2 | Man On West Beach

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Speaker 10 They haven't found the body, they haven't found anything.

Speaker 10 The evidence is gone.

Speaker 1 You sure about that?

Speaker 10 She was supposedly last seen with this guy.

Speaker 10 They found her things in his tent.

Speaker 10 I don't know the guy's name.

Speaker 10 Where the guy went, I don't know.

Speaker 1 But he's not here. No.
He's not known.

Speaker 1 He left.

Speaker 10 I don't know where he went, but I do know that

Speaker 10 if I was an investigator,

Speaker 10 I'd be on his ass like stink on shit.

Speaker 1 Welcome to season four of Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun.

Speaker 1 I'm your host, Payne Lindsay.

Speaker 1 My producer, Mike, and I had finally touched down in Nome, Alaska, where Florence Ockpialik disappeared on August 31st, 2020.

Speaker 1 She was last seen on West Beach, where freelance miners like to set up camp.

Speaker 1 The airport in Nome is tiny, and there's no Uber or Lyft, just a single cab company that loads up as many people as they can. in their 12-passenger van.
I was in a completely different environment.

Speaker 1 And before I could even get my bearings straight, I was interviewing a gold miner who'd been living in Nome for over 25 years.

Speaker 1 He seemed to know a lot about Flo's disappearance, and he spoke vaguely of a man he considered to be the number one suspect.

Speaker 5 Flo's personal belongings were found directly outside of his tent.

Speaker 1 He claimed this mystery man has since fled the town of Nome, long gone since 2020.

Speaker 1 But I found it a bit odd that for as many details as he knew, he couldn't for the life of him recall this individual's name. I need to know his name.

Speaker 1 After a long day of travel, we grabbed some food from a local restaurant in town and tucked in for the night. We had a long day ahead of us.

Speaker 11 We're a pretty interesting little community isolated here on the edge of the Bering Sea.

Speaker 1 This is Sue Steineker. She's lived here in Nome for decades.

Speaker 11 In some ways, it feels like a tiny little Midwest town where you have folks that are third-generation gold rush families and people that have moved here for the country, the rock climbers, the outdoor enthusiasts.

Speaker 11 We are full-spectrum political from super conservative to super liberal.

Speaker 11 I feel like everybody who's been here any length of time,

Speaker 11 sure, maybe you voted this way and I vote this way and your faith is this and mine is this, but you're stuck in a ditch.

Speaker 1 I'm going to pull you out.

Speaker 11 People don't live in Nome for the town. They live in Nome because there's subsistence camps down the beach.
This country out here is fabulous.

Speaker 1 It's gorgeous.

Speaker 11 Nome, the town, is a dump. When the weather's bad, you can't do anything with your house anyway.

Speaker 11 And when the weather's good, you want to go to camp and you want to go fishing and you want to do other things. And houses kind of fall to the wayside.

Speaker 11 There is a recognition amongst the native community that they have not been always treated very well in Nome.

Speaker 11 Fair amount of racial discrimination.

Speaker 11 You know, there was a movie theater, the Dream Theater, that had segregated seating

Speaker 11 and signs that would say no dogs or Eskimos allowed.

Speaker 11 Nome has this very different history.

Speaker 11 And yet, Native people have been here and been part of Nome's history from the very beginning.

Speaker 11 We're the only one that began on a Western model because of the gold rush.

Speaker 11 1900 is the big rush.

Speaker 1 The Nome Gold Rush forever reshaped this town, and its impact still lingers today.

Speaker 11 Somebody goes down to the beach, finds fine gold in the sands. Word goes out there's gold on the beaches.

Speaker 11 40,000 people came and left through Nome that summer. That's the big gold rush.
People just lining that beach.

Speaker 1 And it was on this beach that Florence Okpiolik disappeared. She was first reported missing by her sister, Blair.

Speaker 11 She knew that Flo hadn't come home one night. She knew that she'd been taken down to some of these tent camps.
Blair went down the beach to try to find her sister.

Speaker 1 Flo's sister, Blair, was the first to initiate any search efforts for her. Flo is last seen leaving a bar heading to West Beach.

Speaker 11 Blair goes out, her sister's missing, but this guy gives her some of Flo's clothes. But she's not there.

Speaker 1 In the sand, outside of one of the miners' tents, they found Flo's shoes, socks, and jacket.

Speaker 11 The theory that I think that the search and rescue in the city wanted to work on was that she'd gotten really drunk and left the tents, tried to walk back to Nome,

Speaker 11 and passed out and died of hypothermia somewhere.

Speaker 1 Hypothermia. In the winter in Nome, it can get unbelievably cold.
The temperatures can drop to 50 below zero. But Florence went missing on August 31st in the summertime.

Speaker 1 And according to the official weather report for that day, the average temperature was only 48 degrees. Pretty unlikely to die of hypothermia in weather like that.

Speaker 11 When they first start search and rescue, it's on the assumption that this person is missing and not murdered.

Speaker 11 Until a body's found, every search starts where the person was last seen.

Speaker 1 Once the police department was finally taking her disappearance seriously, the city tapped into every resource they had in an effort to find her.

Speaker 11 Nome is very good at search and rescue, which is largely through the fire department. Things were were organized, and word went out pretty fast.

Speaker 11 We'd start at a certain place arm lengths apart, and we would just do a complete tundra sweep. The Coast Guard came out, and they were looking to see if she had gone into the water.

Speaker 11 They got on four-wheelers and teller and came all the way down, and troopers were flying the area looking.

Speaker 11 And slowly, the searching reached farther out.

Speaker 11 There were lots of little squirrely away places further back from the coast where if you wanted to dump a body, you could. And I wanted to see those areas.

Speaker 11 We flew that pretty thoroughly.

Speaker 11 All of a sudden, we might see a bone.

Speaker 11 Well, let's go down. It's a piece of reindeer antler.
It was not human.

Speaker 11 And we did get to one pond where it looked like there was a sunken 50 gallon drum.

Speaker 11 It looked like two feet under the water was the top of a drum, 55 gallon rusty drum.

Speaker 11 Where it was and how it was placed, let's check this out.

Speaker 11 If you think you're investigating a murder scene,

Speaker 11 things have to be documented.

Speaker 11 They had to wait for a calm enough day

Speaker 11 to fly an illegal drone because you're not supposed to fly within five miles of the airport so that the drone could film them pulling this drum out.

Speaker 11 It just held some old ratty clothes. Nothing conclusive ever came up.

Speaker 11 Had she just simply walked off and died,

Speaker 11 We would have found her.

Speaker 11 The police department's standard line is until we have a body, we assume that person's missing and we keep looking for them following a missing person protocol.

Speaker 11 Why are we not thinking where somebody might have dumped her body?

Speaker 11 There wasn't enough follow-up. I kept thinking there'll be a search central with a big map and an overlay that shows where we went and where we went and where the dogs went.

Speaker 11 And none of that was ever done.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, a lot of police investigations don't happen like they do in the movies with big cork boards and strings of yarn connecting different clues.

Speaker 1 Despite the efforts of Flo's family, it appeared that Gnome PD was a bit disorganized from the jump.

Speaker 1 To a lot of people, Sue included, it seemed as though law enforcement didn't treat this case with the possibility of foul play.

Speaker 1 During the search, Sue learned in more detail the moments leading up to her disappearance.

Speaker 11 So Flo was drunk when a guy picked her up and took her out to his tent. Local people used to have camps down the beach.

Speaker 11 They could just put up a shack and just use it to get out of town.

Speaker 1 Who was Florence with that night? Who took her out to the beach in the first place?

Speaker 1 So, the log line on just a standard missing or person reports says that Flo was last seen on West Beach. Beach, right, with gold miners.

Speaker 1 Can you show me where this West Beach is on the map?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 11 So the beaches that way are east, the beach that way is west. Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay, so here's an old dredge.

Speaker 11 They were in this general vicinity, not too far from town.

Speaker 11 Presumably, picked her up, maybe here at this corner. But then you have to go over this bridge to get out here.
And then here, here, you would just hit the beach with a four-wheeler.

Speaker 1 Looking at West Beach on a map, getting there from the downtown bars would almost certainly have to involve some form of transportation.

Speaker 11 So Blair goes out, her sister's missing, but this guy gives her some of Flo's clothes.

Speaker 11 But she's not there.

Speaker 1 Why would her belongings be there and her not be there?

Speaker 11 It's all part of the mystery, isn't it?

Speaker 11 This guy, I've been told he is obese and not in very good health.

Speaker 11 I've heard that. I don't know him.

Speaker 11 I just know he was a cab driver in town, and a lot of people didn't like him.

Speaker 11 Whether it was intentional or an effort to shut her up,

Speaker 11 she's clearly been murdered.

Speaker 1 My next stop in Nome was to meet up with Wendy. It was Wendy and her family who were really spearheading the community search.
And they're also the ones who were followed by an unknown truck.

Speaker 1 That truck with blacked out windows and no license plate. What does that have to do with all this?

Speaker 12 They didn't care.

Speaker 12 They wanted to get rid of the problem.

Speaker 12 She's a person.

Speaker 12 As nomites, we say if somebody abducts us, scratch them, pull our hair out, leave as much evidence as you can behind, and rely on the public to find them.

Speaker 12 Not the police department, because they're not capable or willing to.

Speaker 12 I've got a couple friends who were beaten up by them,

Speaker 12 but they were too scared to go forward.

Speaker 12 My one girlfriend, she's from St. Lawrence Island, and she was dropped off by the police department two different times, two different places,

Speaker 12 while she was pretty intoxicated under cold weather situations.

Speaker 12 My cousin was left way out down the road, too. The police had a history of dropping natives off way out in the country and letting them walk back if they made it.

Speaker 12 There's a lot of people that they did that to

Speaker 12 that I know of.

Speaker 1 Wendy described the horrific behavior of some of Noam PD's former officers. A long history of discrimination toward Native people in the community.

Speaker 12 Search and rescue didn't look for her till day three, and then I believe it was day six that the police department started to look for her.

Speaker 12 When there was two Caucasian Caucasian women missing, they went out the same day and they found out those two people the same day.

Speaker 12 This is a missing person. Why didn't they help find her?

Speaker 12 It was the townspeople that went looking for her, locals,

Speaker 12 people from the villages.

Speaker 12 They didn't act like they cared at all.

Speaker 12 I think it was all a show. They They acted like they were busy on the case, but they

Speaker 12 failed her.

Speaker 1 It's an emotional case because we spent so much time looking for her and

Speaker 1 We just didn't have the help that we needed to find her.

Speaker 11 I think it was day nine.

Speaker 12 My girlfriend and I, we were paired up looking for her and we were at it every day

Speaker 12 and I started bawling and I says why aren't the police doing anything?

Speaker 12 We were just trying to find her

Speaker 12 there wasn't any help

Speaker 12 There's a lot of people that don't trust them.

Speaker 12 They've been failing the native community for years.

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Speaker 1 In almost any unsolved case, it's certainly common to point the finger back at law enforcement. It's easy to blame the police because solving the case is their responsibility.

Speaker 1 I always try to take that with a grain of salt because every circumstance is different.

Speaker 1 It's not in every situation that the police department is committing some form of misconduct in an investigation.

Speaker 1 But the Nome Police Department has a long, dark history, unlike anything I've ever seen.

Speaker 14 In 2003, the Sonia Ivanoff went missing.

Speaker 1 This is Alice Kinnick Glenn, an Alaska native who hosts her own podcast celebrating native culture called Coffee and Quok.

Speaker 1 21 years before Florence went missing in Nome, another Alaska Native woman also disappeared, 19-year-old Sonia Ivanoff.

Speaker 14 She was walking home. Her roommates said she didn't come home and was reported missing two days later.

Speaker 1 Eventually, an anonymous witness came forward and described the last known sighting of Sonia.

Speaker 14 A police officer stopped her on the road and was talking to her. Someone saw her hop in.
to a police car.

Speaker 1 She was seen getting inside the squad car of a gnome police officer, a white man named Matthew Owens. Then she was never seen again.

Speaker 14 The community knew that she had hopped into a police vehicle, so this person was probably the last person to see her.

Speaker 14 They knew that there was some kind of connection with that.

Speaker 14 Can't just go in a police officer car in Nome and then disappear.

Speaker 14 How could you not have some connection to that?

Speaker 1 A few weeks later, Nome Police Officer Matthew Owens reports that his police car is mysteriously missing.

Speaker 14 Talking to the police officer that was last seen with her, they did some polygraph tests with two police officers that were on duty that night. There was a native police officer and he passed.

Speaker 14 The white police officer failed. They had some suspicions about this guy.

Speaker 1 Matthew Owens failed a polygraph test. This known police officer became the main suspect.

Speaker 1 One evening, while police were out searching for the missing squad car, Dispatch received a strange call on the radio from Officer Matthew Owens.

Speaker 1 You could hear gunshots in the background, and he claimed he was under fire.

Speaker 1 And when other officers arrived there at the scene, they found Matthew Owens completely unharmed and with the missing police car.

Speaker 1 Its windows were broken, and inside the vehicle, there was an envelope that contained Sonia Ivanov's driver's license, And along with it, a letter that said, pigs, I hate cops.

Speaker 1 I hate every one of you. Investigators found this whole thing pretty suspicious.

Speaker 14 There was some kind of shoot-off, like a note.

Speaker 14 Come to find out he just staged it all.

Speaker 14 There was nobody else there. It was just him.
His vehicle was out there.

Speaker 14 After this happened to Sonia, a bunch of these women came forward and told about their experiences with him as this creepy guy messing around with young Inyupak women.

Speaker 14 Like he was known to pick up Inyupak women for sexual favors, driving them around and

Speaker 14 saying that nobody would ever believe them over him.

Speaker 14 Nobody would ever believe a drunk Inyupak woman over a white police officer in Nome.

Speaker 12 It's just textbook evil.

Speaker 1 Ultimately, Nome Police Officer Matthew Owens was found guilty of murder.

Speaker 1 The community's distrust of the Nome Police Department is completely valid. It's rooted in a dark twisted truth.

Speaker 14 To think a police officer would do this to such a bright, beautiful, great Inyub woman ante person,

Speaker 14 how can anyone allow that to ever happen?

Speaker 14 In some deep down way, this story of Sonia Ivanov really affected me when I was young. The Sonia Ivanov case influenced me and growing up and becoming aware of this issue

Speaker 14 deep down influenced the work that I do.

Speaker 14 I've always had this yearn for

Speaker 14 accurate and authentic Alaska Native representation in media because I just felt like everything was sensationalized on TV.

Speaker 14 Media has such a profound effect on how people see us, number one, and then number two, how we view ourselves.

Speaker 14 So important for me, especially as an older sister, that I'm helping to create a better, more equitable world.

Speaker 14 Providing accurate and authentic media representation for Alaska Native people.

Speaker 14 Missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit people, it's a crisis. I really feel like language is important, and to say it's something like an epidemic, I don't try to say that.

Speaker 14 Because an epidemic kind of eludes or elicits this idea of something that's not preventable.

Speaker 14 It's not an epidemic, it's a crisis. It's something that we're dealing with, but we can help alleviate.

Speaker 14 It's something that we can have power and influence over if we all work together.

Speaker 1 According to statistics, in cases of violence committed towards Alaska Native women, 97% have experienced violence committed by an interracial perpetrator.

Speaker 14 Missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people, it's not that we are inherently weak or powerless.

Speaker 1 It's that we're inherently powerful,

Speaker 14 but we're victimized by people who want to assert that power.

Speaker 14 And I think that comes out in violent ways.

Speaker 14 My first time ever going to Nome was in 2020.

Speaker 14 As we were there, there was currently somebody missing. There was a woman missing.

Speaker 1 The missing woman was Florence Akpialik.

Speaker 14 That really affected me.

Speaker 14 I just remember thinking when I was in Nome,

Speaker 14 I just really can't believe that anybody allows this to happen to our people.

Speaker 14 Where am I? You know, like,

Speaker 14 how can this happen in a place like this?

Speaker 14 I felt like I hit a fourth dimension in my mind, feeling a lot of feelings.

Speaker 14 I went to school for aerospace, you know, so I'm rational, logical. I didn't consider myself spiritual until I went to Nome,

Speaker 14 but it really awoke all of those senses in me somehow.

Speaker 14 I felt a profound connection.

Speaker 14 The land itself that was evoking feelings in me.

Speaker 14 I think what's so important is to share that human story, to humanize Inuperc people, to humanize indigenous women, and real people living today.

Speaker 14 Atrocities are committed against us every day, and it's everyone's fault. It's not my fault or your fault.

Speaker 1 It's all of our fault.

Speaker 14 I find myself so scared in my own hometown for myself and for my sisters.

Speaker 14 I see a problem in the community, and I want to help do what I can with the tools that I have

Speaker 14 to help fix it.

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Speaker 1 Since the gold rush of 1899, Over 100 metric tons of gold have been discovered in Nome.

Speaker 1 Outsiders come to the the city and exploit it for its resources, then disappear. Many of them clearly not believing the phrase, leave only footprints.

Speaker 1 A few years ago, there was a major drug bust in Nome, and a mass arrest was made. Many of them gold miners.

Speaker 12 Well, they may have been known for their gold, but they're also known for the drugs, so

Speaker 12 they're not gold miners, they're troublemakers.

Speaker 12 I think the drug dealers got away with murder.

Speaker 12 If it happened once, it's going to happen again.

Speaker 12 Nome is an easy target.

Speaker 12 They got private planes, they got private airports.

Speaker 11 Where there's a will, there's a way.

Speaker 12 I think they're waiting for it to calm down before they attempt it again.

Speaker 12 I don't think Nome is safe still.

Speaker 12 I'm kind of scared to be telling all this because

Speaker 12 I'm worried about retaliation.

Speaker 12 From who?

Speaker 12 We don't know who to trust.

Speaker 12 We don't know who to trust.

Speaker 12 This is really hard to...

Speaker 12 really hard to

Speaker 12 talk hold

Speaker 12 It's unsafe here

Speaker 1 Since the very beginning of my investigation there's one piece of information that has remained consistent throughout nearly everyone I've talked to

Speaker 1 the man on West Beach The man who had Flo's personal belongings in his tent Who is this man

Speaker 12 from the day she was missing? We were told that that's who she was with

Speaker 1 Had you heard of this person before?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 12 There had been word he was a drug dealer

Speaker 12 and then he was a cab driver for Checker Cab.

Speaker 1 Taxi cabs in Nome are nothing like I've seen in other cities. Big passenger vans and everyone piles in together.

Speaker 12 And my girlfriend flagged him down. He already had passengers on board

Speaker 12 And so he stopped, picked her up.

Speaker 12 He dropped everybody else off but her.

Speaker 12 And she had the creeps.

Speaker 12 And he says, you know what? I could have killed you and nobody would have known about it

Speaker 12 because you didn't call this in.

Speaker 1 This guy said that.

Speaker 12 He said that to her.

Speaker 12 She freaked out and got out.

Speaker 1 I believe every word word he says. I believe he could have.

Speaker 12 I don't trust him.

Speaker 1 This story is beyond creepy. This person sounds like a real predator.
I know people with a dark sense of humor, but no one's joking about killing their passengers to a stranger.

Speaker 1 Where is all that coming from? Whoever this person is, they definitely sound a little dangerous.

Speaker 1 So what have you heard recently?

Speaker 12 That he's moved, I think, to the Philippines.

Speaker 12 That's all I know.

Speaker 12 I was just glad he moved, because I think he was in danger.

Speaker 1 In the Philippines? Why would he be there? And where did he come from before he was in Gnome?

Speaker 8 At some point, she ends up on West Beach.

Speaker 12 West Beach is the last place you've seen.

Speaker 1 Okay, so on West Beach, from what you've heard...

Speaker 1 What transpired exactly from this, what you've heard?

Speaker 12 I don't know if she was intoxicated. I don't know if they got her on drugs or not.
There's been a lot of rumors

Speaker 12 they got her on the drug, and maybe she possibly had a bad trip.

Speaker 12 But that's just rumors.

Speaker 1 Flo's sister, Blair, had just left work for the day. She planned to meet up with Wendy and I.

Speaker 1 It is pretty close to the grocery store, yes.

Speaker 1 When Blair arrived at the house, she was wearing a t-shirt she made with Flo's face on it. A constant reminder to the community that her family's still looking for her.

Speaker 1 She recalled the last time she spoke to Florence, a moment that's forever stuck in her mind.

Speaker 15 I was bartending at Paul Bar.

Speaker 15 It was quiet, it was empty.

Speaker 15 Flo came in with her head down,

Speaker 15 not wanting to talk.

Speaker 15 She had an alcohol problem.

Speaker 1 It broke her life.

Speaker 1 Took everything from her, from her job, time with her daughter.

Speaker 15 And I got angry.

Speaker 1 Very angry.

Speaker 3 I told her you're losing everything, Flo.

Speaker 15 You're losing it.

Speaker 1 And that was the last time I saw her.

Speaker 1 And that hurt me for months.

Speaker 1 Because I thought I could have said something more sincere.

Speaker 1 I wanted her to get better.

Speaker 15 To not turn the bruise.

Speaker 1 Blair recounted the moment she first realized her sister was missing.

Speaker 15 Dan texted me and said, have you seen Flo? And I said, I haven't.

Speaker 1 Then I looked and looked.

Speaker 15 and then it was a day she never came home yet. I'm concerned.

Speaker 15 I went bar to bar looking for her.

Speaker 15 At the very beginning, I wasn't too concerned because I thought she was just partying or drinking.

Speaker 15 So I went back to the bars.

Speaker 1 Have you seen Flo?

Speaker 15 Have you seen Flo?

Speaker 1 After Flo went radio silent, Blair went looking for her at the bars in downtown Nome.

Speaker 15 The bartender messaged me on Facebook. That's where we headed.

Speaker 1 Which bar was she at last?

Speaker 12 B.O.T.

Speaker 15 Which one's that? That's the one right on Front Street. It's the oldest bar downtown.

Speaker 8 And which bartender had messaged you?

Speaker 1 Naomi.

Speaker 15 She said, I got a guy in the bar saying Flo is at West Beach.

Speaker 15 West Beach.

Speaker 1 West Beach. Sweet far.

Speaker 1 According to one of the bartenders, there was a man at the bar that night who claimed Florence went to West Beach.

Speaker 1 This is the first time West Beach ever comes up at all. Who was this man who knew this information? How did he know where she went that night? Did he take her there himself?

Speaker 1 This, to me, was important information.

Speaker 1 Eventually, Blair and her family made the trek to West Beach themselves.

Speaker 1 And as they walked down the beach, going tent to tent, they were greeted by a man who had Flo's personal belongings in his possession. This was a puzzling discovery, to say the least.

Speaker 1 Her shoes, socks, and jacket.

Speaker 1 He gave them to me.

Speaker 8 What did he say to you?

Speaker 8 Nothing.

Speaker 1 I don't went around his tent.

Speaker 1 Where is she?

Speaker 1 He said he didn't bring her out there.

Speaker 1 Why do you have her stuff?

Speaker 1 I don't know, but he said he didn't bring her out there.

Speaker 1 But he knew it was her stuff that he had. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Everything that he said was a lie.

Speaker 1 Where is she?

Speaker 1 Where is she?

Speaker 1 Did you ask him?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 She's not here.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 What was his demeanor like?

Speaker 1 He was standing like this.

Speaker 1 Like all stern.

Speaker 1 Quite direct.

Speaker 1 Wendy pulled out her phone. and showed me pictures of this tent where Flo's belongings were found.
But unfortunately, there was no picture of this mystery man who had these items in his possession.

Speaker 1 We went back to him several times.

Speaker 1 And then there's a tent right next to it.

Speaker 1 Right there. Yes, this is the one.

Speaker 1 This is the empty one. This is the one you see.

Speaker 12 I'm going to send it to him right now.

Speaker 12 The guy that had a tent next to him

Speaker 12 saw his neighbor with Flo on the back of the four-wheeler and went up West Beach And he didn't come back till morning, but he came back without her.

Speaker 1 Wendy and Blair spoke to the owner of the tent next door, an older gentleman.

Speaker 1 He told them that on the night Florence went missing, he had seen the man from the tent next door drive off down the beach with Florence on his four-wheeler.

Speaker 1 And then in the morning he returned, but Flo was gone.

Speaker 1 Was he a white guy? He was in English. He didn't speak English very well.
What nationality was he, do you think?

Speaker 12 Oh, was he Swedish or something?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Something different.
Something different.

Speaker 1 He did have an accent.

Speaker 1 Like a European kind of accent? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Before it gets too confusing here, let's just break it down. So we have this mystery man who had possession of Flo's belongings in his own tent.
Why would he have that?

Speaker 1 When confronted by Blair and Wendy, offered up little to no explanation as to why he had these things.

Speaker 1 Then we have a guy in the tent next door who claims to have witnessed this man drive off with Florence on the back of his ATV, then return the next morning without her.

Speaker 1 With no names or detailed descriptions, finding the identity of these people is going to be a difficult task.

Speaker 1 What we do know is the man who had Flo's belongings in his tent, whoever he was, was also a cab driver in town. We're getting closer to something.
I just need to talk to more people.

Speaker 1 It was time to backtrack a little. We know Florence was last seen on West Beach.
But before that, She was seen at a local bar in town called the Board of Trade.

Speaker 1 Flo's sister, Blair, mentioned that a bartender named Naomi recalled a man sitting at the bar that claimed Florence had gone to West Beach. The biggest question is, how did he know that?

Speaker 1 Is this the guy? Did he see her leave with someone else? From all the research I've done, this is the very first time anyone at all even says West Beach. And it's not like it's super close by.

Speaker 1 Either this man saw Flo leave with someone else, just heard this from somebody, or he took her there himself.

Speaker 1 These are questions that drive you crazy until you get some sort of significant lead. So I hit the bars on Front Street myself and tried to find Naomi.
I need to hear her story.

Speaker 1 Hey, does Naomi still work here?

Speaker 1 She doesn't?

Speaker 1 Good news is, it seemed like Naomi still worked here, but usually on the day shift. So I'm going to have to try again tomorrow.

Speaker 1 But if this bar was the last place Florence was seen before she went to West Beach, I want to stick around tonight and try to talk to some regulars.

Speaker 1 A few hours went by, and I started asking strangers about Flo's disappearance. I eventually struck up a conversation with a woman whose name I'm going to keep confidential.

Speaker 1 I asked her if she'd heard anything about this case, and the first thing that came to her mind was a bizarre encounter she had in this same bar a few years ago with a man who was a cab driver.

Speaker 16 There was problems with

Speaker 16 a cab driver.

Speaker 16 This guy comes up to me

Speaker 16 and he follows me.

Speaker 16 He pulled out a knife.

Speaker 17 The only thing for me to respond was, you're gonna fucking stem and you're gonna fucking kill him.

Speaker 16 I said, this guy has a knife.

Speaker 1 Could this be the man we're looking for? I asked her if she remembered his name.

Speaker 16 This guy, though.

Speaker 16 His name starts with Jay.

Speaker 16 And I can't.

Speaker 16 I don't know.

Speaker 16 His name starts with Jay.

Speaker 16 His name starts with J.

Speaker 1 All she could recall was that his first name started with the letter J.

Speaker 17 I think the man

Speaker 16 is a dangerous man.

Speaker 1 Whoever this man was, he seemed seemed to be up to no good that night. And the fact that he was a white guy and a cab driver behaving in this manner is a huge red flag for me.

Speaker 1 We're getting closer to something.

Speaker 1 The next day, I went back to the Board of Trade Bar, in the daytime when they first opened. And there was Naomi.

Speaker 1 I asked her to recall that conversation she had at the bar, the one she told Flo's sister about, the mystery man that somehow knew that Florence went to West Beach.

Speaker 1 Do you remember where you learned that she had gone to West Beach that night?

Speaker 18 She'd been missing for two days. Her sister came in looking for her, Blair.

Speaker 18 She came in asking if anybody had seen Flo, that she was, she'd been missing for a couple days, and I said, no, I hadn't seen her since her birthday.

Speaker 18 There was a man.

Speaker 18 He was sitting here drinking, and he was talking about an incident that was going on with his girlfriend.

Speaker 18 And he was saying she'd gotten a restraining order on something, something something.

Speaker 14 I turned around and said, oh, I seen her down West Beach.

Speaker 18 She was partying with some of the miners down there.

Speaker 18 She was pretty intoxicated at that point. But that's pretty much all he said.

Speaker 1 What was his demeanor like when he was speaking about this?

Speaker 18 Columns, sharing information. Like, yeah, I said, I seen her down West Beach a couple days ago.

Speaker 18 And she had stopped by his tent and was talking to him.

Speaker 18 I feel like he said he had a bottle that he was sharing and that she didn't drink any of it but he said she was acting like she was out of her mind like she was acting talking crazy.

Speaker 18 I don't really remember everything that he was saying but I remember thinking that that was kind of weird or she wasn't drinking to be acting like that.

Speaker 18 But I'd never known her to do any drugs either. Definitely drinking heavily but

Speaker 18 not weed, not any drugs.

Speaker 1 But he admitted that he was with her that night there.

Speaker 18 Yeah, that she had stopped by his tent and was talking to him and

Speaker 1 he moved shortly after that and took off.

Speaker 18 But there was no proof or nothing linked to him besides her cell phone and shoes being found outside of a tent.

Speaker 1 Did he ever talk about why those items were in his possession like that?

Speaker 18 I feel like I recall him saying something about sleeping and hearing something in the middle of the night and getting up to go out and look and seeing her stuff there, but he didn't see her anywhere.

Speaker 1 If she was last seen on West Beach and her items were around his tent, then he would be one of the last people to see her, if not the last.

Speaker 18 And I kind of knew him because he was a cab driver and I'd see him once in a blue moon here, but.

Speaker 1 Have you ever seen him since all this? Like after?

Speaker 18 He moved shortly after I took off.

Speaker 18 I don't even know his last name.

Speaker 1 What was the name that you knew him by?

Speaker 1 Yeah, his queen does.

Speaker 18 Oregon John?

Speaker 1 What do you think happened to her?

Speaker 18 Pretty sure somebody murdered her.

Speaker 1 I guess it's time to find Oregon John.

Speaker 1 This is a real-time investigation. And this season, I want to take you further behind the scenes than I ever have before.

Speaker 1 So each week, after the newest episode, I'm going to sit down with the producers of this show and give you an in-depth breakdown, a deeper look into my investigation, my personal thoughts, and exclusive audio from behind the scenes.

Speaker 1 You can hear my first recap of episode one and two right now on Talking to Death.

Speaker 1 Again, this is a real-time investigation.

Speaker 1 If you want to follow along completely in real time with me, subscribe to Talking to Death on your podcast app and tune in every week after the latest episode.

Speaker 1 Again, that's Talking to Death on your podcast app.

Speaker 1 Enjoy the show.

Speaker 2 Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is a production of Tunderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Your host is Payne Lindsey.

Speaker 2 The show is written by Payne Lindsey with additional assistance from Mike Rooney. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsey.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Additional production by Victoria Mackenzie, Alice Kanik Glenn, and Eric Quintana.
Artwork by Rob Sheridan. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.

Speaker 2 Mixed and mastered by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 For more podcasts like Up and Vanished, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us at tenderfoot.tv. Thanks for listening.

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Speaker 1 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 1 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.

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