Florence Okpealuk and Joseph Balderas: Still Missing

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Welcome back to Up and Vanish Season 4 in the Midnight Sun. It's time to finish what I started.
This is the first time I've ever covered two cases in the same season. Florence Okpialik and Joseph Balderas.
Two names, two mysteries, and one central place. Nome, Alaska.
I know it's been a while, and I want to be honest with you. The break we took wasn't because this story faded.
It's because new stories came roaring back to life. Cases from earlier seasons that couldn't wait any longer.
Real updates. Real consequences.
And people connected to these stories who passed away. Gone.
Before we got the full truth. I've learned that you don't just walk away from these cases.
As Mark Smerling once told me, you don't get to clock out of this work

like you're bagging groceries.

These people stay with you forever.

And even now, while recording this very episode,

someone from Nome reached out to me

with new information about Florence.

This isn't a story I'm telling from a distance.

I'm still very much in the center.

In this episode, we're going to catch you back up, and we're going to listen, closely,

to some of the tape we've been sitting on.

Tape that, no matter how many times we play it, something keeps pulling us back in. From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, I'm your host Payne Lindsey, and this is Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun.

Nome, Alaska. A town where stories freeze and then disappear.

For some, it's the last stop on the edge of the earth. She had reportedly last been seen on West Beach.
From that point on, we were doing updates on a daily basis as to what was happening with the search efforts. This season on Up and Vanished, Payne Lindsay arrived in Nome to investigate not one, but two missing persons cases.
Both unsolved, both haunting. Her name was Florence Okpialik, a 33-year-old native Inupiaq woman.
After becoming pregnant, she moved from the small village she grew up in to Nome in search of better care for her daughter. Allegedly, she was last seen near a bar on Front Street headed towards West Beach, never to return.
She left behind her shoes, jacket, and a family who has never stopped looking. I feel like someone is responsible for getting rid of her.
Whether it was an accident and they didn't want to get in trouble for how it looked, or if it was an intentional incident, she was harmed. Somebody knows something and covered it up.
But when she disappeared, no one searched the way they should have. Not at first.
Not seriously. Not like they would have for someone else.
My reporter and I were covering this non-stop because we've seen enough instances leading up to this to know that if there's not action taken within a certain time frame, if there's not some sort of accountability with the police department, this could easily get swept under the rug.

Another Alaska Native person is missing, and that is what it is, and then nothing happens.

And when Payne arrived in Nome, Florence's name was barely being whispered.

Then, there was Joseph Balderas, 36 years old, drawn to N known by both work and passion for the outdoors. Welcome to Alaska.
This is it. This is my little piece of home here.
That's open ocean out there. You can certainly feel the magnitude of the ocean when you're on this.
You don't really wanna to fuck around out there. Gives me the heebie-jeebies just being out here.
In June 2020, Joseph disappeared after a night out. His car was found on an isolated stretch of Gnome Council Highway near mile marker 44.
There was some fishing gear and a pair of waders in his truck, but not much else. No signs of struggle.
No Joseph. Everybody was pretty consistent about what they said about Joseph.
They described him as a very charismatic, smart guy who loved Alaska and had, you know, a lot of plans for the future,

had met this woman in Juneau, Megan Ryder. They were planning to get married.
He had spent

several years working as a law clerk to judges, and he was ready to transition from that kind of

work into a law practice. So he was going to open a practice in Juneau and he and Megan were going to get married.
There was nothing negative that I found in researching Joseph, nothing that raised red flags for me. He just seemed like a super nice guy that everybody liked.
A guy with a lot of plans and, you know, a lot of stuff going on. There have been suggestions from law enforcement that he was eaten by a bear or fell into a portal.
But Payne didn't buy that. And neither did the people who knew him.
He's talked to me about her. He was very in love with her.
He would text her right away. She sent us all the messages.
I mean, they're like, there is no wait time. If she messaged him, he messaged her right back.
Good morning, Meg. I hope you have a good Friday.
In fact, I know you will. I'm sure Cafe Internationale is going to be hopping today.

And I'm sure you're going to have a good lunch. And I'm sure you're going to have good walks and a good hike.

But I just wanted to say also that I love you and have a great day, babe. Bye.

Two people, gone, in a sparsely populated town.

One, an Alaska Native mother whose case was almost invisible. The other, a man working in the court system, hoping to soon start his own law firm.
Both disappeared without a trace. And the one thing they shared? No.
Had she just simply walked off and died, we would have found her. 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.
Noam has seen dozens of people vanish, most of them native, most of them women, and most of them ignored. When Payne started asking questions, he hit a wall of silence.
officials didn didn't want to talk. Locals were hesitant and a history of distrust between indigenous communities and law enforcement loomed over everything.
Please turn those videos into the department. Okay.
Okay. We're scared.
We're scared everywhere we go because somebody's usually following me.

I understand that. We do.
We're recording everything because we don't trust anybody. The police department, they neglected her.
They neglected Flo in every way, shape, and form. And I'm really mad about it.
They judge Native. I think that there could be human trafficking, sex trafficking, and somebody's holding a secret and they're not telling.
They're not going to tell anything. I think they killed her and they got away with it.
If you know the history of Nome, there has been a lot of people missing. We all believe these people are going to do it again.
But then, slowly, people started talking. And Pne realized these two disappearances weren't just parallel mysteries.
They were pressure points, and something was starting to crack. Two disappearances, one town, and with each episode of Up and Vanished, a question echoed louder.
Is this just coincidence? Or is Gnome hiding something deeper? Florence's story was the quieter one, until you really listened. She was last seen on West Beach, just outside of town.
The place where her shoes were found. where the tide pulls things away.
The search started late, too late. I don't want to bash anyone, but it feels like the police department priority of cases is not based on the protection of the actual people that live there.
The FBI stepped in, But even then, answers didn't come. The Alaska Native community had seen this before.
A woman goes missing. The family begs for help.
And the silence settles in again. I started looking into Nome, and long history of public complaints about mistreatment of Alaska Native people by police.
Women and girls in Alaska faced four times the national average of homicides. I felt it was really underreported.
Florence became part of a pattern, a painful historical one. And Payne knew if this case was going to move, it wouldn't be through official channels.
It would be through whispers, through courage, through the people willing to talk. Joseph's story spiraled in a different direction.
The more Payne looked into his disappearance, the more confusing it became.

He was last seen allegedly near Mile 44.

But the details didn't add up.

His car was there.

But some said he returned to town afterward.

Others said they saw him Sunday, after he was already considered missing.

And then came Jake, Joseph's roommate. the last person who claims to have seen him.
Jake's account changed. At first, he said he didn't see Joseph after Sunday.
Then he said he saw him Sunday. Then, he said nothing at all.
What level of commitment do you think? They passed each other in the home. Inside the house on Sunday.
Guys, I'll be happy to go talk to Jake again.

Jake wasn't just a roommate.

He was also Christine's cousin,

Joseph's co-worker and occasional drinking buddy.

Christine is important because she's the last person

that we know saw Joseph alive. So she's a really important figure.
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to Boca for the whole family. Blair went down the beach to try to find her sister.

This guy gives her some of Flo's clothes, but she's not there.

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

That's when Oregon John entered the picture.

Mysterious man who lived on West Beach, a transient gold miner.

There is no mining for gold in the winters of Nome.

But during the warmer months, miners flocked to West Beach and set up camps.

This was the last place Florence was seen, leaving the tent belonging to Organ John. Rumors began to spread, and eventually he had to leave town.
But Payne and his team eventually got a meeting with John, disguised as someone looking for a job opportunity. They talked in a bar, and Lindsay did his best to get as much information about John's time in Nome as possible.
Florence and Joseph, two names, two stories, two families still waiting. While Joseph's case grew darker, Florence's family stepped forward, stronger.
They didn't want revenge. They wanted to be heard.
He took a mother away from her child, sister and aunt away from her family. A daughter.
He took a daughter away from her parents. The FBI investigation had stalled.
No updates. No suspects.
But the community was waking up. People began to remember.
The women who had gone missing before. The cases that were closed without ever being solved.
Florence's name was no longer a whisper. It was a rallying cry.
If somebody abducts us, scratch them, pull our hair out, leave as much evidence as you can behind them, rely on the public to find them, not the police department, because they're not capable or willing to. I've got a couple friends who were beaten up by them, but they were too scared to go forward.
Then, something else happened. Payne was scheduled to fly back to Nome, but five days before the flight, his name was leaked.
A private flight manifest, confidential. Somehow, people in Nome knew he was coming.
They started talking. 23 hours ago, our plane started hearing rumors about you.
Payne never boarded that plane. And suddenly, the story wasn't just about Florence or Joseph.
It was about him, too. The message was clear.
Don't come back. So where does that leave us? Florence Okpialik, Joseph Balderes, two lives lost to mystery.
Two families without answers, and one town that has learned to forget. But Up and Vanish didn't come here to forget.
And the people of Nome? Some of them aren't staying quiet anymore. Because

someone knows what happened. To Florence, to Joseph, and they're still out there.
This

is Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun. Two disappearances, two truths, still buried.

For now.

Did you hear about the Sonia Ivanov case?

I did.

So you kind of know the background between the community and law enforcement right now

and how it's been in recovery but not recovering. In Nome, grief doesn't fade, it settles, and the silence that Florence left behind is still very loud.
Deila was the very first person to reach out to me about Florence. She's been the voice keeping this case alive.
Gnome, Alaska, if can envision, it's the hub community for all of these smaller, remote, like people fly on really small charter planes. They go to Nome all the time for medical.
They go to go grocery shopping. They go for meetings and conferences and stuff.
But Nome is like the Vegas of all these smaller communities surrounding Nome. So Nome is where the heavy traffic of indigenous people go.
And then they either go home as planned or they don't. That's just how it is there.
Doing like all of this research and trying to understand, like, where are the issues and like, where are we lacking? Where are we needing to improve improve and what i've noticed is that if we are not honest and if we're not speaking the truth as an indigenous woman as a single mom growing up in that culture in a small community living outside of the small community in what they say is like the real world and seeing racism firsthand, experiencing it, you know, like how everything kind of ties into really what the MMIWG statistics are today and like how can we really approach it? Well, one thing is like you're not going to be honest and call the truths there won't no one is going to address it. No one is going to understand it fully if you can't speak the truth and we have to speak the truth and like if anyone's willing to hear it then that is them seeing us and our concerns.
She had been drinking and she went to West Beach and continued to, I guess, like party a little bit. And there was a witness that had watched her go in and out of this one mining tent on West Beach.
That seemed very clear as a fact. And that is what the local law enforcement was also putting out there and asking for anyone to come forward with any more information.
If it can happen to Flo, which everyone knew, she worked at the hospital and records, it can easily happen to one of us. So I think that is a clear example of why most do not feel safe in Nome.

So it's hard not to think of Flo for various reasons.

There is no justice.

Why don't we have justice in a Native community?

Why don't we have that? Now back to the case of Joseph Balderas. We've talked to a lot of people in this case, but this next voice you've never heard before.
Her name is Hannah, and she may have been the last person to ever see Joseph Balderas alive. She wasn't someone telling a second-hand story.
She was there. She walked with him through the quiet streets of Nome that night.
This is a new lead, a new piece to the puzzle that only seems to make things more confusing. I saw Joseph the night before he went missing.
It was around 3 a.m. My daughter wouldn't sleep, so I took her for a walk through town.
He was leaving Soap and Suds alone. He told me he had plans to go ridge running and fishing the next morning.
Said he was heading about 40, 45 miles down Council Road, right around where they found his truck.

We stood outside the bar for a while, talking.

He crouched down, played with my daughter in her stroller.

Then we started walking toward our houses.

He leaned on me for a bit, just to steady himself.

We split off near the gas station.

I stopped to talk to some friends outside.

Joseph didn't know them, so he kept walking alone toward home. We were only a few blocks from his place, and knowing him, he probably made it home.
The next morning, I told my mom I'd seen him. Then Monday came, and we heard he was missing.
That's when we joined the search. My grandparents had driven back from their cabin that Sunday morning.
They saw Joseph's truck parked out on Council Road before 1 p.m., before anyone claims they saw him that afternoon. So when people say they saw him Saturday at the beach or Sunday at home, I don't know.
And my papa, he worked dispatch for Nome PD. He told us the last outgoing message from Joseph's phone was around 9 a.m.
Saturday. If he'd really been meeting up with someone, you'd think there'd be a text, right? He was our friend.
He came to our house. Our cabin.
He took pictures for my daughter's first birthday. And then one day, he was just gone.
No sign of him. No belongings.
Nothing. People disappear from Nome.
It's not new. Some say it's the Ishiguks.
Some say it's something worse. Me? I don't know.
Maybe he fell. Maybe someone hurt him.

But with everything we put into the search, someone should have found something. Anything.

It's haunted me ever since.

Joseph wasn't some fleeting figure.

He was right next to her, laughing, talking about the wilderness,

making plans to leave town the next morning. Plans he never got to finish.
Joseph said he was headed 40 miles out on Council Road. That's where his truck was found.
Almost too conveniently. But the problem is, his roommate Jake said he saw him at home the next day.
So which version of events here is actually true?

They can't both be. And then there's Hannah's grandfather.
He worked dispatch for Gnome PD.

He told Hannah the last text message from Joseph's phone went out around 9 a.m. on Saturday.

Then no more messages. No sign of life whatsoever.

And yet, his truck was spotted early Sunday.

And then there's Tom Moran.

Back when Andy Klamzer, the private investigator, first came to Nome, Tom was the city manager. It is the 4th of October 2016, the time now is 3.27pm.
You're the city manager in the home, correct? Correct. And you know Joseph, or you knew Joseph, correct? I did, yeah.
I did, yeah. Do you recall if you were with Joseph on Friday evening, that would have been the 24th of June 2016.
It would have been just before the weekend he went missing. When Joseph moved to Nome, there's kind of a small group of like a lawyer's guild i guess i'd call it uh a friend of mine named andrew dunnmeyer who is a public defender for the state of alaska and now he is stationed out of anchorage introduced me to joseph so just by a long-winded way of saying that joseph and i when he first moved up here a couple years ago hung out a few times and then it kind of, for whatever reasons, he found a different group to kind of, kind of roll around with.
And he stopped hanging out with the, for, you know, whatever reason, like I said, found kind of a different social circle. So we did not hang out socially, but I would see him around and we'd, you know, exchange pleasantries.
I think he was a big college football fan. So if there was something happening in the world of college football, we'd talk.
So I did see him that night. I mean, it's so long ago that I can remember where it was, and I can remember about what time it was, but he was with a couple of girls, Christine and Kim Piscoya.
I think Kim's last name is Piscoya. I know Christine's is at Breaker's Bar.
And I had been there. I went for happy hour with some friends when I got out of work at 5.30 or 6.
I mean, this is so long ago that I can't remember exactly when it was. And I'd say when I was leaving at 9 o'clock to go home for the night or thereabouts, he was coming out for the night.
So just we exchanged pleasantries as I was kind of out, and he was coming in. So how certain are you of the times, because we, we had been under the impression that Joseph didn't, uh, go out with Christine and Kim until after midnight.
Um, I would be happy to, like, check an ATM receipt or something, but I can tell you that often I know when I was out that night, and it would be not impossible, but pretty rare for it to be a six-hour shift for me. So if I said nine and it was really ten, there's a possibility, but my belief would be that it was earlier than that.
That's a relatively strong belief. I know when we first started discussing this when we were on the search in the months or weeks or whatever that followed, I've always said that it was about that time.
So even when it was kind of fresh in my recollection, I was pretty sure that it was a little, a little in advance at midnight. Do you happen to know of anyone who saw Joseph or his truck that weekend? Oh, let me think.
So I imagine that, like I said, the group of people that I was with would have seen him in the same context that I had, which was sitting in a middle stool in Breaker's Bar as we were heading home for the night. I heard that, again, one of the rumors about the Piscoya girls was that Christine was interested in him, but he went and got this girlfriend in Juneau, and she was mad about that.
I know her well enough to think that she's not a psychopath, but boy, I just don't know. Thinking in my head, and I'm trying to think of justifications for why I think it was 9 o'clock, is that I wasn't partying like an animal that weekend, and I had a triathlon to do on Sunday morning, but I'll, I'll try to think about that and sort of vet that with these, uh, this group of people that I go out for cocktails with.
Great. Thank you very much.
I appreciate your time. All right, Andy, no problem.
Thanks for the call. I'll let you know if I think anything.
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We're not done with Florence's case either. Not by a long shot.
Her family is still fighting for answers. I want to revisit someone who's come up more than once.
In this season, we've referred to her as Kelly. Now, I've heard a lot of stories, most of them rumors, and I still don't know what's true.
But there's one thing I do know. It's time to talk about it.
Blair, Florence's sister, told us about Kelly. And since I'm now pulling the cat out of the bag here, Kelly's real name that she goes by is Danny Girl.
Remember that. She apparently sent this text to a friend who then sent it to Blair.
And they shared it with me. This one says, Danny Girl from Teller said Paul admitted to her that him, Michael, and Paul admitted they cut her up after getting her high.
They said she was screaming too much and freaking out. So they did that to her.
Don't know if it's true. Fucking freak me out.
Now, everything revolving around Danny Girl is a little clouded. There may be drug abuse.
There may be some truth. And there may be both.
Do you know someone who goes by the name Danny Girl? I met with her. You did? I was at work and she kept calling me.
And I was getting irritated. Because she does drugs.

And I couldn't be a part of that.

And then she said, I have to talk to you about something about flow.

Then she said no.

Then finally she said yes.

So I told my boss I have to go.

So I met up with her and I recorded it.

You did? I did. When I first met with her, she was on the phone with the bank.
Being distant. Then she started talking to me.
About where she's at. What she did.
What they did. Did you believe her? Yes and no.
Why yes and why no? Because she got hired to shovel. That's what she told me.
She did what? She got hired to shovel for meth. Do you still have those recordings and stuff? I brought it to the police department.
You don't have it anymore? I don't. That phone broke.
It's okay. But I brought it to the police department.
And they brought the cadaver dogs and never told us that they brought them until they left. Where'd they take them? To a house by Aurora Inn where a tiny girl sat there.
She was under there and there was something wrapped in there but she didn't know what it was. Something wrapped in the corner.
Who do you think is responsible for her disappearance? John Curtin. The FBI said that the last conversation was through a friend.
And, uh, she lives in a village. She told her that there was four people in the bushes and they were passing something around.
And she asked if she was okay.

And she said she didn't know.

Was it a phone call?

Yeah, it was a phone call.

It was her last phone call.

But on her phone, that was her last conversation.

It was the last call?

Yeah.

And then her phone died every night.

Do you know who she was with?

John Curtin.

And who are the other guys?

Michael McCann.

On June 26, 2016, 36-year-old Joseph Balderas dropped off the grid entirely,

and he's never been seen since then.

In most missing persons cases, there's almost nothing left behind. No clues, no crime scene, just questions.
It's why these stories drag on for years, because we're grasping at shadows. But in the case of Joseph Balderas, there is one undeniable piece of physical evidence.
Joseph's truck. It sat in Nome for years, a ghost on the side of the road, frozen in time.
And when I realized the only way to truly understand what happened was to get my hands on that truck, it's like a miracle happened. I found it listed on Facebook Marketplace.
Joseph's truck. The truck.
And so I bought it. But here's the catch.
Right after I made the transaction and sent the money via Venmo, I realized I had less than a couple of hours to move it off that island. Or risk it being stuck in Nome for another year.
We need it off that fucking island. Foolishly, I didn't think it would be this hard.
I have someone holding the vehicle for us now. In Nome.
Why is this so hard? I thought Facebook Marketplace, money sent, done deal. Shipping Nome, Alaska Premium Auto Transport.
Nome is a city in western Alaska's unorganized borough. We know.
The winter in Nome doesn't wait for you. Neither does the last boat out.
Nome's causeway serves as a dock. Get to it.
As it turns out, shipping a vehicle out of the Arctic tundra requires about six miracles, a port manifest, and a goddamn time machine. Thanks for calling.
Ship your car now. Powered by A1 Transport.
For auto transports within the United States, press 1. This call is being recorded.
We were already way past the cutoff. Every minute that passed, I was picturing Joseph's truck, frozen in place, buried under snow.
No, I believe they cut off a couple days ago, actually. Untouched for yet another year.
This can't happen. Let me put out an email.
You know, I'd almost say they're going to tell me we're way too late in the season for this. They stop doing that when the winter comes.
You know what? What's your first name? Final destination of this truck is Tacoma, Washington. Please take a picture before you leave it.
Hello, it's Tracy. Hey, it's Payne.
Can you do me a huge, huge favor? Maybe. That's when I called one of my local friends in Nome, Tracy.
Not a shipping company, a person. Someone who could actually do something.
We had one shot. One hour.
The keys were in the truck.

Tracy had the address.

Can you, right now, go get the truck so it can make the last shipment out before winter?

I think so.

Where's the key?

The keys are in the truck.

Okay.

At this address.

I'm texting it to you now. I can go get it.
Now all we needed was time. Is it possible for you to drive the vehicle to the port within the next hour? It's the cutoff.
Dylan, did you already pay and run the card?

Cutting it close, LOL.

It won't be fucking LOL

if that truck doesn't get on that ship.

I'm gonna put you on with Dylan.

God, send it. It's on its way to Anchorage.
Somehow, it made it. And right now, Joseph's truck is sitting in Tacoma, Washington.
And next week, we take it all apart. We forensically examine it on this podcast, and what we find inside might finally tell us something that no one in Nome ever would.
Stay tuned next week for another episode of Up and Vanished in the next day on hulu so no excuse to not watch it please please check it out i promise you don't want to miss it america's most wanted missing persons premiering this monday april 28th 8 p.m eastern time on fox and you can also watch it on Hulu. All right.
Shameless plug is over. Talk soon.
Going to get some sleep. I'll see you next week.
Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Your host is Payne Lindsey.
The show is written by Payne Lindsey 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.
Thank you. Thanks for listening.

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So I am currently on a plane back to Chicago to interview everybody. Anybody that knows anything about this.
I'm in shock. This is absolutely insane.
I just don't understand. I need to figure this out.
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