nevada state line where he was last seen.
And they said they went to the Cowboy Bar is what it's called. Big surprise there.
19-year-olds allowed on a Cowboy Bar. Fuck yeah.
Well, I guess you can eat there too. And they spoke with two Montello citizens to see if they knew anything about Dylan.
They asked the bar owner if she had seen Dylan recently. The bar owner said that Dylan had not been in for about a week.
So they spoke with the bar patrons and they were told that Dylan was staying out in Lucene, which they already knew, and that there were locals out looking for him as well. They were like, oh, there's people here out looking for him.
So they asked the bar owner who Dylan spends time with. And she replied that he spends time with her son and that her son was out there looking for Dylan right now.
Now the daughter of the bar owner said that she heard Dylan had a confrontation with a man named chase Venstra. Okay.
Okay, now Chase Venster is a local drifter with a man named Chase Venstra. Why the fuck does she have that?
Okay, now Chase Venstra is a local drifter
with a long criminal record,
and he's a mess, basically.
So the daughter said she was worried
about this confrontation.
She said that if Dylan walked back
from where he left his grain truck
and this Chase Venstra got a hold of him,
something bad could have happened in that space between those two places. She explained that another individual in Montello had his face smashed in by the butt of a gun and his whole camper shell was destroyed.
And the people at the bar said that Chase that lives out in a motor home out on Church Street, that's where quote all the drug users live. Chase is a bad guy.
Yeah, he's not a good cat in this town anyway. He's not considered one.
So this young lady went on to reply that she'd heard it said that Chase was out there in a ghillie suit? Yeah. What's that? It's one of those
like a camouflage suit.
Oh, okay. It's like a
combat suit.
Worse, it's like, yeah.
Schwarzenegger would have worn it in
Predator?
Why do I always want to call him
Platoon? I don't know. You've done that
several times. Much different
movie. But I would like to see Charlie Sheen fight the Pred predator though that would be great that i'll watch fucking willem dafoe going after the predator that would be fun predator starring tom berenger that's good stuff it's a it's a it's a swamp suit essentially it's like trying to uh keep yourself hidden okay well she said he's out there in one of these suits and would attempt suicide by law enforcement if they came for him oh he might be just hiding amongst the yeah just ready to throw down wow ready to start a firefight with somebody yeah so it was then stated that dylan was driving down the road and chase had stopped and asked dylan for water chase then asked dylan if he Kurt, which is another guy we'll talk about, and they got into an altercation somehow.
Everybody fights over nothing in this town. There's two people around.
And they're all mad at each other. Two people in five square miles and they want to fight.
Like, wouldn't you just want to talk to somebody? You'd be so lonely. Wow.
Jesus Christ. So they got into an altercation and Chase said Kurt was an asshole, to which Dylan said he wasn't.
Dylan said, no, he's not. He's a good guy.
Yeah. Throw down, boy.
So then they spoke with more bar patrons and didn't receive any new information about Dylan and Chase. It was stated at the bar that Dylan was a good kid and didn't do drugs.
They were told that Chase does do drugs quite often, and outside of multiple rumors and second to third-hand information, they found nothing further. So, they drove back to Lucen to talk to some other people here.
They talked to a guy named Kevin Bibbins, and they talked to him about a half hour. He said his property was burned down at one point.
This place is crazy. Yeah, this is the craziest place ever, dude.
There's a lot of fire. This is wild.
Wow. And detailed a time when he was assaulted by Brenner as well.
James Brenner. When the talk turned to Dylan, Kevin didn't have any information about what may have happened to him.
But he did say that Brenner is kind of a nut and attacked him one time.
So then he went out to the this cop went out to the property where Brenner was and where Dylan parked the grain truck.
The cop searched inside of the drink grain truck to see if maybe Dylan's phone or wallet may have been left inside.
And the cop said he was informed thatylan's family had already gone through the truck
but he said he searched it again and didn't find anything except a phone charging cord so there's about that now this is when the cops find out that the family's not only put up a twenty thousand dollar reward it also had an old picture of chase venstra and stated that they were offering a $5,000 reward for
information on locating Chase.
Stalk this guy
for $5,000 reward for information on
locating Chase.
Stock this guy for five grand.
Yeah.
He's not even technically a suspect yet.
He's not missing nor a suspect.
What the fuck?
Can you do that?
Fucking wild, man.
That is crazy shit.
So then they talk about that they found, there's a guy, I swear to God, his name is Joe Glasscock. Perfect.
He's the wine cup ranch manager, Joey Glasscock. That's the wine.
Which is a wine cup? Wine cup ranch. It's just called wine cup.
But the word wine is in glass. It's just too much.
So he's talked about an incident with Chase Venstra. He said about a week ago he was driving on the highway toward the Wine Cup Ranch when he saw Chase lying on the side of the highway dressed in camouflage.
In a ghillie suit. In a ghillie suit.
Joe said he recognized Chase from prior employment, so he stopped to check on him. According to Joe, Chase started to approach the vehicle while carrying a rifle.
You're not good camouflage. I can see you.
Hey, buddy, what's going on? While I was driving, I saw you. And he's stopping to go, are you okay? And this guy's approaching him with a rifle.
Jesus. So according to Joe, he said that Glasscock said he was concerned enough for his safety that he had a gun out on his vehicle seat, but Chase didn't continue all the way to the vehicle.
Joe said that after his interaction with Chase, Chase walked east on the railroad tracks where Joe believed that he would come across Dylan. That's when Dylan ran into him.
Chase was barefoot and needed water and his phone charged. And that's when Dylan let him charge his phone and gave him water.
So there's a thing that happens there. According to Joe, Chase appeared to be under the influence of some type of narcotic based on his odd behavior and mannerisms.
He said that he saw him. He said, after the pickup left, Chase got up, and I could see he was wearing camouflage clothing and a tan military style backpack.
He was carrying a tan assault rifle with a scope.
He crossed the highway and started walking toward Lucen.
I asked him what he was doing and he said, quote, just trying to stay out of trouble.
I said, with an assault rifle?
Yeah.
And he said, it's just a pea shooter.
And that was the last he saw of him.
Okay.
All right.
So, more on Chase.
Later on that day, they talked to candace dylan's mom and dylan said or dylan's mom said that um that dylan had told her he was driving on tacoma road when chase ran out of the bushes bloody and high on drugs according to candace chase did not have any shoes on and wanted a ride from d a ride from Dylan. Dylan didn't feel comfortable giving him a ride due to his erratic behavior.
So Dylan reportedly left Chase with water and contacted Chase's father to inform him about Chase so he could pick him up. So that's another incident he's had with him.
So that's interesting. Now, very, very interesting.
Now, they talk a little bit about Dylan.
They said he had purchased his own land, and they're talking about all this.
They talked to the parents more about Chase to see if maybe there was some other stuff with Chase that happened.
You know what I mean?
Did he threaten your son?
Did your son say anything about that?
And all that shit. So after they interviewed the family, they went back to the property that the grain truck was parked on.
At that time, they had another sergeant there. They took a bunch of pictures.
And Brenner was there the entire time and walked around with the cops while they tried to separate from him. They said they couldn't get away from him.
Where are you going, guys? He wouldn't them the fuck alone. He wanted to see exactly what they were doing, which is odd when you add that with, is there any blood on that boot? Yeah.
And I've already found the truck, those truck tracks. Yeah, this is weird.
So June 3rd, 2022, they think Chase is on the run here. They tried to, cops are trying to interview Chase, but they were unsuccessful getting in contact with him.
They couldn't find him, but they, they were left a voicemail. They were advised though that by friends that Chase had been making posts on Facebook about Dylan's disappearance, saying that he wasn't involved in any way, which is super weird when you're posting on Facebook that you weren't involved.
He posted that we would have not been in contact with him, but at one point he said he wasn't even out there at the time and that he already had spoken to Candace about it and was cleared by her and the private investigator. Oh, if you're cleared by the mom.
Tell the cops to leave me alone. Tell the cops that.
But the FBI is involved in this and shit. Yeah, there's a 19-year-old missing.
So it's pretty fucking interesting. So they said the deputy said that he was a deputy told the detective that he was Chase's neighbor growing up and that Chase had been sending him text messages about Dylan.
Chase told this deputy that he had no involvement in the disappearance and he wasn't even out there after the 25th of May. At one point point he stated that he did talk to a private investigator and was cleared of any involvement um you know and um he said that the box county elder box elder county sheriff's office just wants to arrest him and leave him in jail while they continue the investigation so that's why he's hiding he also said everything that anybody said about him was total bullshit, quote unquote.
So then they found out, though, that Chase had a $75,000 arrest warrant out of Montana for a domestic incident. So they got in contact with other sheriff to try to find him and all that kind of thing.
They finally get Chase in there. Good.
They get him here. And he said the last time he talked to Dylan was when he drove him to the Tacoma Crossroads.
So they talked to him. He said that I don't know anything about it.
That's just all he did. He said he gave the exactly where he was.
I mean, everything. He said on the 28th of May at 6 o'clock, he was at Little Caesars Pizza.
Then he bought beer and went home. Like, oh, that is a rough night.
That's a rough gastrointestinal night. Pizza and Little Caesars.
Or Little Caesars and beer. Little Caesars and beer.
Oh, boy. I can't imagine it's any higher grade beer than Little Caesars kind of beer.
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So Chase said some more information about things that were occurring in the desert here. He said that Dylan and Kurt Wadsworth might be in a relationship with one another.
Kurt is the bar owner's kid, I believe, said that he thought they might be in a relationship with one another and described that he has seen Kurt dress up in dresses. Okay.
He told the cops that he believes that Kurt could be attempting to, quote, set him up, meaning me, setting me up, Chase. He also said that when he was out in that area, he had his boy's SKS rifle, shotgun, and pistol stated that the pistol was stolen.
And he informed the cops that he thinks Kurt's place would be a good place to look for Dylan and that he hopes Kurt hasn't hurt Dylan. Okay.
Wow. Interesting.
So they're in a homosexual relationship, and I'm hoping that kurt didn't hurt um yeah that's what he's that's what he's claiming no one else is saying this by the way that's a wild accusation it's a lot yeah it's all we've heard are crazy rumors and innuendos and yeah yeah this is small town gossip that's all this is nothing's checking out out yet. Nope.
So they interview Brenner again.
They keep talking to him. They talk to him on the 7th.
They talk to him June 7th and then June 11th.
And they serve a search warrant on his trailer.
During that search, they found ball ammunition, ignition caps, black powder, speed loads,
all related to muzzle loading, which were photographed in the trailer.
They didn't seize them at the time, but they're going to go back, and he's going to get arrested for weapons charges again because he's not allowed to have that. June 8th, 2022, there's a tip that comes in here.
They spoke with an individual who remained anonymous and they said that, okay, Dylan Rounds and Kurt Wadsworth lived inside the Saddlesore Bar together, which sounds like a gay bar. I know it's not, but that sounds like your butthole's sore because you've been getting it pounded all night.
That's what that sounds like. That's the whole point of it, yeah.
That's what Saddlesores are. If you were in a city and you saw the Saddlesore Bar, you'd go, that's a gay bar.
That's a gay bar. Yeah, for sure.
Absolutely. So this guy stated that Wadsworth and potentially Dylan were running around with loaded guns and wondered if there was potentially an accident.
It was reported that multiple individuals had been running around Montello, Nevada area with loaded guns trying to catch people committing thefts. Probably some crazy.
Vigilantes. Probably some YouTube bullshit where they're trying to, yeah.
They were previously referred to being vigilantes, but I was unable to actually obtain information confirming that this was actually transpiring. This is the cop talking.
This is from his report. In the Montello, Nevada relation to Dylan Rounds, the vast majority of these statements were third person and could not be verified or confirmed at all.
This person also stated that the Wadsworth family that's in Montello, Nevada was Barbara, Troy, Kurt, and Scott, and he said they ran a lot of things in town, including the Saddle, Soar, and Cowboy bars. They also said that Troy Wadsworth had been seen with multiple scratches on his forearm, and he had stated he crashed a three-wheeler.
But this guy said, I went and looked at his three-wheeler, and it didn't have any scratches on it. So, you know.
Those things will throw you. That's a stupid machine.
And he said that it happened yesterday, but his scratches were already scabbed over, so he didn't believe him. So, and then this guy, or whoever, this anonymous person said that Kurt has a backhoe that was out in Lucen and explained that Kurt knows the mines and other areas that could be used to hide a body.
So they're trying to put this on Kurt big time. So anyway, Brenner's arrested for all the weapons violations here.
They also go out to Dylan's property. They talk to Dylan's grandfather, Larry, and he told the cops that Brenner and Don Hatley had gone into town grocery shopping and that they recently spoke with Don Hatley and they were almost on their way back to Lucen.
So they're waiting to arrest Brenner here. So they're going to do that.
They get Brenner in cuffs and this cop approached Don Hatley and inquired if the gate access to Brenner's trailer was secured or not. Don said it was open, but he could go and close it.
Don't leave his gate open, which is a nice gesture by the cops. So the cop asked Don about Brenner's horse on the property that he needed to keep in the fenced area.
Don said that he does have a horse and stated that he needed Brenner's keys. Brenner said that Don would secure and lock the gate.
I told him that Don was about to get the keys. Brenner started to get upset and saying that he doesn't want anyone in there.
I don't want anyone in there, which is weird. Don said if he didn't want to give him the keys, that's fine.
And asked if his brother, if your trailer's locked, I'll lock it for you. Brenner said that it was locked and he asked Don to close the gate and get the cooler that has meat in it from earlier when they got groceries.
Brenner angrily said he doesn't want anyone in there. He was irate and said that people go in and out of there and they don't close the gate and he has to go and look for his horse and it gets out of the gate.
And he says that he has to go up to the mountains to find his horse, which is bullshit. It's enough with the horse.
Yeah. Uh, so this is fucking amazing.
So, uh, Don said that Brenner had been living on his own property in the Nevada side of the state line before his trailer burned down and that's why he went to live on Dylan's property. Don continued to explain that one day Brenner looked out his window and there were two people stealing a winch off his truck.
He explained that Brenner hollered at them but they just flipped him off. I'd expect some desert trailer hermit to come out bucking shots wouldn't you yeah i'm not taking any especially a winch that like that probably saves his life in some situations yeah not not only that just if i see that i expect the guy on the old mountain dew can to come out like a long beard and a hat firing a fucking shotgun in the air and talking about my property tennessee valley authority i don't want no electricity
expensive don't fuck with a man's winch no um at this point according to don brenner had a black powdered pistol and shot at the individuals which shall happen don did state that he does think that dylan went and parked the grain truck on the property that brenner was living on without calling Brenner to come and open the gate for him. So, okay.
Now Brenner's statement, he said that Don Hatley, they're talking about what happened the day that he was gone, that Dylan disappeared. He said at approximately 1300 to 1400 hours, he left the farm where the trailer's located.
He said that Don Hatley was cooking ribs and they were going to watch Yellowstone. I'm going to go watch some Cosner, is what I'm going to do.
Living life on the range, watching shows about life on the range. Watching shows about living, going, these people are full of shit.
Are they doing it just to call out how full of shit they are? That ain't right right there. That ain't how you hook up a horse trailer.
like tv's a break from reality so you don't have to think about day-to-day shit they're watching shows about their day-to-day all i do is watch police interrogations and shit so i guess it's the same thing but then like yellowstone is about comfort everybody's it makes sense why they're all mad yeah they get it apparently that's when you move out to the middle of nowhere you just want to kill all your neighbors apparently fuck so brenner stated that before he went to don's residence he went to lucian lucian pond to gather wood and water because it's on the way to don's brenner said that he arrived home about 2100 hours and when he came over the hill he saw Dylan's grain truck. He told the cops that Dylan was the kind of kid who does whatever the hell he wants and doesn't tell you anything.
Brenner said that Dylan backed the grain truck in the shed and moved Brenner's stuff out of the way. Brenner also said that Dylan had broken some of his property.
So according to Brenner he didn't think anything of it until Don called him the next day and asked if he'd seen Dylan. Brenner stated that he was looking around outside.
He found what he stated were two tracks of 10 wheelers going one in and one out. Brenner stated that he didn't use the front gate there and that he noticed Dylan had unhooked the wires to the gate because it was locked and he wanted access.
Brenner further said that Dylan or somebody had wired the gate back up and he felt that Dylan had left the grain truck and exited the property. So as he continued, he named Chase Venstra and explained how Chase had been a problem in both Montello and Lucen.
He said that he knew who, quote, who, quote, over there uses methamphetamine.
And he continued explaining that the different items and places he felt Chase had stolen from both him and other victims in the area.
He said that Brenner said he saw a black truck on Chase's property that he knew was responsible for blowing up his trailer.
So he's this guy says that Chase blew up his trailer.
OK, he relayed frustrations that the Elko County Sheriff's Department won't go and investigate the incidents.
Wow.
They said they let him speak without too much interruption, even though he was trying to move the conversation away from Dylan's disappearance.
But that's what he wants to talk about, basically. He said that Dylan drinks beer, and one time around the 4th of July, Dylan arrived back to Lucen from Twin Falls, Idaho, and had the entire back of his truck loaded with beer.
He stated that Dylan stored the beer in one of the trailers he had on his farm property. He also said that Dylan borrowed money from him to purchase that trailer.
Borrowed money from a desert squatter. Brenner also said that Dylan was in the bar in Montello bragging about how much money he had Brenner continued to make allegations And name individuals that he stated were into drugs And stealing things He also made allegations about crimes he stated he knew as a fact But ultimately was being told this information He wasn't present to any of these He just described every bit of gossip of every crime that he's heard about in the last five years to these people.
So Brenner told us he believes that Dylan was involved in a strong arm robbery. And he believes it was Chase Venstra and Robert Avila's.
And Brenner reported that he believes Dylan wouldn't give them money and it escalated. Chase sounds pretty dangerous He does When asked about the bar Brenner stated that he did not think that
Kurt or Troyroy rodsworth would have anything to do with this incident he explained that kurt was too good to dylan and allowed him to sleep in the bar when dylan had had too much alcohol and couldn't drive home that's what he doesn't live there with him he sleeps in the bar when he's too drunk they let him fucking put a cot on a table in the fucking back yeah why does he care if dylan uh is the kind of kid that just does whatever he wants doesn't he own this shit yeah it's his land so brenner told uh the cops that dylan had a shotgun he would keep in the back seat of his truck and they found that in rigby idaho with his family brenner stated that dylan also had a handgun that he had already found brenner commented that dylan would often keep handgun in his truck's console, but did not keep it loaded all the time. Remember, he'd be better off throwing it.
Brenner said he told Dylan that he either needs to learn how to use the pistol or put it somewhere because it would end up getting him killed. And then he commented that it was a little late for that, referring to the pistol, and said that he was telling Dylan's dad, Justin, that as
well. He just had him killed off already.
So he went back to stating he believes Chase and the drug users were the ones responsible for the disappearance. He went off about Kevin Bibbins saying that he would be the only one going around out in Lucent and Montello carrying a gun.
this is a mess
so they explained to him that Dylan's boots
were out where they were located there and they had to be taken out there by someone. Brenner talked about Dylan telling his grandmother or somebody on the phone and he said that Chase didn't have boots.
Remember? So he probably didn't. Well then he would have probably worn them then, not left them in a fucking field.
So they said that field. So this guy said, I told Brenner that it was odd that there didn't appear to be any vehicle tracks out to the location of the boots.
And he explained that someone had to have taken the boots out there as it's too far for the boots to just be thrown out there by someone. They then asked him, is there any reason that your DNA would be found on these boots? Oh, that's a good question.
Brenner said that if he picked them up, there might be some fingerprints on him and that his fingerprints are on everything out there.
Everything in the vast desert, his fingerprints are on.
I touch everything.
That's the thing about me and six-year-olds.
I touch everything.
We hang out all the time.
My fingerprints are on none of your shoes. None of them.
And you have multiple pairs pairs this is this guy's only pair of shoes are always on his feet this guy's was he going down checking his toe to see if he's growing out of him i give him a lot of foot massages through his shoes do that all the time so um brenner stated that he did pick up a boot out there and threw it. Before, he said he doesn't know how they got out there.
Now he goes, oh, yeah, I did pick it up and throw it. Yeah, that's how that happened.
All right. So they're like, interesting.
He told us that he never saw the boots we recovered and didn't know if it was one of those boots, but he's touched some of Dylan's something. He described that he was walking out to catch his horse on a path and came across a boot that he threw out of the way.
That might have been the boot so they search his area uh brenner's area here and they now they have some phone activity yeah so they have phone activity between him and brennan basically and the way it ends up happening is their phones line up perfectly at some point to where all of their movements are together together Together. And then Dylan's phone doesn't have any more movements and Brenner's goes about its day.
Keeps moving. Yeah.
Keeps moving. So they said that Dylan's phone appeared to move around the property until 1101 hours where it goes stationary on the property for three hours and 36 minutes.
Okay. It's 1101 AM.
It goes stationary, which he's on a property doing things. It wouldn't be stationary.
Then the phone moves again at 1437, where it travels from the barn to Lucent Pond. Remember, that's the same exact time Brenner said he was at Lucent Pond.
And by the way, his phone is also at Lucent Pond at this time. The route that Dylan's phone takes is on the road that Brenner refers to as the back way, and Brenner
has stated on multiple occasions he doesn't use
the Little Pigeon Mountain Road to go to the main
entrance. He uses the back way.
The phone arrives at the pond at 14.52
hours, and that's the
last movement of the phone. The final
time stamp on his phone is 14.53.55.
Also, so they
analyzed all of Brenner's. Everything
mirrors everything until the pond.
And then Brenner goes on with his day. So they went, huh.
That pretty much says it all. We just watched what happened.
So they find it in the water in the pond. They find his phone.
The phone is in the water. Yeah.
They find the phone. The polygraph.
Now they bring him in.
They tell him he's going to do a polygraph Brenner.
He does it.
They tell him you didn't do well on that at all.
You did very poorly.
So they end up there.
He's in there anyway for the for the guns.
So after the polygraph, they interviewed him again and told him they asked him if there's anything other than Dylan's boots and inside Dylan's truck that could have his DNA on it. He told investigators that Dylan's trailer is another item that would have DNA on it.
He also included the tractor. And they said, have you ever handled his cell phone? And he said, no, absolutely not.
So they find out that he did, obviously. So that's a problem.
June 20th, 2022. There's a neighbor here, Donald Hatley.
They talked to him a little bit more and they talk about that Brenner. OK, they said on June 7th, Brenner brought three black powder guns to his house and asked him to, quote, safe keep them.
Hang on to these. Hang on.
Like Godfather 2 when he passes him. Hang on to this for me through the window.
So when the just in case you didn't realize, I watched Godfather 2 recently because I made two references in an hour. Yeah, it's the better one.
It's they're both great, but I like it better. Yeah.
When the neighbor asked why here, Brenner asked, said that he needed this, that he needed to do this for his own safety and that the last time he had trouble with the law, they took everything from him and he didn't want his things to be taken again. So he brought a 22 caliber rifle and some shit like that.
He explained that the rifle had been left on the in a trailer on the property where Brenner had been living prior to Brenner living there by a person who owed Brenner money. So that's what that goes on here.
So, um, yeah. So Donald Hatley talks about a little bit more about Dylan.
And, uh, he said that Brenner had potential to fly off the handle and get extremely, uh, violent when upset. He talked about several incidents when that happened, uh, there keep talking to this Donald Hatley because they think that he might have some info as a neighbor.
But all he has, he has a lot of like innuendo and all that. So he said that he liked Dylan and that he wanted to help because he believed in villains, villains, Dylan's vision, not villains vision start a farm in Lucen.
And he felt like a father type to Dylan, and he wanted to help him out. So there's that.
Now, this guy said he knew Brenner since he lived in Montello. And he'd seen Brenner two to three times a week since Brenner has been in Lucen.
And he said if Brenner did kill Dylan, he didn't know where Brenner would hide a body. He said that he did do some, Dylan did some exploring, he and Dylan did some exploring together at the Williams Place, where Hatley described being north between Brenner's place and Dylan's place on the other side of the mountain.
He did say that if Brenner did kill Dylan, he would not probably find the body easily out there. Oh, so anyway, June 25th, they get more tips to police from complete about completely different people.
A guy said that they had a friend near Area 51.
Oh, God.
They said that a female said the guy was named Justin Hayward, but goes by the rap music name Lil Eric.
So she's blaming Lil Eric on this.
That's what's going on here.
Lil Eric killed him.
It's a stupid rap name.
Oh my God.
So when they get the phone out of,
that's a terrible rap name.
When they get the phone out of the pond,
that's when everything breaks open
because the opportunity and the phones being together make Brenner look very guilty. Right, yeah.
Unless Lil' Eric left a note in this phone. Lil' Eric did this, bitch.
Left his calling card. I'm not afraid of Lil' Eric.
No. No Lil' Eric.
It's a bad rap name. So, while they're searching the phone, they get, they actually recover his phone, recover data from his phone, despite it being in a pond.
Oh, shit, it didn't ruin it. Nope.
There was media located that clearly shows that the phone was in a trailer and was identified as Brenner's trailer. There's a picture of, this is fucked up.
The time frame is consistent with Dylan first arriving on the property in the morning of May 28th.
The media recording was originally moving at a high speed, then was converted to a lower speed recording by the FBI. Now, in the video, the stair railing can be seen as well as the window in the door of Brenner's place.
Brenner can be seen in the video wiping off a revolver consistent with his black powder revolver and a red substance consistent with blood appears on his left elbow, wrist, and hand. How the fuck did that happen? I don't know.
I don't know if he did it on purpose. Did it on accident, maybe? But Brenner is seen wearing a camouflage T-shirt, and at multiple points in the recording, it appears he's standing over the phone.
They end up going to his house and finding that T-shirt with Dylan's bloodstains on it. Oh, shit.
Not good. He got himself caught.
Not fucking good at all. Yeah, very, very bad.
They also found a bunch of other stuff with Dylanylan's blood on it um they have brenner's
touch dna on the boots oh yeah it's so recent there's so much technology it's so so technologically fat and then the shirt is the big one though they find literally find the fucking shirt he was wearing when he did it this the video comes right when dylan went missing it is not good at all pair. They also find a hat
as well, a John Deere hat that his mother
said, Dylan's mother said, it's a rare special edition John Deere hat that he purchased and worn. And it was confirmed that that was what he was wearing and James was wearing the hat when they arrested him.
He was wearing Dylan's hat. Dylan's hat.
He took the hat. It's fucked up.
So they're still looking for his body, though. They haven't found his body.
They look around. They find a bag of bones in the desert, and they find out that they're not human bones.
They thought maybe that was it. They find a clump of...
Justin, the dad, found a clump of skin and hair. Turns out not his.
Oh, my God. What is happening out here? Don't know know this i'm telling you this place is wild so they charge brenner with murder anyway obviously i'm here then the parents start sending brenner emails begging for the body yeah grandpa let us bury him yeah grandpa sent one that said jim this is larry on may 30th you said dylan should learn how to use a.
A gun can't do you any good if all you know how to do is throw it at someone. Did Dylan throw his gun at you on May 28th? What did he do to make you so mad? I would really like to hear it from you.
I have some questions I hope you can answer. My phone number is and gives it out and said, or you can text me.
There is money on this account for either one. In other words, if you call me, I'll give you money.
I'll pay you to tell me what the fuck happened. So anyway, he decides to make a plea bargain.
Really? Yep, he admits it. He said, I did it, I killed him, fuck it.
He does it. The prosecutors are working with the parents of Dylan to come out with different options and sentencing outcomes to finalize a plea deal here.
So in part of this, he's required to tell all about the case, including the location of the body. That's part of it.
So he leads police to the body. It is way out in the middle of the desert and loosen just in the middle of the desert under a pile of fucking shit.
And he's skeletonized by now. It's Jesus.
This happens about a year and a half later. He's basically a skeleton.
Just last year. 2023 is when they found the body.
So this took this long. They finally found him.
He's been gunshot wounds is what did it. They think they shot him with a .22 rifle I believe here.
So much for fucking private investigators. So Dylan's mom said that's it.
Just mad. It was that he was just mad.
Because he told, Brenner told the cops that he was mad that Dylan put his truck in the shed that day. That's why he killed him.
Annoyed by the truck in the shed. It's his property, man.
But he knocked his stuff over. So the mom said, that's it.
Just mad. It was absolutely shameful that that's what it was over.
And then that's probably all we'll ever get out of him. There's no legal arrangement that can make him tell us exactly what happened that morning.
Oh, my God. And he said that we've been waiting for it.
It's a giant elephant out of the room. It's a relief in that sense, the mom said.
Sentencing
comes around. The defense and the prosecution
agreed to recommend a minimum of
three and maximum of 30 years in
prison at sentencing. Okay.
The judge requested that Brenner
stand and face the gallery,
which was filled with Dillon's friends and family,
and he refused.
What?
He said, nope, not going to do it.
So the judge said,
I am going to recommend to the parole board
Thank you. and he refused.
What? He said, nope, not going to do it. So the judge said, I am going to recommend to the parole board that they keep you as long as they legally can.
You, sir, may fuck off one to 15 years in prison for each of the three counts he pleaded guilty. And he's been given credit for like a year and change time served.
So it's three minimum that's what he's got they'll run consecutively recommend they hang on to him for 15 years for 45 because consecutive so that's the most he can possibly get is 45 so that's that's a lot the mother said it shouldn't have been an option it should be 25 to life but the justice system forced us into this type of plea since then they've set up a non-profit to honor dylan's memory and to get resources for families who are searching for missing loved ones which is very cool so fucked it's so fucked yeah that's dylan's legacy is what it's called so poor little guy that is fucked up man this is all fucked up he went out there he just just wanted to grow some grain he. He just wanted to grow grain.
He wanted to be fucking just to feed people. He wanted to be an actual farmer.
Jesus Christ. It's hard.
So there's poor Dylan. The most information we've ever had on a case in this.
We had everybody's interviews. It was so much to sift through.
So get through the end real quick here. Definitely, if you like that, tell everyone you know.
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