Status: Untraced - E4: Under One More Rock

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Our latest podcast series, Wisecrack, was just named one of the best of 2025 by Apple Podcasts. It's an amazing honor.

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And thanks again to Apple for showing this show some love.

Speaker 5 As promised, here is Status Untraced, Episode 4.

Speaker 2 You're listening to Status Untraced, a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey.

Speaker 2 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast. This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone.

Speaker 2 Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 1 Jonathan Skiels kindly shared his Dropbox containing hundreds of videos and photos from the 2016 search. And we begin to comb through it.

Speaker 1 These are the most notable finds.

Speaker 1 Number one:

Speaker 1 photos showing the contents inside Justin's backpack from Kolga. It includes 20 unused pills of Xanax, a total of 120 tabs of Viagra, three boxes of Durex condoms, and $720 in U.S.
cash.

Speaker 1 Number two:

Speaker 1 there are videos of the interrogations of Baba Rawat and porter Anil Kumar. They can say something about what happened that day.

Speaker 3 Why didn't he say that before?

Speaker 1 Most of the interrogations are conducted in Hindi, so I send them to a translation service and await a response.

Speaker 1 And finally, number three:

Speaker 1 a video shot by Jonathan Skeels and an Indian mountaineer that captured one of the most important moments in the search.

Speaker 1 Mountaineer creeps along a ledge of tall, dry grass. At a steep plunge below is the river.
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 So this is what I spotted here.

Speaker 1 I see the flute of the guy who is missing.

Speaker 1 Oh god.

Speaker 1 This is the flute, right? It looks like it.

Speaker 1 And it's fresh.

Speaker 1 You can take out.

Speaker 1 Oh shit!

Speaker 1 So there's clothes? It's a lighter? Yeah, I see a lighter also.

Speaker 1 Don't look around. I'm not touching anything.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck hell.

Speaker 1 Fucking Baba.

Speaker 1 He didn't

Speaker 1 fall here.

Speaker 1 He can't fall. I'm sure he can't fall.

Speaker 1 You won't see fluke hair like this. And you won't see clothes like this.
Again. Should we open it to confirm it's his?

Speaker 1 Using a stick, they poke at a backpack rain cover that has been rolled up. Inside is a brown fabric shawl and a gray head wrap.

Speaker 1 Help, help!

Speaker 1 It's Justin!

Speaker 1 Skiels takes hold of the camera, and his attention is drawn to the mystery surrounding one particular item:

Speaker 1 the flute staff. It looks like there's an impression

Speaker 1 like someone was sitting almost.

Speaker 1 Like a flagpole, the flute staff is jammed straight into the ground. Right behind it, a slight impression in the grass, as if someone sat down.

Speaker 1 I can't make sense of it.

Speaker 1 It's as if these items were intentionally left behind.

Speaker 1 Sometimes Sometimes I get the feeling I'm lost.

Speaker 1 Can't hide a man, it's never enough.

Speaker 1 Now I find in every mirror I close.

Speaker 1 Oh, that once I saw the killer,

Speaker 1 once I saw the killer of close.

Speaker 1 I'm Liam Luxon, and this is Status Untraced,

Speaker 1 episode 4,

Speaker 1 Under One More Rock.

Speaker 1 I don't know. You think about, like,

Speaker 1 if this is where she was and her son's all the way in India. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like a completely different world. It's almost too massive to even comprehend.
Are we late? Are we on time? Right on time.

Speaker 1 Alex and I reconvened and quickly made plans for another trip. This time headed north to Salem, Oregon, a small town in our outside of Portland.

Speaker 1 We've intended to make a trip here for some time to visit Justin's mother, Susie Reeb.

Speaker 1 She's invited us to an Italian restaurant in town,

Speaker 1 and as we walk by, we spot her sitting by a large window.

Speaker 1 Hey!

Speaker 1 How's it going?

Speaker 1 I'm doing great here. Susie welcomes us with warm hugs, radiating kindness.
She's draped in a bohemian blouse and adorned with turquoise jewelry.

Speaker 1 I imagine she would have glowed in the sunlight if it weren't for the dreary skies. Though, given the situation, everything feels a bit gray.

Speaker 1 We try to keep the conversation lighthearted. But naturally, we find ourselves talking about Justin.

Speaker 3 For me,

Speaker 3 it was the greatest experience to be a mother and to be his mother.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 someone had said to me, oh, you were Justin's best friend.

Speaker 1 And I'm like,

Speaker 1 no,

Speaker 3 I would never see myself that way. Did we have a great relationship? Yes, in many ways.
Did he keep things from me to protect me? Because he was a protective son? Yes.

Speaker 3 He would tell me after the fact when he had

Speaker 3 done something that was dangerous.

Speaker 1 He didn't want me to worry until it was all better.

Speaker 1 Occasionally, as Susie shares anecdotes about her son, her eyes cloud and drift towards the window, as if in a distant place.

Speaker 1 The loss of losing her only child is something she says will never heal. But she tries to cope with trips to Utah.

Speaker 3 I'm going back to... That's kind of like my sacred space.

Speaker 1 it's where I go, and

Speaker 3 it was very healing for me after

Speaker 3 Justin's murder, which it's been hard to say that word, but somebody, you know, it would always come up in a conversation: oh, you have family or kids, or somebody who didn't know me.

Speaker 3 Well, I had a son, he

Speaker 3 recently passed away. But I was angry that I had to say that because my child had just been

Speaker 2 murdered.

Speaker 1 This is also part of the reason we're here. To try to better grasp the murder theory.

Speaker 1 Where did it originate from? What evidence points to foul play?

Speaker 1 And why does Justin's mother so fullheartedly believe her son was killed?

Speaker 1 We wrap dinner and meet at a shared office the next day.

Speaker 1 Susie walks us through her experience, much of it familiar, but some stories are new, such as her struggles with contacting the U.S. Embassy for help.

Speaker 1 How did you feel trying to reach out to the embassy and just nobody seemed to be getting back to you?

Speaker 3 Crazy frustrated, angry, just beyond angry.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, by that time,

Speaker 3 all I cared about was getting there, boots on the ground, and begin. I just felt I had to move now.

Speaker 3 I couldn't wait for anybody.

Speaker 1 The first article announcing Justin's disappearance was not from India, but the Portland Tribune on October 8th. In it, Susie is quoted saying, I want to make noise.
I want people aware of this.

Speaker 3 And the Kulu police, they were not initially supportive. They're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've heard this before.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 He's just gone missing. He's probably out doing drugs.
And, you know, it was very difficult to convince them.

Speaker 3 And we had to show pictures of Justin being healthy and strong, that he was very skilled, a very skilled tracker.

Speaker 3 Way to show them aerial photography of the path going in and out. There was only one way in and out, and he just completely vanished.
It was very, very tough.

Speaker 1 Two days after arriving in Kulu, Susie filed an FIR. First information report.
The official missing person submission.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Jonathan Skeels, I now have a copy.

Speaker 1 Signed by Susie Reeb at 2:37 India Time, the FIR ends with the following.

Speaker 2 We suspect Baba or his porter have done something wrong or not telling the truth and are potentially responsible for his kidnapping with intention to murder.

Speaker 1 It's the first documented record of any criminal accusation against Baba Rawat and Anil Kumar.

Speaker 1 After the FIR submission, India media outlets such as Midday, The Indian Express, and Hill Post started reporting on Justin's disappearance.

Speaker 1 According to Susie, law enforcement also became more proactive in the case, particularly regarding Baba Rawat.

Speaker 3 Police knew that they had to be on board because it was getting too much notoriety. I had been on TV, the articles in the newspaper had been, it was all over about

Speaker 3 Justin and his situation. We were rattling a lot of chains.
They're like, well, do you want us to have this guy arrested? You know, and I'm like, yes.

Speaker 3 They couldn't believe it they just they just didn't believe it it was very very difficult

Speaker 1 i ask what made susie so sure of baba rawat's guilt and she refers to her last call with justin

Speaker 3 uh and this last experience he had with um rawat i didn't feel good about it in fact i felt it was dangerous it sounds strange

Speaker 3 But I just, in my mother's heart, something was not okay.

Speaker 3 I felt that he was a nefarious character in my heart and in my gut. This is a nefarious character.

Speaker 1 What about Anneal, the porter that was with him? Did you ever feel that he had some

Speaker 1 involvement in the disappearance?

Speaker 3 Let's put it this way. It was a team effort.

Speaker 3 And I know that later... that the porter helped in the search effort when I left.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 3 people that light fires, arsonists, or do crimes often return and observe.

Speaker 3 He changed his story three or four times, just like the Baba. The Baba changed his story about five or six times.

Speaker 3 And by the way, he's left India. Nobody knows where he's at.
They think he went back to Nepal. And Rawat wasn't Indian after all.
He was Nepalese. No, it was a team effort.

Speaker 3 This I am sure of.

Speaker 3 That's all I can say to you.

Speaker 3 It was both of them. It was a team thing.

Speaker 1 Did you guys ever see a body of Rabat?

Speaker 3 I wouldn't want to see.

Speaker 3 I wouldn't care.

Speaker 3 Maybe somebody helped him. I'm not saying that they didn't do that because they wanted him gone.

Speaker 3 However, the fact that it ended that way

Speaker 3 caused a lot of problems.

Speaker 1 After Babarawat's death, the Indian authorities cleaned house.

Speaker 1 The prison guard was suspended, and every officer involved with the case, including the superintendent, have since been discharged or restationed across India.

Speaker 1 The FIR's mention of kidnapping and murder definitely made waves and put a spotlight on Justin's disappearance. But something about it leaves me uneasy.

Speaker 1 Were these murder claims based on anything solid? Or was Babarawat simply a convenient scapegoat to provoke a response from high-ranking officials?

Speaker 1 Someone to shoulder the blame and perhaps offer a needed sense of closure.

Speaker 1 The truth is,

Speaker 1 we still need more evidence to untangle these mysteries.

Speaker 1 So I turn our conversation with Susie Reeb to an idea we haven't previously touched on, hoping to open new doors.

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Speaker 1 When you were in India, but Justin's Google account, like, and his password, you haven't gotten access into that yet, correct?

Speaker 3 No, and I have

Speaker 3 connections at Google.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And if that was possible, it would have been done by now. I think there was a big search for his phone.
That was the big thing because that's where he did everything.

Speaker 3 He recorded everything on his phone.

Speaker 3 Yeah, people asked me for Justin's password. I've had so many people ask, and I just

Speaker 3 tried everything.

Speaker 1 Justin's digital accounts are of interest because they could hold a wealth of information like location tracking and final communications.

Speaker 1 With no leads, we postpone looking into the accounts. And as our interview winds down, Susie makes a kind offer.

Speaker 3 So, you know, I

Speaker 3 have a lot of magnificent experiences and stories, but they're a little too woo-woo for you guys. But

Speaker 3 I have his first pair of shoes and I have the flute staff downstairs. You said you might want to see it.
I'd love to see that. So before we go, I can just, because my car is right out here, it's just.

Speaker 1 She leads us outside to her car, parked on the side of the street. One by one, she pulls Justin's trinkets and personal belongings out of her trunk.

Speaker 1 Oh, look at this. Wow, that is cool.

Speaker 3 Do you want to try it?

Speaker 1 She encourages me to try on and feel the weight of Justin's brown leather jacket.

Speaker 3 This is the head wrap.

Speaker 1 I run my fingers. over the tattered gray head wrap.

Speaker 3 Well, here it is here. Seeing it now in the real flesh, not just seeing it.

Speaker 1 And then she presents an item that has been circling my thoughts. The flute walking staff.

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Speaker 1 By the time I met Susie, I had been looking into Justin Alexander's disappearance for nearly a year.

Speaker 1 I had immersed myself in everything he'd shared online, from his writings to every picture and video on Instagram. I'd met up with his friends and spent hours talking.

Speaker 1 So many hours, they can't all fit into this show.

Speaker 1 After following in Justin's footsteps for so long,

Speaker 1 I'm starting to feel like I knew him. And holding these personal items now makes it even more real.

Speaker 1 These are the last traces of a man, of a son, who had so much more to give.

Speaker 1 And knowing this, feeling it in my hands, makes everything unknown in Justin's disappearance harder to bear.

Speaker 1 One by one, I hand the items back to Susie Reeb.

Speaker 1 I wish her a peaceful retreat to Utah,

Speaker 1 and we plan to keep in touch.

Speaker 1 Back in Los Angeles, Alex and I strategize on how to track the porter, Anil Kumar, and access Justin's digital footprints. Both missions are way outside our realm of expertise, so we make a call.

Speaker 1 Emerging UN. Perfect.

Speaker 1 I believe I hope you guys hear.

Speaker 1 Hi, good morning. Morning.

Speaker 1 This is our first time meeting, but a voice I'm familiar with. Jaden Brandt is a private detective and founder of Origin Investigations, who aided in the searches for Adeya Shabani and Elaine Park,

Speaker 1 the missing person cases that are the focus of the podcast to live and die in LA.

Speaker 1 Correct me if I'm wrong. You're actually trying to investigate this case,

Speaker 1 not simply document it, correct? Correct.

Speaker 1 There has been a decent amount of investigation into the guy that went missing. There is one suspect, though, that was arrested and then let go.
He's either an Indian national or he's Nepal national.

Speaker 1 And so our goal is to try to track him down.

Speaker 1 You know, whether we're looking for a subject or we're trying to get information on an individual or company or things like that, doing that here in the U.S. is a very straightforward process.

Speaker 1 Overseas, it's much more reliant on your kind of

Speaker 1 personal currency. If I'm headed to China and I need to speak to someone there,

Speaker 1 I don't even begin to look for anybody.

Speaker 1 I just make a phone call and have someone else do it. So that's going to be challenging.

Speaker 1 Not impossible. It's just a matter of getting the right resources or getting on the ground and making it happen over there.

Speaker 1 Jaden's foreign connections are predominantly in China and Thailand. But he offers to dig up what contacts he can for PIs in India.
Independently, Alex and I plan to do the same.

Speaker 1 I then asked Jaden for his advice on accessing Justin's digital accounts and if it's possible to make a request from companies like Google.

Speaker 1 Okay, so what do you what do you guys have now in terms of do you have devices of his or we have nothing of his currently okay

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 I mean in terms of getting it from Google that's not really gonna happen. Okay.
I mean because first thing I'm thinking is you know if you can get access to a phone that has his same number,

Speaker 1 you can start to look at trying to get into some of those accounts through two-factor authentication.

Speaker 1 Two-factor authentication is an extra layer of security on your online accounts. You've probably seen it before.

Speaker 1 You log in with your username and password, and then to confirm it's really you, a secret PIN is sent to your phone. This sort of security is also used when resetting your account passwords.

Speaker 1 So what Jaden is saying is if if we could somehow get a hold of Justin's old phone number, we might have a shot at changing his passwords. Meaning we'd basically have a key to his entire online world.

Speaker 1 Stuff like email, Google, and iCloud.

Speaker 1 We don't know who currently owns the number, so I call Justin's mom, Susie, to figure it out.

Speaker 1 Alex and I have been talking about, you know, maybe there's a way that we can get into his Google account and track like the location.

Speaker 1 And so if you have his phone number and you figure figure out if that phone number is still active or if it isn't okay so here's okay i'm going to interrupt you here because

Speaker 6 i have had this habit for four and a half years of every so often calling justin's number yeah

Speaker 6 i just call

Speaker 6 and i leave messages

Speaker 3 and um

Speaker 6 i had this um this experience where it said it had been read

Speaker 6 that i didn't get a response and i contacted Jonathan and he said that they probably already reassigned the number.

Speaker 1 This is true. Your number can be reassigned if you don't pay your phone bill.

Speaker 6 So I don't know what's going on. I will give you the number.

Speaker 1 Hold on.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to need to reach out to those people. I'm going to try to and kind of explain the scenario because the idea is that we're going to try to

Speaker 1 go to his Google account and then say we forgot the password because it should send a two-form authorization code to the phone and then hopefully find something.

Speaker 6 Well, I'm okay with whatever you need to do. Shall I give you the number?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Yes, please.

Speaker 1 Perfect. From your knowledge, that was the one he was calling you from.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 And then the other question is, what email do you think he would have had attached to his Google account?

Speaker 1 Probably

Speaker 6 yeah, it's disbanded.

Speaker 6 Jonathan and I just checked that last month, too.

Speaker 1 The other thing that we could look through, Justin had an iPhone, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We might be able to get his Apple account through

Speaker 1 that somehow as well, actually.

Speaker 1 So that would be kind of our possibilities there. But we're going to, we'll try the Google one first.
But

Speaker 1 this may be a complete dead end, but whatever option we can possibly take take to maybe find something.

Speaker 1 I have a similar conversation with Justin's father, Terry Shettler. And with both parents' permission, I launch into tracking down the current phone number owner.

Speaker 1 I call Justin's number. It rings, and I get a voicemail.
Thank you for calling.

Speaker 1 This number is now owned and operated by a private company in Northern California. And I spend the next couple of weeks trying to get in touch with someone.

Speaker 1 Finally, their their secretary, who for the sake of the podcast, we'll call Savannah, picked up.

Speaker 1 She didn't recognize the number and, after talking to her boss, insisted that the company didn't own it.

Speaker 1 A little thrown off, I called the number again.

Speaker 1 And yeah, I was absolutely sure the number belonged to the Northern California Company. Except this time...

Speaker 1 I noticed something strange about the voicemail. It sounded exactly like Savannah.

Speaker 1 I know this is asking you a lot, but could I actually have you just call that number? Because it goes directly to a voicemail and

Speaker 1 it sounds a lot like the same voice, which I believe is your voice.

Speaker 1 Savannah calls the number herself and agrees with me. It's her voice.
She promises to look into the ownership of the number and what they can do to transfer it.

Speaker 1 So while Savannah begins that process, I decide to look into one more lead, a tracking expert who analyzed the location where Justin's items were found.

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Speaker 1 When everybody is worried about him dying in India, I remember just going, eh, it's Justin. Like, he doesn't, he never dies.

Speaker 1 Tom McElroy, a wilderness survival instructor, met Justin when they were both young adults training in the art of survival.

Speaker 1 Susie Susie put me in touch with Tom, saying that the two men had been like brothers since they were teenagers.

Speaker 1 Like, he's the guy that gets hit by a truck and he falls out of a tree and cracks his head, but like, he always just pops back up and like, you know, sews his head together with some duct tape and then he's fine, you know, and this larger-than-life kind of guy that seemed like nothing could ever get him.

Speaker 1 Tom wasn't initially involved in the search, but decided to fly to India midway through October.

Speaker 1 I think I was teaching a class or something right at that time. And so I didn't go right away.
I also wasn't sure if I was going to be the most helpful person.

Speaker 1 I was thinking more like somebody that spoke the language and knew the culture would be better because, you know, I was just another guy walking around looking under rocks.

Speaker 1 And it just kind of turned out that a week later, they needed more help. And so.
I basically packed all my stuff and was on a plane that evening,

Speaker 1 30 hours later, being on a helicopter flying up to 10,000 feet to go look for Justin's body. So it all just moved really quick at that point.

Speaker 1 I noticed the words, Justin's body, and ask why that's the verbiage he uses.

Speaker 1 I think at that point, I really kind of given up hope that we were going to find Justin just hanging out and okay.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, of course, every time I turned a corner on the trail, my mind was like totally waiting to see Justin wrapped in blankets walking around the corner with a busted leg.

Speaker 1 Just been like, oh my god, Tom, what are you doing here? You know?

Speaker 1 But then we walked down to where they found his flute. And I looked up this cliff.

Speaker 1 Something very clearly heavy went off the cliff because there's just broken branches all the way down the cliff to where Justin's stuff was found.

Speaker 1 You know, there were some branches two inches in diameter that were snapped in half going down the cliff and fairly fresh. And it wasn't like a steep cliff.

Speaker 1 I never in my life would fall off a cliff like that, and Justin was more agile than I am.

Speaker 1 Even if you did fall off of that cliff, you'd probably be able to grab something on the way down. It wasn't that big a deal.

Speaker 1 Reiterating Tom's observations, he says standing where Justin's flute staff was found, there appeared to be one distinct line of broken branches from something that fell down the cliff face to that spot.

Speaker 1 He also said, search teams possibly experimented with throwing logs and rocks higher up off the cliff to see how they fell.

Speaker 1 In addition to that broken line, he observed two other tracks here.

Speaker 1 I could find a trail of two people. It was a very obvious track.
If I had gotten there before anybody else had gotten there, I would have been able to track it.

Speaker 1 But the fact that Jonathan and a bunch of people had already walked down there, I couldn't tell the difference between his tracks and tracks from before that.

Speaker 1 Tom inspected this location two months after Justin was last seen. So really, these tracks could belong to anyone.

Speaker 1 However, further up the cliff, he made another discovery. So, I hiked slightly up the cliff and then found there was a jacket actually stuck halfway up the cliff that nobody had found.

Speaker 1 They took the jacket and they said they did some forensics on it and didn't find anything that would indicate that it was his jacket. But yeah, the jacket never led to anything.

Speaker 1 We never saw it in a picture or anything like that. So, who knows? It could have just been there for years.

Speaker 1 Tom says he then reached the top of the cliff where the trail is.

Speaker 1 So I saw two sets of tracks coming in and standing at that spot. And so the tracks didn't look like they were a month old.
They looked more recent at the time.

Speaker 1 But everybody told me nobody's been out here. Tom later found out that statement wasn't true.

Speaker 1 He came across photographs of search teams actively walking in the area earlier in the week. The discovery muddled his entire analysis, but one thing remained clear.

Speaker 1 I was like, okay, confirmed something heavy went off the cliff and broke branches all the way down.

Speaker 1 And so from there, I just assumed that that's a likely story of what happened, why his stuff was there. And so I was like, well,

Speaker 1 either his body continued all the way down the river and it could be anywhere. We're never going to find it.
Or there's probably a 50% chance that it got caught underwater.

Speaker 1 But the water is moving so fast and it's all glacial melt. That's freezing cold.
So you can't just like jump in and find out. So we came up with a plan to get these grappling hooks made out of rebar

Speaker 1 and had a GoPro with an underwater flashlight and some big long poles.

Speaker 1 And I hiked back up there with Chris and these young guys that were putting together a search crew.

Speaker 1 And then we chucked the grappling hooks in that spot a bunch of times and we never pulled up anything.

Speaker 1 After that, we basically called off the search. It was just too impossible to get back up there with all the ice.

Speaker 1 You always think like, God, if I just looked under one more rock or if I hike down to the river one more time,

Speaker 1 maybe I'm going to find it this time. And

Speaker 1 it was just, it was very sad to walk away from that.

Speaker 1 Tom's findings. provide the clearest picture of what actually happened at the site.

Speaker 1 Yet I can't get past the the flute staff jutting straight out of the ground. How did it end up like that?

Speaker 1 Before I got to India, I was like, there's no way somebody didn't plant that staff in the ground. And then somewhere in there, I just kind of was like, well, it doesn't make any sense any other way.

Speaker 1 We got a bunch of logs and threw them off the cliff. And every single time, those logs would hit where that staff was.
And then the logs would continue to bounce into the river.

Speaker 1 I mean, if his body's falling, if he was still alive, he's like, ah, and just kind of hits, you know, with the staff, I don't know. Yeah, it's weird.

Speaker 1 I agree with Tom. It's weird.
The way the walking staff was found, it's like something out of a mystery novel.

Speaker 1 There's only a few scenarios that make sense. One, Justin fell off the cliff and in a desperate attempt to save himself, jammed the flute staff into the ground.

Speaker 1 Two,

Speaker 1 He planted it there himself before vanishing into thin air. Or three,

Speaker 1 the staff was put there by someone else.

Speaker 1 Whatever happened here is anyone's guess. Was Justin pushed or not?

Speaker 1 If foul play, why wouldn't a murderer dispose of the evidence? The river was just over the ledge.

Speaker 1 I'm at a crossroads in this investigation, feeling like I've hit dead ends. Short of hopping on a plane to India, I'm running out of leads.

Speaker 1 That is, until Savannah contacts me with news. And I call Alex to fill him in.
I'm on my way to Sprint store to see if I can talk to them.

Speaker 1 And then probably head back to T-Mobile after that, hopefully with some results.

Speaker 1 Savannah got approval to transfer Justin's old phone number. While that's excellent news, I soon find my challenge isn't over.

Speaker 1 I take a visit to T-Mobile. and the employees claim the transfer request can only be dealt with over the phone.

Speaker 1 But when I dial up T-Mobile tech support, they claim the transfer request can only be made in store.

Speaker 1 So I was just sitting in my car on the phone, and then I had to take it in there, give it to the manner, and the manner had to talk to him. The whole thing is just so utterly absurd.

Speaker 1 This whole ordeal drags on for days. I'm on the phone for hours.
I pour my heart out to multiple T-Mobile employees. And at one point, call me a complete idiot.

Speaker 1 I almost accidentally lose ownership of the number entirely. But I don't give up.
I stay vigilant. And the process pays off.

Speaker 1 I get access to Justin's old number.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 we did it. We fucking finally did it.
It only took me six hours of being at T-Mobile over the last couple days. Wow.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Okay, we gotta get into the Google account. I know.

Speaker 1 Alex and I meet at an office in LA. I bring a newly purchased iPhone and the SIM card associated with Justin's number.

Speaker 5 How you feeling?

Speaker 1 Fucking... I'm nervous.
I power up my computer. We're going to try to get into one of Justin's email accounts.
Should we just try it? Click forgot password.

Speaker 1 Okay. And the last password you remember when this is.
We start with a forgot password method.

Speaker 1 Try another way.

Speaker 1 Get a verification code. Oh god, this is so fucking crazy.
This is the thing. Um, the number

Speaker 1 send.

Speaker 1 Should be coming back there.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 A two-form authentication pin is sent to the iPhone. I use this pin to reset Justin's email password.
And like clockwork, we're in Justin's Yahoo account.

Speaker 1 But it's not what we were expecting. Weird.
It's empty.

Speaker 1 Does.

Speaker 1 That can't be right, is it?

Speaker 1 Do things just get deleted after a certain point?

Speaker 1 There is no data in Justin's email accounts. No received emails, no sent messages, no saved drafts, no search history, nothing.

Speaker 1 Hoping beyond hope that some piece of data must exist, we log into Justin's Google account and open his Google location tracking.

Speaker 1 Go to manage your Google account. Here you go.
We're discovering Location history is paused. Fucked.

Speaker 1 It's been turned off. He doesn't have anything.

Speaker 1 No luck with Google. But I want to try to turn over one more stone:

Speaker 1 Justin's iCloud.

Speaker 1 Hang on, let's try to get this Apple ID.

Speaker 1 Please hungry, continue. Text mess hinge.

Speaker 1 Cool.

Speaker 1 Enable.

Speaker 1 what is this?

Speaker 1 Holy shit.

Speaker 1 Dude, we got them all.

Speaker 1 Holy shit, we're in it.

Speaker 1 If you have tips or information on the individuals in this podcast that you'd like to share, please email us at statusuntraced at gmail.com or leave us a message at 507-407-2833.

Speaker 1 Status Untraced is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. I'm your host, Liam Luxon.
Executive producers are Alex Vespested, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay.

Speaker 1 Producers are Meredith Stedman and myself. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan.
Consulting producer, Jonathan Skeels.

Speaker 1 Associate editors are David Bash and Charles Rosner of GetUp Productions, with additional editing by Sydney Evans.

Speaker 1 Artwork by Trevor Eiler. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Our theme song is Colder Heavens by Blanco White. Mix by Cooper Skinner.
Voice acting provided by Robin McAlpine.

Speaker 1 Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group.

Speaker 1 For more podcasts like Status Untraced, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us at tenderfoot.tv.

Speaker 1 Big news!

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Speaker 8 Every story has layers, and sometimes the truth hides in plain sight. I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, the podcast about people who transform, deceive, and survive.

Speaker 8 From con artists to unbelievable yet true occurrences, we dive into stories where nothing is ever quite as it seems. Because to understand the world, you sometimes have to change the way you see it.

Speaker 5 Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.