17 | Bad Blood

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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 3 Jake lied to the state troopers on multiple occasions occasions about his whereabouts on the weekend Joseph went missing. And so did Tyler, his friend.

Speaker 3 Jake told the police he stayed in his house playing video games all night when in fact he was at a party at a bonfire until at least 4 or 5 a.m.

Speaker 3 We have video proof of that. But why would Jake lie about that? The I don't remember excuse gets a lot flimsier when he's being asked to recall the night he first met his summer girlfriend, Leah,

Speaker 3 the first time he kissed her and exchanged numbers. Somehow, that's either all a blur to him, or he's withholding information for a reason.

Speaker 3 I talked to his 2016 summer girlfriend, Leah, for several hours, and she recalled, to the best of her memory, what happened that summer. She left Nome in August 2016 and went back home to Florida.

Speaker 3 This is when the very first episode of Up and Vanish came out about Terra Grinstead. And I kid you not, she started listening to the podcast.
And she has been ever since.

Speaker 3 When Joseph's case merged into the picture this season, she reached out to me, a little freaked out.

Speaker 3 Were you already listening to Up and Vanish?

Speaker 6 Hayne, yes. I was obsessed with Terra Grinstead season.

Speaker 6 I went to Alaska in 2016. So then when you put out this Gnome season, I was like, you've got to be kidding me.
Worlds Collide.

Speaker 6 I've got this great message with four other girls I spent the summer with. We were just outsiders in GNOME.
There's a lot more that you're putting out now that we had no idea when we were there.

Speaker 6 And sometimes it hits a little close to home and I'm like, take a step back and kind of process.

Speaker 6 We met June 25th at that party. And then Jake and I coupled off pretty quickly.
We had just like a little summer fling.

Speaker 6 It was nothing serious. You know, we didn't talk after I left that summer, but him and I were involved.

Speaker 3 Saturday morning, the 25th, what did you do that day? And then when were you with Jake? For how long? And what did y'all do?

Speaker 6 I'm so thankful. I wrote what I did every single day that summer in a journal.
Otherwise, I would have no idea. We were at a party the night before.
So I think We went to a house party.

Speaker 6 There was a bulldog that I pet and then everyone went to the bars and I went home. Saturday morning, we were all kind of hungover.
We went bridge jumping earlier that day.

Speaker 6 I have pictures from that on June 25th, but we did not go with Jake because I met him that night at the party.

Speaker 6 So I meet Jake at this party. Everyone's drunk.
All the girls, the interns I've lived with, we all left together and all six of us were there. We went to the party.

Speaker 6 The picture I sent you was from 1 a.m.

Speaker 6 And I know there was at least 30 more minutes after that that I would have talked to Jake.

Speaker 3 So Leah meets Jake at this party on Saturday night. They kiss and exchange numbers.
She took several pictures and videos from the party, but you can clearly see Jake himself in the background.

Speaker 3 Around 2 a.m. or so, she leaves the party and goes back home with her girlfriends.

Speaker 3 She goes to sleep and when she wakes up the next morning, she sees a text message from Jake that he sent to her while she was sleeping.

Speaker 6 And he texted me and was asking if he'd come over.

Speaker 6 He didn't come over because I was drunk. I literally was completely asleep.
And it was like the next morning I saw that he had texted me and tried to come over.

Speaker 6 It had to have been like three, four, 5 a.m.

Speaker 3 A friend named Cam remembers dropping Jake off at Leah's house around 5 a.m. Did he just knock on her door, then turn around and walk home?

Speaker 6 So many people saw you at this party. Why are you not coming out and saying that you were there? And that's what you did.

Speaker 6 I really have a hard time believing that he did anything leading up to the point when he met me and kissed me because it was just so normal.

Speaker 6 It's like, why would you, why would you do that and then go to this big open party?

Speaker 6 But then on the other hand, even if you were blackout drunk and don't remember being at that party and people are asking you your alibi, why not just say you're there?

Speaker 6 Okay, so per my journal, I'm so thankful I wrote what I did every single day that summer in a journal. Otherwise, I would have no idea.

Speaker 6 So we met the Saturday party, June 25th.

Speaker 3 June 25th.

Speaker 6 We met June 25th at that man camp party.

Speaker 6 The first time that I saw him a few days later when we were sober during the week, he had told me at some point my roommate's the missing person. And I was like, that's weird.

Speaker 6 First he told me they took all my guns. They searched the house.
There's caution tape on the door. My roommate's missing.
It was very nonchalant. They took all my guns.

Speaker 3 You took all his guns? What do you mean?

Speaker 6 He told me that during the week. He was saying, like, yeah, my roommate's a missing person.
The cops took my guns.

Speaker 3 Do you remember him like specifically saying that they took his guns?

Speaker 6 Yes. He said the cops, they took my guns.
They

Speaker 3 had more than one gun?

Speaker 6 He used that term. That is clear in my head.
But I don't know if he meant multiple, but that is what he said. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Did he make it sound like they took my guns? I don't have them back yet.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 6 It is interesting.

Speaker 6 I know for a fact that Jake had told me that before July 1st.

Speaker 3 When did the cops first go there?

Speaker 3 I can tell you.

Speaker 8 Not July 1st, right?

Speaker 6 He made that statement to me before July 1st.

Speaker 3 Jake told Leah that the cops took his guns, plural, before the cops had even been to his house and seen a gun in the first place.

Speaker 3 They didn't even notice the rifle in the house until July 3rd.

Speaker 6 They took it before then. By the 1st was the house party.
So he had already told me that we had the missing person conversation before then.

Speaker 6 It was when he told me his roommate was missing that he said, yeah, no, like they're interviewing me. They took my guns.

Speaker 3 Maybe someone did take the gun, but it just wasn't wasn't the police

Speaker 6 monday was the 27th i saw him for the first time sober on monday he's sober on monday so we hung out on the 29th for the first time like longer and that could have been when he told me it was either

Speaker 6 it was probably the 29th that he told me that but it was between june 27th and july 1st

Speaker 3 it seems pretty early for jake to be saying that who knows it's weird though jake had a party he had a party that we all went over to the house for the first time.

Speaker 6 He gave us a house tour. And at the house party, he's like, see, I told you, there's the room.
I feel kind of stupid in hindsight.

Speaker 6 When someone tells you their roommate's missing, you would

Speaker 6 start to question and pick up on the fact that, oh, you're not involved in the search. You don't ever talk about it.
That in and of itself is weird. But at the time, we were just naive.

Speaker 6 Everyone just said, it's Alaska. People go missing.
It happens all the time.

Speaker 6 I do have to tell you this. Later on in the night, it did freak me out in the moment, but I continued to hang out with him and not think anything of it.

Speaker 6 But during that house party, people didn't have anywhere to sleep.

Speaker 6 And he went into Joseph's room and got a pillow from Joseph's room for people. I remember all of us just being like, Did he just go into the crime scene and take a pillow?

Speaker 6 And some people started laughing.

Speaker 3 To us we were just like that's really weird he went into that room and got a pillow for someone to sleep on leah sent me her journal entries for that summer she wrote down what she did nearly every single day and from her perspective it's likely the most authentic timeline we have he never wanted to talk about it back then

Speaker 3 Did you like try and you didn't or he just oh my god, I would ask.

Speaker 6 I would ask all I would ask all the time. Like what? I would just bring it up casually because it's like a main thing happening that summer.

Speaker 6 You know, I would just say like, gosh, I still just can't believe they haven't found that guy like i would make that comment i would just be saying that out loud and then at one point we were on a hike once and we were off on our own i don't know if you ask me i think someone had bad blood somebody had bad blood and i was like what what what do you mean by that that's the first time i had ever heard anyone insinuate that it was not a bear and He just completely changed the subject after that.

Speaker 6 He's like, nothing. I don't know.
I'm like, you just said that you think someone had bad blood with this missing person. That means you think it could have been a murder.

Speaker 3 I told Leah that Bonnie, Jake's mom, had first brought her name up to the PI Andy Clamser.

Speaker 6 Wait, Bonnie said that to Jake?

Speaker 3 Yeah, find the Bonnie Clams.

Speaker 7 But Bonnie brought you up.

Speaker 6 What the fuck? I never met her.

Speaker 6 That is, wait.

Speaker 6 That's really weird to me.

Speaker 6 Wait, so what you're telling me is Bonnie gave Jake the heads up that the investigator knew about me? That makes absolutely zero sense to me.

Speaker 6 Payne, literally, thank you so much for playing that for me. You don't know how much that means.
It's a lot to process.

Speaker 6 The fact that the only people that have seen Joseph or have communication with Joseph are all related past a certain point.

Speaker 6 It's freaking weird that I met him that Saturday night.

Speaker 6 I have to take like probably the rest of the night and week to process that.

Speaker 3 Leah and I have continued to stay in communication. And slowly but surely, more details about that summer have come to light.
She left Nome in August 2016 back to Florida.

Speaker 3 And she's never talked to Jake or been back to Nome since.

Speaker 3 But the group of girls she was with that summer have collectively pulled together all their information, phone data, photos, video, and it's building a much clearer picture.

Speaker 3 From Tinderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun, Chapter 2.

Speaker 3 I'm your host, Payne Lindsay.

Speaker 3 In 2018, two years after Joseph went missing, his family petitioned with the state of Alaska to officially declare him deceased.

Speaker 3 A presumptive death hearing was held in the Nome Courthouse, and several people were subpoenaed to testify under oath.

Speaker 3 One of them was Christine.

Speaker 9 My full name is

Speaker 9 Can you just begin by generally introducing yourself, just your age, where you live, and what you do in the community?

Speaker 9 And can you kind of just explain how you met Joseph and just generally the nature of your relationship?

Speaker 9 I first met Joseph when he started his first year as a,

Speaker 9 you know, working here. That's when I first met him.

Speaker 9 and then as the time went on we started talking more and just becoming more friends and just talking um

Speaker 9 i did start to invite him over to my grandmother's place um for us for traditional eskimo food um to see if he would like it um

Speaker 9 and he did so he kept he wouldn't go all the time but he went occasionally

Speaker 9 And so we just, as time went on, we just talked more and hung out more and did stuff. It sounds like Joseph spent some time with you and your family on a somewhat regular basis back there.

Speaker 9 Can you kind of just explain, if you know, what Joseph's hobbies were and what he liked to do with his free time?

Speaker 9 He was an avid runner. He ran a lot and

Speaker 9 I think almost every day he said he'd either run or bike because he had a bike until it broke, I guess. But he would run.

Speaker 9 He liked being in the outdoors he liked going for hikes he liked you know fishing and being in the outdoors overall so how would you describe Joseph's personality his demeanor was he

Speaker 9 you know he used to think he was funny but it came out more of the

Speaker 9 lawyer type of funny I guess to explain

Speaker 9 We

Speaker 9 did bicker, but it was like a sibling baker. It wasn't a, oh, I'm going to be mad at you because I want to, but we always found something

Speaker 9 to disagree on and agree that we disagree. So

Speaker 9 overall, he just was a very generous person, you know,

Speaker 9 friendly.

Speaker 9 So I

Speaker 9 didn't believe that he was crazy or that he was...

Speaker 9 I don't know, you know, he was normal.

Speaker 9 Did you ever see him go through periods of depression or anxiety or anything that would cause you concern?

Speaker 9 I think the only thing is, like, he was here for two years and he was going on to a new adventure. And I don't know if it just was something new that he hadn't done in the last two years.

Speaker 9 I'd probably just say it would be a slight anxious, but nothing to give me a red flag that he was depressed or anything. I didn't get that.

Speaker 9 So I've been questioned by police, AST, investigators, attorneys, private investigators, and they've all asked me,

Speaker 9 what do I think happened to him? Could this have happened? I said,

Speaker 9 at the time, because I think the last interview I did was with a private investigator,

Speaker 9 but they had all asked me, what do I think happened? Or what what do I feel like happened and I said at the time I said

Speaker 9 once I start to believe that something happened to him that's when I lose hope that we won't find him

Speaker 9 and it

Speaker 9 I they were like well do you think he was murdered do you think he left I said I I don't know I can't say I I die I all I know is I don't know where he's at

Speaker 9 but the second I start believing in something happened to him, then that's when I lose hope.

Speaker 9 And so they understood

Speaker 9 i don't

Speaker 9 i thought oh he's somewhere he's missing i i don't i don't know so i can't say what happened to him because i i don't know and i don't want to

Speaker 9 start

Speaker 9 to believe in in something that i don't know what happened

Speaker 9 those are all my questions thank you guys

Speaker 3 Clearly, something happened to Joseph. The state of Alaska officially declared Joseph Balderis as deceased, and a death certificate was issued to his family.

Speaker 8 There was a weapon involved.

Speaker 8 When a trooper went in to the room, he didn't see anything. And then all of a sudden, when he goes back into the room, there was

Speaker 8 a rifle.

Speaker 10 Inside Joseph's room? Are you solid on that?

Speaker 8 Solid on.

Speaker 10 Which officer?

Speaker 8 Smith and Strobel.

Speaker 10 They found a rifle in his room.

Speaker 8 Maybe I shouldn't have said anything.

Speaker 10 No, no, this is not a criminal case. It's all public information.
They have to turn it all over. They just haven't.

Speaker 8 The two investigators and I sat down

Speaker 8 and they were focusing in on the rifle. And it showed up.

Speaker 8 Jake's uncle put it there, Kevin.

Speaker 3 The disappearing and reappearing rifle in Jake's house. It was said that Jake's uncle, Kevin, was moving it around.

Speaker 8 Kevin would be his uncle, right? And he was on the search quite regularly.

Speaker 10 What's the uncle's name?

Speaker 1 Kevin Bescoya.

Speaker 10 P-I-S-C-O-Y-A.

Speaker 10 Yep.

Speaker 8 Former police officer. Got fired.

Speaker 10 You said that Kevin Bescoya is a former officer that was fired.

Speaker 8 His brother is a state trooper in Fairbanks.

Speaker 10 And he was heavily involved in the search? Probably about four days.

Speaker 7 What area was he searching?

Speaker 10 All over. Is that a record? Is there a record of where he went?

Speaker 8 No, because he was in various groups.

Speaker 10 Why would he place a gun in somebody else's room after the guy went missing?

Speaker 10 Confiscated a gun out of that room.

Speaker 8 The other two troopers that came in from Anchorage.

Speaker 10 And they told you not to tell anybody.

Speaker 10 Why would they tell you not to tell anyone?

Speaker 10 Did you guys go to school with Kevin?

Speaker 8 He was in our,

Speaker 8 not in our class, but he was below us.

Speaker 7 Tell me a little bit about him.

Speaker 8 I think he had a little drinking problem.

Speaker 8 He's rough around the edges.

Speaker 8 That's narcissistic.

Speaker 3 You may recall from earlier that during the search, It was reported that Kevin Pescoia was driving his ATV over footprints and tracks in the woods, obstructing the the path of the canine search dogs.

Speaker 3 Jake told Leah his guns were missing before the police even knew there was a gun in the first place. And maybe Jake's telling the truth about that.

Speaker 3 Maybe Kevin did take it and then place it back there.

Speaker 3 Here's a recording of an old acquaintance of Kevin Pescoya.

Speaker 11 Maybe it's gonna come out. It's gonna come out.
Say it's gonna come out.

Speaker 1 The old cops,

Speaker 11 the ex-cops. Kevin.
Kevin was a

Speaker 11 policeman too.

Speaker 11 Kevin was supposed to be good friend of mine.

Speaker 7 It's let her come out.

Speaker 11 There's a lot of things that I always been talking about and now I started coming out. Because when you go to the bar, you always listen.
People talk. People talk too much when they're drinking.

Speaker 11 But I know a lot. I know a lot.

Speaker 11 When Selena was here,

Speaker 11 his sister. I'm a good friend with them.
I'm in touch with Selena and her mom. And they come to Norman to go to Norm.
I even had a dinner over there. And that's how I find out a lot of things

Speaker 11 about the case. And I knew

Speaker 11 what was going to happen to Kevin in those days.

Speaker 11 And Kevin, Kevin told me one day, I went there with Berdera's mom and dad and Tracy and Joe's mom and sister, Selena, and they're here. They want to see you.
And they want to say hi.

Speaker 11 I go there and they grab a table. They were sitting there and a table there.
And I... And Kevin goes there and see me sitting with them.

Speaker 11 And he looks at me. But I was very uncomfortable there.
I go like, and they keep saying, look, I go, fuck this.

Speaker 11 That next weekend, Kevin went to Chew Darwin. He looked at me, he looked at me.
Hey, I saw my brother and my brother grabbed my hand,

Speaker 11 pulled me to his heart like that. I love you, you know I love you, right? He said, oh, I know you love me, I love you too, you know you die, you know that.

Speaker 11 He always did high five me, he always high-five me, but he never hugged me. And I was just very uncomfortable the whole time.

Speaker 7 He looked and looked at me.

Speaker 11 I was watching him all the time.

Speaker 7 She was happy for a reason.

Speaker 11 And the way he died, it was weird, man. It was weird.

Speaker 3 On October 3rd, 2021, Kevin Pescoya went missing. Then later that day, he was found deceased in his vehicle around mile 37 of Council Road, not too far from where they found Joseph's truck.

Speaker 11 He left the bar there.

Speaker 11 He went home like more drunk and got in the car, took a bottle of crown with him.

Speaker 11 So he's dead. He's dead somewhere.
So he was pulling him. Joe.

Speaker 11 People don't believe in that stuff. When you're guilty, when you've done something, do something.

Speaker 11 It can take months, days, months,

Speaker 11 years, whatever, but every one day

Speaker 11 his spirit still alive.

Speaker 11 But they never say what happened to him. Because his brother found his kids.

Speaker 10 I looked back at the obituary, they never said how he died.

Speaker 11 No, they don't say it.

Speaker 11 He shot himself or whatever he did himself.

Speaker 10 He's the only one who talked about it.

Speaker 1 By the time he called, you know,

Speaker 11 they never say what happened.

Speaker 3 Kevin's cause of death remains a mystery. Nothing about it in his obituary.
But what is known is that the first to arrive to the scene were his family members, not the paramedics.

Speaker 3 Plenty of rumors floating around out there about this. Nothing concrete, but the story is always the same.
Rumors of a crown liquor bottle, pills, and some sort of suicide note.

Speaker 3 Again, all just rumors. But what I can say is that I heard from a paramedic who was at the scene hours after the family had been there.
The one thing they recalled was the smell.

Speaker 3 And sorry to be graphic, but they felt the smell indicated to them that he had been deceased for much longer than he was reported missing for. Almost like he was put there.
Just someone's observation.

Speaker 3 But it all feels eerily close and similar to Joseph Valdez.

Speaker 7 I was a radiologist up there in Nome for 16 years from 1998 until 2015.

Speaker 7 And I think there's a lot of good cops, but there's also some bad ones, and they seem to be in a position of power. And there's so many problems up there.

Speaker 7 It's so easy for people to get away with stuff.

Speaker 7 People escaping, people running away from stuff, come to Nome because it's so far removed.

Speaker 7 There's often bad people or people with bad intentions, they can come up into Nome and they can get away with stuff.

Speaker 1 Drugs.

Speaker 7 Drugs are big up there.

Speaker 7 Was you can sell a pill of OxyContin on the streets in St. Lawrence Island, gamble or Savunga.
Huge. I mean, alcohol makes a lot of money in these small, isolated communities, but drugs, even more.

Speaker 7 It's big business.

Speaker 7 Nome is a hub for 15 surrounding villages over an area the size of Ohio.

Speaker 7 People with bad intentions, they can come up into Nome and they can get away with stuff.

Speaker 7 People just don't want to speak.

Speaker 7 Tight-lipped.

Speaker 7 People share stuff with me, and then I get back with them to follow up. Like, oh, maybe I shouldn't have said this.
There's a lot of good people up there, but there's a dark side.

Speaker 7 The corruption there goes all the way up to the mayor. Back in the early 90s, he was famous for his Coke parties.
Cocaine. Oh,

Speaker 7 everybody knows that.

Speaker 7 Cocaine is illegal, so it means he had to be getting it from drug dealers, which means he had the connections.

Speaker 7 A retired state of Alaska Medicaid fraud investigator said if the mayor was ever fully investigated, audited, there'd be enough financial fraud to put him behind bars for a long time.

Speaker 7 There's something wrong. I'm suspicious, and other people I've talked to are, that he knows what's going on in that town.

Speaker 7 I personally would not be surprised if he knows what happened to Florence and what happened to Boulderis.

Speaker 7 There's a good old boy network up there. They rub each other's back and do all kinds of stuff.
And the corruption is at the very top, exploits vulnerable people.

Speaker 7 You get into power up there and you just realize that you can get away with so much.

Speaker 7 Because the people that you can control, people that grew up there, they lived there in Nome, their families are there, their job is there, their kids are there, they can't go anywhere.

Speaker 7 They can't speak up against these power structures, and that's why the hospital there is so corrupt.

Speaker 7 I was the radiologist at the hospital in Nome, basically the only medical specialist in town. The CEO at the time was a sexual predator.

Speaker 7 The first person I found out he groped was my radiology director, reaching under the blouse, grabbing the breasts, and then two other women in radiology were also groped, breasts and crotches.

Speaker 7 I brought all three of these women to, we need to go to the police and make a statement. This is sexual assault, it's crime.

Speaker 7 I have their names, I've talked with them, and I went with them to the police.

Speaker 7 The police chief at the time, police chief in Nome.

Speaker 7 And an investigation was started.

Speaker 7 I called the medical director in to my office.

Speaker 7 The hospital immediately went into cover-up mode.

Speaker 7 The CEO lasted three days. It was reported that he had tendered his resignation.
That's a euphemism for being fired, but it was a tendered resignation.

Speaker 7 Once he tendered his resignation, Carol Pescoia was appointed acting CEO. Did you talk to Carol?

Speaker 7 I'll get to them.

Speaker 7 Carol Pescoia became the acting CEO and Everyone in the hospital was told not to talk about this.

Speaker 7 The CEO groped these women outside the hospital. So what happens outside the hospital stays outside the hospital.
It doesn't come in in the hospital. We were not supposed to talk about it.

Speaker 7 Three sexual assaults. These are crimes.
You don't turn the page on crimes. Sexual assaults are felonies, by the way, you idiot.

Speaker 7 Lonnie Pescoya. Did you ever talk to Lonnie? He was a state trooper and he's now in charge of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Speaker 3 Carol Pescoia, grandmother of Jake and Christine and the mother of Kevin. She also has a son, Lonnie Peskoya, who was appointed as the lead MMIW investigator for the entire state.

Speaker 3 I emailed Lonnie all the way back in January, before this podcast was even out, saying, your work with MMIW is really strong and admirable.

Speaker 3 We're doing a podcast about Florence Akpialik, and we'd love to talk to you. Nine months later, I've yet to get a response.

Speaker 7 Lonnie Peskoya is a retired state trooper. His mother, Carol Peskoya, obstructed a police investigation and multiple assaults.

Speaker 7 What if Lonnie's investigations take him anywhere close to his mother or to the mayor? He's going to have a conflict of interest.

Speaker 7 I know where you look. They're all tied together and they're covering for each other.

Speaker 7 They tried to run me out of town for years. I stirred the pot by reporting a crime, which you don't do.
because they like to handle things in-house.

Speaker 7 I finally just left on my own because I just got tired of the corruption up there. I had no respect for anybody.

Speaker 7 The Pescoias, there was that one Pescolla, Kevin Pescoia, I think.

Speaker 7 Joseph Balderis was having a relationship with Christine.

Speaker 7 Kevin Pescoia knew something or was mad, but there's something going on there. Lonnie might be okay, but I mean, is he going to go against his mother and the mayor? No.

Speaker 7 You got all these people in there.

Speaker 7 none of them are gonna want to talk because pull one domino out and the whole thing collapses.

Speaker 7 There's a den of darkness and corruption up there and you've got to give people information.

Speaker 7 If you hear that something's happening, somebody's being hurt or taken advantage of or abused or stolen from, you don't just look the other way. Too many people were aware of this stuff.

Speaker 7 They're aware that this person's covering this up. They're aware that this person did this.
And they don't say anything.

Speaker 7 And eventually you're going to get to the dark clit. It's going to be very tight-knit, and that's where it's going to take law enforcement or somebody to turn these people against each other.

Speaker 7 I mean, if somebody said who interacted with Joseph, what happened? What vehicles were there besides his truck? Somebody knows.

Speaker 7 It's like when you take down a serial killer. They give you information about all the other unsolved cases that they were involved in.

Speaker 13 Lonnie has seen the worst in society society and he has seen the best in society.

Speaker 13 On September 19th, 2022, Lonnie was hired back to the Alaska State Trooper Investigation and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Unit.

Speaker 3 Lonnie did a Zoom interview call with students last year.

Speaker 13 His goal as an investigator in this unit is to solve as many cases as possible. Thank you.
And at this time, I will turn it over to Lonnie.

Speaker 14 Thanks for inviting me today.

Speaker 14 I guess the one thing that wasn't said earlier is I got four brothers and two sisters and a gazillion cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Speaker 14 Of course, I think my mother's online, so she's probably chuckling by now.

Speaker 3 At the end of the interview, students asked questions, and so did his mom, Carol.

Speaker 13 Carol asks, at what point or when do you get involved with either a missing or murdered person? Missing persons from this area have been missing for years.

Speaker 14 That's my mother.

Speaker 14 Mom, I guess it's the squeaky wheel gets to Greece, right?

Speaker 14 When you speak up about it and you call and call and ask and say, I think I have more information,

Speaker 14 then I'll get involved.

Speaker 3 Well, the phone's still ringing. Is a two-hour conversation with the last person to have seen Florence Okpialik alive? knew enough information?

Speaker 3 Considering the fact he had her belongings in his tent, was never never officially interviewed by police, and claims that she was murdered and put inside a barrel under a meth dealer's house at Nome?

Speaker 14 Eventually, I think we'll get to some of these cases that are not necessarily more popular but have been publicized more out there.

Speaker 3 We're ready when you are. Check your email.

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Speaker 3 Nome has had a dark history for a long time now.

Speaker 3 Long before I began investigating, a journalist by the name of Victoria McKenzie traveled to Nome to conduct her own investigation into the police department.

Speaker 24 I was working as a deputy editor for the Center on Media, Crime, and Justice in New York.

Speaker 24 I started looking into Nome and a long history of public complaints about mistreatment of Alaska Native people by police.

Speaker 24 Decade after decade, you'd hear calls by Native institutions calling for a civil rights investigation of civil rights violations and also an outside investigation of these deaths and disappearances.

Speaker 24 Women and girls in Alaska faced four times the national average of homicides. I felt it was really underreported.

Speaker 24 Around that same time, National Native News had a short report about a group of Alaska Native women who came out saying that, look, we reported serious sexual assaults to local police and they did nothing.

Speaker 24 They're not taking our cases seriously.

Speaker 3 I met Victoria in person in New York City. She recalled her experience in them and what she uncovered during the months she stayed there.

Speaker 3 A group of Alaska Native women had banded together seeking justice for sexual assaults that that were not being investigated.

Speaker 24 What they were all saying is that they needed data to prove what was going on. They had asked for this data from the state and it wasn't forthcoming.

Speaker 24 People wanted data on Native victimization, data that tracks cases from first report through to prosecution outcome, if there's any. They'd been working for three years behind the scenes.

Speaker 24 to improve police response to sexual assaults. Police interviews were really victim blaming.

Speaker 24 In 2018, you didn't only have this one group of women, but other community members were really upset about specific incidents with police.

Speaker 24 A police officer was convicted of punching an Alaska Native woman in his custody. He continued to work in the department afterwards.

Speaker 24 There were concerns about another officer giving unauthorized ride-alongs to underage girls, and that really echoed back to what happened with Owens.

Speaker 3 Back in 2003, known police officer Matthew Owens was convicted for the murder of 19-year-old Sonia Ivanov.

Speaker 3 His inappropriate behavior towards Native women had been reported for a long time before then, but the Nome Police Department did absolutely nothing about it.

Speaker 24 They knew he was riding around patrolling in his police cruiser, picking up young women.

Speaker 24 And at the same time, you had a 911 operator.

Speaker 3 An Alaska Native woman who was sexually assaulted reported her own assault and nothing happened.

Speaker 24 She came out in the news saying that she reported her own rape to her lieutenant, her colleague and friend, Lieutenant Nick Harvey, and he did nothing for a year.

Speaker 24 He'd been the ranking officer for a long time in charge of investigations. He didn't create a call for service or a police report.
And meanwhile, he told her he was working on the case.

Speaker 24 John Papazadora, who had been with the Nome Police Department since 2007, you did see him in the news talking about the lack of financial resources for policing and the high turnover rates.

Speaker 24 Obviously, they were turning people away. If he's saying, you know, we don't have enough resources.
But was that the whole story?

Speaker 24 I spoke with people who had worked under him in the department. One was a sergeant, Sergeant Stotz.
He had conducted his own investigations, he said, of Lieutenant Harvey.

Speaker 24 He felt that Harvey had been promoted without any reason to do so and that he, Stots, had experienced retaliation every time he tried to report nonsense.

Speaker 24 What he called shoddy police work, not going out on serious sexual assaults, serious felony assaults, and also what he called like good old boy network.

Speaker 24 What he eventually did was quit, file a complaint, and that's before the 911 operator was assaulted. She had reported her rape to Lieutenant Nick Harvey, and he did nothing about it for a year.

Speaker 24 And then the chief knew about it too. The ACLU filed this equal protection suit on behalf of the 911 operator.

Speaker 3 Nome police eventually settled the lawsuit for $750,000.

Speaker 24 I can't say why there was never a report made or a call for service made. You'd have to ask them.
They didn't really respond either.

Speaker 24 So the complaint was on behalf of this one 911 operator who's Alaska native, being part of a pattern and practice of discrimination against Alaska natives and against women in Nome.

Speaker 24 She was looking for vindication of her own rights to equal protection, but also all of the other women in Nome.

Speaker 24 Didn't feel safe anymore

Speaker 24 for valid reasons.

Speaker 24 It stalled for a long time because the city wouldn't turn over Discovery. They had to get a court order to turn over Discovery.
And still, after the court order, they didn't give it.

Speaker 24 I've heard from the police officer who was hired to replace Matthew Clay Clay Owens.

Speaker 24 She had been ordered several times to drop cases of sexual assaults for reasons like, oh, the victim had been drinking, the victim, a 14-year-old girl, was not a virgin, or, oh, I know the suspect, he's a good guy, he doesn't have sex with minors, he only takes, you know, he gets adults drunk and takes them out to the tundra and has sex with them.

Speaker 24 She was the lone female officer at the time. She was trying to investigate sexual assaults, sexual assaults against minors, sexual assaults against adults, and

Speaker 24 was having this experience over and over again.

Speaker 24 She had written a lengthy document to every single city council member when she left. Turned over documentation on falsified reports, everything she had seen going on there.

Speaker 24 The city knew what was going on. There's just no way to deny that.

Speaker 24 It was overwhelming and I was really aware of how traumatizing it was for people to talk to me. There were people who, you know, withdrew from the whole story process.

Speaker 24 I had sources who had a mental health crisis and didn't want to continue. And we have the numbers to show what was happening.

Speaker 24 We have the police reports or the lack of police reports to show what's happening.

Speaker 24 We have the medical reports to show what's happening. It's lazy to just go up to somebody and have them cry into a microphone.

Speaker 3 I spoke to the former 911 operator on the phone.

Speaker 1 I love Victoria. She watched me with my case and

Speaker 1 I really appreciate what you guys are doing for Bogara and Loan's family. I really appreciate that.

Speaker 1 I do remember the day that Joseph went missing.

Speaker 1 I was a dispatcher at that time.

Speaker 1 The chief of police, he was very adamant that a bear had gotten him.

Speaker 1 One remark that he did make to me was, do you think I'm stupid?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, well, you know, it's kind of common sense. If a bear had gotten him, where's his shoes? Where's his foys?

Speaker 1 This is why I was a dispatcher. These were conversations that I walked in on.

Speaker 3 It doesn't take a rocket scientist. to realize that policing in Alaska has never changed.
Despite new money, new investigators, lawsuits, initiatives, the good old boys have remained in place.

Speaker 7 Florence Oak Pialik?

Speaker 1 Oh, interesting.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I talked to you about that one, too.

Speaker 7 Pialik, a native gal, disappeared from the West Beach there. You know what her last words were?

Speaker 7 They picked it up off her cell phone. Her last words were.

Speaker 7 There's four of them in the bushes, and it doesn't look good.

Speaker 7 I told the troopers up there, you need to get a hold of her phone and do a forensic thing. She was hanging out with some guy named Oregon John,

Speaker 7 a meth guy, I guess, and he was supplying her with meth, and she was into drugs. I called to talk to the investigator up there at NPD.

Speaker 7 We talked to Oregon John, and he thought that Oregon John was the main suspect.

Speaker 3 Why would the lead MMIW investigator for the entire state state of Alaska completely disregard Florence Akpialik's disappearance?

Speaker 3 It's time to revisit the disappearance of Florence Akpialik.

Speaker 25 There is a recognition amongst the native community that they have not been always treated very well in Nome.

Speaker 25 Nome has this very different history, and yet native people have been here and been part of Nome's history from the very beginning.

Speaker 25 Flo hadn't come home one night.

Speaker 25 She'd been taken down to some of these tent camps.

Speaker 25 Blair went down the beach to try to find her sister.

Speaker 12 This guy gives her some of Flo's clothes, but she's not there.

Speaker 25 I just know he was a cab driver driver in town and a lot of people didn't like him.

Speaker 3 Well, we know who this guy is. He goes by Oregon John.

Speaker 25 Whether it was intentional or an effort to shut her up, she's clearly been murdered.

Speaker 3 The cat's coming out of the bag. There are other names in this case.

Speaker 25 I don't know these people, but

Speaker 25 We don't hear anything good about a fellow named Mike McGowan or Paul Benchoff Jr.

Speaker 3 Alongside Oregon John, two other men have been named.

Speaker 25 Rumors are they're into meth.

Speaker 26 There's different stories that there's other people involved with John Gerton.

Speaker 26 Michael McGowan is one of them. He was a druggie.

Speaker 3 I had previously censored their names, but no longer. They're Paul Benchoff.
and Michael McGowan.

Speaker 27 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 27 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.

Speaker 3 Blair, Flo's sister. Do you know who she was with?

Speaker 1 John Gurton.

Speaker 1 And who are the other guys?

Speaker 7 Paul Benchoff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Make him look out.

Speaker 1 She was standing by John Gooden's home a couple days later. He got busted for drugs.

Speaker 7 Who did? This guy? Yeah, this guy.

Speaker 3 If we have the names of these people, why aren't the police doing anything about it?

Speaker 1 They don't even listen.

Speaker 1 They don't listen to us.

Speaker 1 You know, why didn't the police talk to all these people?

Speaker 25 The theory that I think in the city wanted to work on was that she'd gotten really drunk, left the tents, tried to walk back to Dome, and passed out and died of hypothermia somewhere.

Speaker 25 Until a body's found, every search starts where the person was last seen.

Speaker 3 Why would her belongings be there and her not be there?

Speaker 25 It's all part of the mystery, isn't it?

Speaker 27 Well, they may have been known for their gold, but they're also known for their drugs, so

Speaker 27 they're not gold miners, they're troublemakers.

Speaker 27 I think the drug dealers got away with murder.

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Speaker 3 In late October 2020, just two months after Florence went missing, the Alaska State Troopers alongside the FBI conducted a large-scale drug bust in Nome,

Speaker 3 seizing heroin and methamphetamine, resulting in the arrests of eight people. And two of those people were Paul Benchoff and Michael McGowan.

Speaker 3 When I spoke to the former 911 operator for MPD, who was sexually assaulted and sued the department, she recalled a peculiar incident that transpired shortly after Joseph went missing.

Speaker 1 Just getting getting those EBGBs. Ooh, just that creepy feeling from them.

Speaker 1 I was told by the manager, then don't talk about it.

Speaker 1 It pondered my mind.

Speaker 1 I really do think it was Kevin.

Speaker 3 It's time to start piecing this all together.

Speaker 3 I have Christine Pescoia's phone records for that weekend, and in it, there are numerous calls to a random phone number during the day Friday, Friday night, again after midnight. and around 6 a.m.

Speaker 3 on Saturday.

Speaker 3 All these calls to a random guy she's not even friends with on Facebook.

Speaker 3 A man named Tom Vaden.

Speaker 3 This is Josie, a local enome who has helped Joseph's family with the investigation for years.

Speaker 33 Looking at Christine Pascoia's phone records, several phone calls back and forth to that number early in the evening, then late in the evening.

Speaker 33 Tom Vaden, volunteer ambulance department, EMT, also a professional bear hunting guide. I remember thinking, did Joseph get hurt? Did Christine call Tom Baden to get medical assistance?

Speaker 33 It bothered me so much that I called him.

Speaker 33 I said, Tom, why would Christine be calling you at these times of the morning, the morning that Joseph disappeared?

Speaker 33 He said, well, that was my old home phone number, the landline.

Speaker 33 He was married at the time. They had slid up.
Apparently, she kept the house and the phone number, the landline. And what Tom Baden had said was, that was my old house.
That was my old landline.

Speaker 33 And it was a known drug house.

Speaker 3 I've seen these messages myself.

Speaker 3 So essentially, the number Christine was calling. All hours of the night Joseph went missing was a landline number.

Speaker 3 And it belonged to a house not too far from where Joseph lived.

Speaker 3 A house known amongst the locals as the drug dealing house.

Speaker 33 If they were up till 2, 3 in the morning, and then somebody calls at 6.51 in the morning and then at 9.30 in the morning, all those phone calls at strange hours just said to me like somebody was up all night.

Speaker 33 And I just thought, you know, were they, I don't know. I never knew Joseph to be into drugs.
And I don't, none of them have I known them to be into drugs, but you just never know, right?

Speaker 33 The timing of it all. Things are pretty consistent up until the time.
Kim says she left them for breakers. She took a cab ride home.
And then it was just Joseph and Christine.

Speaker 33 Maybe they went out that night to talk about him moving to Juneau and he was going to be getting married to Megan and maybe it was accidental after all, but whether it was between Jake and Christine, Kevin swooped in and maybe it was accidental after all.

Speaker 33 It was a known drug house.

Speaker 3 Both Florence Okpialik and Joseph Balderis disappeared under very different circumstances. But two years into this investigation, I've found an uncanny connection they both have.

Speaker 3 Joseph was last seen with Christine, and apparently she went to the beach with him the next day.

Speaker 3 But other than that, it's only members of the Pescoia family themselves who claim to have seen Joseph anywhere. Christine and Joseph were together past 2 a.m.

Speaker 3 on Friday night, and Christine made six or more phone calls to a landline number linked to a house in town known for its drug dealing. Who was living in the house at that time?

Speaker 3 Were they selling drugs that night?

Speaker 3 I found a man who was living there during the time of both Joseph and Florence's disappearance, who in October of 2020 was arrested for distribution of narcotics in Nome.

Speaker 3 A man who is now on the run with an active warrant for his arrest. A man named Michael McGowan.
The same man named as an associate of Oregon John on the night of Flo's disappearance.

Speaker 25 I don't know these people, but you don't hear anything good about a fellow named Mike McGowan. Rumors are they're into meth.

Speaker 26 Other people involved with John Gerton. michael magohan is one of them he's a druggie

Speaker 1 do you know who she was with john girton and who the other guys

Speaker 1 michael mcgowan

Speaker 3 we've talked to organ john who said some weird things to say the least and also some accusations of his own

Speaker 3 I believe that most of what John told me is a lie.

Speaker 3 But tucked away deep in there, there may just be a few kernels of truth.

Speaker 3 Remember what John said?

Speaker 11 And a girl came and hung out in my tent one night, and she walked off somewhere, and somebody kidnapped her and murdered her.

Speaker 7 The whole town thought I murdered her.

Speaker 11 The FBI had to come in. They cleared me.
They found her buried under the dude's house, the meth dealer, and they thought I did it, so I bounced.

Speaker 11 I was the last person seen her alive, besides the guy that killed her.

Speaker 3 Besides Michael McGowan, what else does John know that he's not saying? Since part one of this season, I've been sent hundreds of emails about Oregon John.

Speaker 3 He was a cab driver in Nome before Florence went missing. And one person had a terrifying experience during one of those cab rides.
And they sent me a video of it.

Speaker 34 Fucked you in the ass with a chain fuck.

Speaker 34 No, I didn't. I was trying to tell you to get out of my way because you won't listen to reason because you're too drunk and don't belong to sleep.

Speaker 34 Yeah, well, you know what? You're still walking home, ain't you, bitch?

Speaker 34 Yeah, you are. Holy moly.

Speaker 34 It's too much drama for you, man.

Speaker 34 Five people came over and tried to beat me up because I called the confidential dude beating his wife.

Speaker 34 They came from Super Set to open the way I would.

Speaker 34 What the fuck?

Speaker 34 Yeah, it's gonna be a while. I'm the only cap.
The other one just left on me. I don't know where it is.

Speaker 34 Check the cap.

Speaker 3 With Michael McGowan on the run,

Speaker 3 I need to try and talk to Oregon John again.

Speaker 3 But this time, as the real me.

Speaker 3 Hello?

Speaker 3 John.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 3 This is Payne Lindsay.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 7 Payne Lindsay.

Speaker 3 I'm the podcast guy.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 3 How's it going?

Speaker 1 Things get different day.

Speaker 3 Question for you. Would you ever be down to sit down one-on-one and just talk to me about everything?

Speaker 3 Um.

Speaker 3 We can set the terms and, you know, make it comfortable for both of us, you know.

Speaker 1 You know, um,

Speaker 1 all I have is the truth.

Speaker 8 You know, that's it.

Speaker 3 Well, let's talk about this.

Speaker 1 Well, Park and we'll set something up.

Speaker 1 I appreciate this.

Speaker 7 Got some stories for you. You have no idea.

Speaker 3 One of the hardest parts about doing this investigation in real time, as the podcast is coming out, is the game of chess we're playing in the background. When do we say certain things that we know?

Speaker 3 And I've decided it's time to reveal some details I think the community itself could help us with.

Speaker 3 Weeks after Joseph Balderis went missing on June 25th, his credit card was used five different times in Nome on July 8th, 9th, 11th, 13th and 14th.

Speaker 3 This was literally while his family was in Nome searching for him. Somebody had his credit card and was using it.

Speaker 3 Joseph's mother was able to track down the physical receipts from the store where all these purchases were made.

Speaker 3 It's called Bonanza Express, a convenience store on the corner next to where Joseph used to live.

Speaker 3 I have the dates of birth of these alleged individuals who made these purchases because they're on the receipts.

Speaker 3 But after investigating this to the fullest extent, it seems likely that whoever was working the counter just punched in random dates.

Speaker 3 And that happens. But the purchases that were made each time were always the same things.

Speaker 3 Here's what they were. 12-ounce cans of Red Bull.
Pretty common. 16-ounce cans of a monster energy drink called Mad Dog.

Speaker 3 A lighter. And every time, boxes and boxes of menthol cigarettes of the brand Cool.

Speaker 3 K-O-O-L.

Speaker 3 So I'm asking the community, who smoked Cool Menthol cigarettes in Nome, Alaska in the summer of 2016?

Speaker 3 Not everyone, I'm sure, but we're looking for you, and we're going to find you.

Speaker 3 We're going to take one more break, simply so we can continue this investigation into both of these cases.

Speaker 3 But this season as a whole is far from over, and we're coming back with a final installment in just a few months.

Speaker 3 The community engagement this season has been amazing, and as a team, we want to thank all of you for your support.

Speaker 3 On November 10th in Atlanta, Georgia, I'll be hosting an up-and-vanished live event and all the ticket proceeds will be donated back to the Family's Reward Fund.

Speaker 3 So if you're in Atlanta or you want to make the drive or flight there, come see me on November 10th at Terminal West. I'd love to meet you all in person and discuss these cases in a much deeper way.

Speaker 3 I'll be sharing exclusive video interviews from the season, taped that has not yet been released, and give you a complete behind-the-scenes look of our investigation. We'd love to see you.

Speaker 3 If you want to come, you can get tickets now by going to uppandvanished.com slash tickets. This is a one-night event only November 10th in Atlanta.

Speaker 3 And you can get tickets now by going to uppandvanished.com slash tickets. The link is also in the description.
All proceeds from the show are being donated back to the Family's Reward Fund.

Speaker 3 We'll be back soon with the third and final installment of this season. But if you want a sneak peek of what's to come, come see us in Atlanta November 10th at Terminal West.

Speaker 3 Link to tickets are in the description. Just go to upandvanish.com/slash tickets.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening. See you soon.

Speaker 2 Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is a production of Tunderfoot 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 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 McKenzie, Alice Konik 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.