Florence Okpealuk and Joseph Balderas: Still Missing

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Speaker 9 It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes. The killing of a wealthy family at Whitehouse Farm.
But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

Speaker 11 I know there's going to be a twist, willn't they? A massive twist. At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

Speaker 9 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and the New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.

Speaker 2 Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is released every Thursday and brought to you absolutely free.

Speaker 2 But for ad-free listening and exclusive bonuses, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is intended for mature audiences and may include topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder.

Speaker 2 The names of survivors have been changed for anonymity purposes. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not reflect the views of Tenderfoot TV or Odyssey.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 14 Welcome back to Up and Vanished Season 4 in the Midnight Sun. It's time to finish what I started.

Speaker 14 This is the first time I've ever covered two cases in the same season, Florence Akpialik and Joseph Balderis.

Speaker 14 Two names, two mysteries, and one central place. No Malaska.
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.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 1 Gone.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 These people stay with you forever.

Speaker 14 And even now, while recording this very episode, someone from Nome reached out to me with new information about Florence.

Speaker 14 This isn't a story I'm telling from a distance. I'm still very much in the center.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 Tape that, no matter how many times we play it, something keeps pulling us back in.

Speaker 14 From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, I'm your host, Payne Lindsay, and this is Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun.

Speaker 15 Nome, Alaska. A town where stories freeze and then disappear.

Speaker 15 For some, it's the last stop on the edge of the earth.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 15 This season on Up and Vanished, Payne Lindsay arrived in Nome to investigate not one, but two missing persons cases. Both unsolved, both haunting.

Speaker 15 Her name was Florence Akpialik, a 33-year-old native Inupiak woman. After becoming pregnant, she moved from the small village she grew up in to Nome in search of better care for her daughter.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 17 I feel like someone is responsible for getting rid of her.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 she was harmed. Somebody knows something and covered it up.

Speaker 15 But when she disappeared, no one searched the way they should have. Not at first.
Not seriously.

Speaker 15 Not like they would have for someone else.

Speaker 16 My reporter and I were covering this nonstop 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.

Speaker 16 Another Alaska Native person is missing and that is what it is and then nothing happens.

Speaker 15 And when Payne arrived in Nome,

Speaker 15 Florence's name was barely being whispered.

Speaker 15 Then there was Joseph Balderas, 36 years old, drawn to Nome by both work and passion for the outdoors.

Speaker 20 Welcome to Alaska.

Speaker 20 This is it. This is my little piece of home here.

Speaker 20 That's open ocean out there.

Speaker 20 You can certainly feel the magnitude of the ocean when you're on this.

Speaker 20 You don't really want to fuck around out there. Gives me the heebie-jeebies just being there here.

Speaker 15 In June 2020, Joseph disappeared after a night out. His car was found on an isolated stretch of Nome Council Highway near Mile Marker 44.

Speaker 15 There was some fishing gear and a pair of waders in his truck, but not much else. No signs of struggle.
No Joseph.

Speaker 21 Everybody was pretty consistent about what they said about Joseph.

Speaker 21 They described him as a very charismatic,

Speaker 19 smart

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 So he was going to open a practice in Juneau, and he and Megan were going to get married.

Speaker 21 There was, you know, nothing negative that I found in researching Joseph, nothing that, you know, raised red flags for me. He just seemed like a super nice guy that everybody liked,

Speaker 19 a guy with a lot of plans and, you know, a lot of stuff going on.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 And neither did the people who knew him.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 If she messaged him, he messaged her right back.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 But I just wanted to say also that I love you and have a great day, babe. Bye.

Speaker 15 Two people gone in a sparsely populated town.

Speaker 15 One, an Alaska native mother whose case was almost invisible.

Speaker 15 The other, a man working in the court system, hoping to soon start his own law firm. Both disappeared without a trace.

Speaker 15 And the one thing they shared?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 4 Had she just simply walked off and died,

Speaker 4 we would have found her.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 The more you look into it,

Speaker 21 the more unanswered questions and red flags there were.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 Officials didn't want to talk.

Speaker 26 Locals were hesitant.

Speaker 15 And a history of distrust between indigenous communities and law enforcement loomed over everything.

Speaker 12 Please turn those videos into this department.

Speaker 10 Okay.

Speaker 27 Okay. We're scared.
We're scared everywhere we go because somebody's usually following me.

Speaker 12 I understand that.

Speaker 10 We do.

Speaker 27 We're recording everything because we don't trust anybody.

Speaker 28 The police department, they neglected her.

Speaker 25 They neglected Flo in every way, shape, and form.

Speaker 1 And I'm really mad about it. They judge natives.

Speaker 28 I think that there could be human trafficking, sex trafficking, and somebody's holding a secret.

Speaker 28 and they're not telling.

Speaker 28 They're not going to tell anything.

Speaker 25 I think they killed her

Speaker 28 and they got away with it.

Speaker 28 If you know the history of Nome, there have been a lot of people missing.

Speaker 13 We all believe these people

Speaker 28 are going to do it again.

Speaker 15 But then,

Speaker 15 slowly, people started talking.

Speaker 15 And Payne realized these two disappearances weren't just parallel mysteries. They were pressure points.

Speaker 15 And something was starting to crack.

Speaker 15 Two disappearances, one town.

Speaker 15 And with each episode of Up and Vanished, a question echoed louder. Is this just coincidence? Or is Noam hiding something deeper?

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 The search started late. Too late.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 15 The FBI stepped in, but even then, answers didn't come.

Speaker 15 The Alaska Native community had seen this before.

Speaker 15 A woman goes missing. The family begs for help.
And the silence settles in again.

Speaker 31 I started looking into Nome and long history of public complaints about mistreatment of Alaska Native people by police.

Speaker 31 Women and girls in Alaska faced four times the national average of of homicides. I felt it was really underreported.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 It would be through whispers, through courage, through the people willing to talk.

Speaker 15 Joseph's story spiraled in a different direction.

Speaker 15 The more Payne looked into his disappearance, the more confusing it became. He was last seen allegedly near Mile 44,

Speaker 15 but the details didn't add up.

Speaker 15 His car was there,

Speaker 15 but some said he returned to town afterward.

Speaker 15 Others said they saw him Sunday, after he was already considered missing.

Speaker 15 And then came Jake, Joseph's roommate.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 Then he said nothing at all.

Speaker 11 I know that the timeline doesn't make sense to you, and we know that his roommate says he saw him. People are mistaken.
It could be that.

Speaker 11 It could be that he came back in, forgot his phone, because there's all these theories, but I don't have the answers. Nobody does.
The roommates Sunday. Do you know what he said about that?

Speaker 11 Like, yes, I saw him. I spoke to him.
I saw him driving away. Like, what level of commitment do you think? They passed each other in the home inside the house on Sunday.

Speaker 26 Guys, I'll be happy to go talk to Jake again.

Speaker 15 Jake wasn't just a roommate, he was also Christine's cousin, Joseph's co-worker and occasional drinking buddy.

Speaker 10 Christine is important because she's the last person that we know saw Joseph alive,

Speaker 10 so she's a really important figure.

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Speaker 9 Blair went down the beach to try to find her sister.

Speaker 25 This guy gives her some of Flo's clothes, but she's not there.

Speaker 4 I just know he was a cab driver in town, and a lot of people didn't like him.

Speaker 15 That's when Organ John entered the picture. A mysterious man who lived on West Beach, a transient gold miner.
There is no mining for gold in the winters of Nome.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 They talked in a bar, and Lindsay did his best to get as much information about John's time in Nome as possible.

Speaker 15 Florence and Joseph. Two names, two stories, two families still waiting.

Speaker 15 While Joseph's case grew darker, Florence's family stepped forward, stronger.

Speaker 15 They didn't want revenge.

Speaker 15 They wanted to be heard.

Speaker 40 He took a daughter away from her parents.

Speaker 15 The FBI investigation had stalled. No updates, no suspects.
But the community was waking up.

Speaker 15 People began to remember the women who had gone missing before.

Speaker 15 The cases that were closed without ever being solved. Florence's name was no longer a whisper.
It was a rallying cry.

Speaker 27 If somebody abducts us, scratch him, pull our hair out, leave as much evidence as you can behind, and rely on the public to find them.

Speaker 27 Not the police department, because they're not capable or willing to.

Speaker 27 I've got a couple friends who were beaten up by them, but they were too scared to go forward.

Speaker 15 Then, something else happened. Payne was scheduled to fly back to Nome,

Speaker 15 but five days before the flight, his name was leaked. A private flight manifest.
Confidential. Somehow, people in Nome knew he was coming.

Speaker 15 They started talking.

Speaker 1 23 hours ago, our flarence started hearing rumors about you.

Speaker 26 Payne never boarded that plane.

Speaker 15 And suddenly, the story wasn't just about Florence or Joseph.

Speaker 15 It was about him, too. The message was clear.

Speaker 26 Don't come back.

Speaker 15 So where does that leave us? Florence Akpialik, Joseph Balderez, two lives lost to mystery.

Speaker 15 Two families without answers. And one town that has learned to forget.

Speaker 15 But Up and Vanish didn't come here to forget. And the people of Nome,

Speaker 15 some of them aren't staying quiet anymore. Because someone knows what happened.
To Florence, to Joseph, and they're still out there.

Speaker 15 This is up and vanished in the midnight sun.

Speaker 15 Two disappearances, two truths, still buried. For now.

Speaker 17 Did you

Speaker 17 hear about the Sonia Ivanov case?

Speaker 15 I did.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 17 you kind of know the background between the community and law enforcement right now and how it's been in recovery, but not recovering.

Speaker 14 In Gnome, 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.

Speaker 14 She's been the voice keeping this case alive.

Speaker 17 Gnome, Alaska, if you 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So Nome is where the heavy traffic of Indigenous people go.

Speaker 17 And then they either go home as planned or they don't. That's just how it is there.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 and

Speaker 17 seeing

Speaker 17 racism firsthand, experiencing it, you know, like how everything kind of ties into really what the MMIWG statistics are today and like how

Speaker 17 how can we really approach it. Well, one thing is like if you're not going to be honest and call the truths out, then there won't, no one is going to address it.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 Gnome.

Speaker 17 So it's hard not to think of Flo

Speaker 2 for various reasons.

Speaker 17 There's no justice.

Speaker 17 Why don't we have justice?

Speaker 17 In a native community, why don't we have that?

Speaker 14 Now back to the case of Joseph Balderis.

Speaker 14 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 Balderis alive.

Speaker 14 She wasn't someone telling a second-hand story. She was there.
She walked with him through the quiet streets of Nome that night.

Speaker 14 This is a new lead, a new piece to the puzzle that only seems to make things more confusing.

Speaker 18 I saw Joseph the night before he went missing. It was around 3 a.m.

Speaker 18 My daughter wouldn't sleep. So I took her for a walk through town.

Speaker 18 He was leaving soap and suds alone.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 We stood outside the bar for a while talking. He crouched down, played with my daughter and her stroller.
Then we started walking toward our houses. He leaned on me for a bit, just to steady himself.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 And knowing him, he probably made it home.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 They saw Joseph's truck parked out on Council Road before 1 p.m.,

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Saturday. If he'd really been meeting up with someone, you'd think there'd be a text, right?

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 No sign of him. No belongings.
Nothing.

Speaker 18 People disappear from Gnome.

Speaker 18 It's not new.

Speaker 18 Some say it's the Ishiguks. Some say it's something worse.

Speaker 17 Me?

Speaker 18 I don't know.

Speaker 18 Maybe he fell. Maybe someone hurt him.

Speaker 18 But with everything we put into the search, someone should have found something. Anything.

Speaker 18 It's haunted me ever since.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 So which version of events here is actually true? They can't both be.

Speaker 14 And then there's Hannah's grandfather. He worked dispatch for GNOME PD.

Speaker 14 He told Hannah the last text message from Joseph's phone went out around 9 a.m. on Saturday.

Speaker 14 Then no more messages. No sign of life whatsoever.

Speaker 14 And yet, his truck was spotted early Sunday.

Speaker 14 And then there's Tom Moran.

Speaker 14 Back when Andy Clamser, the private investigator, first came to Nome,

Speaker 14 Tom was the city manager.

Speaker 41 It is the 4th of October 2016. The time now is 3.27 p.m.

Speaker 41 Oh, you're the city manager in Nome, correct? Correct.

Speaker 41 And you know Joseph, or you knew Joseph, correct?

Speaker 1 I did, yeah.

Speaker 41 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.

Speaker 1 When Joseph moved to Nome, there's kind of a small group of like a lawyer's guild, I guess I'd call it.

Speaker 1 And a friend of mine named Andrew Dunmeyer, who is a public defender for the state of Alaska, and now he is stationed out of Anchorage,

Speaker 1 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 of years ago, hung out a few times, and then it kind of,

Speaker 1 you know, for whatever reasons, he found a different group to kind of roll around with, and he stopped hanging out with, for, you know, whatever reason, like I said, found kind of a different social circle.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So if there was something happening in the world of college football, we talked. So I did see him that night.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's so long ago that I can remember where it was, and I can remember about what time it was, but it was he was with a couple of girls, Christine and Kim Pescoia.

Speaker 1 I think they're, I think Kim's last name is Pescoia. I know Christine's is at Breaker's Bar.

Speaker 1 And I had been there. I went for a 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

Speaker 1 when I was leaving at 9 o'clock to go home for the night or thereabouts,

Speaker 1 he was coming out for the night. So just we exchanged pleasantries as I was kind of going out and he was coming in.

Speaker 41 So how certain are you of the times? Because we

Speaker 41 had been under the impression that Joseph didn't go out with Christine and Kim until after midnight.

Speaker 1 I would be happy to like check check an ATM receipt or something, but I can tell you that often,

Speaker 1 you know, I know when I was out that night, and it would be

Speaker 1 not impossible, but pretty rare for it to be a six-hour shift for me. So if I said nine and it was really 10, there's a possibility, but my belief would be that it was earlier than that.

Speaker 1 relatively strong belief.

Speaker 1 I know, you know, when we first started discussing this, when we were on the search in the, you know, months or weeks or whatever that followed,

Speaker 1 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 in advance of midnight.

Speaker 41 Do you happen to know of anyone who saw Joseph or his truck that weekend?

Speaker 1 Oh, let me think.

Speaker 1 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 at a middle stool in Breaker's Bar as we were kind of heading home for the night.

Speaker 1 I think, you know, I heard that, again,

Speaker 1 one of the rumors about

Speaker 1 the Pescoia girls was that Christine was interested in him, but he went and got this girlfriend in Juno, and she was mad about that.

Speaker 1 I know her well enough to think that she's not a psychopath, but I, boy, I just, I just don't know.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But I'll try to think about that and sort of vet that with

Speaker 1 this group of people that I go out for cocktails with.

Speaker 41 Great. Thank you very much.
I appreciate your time.

Speaker 1 All right, Andy, no problem. Thanks for the call.
I'll let you know if I think of anything.

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Speaker 14 We're not done with Florence's case either. Not by a long shot.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 Most of them rumors, and I still don't know what's true. But there's one thing I do know.

Speaker 14 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

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 14 Now, everything revolving around Danny Girl is a little clouded. There may be drug abuse.
There may be some truth.

Speaker 14 And there may be both.

Speaker 14 Do you know someone who goes by the name Danny Girl?

Speaker 42 Aw, I met with her.

Speaker 1 You did?

Speaker 42 I was at work and she kept calling me. me.

Speaker 42 And I was getting irritated.

Speaker 42 Because she does drugs.

Speaker 42 And I couldn't be a part of that.

Speaker 14 And then she said, I have to talk to you about something about Flo.

Speaker 42 Then she said, no. Then she said, finally, she said yes.

Speaker 42 So I told my boss I have to go. So I met up with her and I recorded it.

Speaker 26 You did?

Speaker 42 I did.

Speaker 42 When I first met with her, she was on the phone with a Bing, Bing distant.

Speaker 42 Then she started talking to me

Speaker 42 about Flo. Where she's at.
What she did. What they did.

Speaker 42 Did you believe her?

Speaker 1 Yes and no.

Speaker 14 Why, yes and why no?

Speaker 42 Because she got hired to shovel.

Speaker 42 That's what she told me.

Speaker 15 She did what?

Speaker 42 She got hired to shovel for meth.

Speaker 14 Do you still have those recordings and stuff?

Speaker 42 I brought it to the police department.

Speaker 26 You don't have anyone?

Speaker 42 I don't.

Speaker 42 That phone broke.

Speaker 42 It's okay.

Speaker 42 But I brought it to the police department.

Speaker 42 And they brought the cadaver docks and never told us that they brought them until they left.

Speaker 14 Where'd they take them? Um, to a house by Aurora Inn

Speaker 42 where Danny Girl said that.

Speaker 42 She was under there and there was something wrapped in there, but she didn't know what it was.

Speaker 42 Something wrapped in the corner.

Speaker 35 Who do you think is responsible for her disappearance?

Speaker 35 John Curtin.

Speaker 42 The FBI said love's last conversation was through her friend.

Speaker 42 And uh, she lives in a village and

Speaker 42 she told her that there was four people in the bushes and they were passing something around.

Speaker 42 And she asked if she was okay, and she said she didn't know.

Speaker 42 This is a phone call, yeah, it was a phone call. It was her last phone call,

Speaker 42 but on her phone, that was her last conversation.

Speaker 1 It was the last call, yeah.

Speaker 42 And then her phone died at midnight.

Speaker 14 Do you know who she was with?

Speaker 42 John Curtin.

Speaker 1 And here are the other guys.

Speaker 1 Michael McConnell.

Speaker 14 On June 26, 2016, 36-year-old Joseph Balderis dropped off the grid entirely, and he's never been seen since then.

Speaker 14 In most missing persons' cases, there's almost nothing left behind. No clues, no crime scene, just questions.

Speaker 14 It's why these stories drag on for years, because we're grasping at shadows. But in the case of Joseph Balderis, there is one undeniable piece of physical evidence.
Joseph's truck.

Speaker 14 It sat in Nome for years, a ghost on the side of the road. frozen in time.

Speaker 14 And when I realized the only way to truly understand what happened was to to get my hands on that truck, it's like a miracle happened. I found it listed on Facebook Marketplace.

Speaker 43 Joseph's truck, the truck.

Speaker 14 And so I bought it.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 Or risk it being stuck in Gnome for another year.

Speaker 38 We need it off that fucking island.

Speaker 14 Foolishly, I didn't think it would be this hard.

Speaker 34 I have someone holding the vehicle for us now.

Speaker 36 In Gnome.

Speaker 44 Why is it so hard?

Speaker 14 I thought Facebook Marketplace, money sent, done deal.

Speaker 12 Shipping Gnome, Alaska, Premium Auto Transport. Gnome is a city in western Alaska's unorganized borough.

Speaker 38 We know.

Speaker 14 The winter in Gnome doesn't wait for you. Neither does the last boat out.

Speaker 12 Gnome's Causeway serves as a docket. Get to it.

Speaker 14 As it turns out, shipping a vehicle out of the Arctic tundra requires about six miracles,

Speaker 14 a port manifest, and a goddamn time machine.

Speaker 1 Thanks for calling Sit Your Car Now, powered by A1 Transport for auto-transports within the United States. Press One.
This call is being recorded.

Speaker 14 We were already way past the cutoff. Every minute that passed, I was picturing Joseph's truck, frozen in place, buried under snow.

Speaker 1 No, I believe the cutoff was a couple days ago, actually.

Speaker 14 Untouched for yet another year.

Speaker 14 This can't happen.

Speaker 1 Let me put out an email. You know, I'd almost say they're gonna tell me we're way too late in the season for this.
They stop doing that when the winter comes.

Speaker 1 You know what? What's your first name?

Speaker 34 The final destination of this truck is Tacoma, Washington. Please take a picture before you leave it.

Speaker 33 Hello, it's Tracy.

Speaker 38 Hey, it's Payne.

Speaker 15 Can you do me a huge, huge favor?

Speaker 10 Maybe.

Speaker 14 That's when I call one of my local friends in Gnome, 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.

Speaker 14 Tracy had the address.

Speaker 34 Can you, right now, go get the truck so it can make the last shipment out before winter?

Speaker 13 I

Speaker 13 think so.

Speaker 13 Where's the key?

Speaker 34 The keys are in the truck.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 38 At this address, I'm texting it to you now.

Speaker 40 I can go get it.

Speaker 14 Now all we needed was time.

Speaker 37 Is it possible for you to drive the vehicle to the port within the next hour? It's the cutoff.

Speaker 34 Dylan, did you already pay and run the card?

Speaker 38 Cutting it close.

Speaker 10 LOL.

Speaker 44 It won't be fucking LOL if that truck doesn't get on that ship.

Speaker 44 I'm going to put you on with Dylan.

Speaker 10 God send it.

Speaker 10 It's on its way to anchorage.

Speaker 14 Somehow, it made it.

Speaker 14 And right now, Joseph's truck is sitting in Tacoma, Washington. And next week, we take it all apart.

Speaker 14 We forensically examine it on this podcast.

Speaker 14 And what we find inside might finally tell us something that no one in Gnome ever would.

Speaker 14 Stay tuned next week for another episode of Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun.

Speaker 37 Hey guys, real quick, I'm on the road right

Speaker 34 We just wrap shooting for a new show I'm hosting, America's Most Wanted Missing Persons.

Speaker 34 It premieres this Monday, April 28th, 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Fox.
And it also streams the next day on Hulu. So no excuse to not watch it.

Speaker 29 Please, please check it out.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 35 And you can also watch it on Hulu.

Speaker 38 All right, Shameless plug is over.

Speaker 35 Talk soon.

Speaker 33 Can we get some sleep? I'll see you next week.

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

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

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 McKenzie, Alice Kanik Glenn, and Eric Quintana.
Artwork by Rob Sheridan. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.

Speaker 2 Mix and Mastered by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Bank 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.

Speaker 4 This is the story of the one.

Speaker 30 As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast.

Speaker 30 It's why he partners with Granger to stay fully stocked on the products products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

Speaker 30 All so that he can help students, staff, and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRA, clickgranger.com, or just stop by.
Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 43 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 43 From con artists to unbelievable yet true occurrences, we dive into stories where nothing is ever quite as it seems. Because to understand the world, you sometimes have to change the way you see it.

Speaker 37 Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.