3 | Oregon Jon

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Hey, it's Payne. I want to thank everyone for being a listener of this show.
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Previously Previously on Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun. August 31st, 2020, Florence Akbialik is reported missing.
Do you feel like the police have done enough to solve her case? No. It feels and looks like they haven't done anything.
If there's not some sort of accountability with the police department, this could easily get swept under the rug. She had reportedly last been seen on West Beach.
And I have to be honest, I've gone to party at West Beach before. Okay.
There's a lot of people that would migrate from the bars down to the beach. Somebody knows something and covered it up.
That beach is very popular for gold miners. But I do know that she was supposedly last seen with this guy.
They found her things in his tent.

The gentleman who owned the tent, the miner,

this miner may have been involved.

I don't know the guy's name.

Where the guy went, I don't know.

This guy, I just know he was a cab driver in town, and a lot of people didn't like him. He was a drug dealer, and then he was a cab driver for Checker Cab.
He dropped everybody else off but her, and he says, you know what, I could have killed you, and nobody would have known about it. This guy gives her some of Flo's clothes, but she's not there.
Why would her belongings be there and her not be there? It's all part of the mystery, isn't it? Whether it was intentional or an effort to shut her up, she's clearly been murdered. Which bar was she at last? B.O.T.
That's the one right on Front Street. It's the oldest bar downtown.
She said, I got a guy in the bar saying throw us out West Beach. There was problems with a cab driver.
And he followed me. He pulled out a knife.
This guy, his name starts with J. The man is a dangerous man.
She'd been missing for two days. There was a man and I kind of knew him because he was a cab driver.
He was sitting here drinking and he was talking about an incident that was going on with his girlfriend. And he was saying she'd gotten a restraining order on something, something, something.
He turned around and said, I seen her down West Wheat. She was partying with some of the miners down there.
And she had stopped by his tent and was talking to him. Her cell phone and shoes being found outside of a tent.
Her items were around his tent.

One of the last people to see her, if not the last.

You ever seen him since all those?

He moved shortly after that. He took off.

What was the name that you knew him by?

Oregon John.

What do you think happened to her?

Pretty sure somebody murdered her. From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, I'm your host, Payne Lindsey, and this is Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun.
In the case of Florence Okpialik's disappearance,

the biggest lead I have is this mysterious gold miner

who was camped along West Beach in Nome.

He was reportedly seen by multiple witnesses

taking flow to and from West Beach on the night she vanished,

and her personal belongings were found outside his tent the next morning. As of right now, here's what we know about him.
He's a middle-aged white guy, potentially overweight, and in addition to being a freelance gold miner, he allegedly drove a cab in town. I heard multiple first-hand accounts of scary run-ins with the cab driver, who also fits this loose description.
A friend of Flo's Aunt Wendy described an incident where she was picked up by a man in a cab, and he told her he could have killed her that night and gotten away with it. Another story from a lady I met at the local board of trade bar involved a cab driver of a similar description, who allegedly was following her one night, night and threatened her with a knife and a man meeting the same description told the bartender Naomi just two days after Florence went missing that she had gone to West Beach that night and as far back as I can trace it's the first time that anyone ever mentions that Florence went to West Beach this is intimate knowledge that only someone who was with Flo that night she went missing could have possibly known.
This same man at the bar was also a cab driver, and he admitted to the bartender that he was in fact with her that night on the beach, and the personal belongings they found were outside of his tent. According to the bartender Naomi, his nickname is Oregon John.
And right now, above all else, he's my number one focus. What's Oregon John's real name? And where is he now? Upon replaying the recording of Naomi, there was one thing in particular that really stood out to me.
She had stopped by his tent and was talking to him. Her cell phone and shoes being found outside of a tent.
According to every missing persons flyer for Florence, in every personal account I've ever heard from her family, the items found outside Oregon John's tent were her shoes, shirt, and jacket. But in that conversation at the bar, Org and John added a new detail

that I've never heard anywhere else in this case.

Her cell phone and shoes being found outside of a tent.

He mentioned that he had Flo's cell phone.

Why on earth would he say that if it wasn't true?

It's definitely not a good look,

but it's also strange to me

that there's no mention of her cell phone anywhere else.

Did he really have her cell phone that night too? And if so, where the hell is it now? Do the police have it? Do the police even know about this stuff? The Nome Police Department has been a revolving door of police chiefs and investigators for years now. It seems that most people don't stick around for long.
At the end of last year, the current chief retired, and for the first time in three years, the Gnome PD had no police chief at all. Instead, the lead investigator, a man named William Crockett, seemed to be unofficially filling that role.
I don't know if he's investigator Crockett or officer Crockett, but he now has the case, even though he wasn't here at all during any of the search efforts.

I met with Sue Steinecker again, a known local who's been here for decades,

and followed Flo's case from the very beginning.

Now they've decided that she must have been killed by a bear because we can't find any sign of her at all.

None of it makes, none of it makes sense.

According to the last known conversation with the police department, they're running on a new theory now. We do have bears, grizzlies here.
I mean, they are around. Every great once in a while, one will come into this region, closer to town.
A bear kill, there would have been all kinds of signs. It's not like they eat every last bone.
That doesn't make any sense. Bears are most certainly present in Nome, Alaska, but they rarely make their way into town.
In 2022, Officer Curtis Worland was killed by a muskox trying to defend his dog from the animal. A muskox is a huge, bull-like mammal, native to the Arctic region.
They range from 400 to 900 pounds. It can run up to 37 miles per hour.
And just like grizzly bears, the musk ox can be a very dangerous animal to encounter. But overall, these incidents are extremely rare.
The other thing that doesn't make any sense to that is that we had people out searching all the time. If there had been a bear in the area, there would have been alerts.
And it's just, it's very frustrating that the police department can say, well, we can't share anything with you because this is an active case. How active is it? It's a great way to cover your butt if you're not doing anything, or if you've given up.
Now you're blaming it on a magical bear that cleans up neatly after itself. I feel she's clearly been murdered.
There's a long history of strange disappearances in Nome that continue to remain unsolved. There's a couple of unsolved murder mysteries that people have taken advantage of being able to get out of town.
This is the same explanation they've used for Joseph Balderas because they can't find his body. Well, it must have been a bear.
Four years before Florence went missing, in June of 2016, a man named Joseph Balderas disappeared. He didn't show up for work on a Monday morning, and upon checking his residence, he was nowhere to be found.
The police theory on his case is the same thing, a bear attack. I mean, this seems to be the default explanation, and there's a lot of people not buying that line.
At the entrance to the Aurora Inn Hotel in Nome,

there was a missing poster for Joseph Balderas taped to the door.

He was 36 years old when he disappeared.

And just like Flo's case, there's no leads whatsoever.

The man just vanished into thin air.

His family is continuing to post reward signs.

They told me they got very frustrated with the Nome Police Department and they hired our own private detective. They feel like his case is very suspicious.
I did some more reading on Joseph and started drawing many similarities to Flo's case. Displeased with the Nome PD's handling of his case, his family decided to hire their own private investigator, a man named Andy Clamser.
For years, this PI was traveling back and forth to Nome, conducting his own investigation, doing his own interviews.

If there was anybody out there with more insight on how to privately investigate a disappearance

in this town, it's got to be this guy. Investigating a missing persons case in the

subarctic region of Alaska is a pretty unique thing. This is somebody I want on my team.
So I tracked him down. When I think of an investigation like this, I think of it as a long hallway with a lot of doors off it.
The idea is to travel down that hallway, go in every door, and check it out. You can go down rabbit holes and waste a lot of time.
You really need the ability to look at all those other issues and figure out which of them warrant a lot of time to focus on what is important. In every case I've ever covered, there comes a point where your mind becomes scrambled with information overload.
You start going down every avenue you find, checking off the boxes one by one. But sometimes you find yourself stuck in a loop.
It's important to remember to zoom out and reset, or you might get lost in minute details that don't matter. For whatever reason, a lot of people seem to go missing in Nome.
The number of missing people does not really match the population of the area. It is weird.
It is weird. It is weird.
It's definitely wild country. There's a lot fewer people.
Some people can't stand the winters because the winters are long. I mean, it's a different feel up here in the winter.
Much quieter. There's a lot fewer people.
We have about six hours of daylight. I mean, so in the summer, it's light 20 hours out of the day.
Speaking of that, I don't think I've slept since I've been here. The five-hour time difference is one thing.
But when I look out my bedroom window at two in the morning, it looks like two in the afternoon. I've been here for almost a week now, and the only darkness I've experienced is with the blackout shades drawn.
Gnome's unusual in that you've got these three long roads. Unlike other places in Alaska, you can go to Nome and take a vehicle way out in the middle of nowhere and do whatever you want to do, hunt, look for gold, whatever.
And so that would create more missing people than other communities, I think. But once you turn up into the hills, there's nobody, there's nothing.
It's open country. People don't live out there.
People, you know, go back and forth on that road to council. But other than that, there's nothing out there.
When you start to venture outside the downtown area, you need to have your wits about you. If you get a flat tire, you could be there for days before another car drives by.
Joseph Balderas was reported missing on June 27, 2016. And just like Flo, despite extensive search efforts, he too has never been found.
One of Joseph's friends contacted me early on. After talking to friends of Joseph's, it wasn't making sense.
His fiance was alarmed right away. His usual practice was to stay in touch with her multiple times a day.
Joseph wasn't responding to anything and nobody had seen him other than the roommate. So for him to not respond to her messages was very unusual.
For him to just disappear, not reappear in town, was very unusual. According to Joseph's friends, he was a very skilled runner and outdoorsman who loved camping and fishing out in the elements.
He was reported missing on the 27th, and then the next day, his truck was found, abandoned, at the mile 44 marker of Gnome Council Road, way outside of town. The first sighting of his truck out there was at 10.45 a.m.
Inside the vehicle, they found his backpack. It contained bug spray and some fishing lures, and on the floorboard, a pair of waders and some boots.
His truck was found parked, backed into a pullout. It became a very big deal in Nome quickly.
Close by, there appeared to be footprints, leading into the woods to a nearby river. But Joseph himself was nowhere to be found.
They had done a lot in terms of searching. Helicopters and airplanes.
I think they had the Coast Guard helping. The state's conclusion, he had been attacked by a bear or had some kind of accident, and they just didn't find the body.
If Flo or Joseph were attacked by a bear, you'd think there'd be some evidence of that. Bears don't eat backpacks, clothing, or cell phones.
Those pieces weren't fitting together. Frankly, it would be pretty unusual for somebody to get attacked by a bear and then never found.
That would be unusual. That scenario that he was attacked by a bear, somehow the body was hidden, that just seemed unlikely.
And so it was worth looking into. The more you look into it, the more unanswered questions and red flags there were.
Through Andy's investigation, there seemed to be some red flags of his own. A suspicious alibi from his roommate.
Strange text messages to his fiancée. And some associates in his life that weren't being very forthcoming about some of the details of their last interactions with him.
There's other things that point in another direction. If you look at everything in total, the theory that he was a victim of animal predation or that he had an accident out there, he fell or something and they just didn't find the body, that is less likely than the scenario where somebody killed him.
The normal course of action would be to do in-depth interviews with all of his friends and associates and family members, you would do a normal homicide investigation. And that never happened in this case.
Gnome PD is just a constant churn. It's a weird department.
For whatever reason, it's just unstable. They don't pay enough for people to go out there and actually stay.
There's no transparency. They want to defend what they did or didn't do.
Nobody's off limits. The more people you talk to, the better.
I think it was time that I met with the known police department myself, but I didn't necessarily have high hopes.

Andy left me with some parting advice.

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I met up with Flo's sister, Blair, and we discussed her interactions with Gnome the years. They never listened.
We don't know who's having a case at the time. It was somebody cheering every week.
They didn't listen to us. Investigator William Crockett seems to be the head man in charge today.
Have you ever talked to Crockett before? I have, several times. What have your exchanges been like with him? The last conversation was very upsetting.
I seen him in April. He said he wanted to talk to me.
And I said, about what? He said about those keys. And then I called him.
I called three times and left two messages. And then he never returned my call.
She's tried on numerous occasions to make meaningful contact with investigator Crockett from the known police department. But every time, she's been shut down.
A few days after we talked, she tried calling him again. I call him and they answer him.
They say they haven't seen him in the office yet.

He's not here.

Would you like to read a message?

I've left several messages.

I want to speak to him.

I think you should go to the police department

because then they'll know that this is happening.

If they knew it was happening,

maybe they'd get a little more motivated.

Or come up with another, maybe it was a dinosaur that killed her. So I went to the known police department myself to try and figure out what the hell is going on here.
Is the police chief in today? No, he is out the office this week. Massacre you folks here, don't you birdie? I spoke to an officer through a bulletproof glass window, using a speaker box.
We're here to discuss some missing persons cases. Please hold.
Then investigator Crockett emerged from the back. Hello.
Hey, how you doing? Hey, Payne. Payne, nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. Is there a chance we can do it tomorrow? Potentially, yeah.
Okay, if we can get something tomorrow, that would I be more than happy to sit down with you guys. I've got administrative stuff I've got to wrap up here in a bit.
He kept his foot on the door, casually leaning back against it. I don't think we're getting the invite to his office.
What time would work best for you guys? I mean, really, anytime tomorrow would be okay. Is earlier, midday better for you? It's probably, let's shoot for earlier in the morning.
You know, we'll talk then, and then we'll make a decision.

I know you guys are out of Atlanta for some kind of podcast.

Yeah, yeah.

So just call the station or?

Yes.

Awesome.

Thanks again, man. I appreciate it.

Uh-huh.

He agreed to meet with me the following morning, so I cleared my schedule.

And just like he asked me to,

I called the station before we arrived.

No, police department can help you. Yes, I'm calling for Deputy Chief Crockett.

And this, who's calling? What is skirting? This is Payne Lindsey. I'm a journalist from Atlanta.

I spoke with him yesterday briefly about possibly meeting today. Give me one second, please.
Sure. Thanks, Rowling.
I appreciate that. He is unavailable for the rest of the day.
Could I take a message? Is he not there? I wasn't able to reach him. I'm not sure what he's got going on right

now. Okay.
Do you know when he might be in again? I'm not sure. If you'd like, you can try calling

back tomorrow. Tomorrow, huh? Do we get free beer tomorrow, too? I don't think tomorrow is happening.
Now they've gotten on my nerves. And I can be quite persistent when I'm like this.
So I tried them again the next day. Okay, what the fuck? Is their landline disconnected now? This is frustrating.
Hello, you have reached the city of Nome.

Please listen to the following options and make your selection at any time.

To leave a message, press zero for the operator.

Wait while I transfer your call.

Hello, you've reached the city of Nome. We are currently unavailable at the moment.
Hang up or press pound for more options. Okay, I think I'm getting the message.
It's clear the Nome Police Department have no interest in talking to the podcaster from Atlanta. That's fine.
I got a backup plan. The private investigator Andy Clamser warned me of this.
And his advice was to reach out to the city manager's office.

My number one focus right now is finding the identity of Oregon John.

This was going to be a Hail Mary,

but I requested any documents of police interactions with a man named Oregon John. So the city manager would be an ideal person to speak with.
Our actual city manager is out of town for a week. We've got an acting city manager in his place.

So John, J-O-H-N.

Records request with governments, they can be months long.

Just depends on what the requester is requesting.

For now, it seemed like that was the most I could do.

Fingers crossed that there's some record of an Oregon John. And fingers crossed they even fucking look for it.
But I'm not going to hold my breath. Until then, it's back to the drawing board.
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I customized, optimized, and monetized everything exactly how I wanted with AI. In Florence Okpialik herself.

What was she like as a person?

Her friend Dialik connected me to two friends of hers in Anchorage, Evelyn and Deanna. We were both living in Teller, which is like 72 miles away from Nome.
Her laugh was just like unique. Contagious, yeah.
Yeah. Like I could hear it now.
Both of our parents come from Wells. Our families are from the same little village.
Flo's family is from Wells and the little Diomede Island. All three of us worked at the hospital together.
Yeah. In different departments, but you know, we would see each other all the time.
We would go to the beach or we would take a drive inland to go picking for greens or tundra berries. A lot of my memories revolve around that.
It's a lot harder to get good groceries up north and even before that was a thing, Alaska Natives relied on the land to sustain themselves. She was really enthusiastic about that.
There was a time where I hung out with her in high school. I was being a little mischief teenager.
I lived with my older brother and his wife at the time, and I was afraid to go home, and then Flo was just like, was just like, let's go pick berries. So, eight in the morning, we went to the tundra and started berry picking.
I feel like she always looked after me and tried to give me advice. And she would bring me desserts or like mukduk, which is whale.
That's a really good memory that I always think about her. Like she was so...
Like she was thoughtful. Yeah.
I've been a single mom for a while now. Her daughter and my daughter are about the same age.
And what I really, really enjoyed about her is that she was very vocal, but she was also quick to let me know what resources were available to me. She was quick to look after people.
She was also quick to give advice. She would do it without judgment, too.
She's always thinking about what's best for her daughter. She always talked to her daughter, Alethea.
Like, she would talk her through things. Her daughter is very smart.
She's very talkative. I think that's what her mom taught her.
Like she would just talk her through things and read to her. She would take the time to explain things to her, or she would teach her about our subsistence.
I think that was really sweet. She was a really good mom.
It was really encouraging like that. Like if we didn't understand something about subsistence, you know, she would talk to us about that or she would show us what to do, especially when it comes to like picking greens or, you know, egg hunting.
Like she'd just be like, you can do it. Come on.
Like, just don't be too, like, don't be afraid. Just, let's go.
Like she had a lot of knowledge, I guess, more than I did and she just loves subsistence so I was shocked and like it just still feels unbelievable to this day like how can you just be missing and I don't know if there's any leads. I don't know what's going on, but it's been so long, and it's just still unbelievable to me.
She's not the type to just leave her daughter. You know, a lot of our memories, too, involving Flo, her daughter was always right there, too.
Same with my daughter. We would all be with our kids.

But she was never the type to just, you know,

when she had first gone missing, like, we all knew that.

Like, she was not the type to just leave her daughter like that.

That was her pride and joy.

For the first week, we were like, what I felt was, like...

Like, she has to be somewhere.

She has to be with someone.

Maybe she took a little break.

I can't remember at what point it was in the case,

but like it just blew my mind that, you know,

when the story started coming out about who saw her last

after that week, you know, it was just,

it felt surreal

because she wouldn't just leave her daughter or her family like that. When they started searching the beaches for her, because it came out that so-and-so said that they saw her walking on the beach or hanging out with someone on the beach.
And when they started taking the search and rescue to the beaches of Nome and up the coastline is when, like, it clicked. I don't think she's going to come back or maybe something really bad had happened to her.
It was like a heart-sinking feeling like this is actually real, like she's actually missing, she's not just taking a break or she's not just like hiding. Like they're actually searching outside for her.
You have to understand where we're coming from because this is Alaska. We have a really harsh environment, it's really pretty, but there's only so long that you can be outside with the right resources.
Our water is rough too, and then the tundra is hard to walk on. And it starts to click in when you realize that they are searching outside, the places that they are searching.
Then you start thinking, like, she's not coming back. What happened to her? Who did this to her? Why is she missing? Especially because she has a daughter.
That's when it started clicking for me that she's not coming back. After time passed and there was no success in finding her, it was just a big, like, sinking feeling.
Or like a slap in the face. Like she's just not here right now.
Yeah. It's just really unbelievable, like unimaginable.
Yeah, because you don't know. You start questioning like if she's out in...
Like what's going on here? Yeah, if she's out in the elements, like is she warm? Will they find her? It's kind of like breathtaking. You can't breathe and you start thinking about, has she eaten? Is she still alive? Is she well-clothed? She just can't be gone.
Especially because at that point, I was living here. And, you know, I kept thinking about my sister and Flo and all of us hanging out.
Like, I wanted to be there, but I, you know, I'm here with my daughter, so there wasn't much I could do from here besides trying to process my emotions or hoping that they'll pick up on a lead in this case while they're searching for her. But it's just like all of that piled on together just gives you anxiety.
You're in a town with 3,000 people. You're telling me no one saw anything, no one has come forward.
I mean, I get it that it's the vast land out there outside of the town, but this is a town, a small town. Someone had to have seen something.
You know, everybody talks to each other, everybody knows each other, and no one has come forward with anything solid. It's just, it's been three years.
There's nothing at all. This is one of our own.
Why would anyone think that it's okay to harm someone else or take someone away from their family and friends? You took a mother away from her child, a sister and aunt away from her family. A daughter.
You took a daughter away from her parents. You took a beautiful person from this earth.
You did that. Why would you think that's okay? Why would you pray on someone who's very innocent and loving and caring? Why? Why would you do that? I hope you feel horrible and you feel guilty.

I love you.

It's okay.

I just hope

they feel guilty and horrible

that they just can't live with this anymore.

They just come forward.

I hope that we find something that will open this case back up,

where they find something significant to reopen it.

And I hope you get what you deserve, and I hope we can figure

out who you are.

In terms of my investigation, it was starting to feel like I had a serious roadblock. Flo was last seen with a man named Oregon John.
He had her personal belongings, potentially her cell phone. And apparently he fled town a long time ago.
If this man holds the key to what happened to her that night, then I need to talk to him. A week or so went by, and one morning I woke up to an email that I never expected to see.
You are not going to believe what the Gnome City Hall just sent back to us.

You are not going to believe it.

I couldn't actually believe it.

The city's office sent me a detailed report of every police interaction with Oregon John.

They gave us a report.

What's more shocking is what is in this fucking report. But then we got another email.
And this one was from the known police department. I guess they do still work there.
In addition to the police report on Oregon John that we graciously received from the city hall,

we received a lovely letter from the Nome PD as well.

It reads,

Dear Sir, the city of Nome is in receipt of your records request.

As there is an active and ongoing investigation into this matter,

your request is hereby denied.

You're kidding me. We already have it.
Do they know that we have it? Is this like a fuck you? In their denial letter, they state there is an active and ongoing investigation into Oregon John. I never once mentioned Flo's disappearance in any of my requests.
I got an email here from the city hall, an official document from the known police department with all the interactions with Oregon John. But what is even more interesting is what's inside this report.
I have his full name now, but for the time being, I'm still going to call him Oregon John. Race, white.
Sex, male. Age, 52.
Weight, 270. Additional remarks from the Gnome PD.
October 2, 2020. Quote, John has made threats to the Gnome Police Department if any law enforcement approaches his tent on West Beach.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In this report, there are 93 incidents.
And yes, you heard me correctly. 93.
Assault third degree. Assault fourth degree.
Assault third degree. Cruelty to animals.

Sexual assault first degree.

Probation violation.

Criminal trespass.

Assault fourth degree.

Sexual assault first degree.

Known aliases.

Oregon John. This is a real-time investigation.
If you want to dig even deeper into the case, go check out my weekly show called Talking to Death. In the latest episode that dropped today, I break down episode three in a conversation with the producers who helped put this show together.
It's an in-depth look like I've never done before, exclusively on my weekly show called Talking to Death, which is out right now. Go check out the latest episode featuring Sarah Turney.
Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Your host is Payne Lindsay.
The show is written by Payne Lindsay with additional assistance from Mike Rooney. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay.
Lead producer is Mike Rooney along with producers Dylan Harrington and Cooper Skinner. Editing by Mike Rooney and Cooper Skinner, with additional editing by Dylan Harrington.
Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Additional production by Victoria McKenzie, Alice Kanique Glenn, and Eric Quintana.
Artwork by Rob Sheridan. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Mix and Mastered by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group.

Special thanks to all of the families and community members that spoke to the team.

Additional information and resources can be found in our show notes.

For more podcasts like Up and Vanished, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us at tenderfoot.tv.

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