Ep.6: A Person of Interest

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Previously, on who took Misty Copsey.

She got along with everybody.

Super friendly, kind, gentle soul.

Western Washington was a veritable killing field for young women.

Like, I don't think people can even wrap their brains around how many serial rapists and predators were out running around.

It's insane.

She changed in the car from her school clothes to play clothes, and then her mom dropped us off.

The day was a great day.

We were together, we were having fun.

You know, for years, my mom felt like people thought she was crazy.

I mean, every time she would even talk to the PL Police Department, it was like, You guys think I'm crazy, and I'm not crazy.

The original plan was our friend would pick us up that drove, and that was Ruben.

From IED and Arc Media, I'm Sarah Kalen, and this is Who Took Misty Copsy.

After meeting with Misty's best friend Trina, I feel fairly confident that she's not holding anything back.

And while I can't rule him out completely, I also feel pretty confident that Michael Reiner did not play a role in Misty's disappearance based on the way Trina described their time together that night.

Still, there's a sea of sharks circling around Misty, including the man in the yellow Chrysler Cordoba.

In March 1993, an anonymous caller reached out to the News Tribune saying that during the fair, he had seen a girl he thought was Misty getting into a yellow Chrysler Cordoba with a man who the caller recognized, a man who turns out to be a convicted sex offender.

The man's name has never been released publicly.

So that's one possibility.

Then there's Robert Leslie Hickey, who abducted and raped a 15-year-old girl off the main street near the fairgrounds just a few months after Misty disappeared.

There's the infamous Green River killer, who was at large in western Washington in the early 90s and was known to dump bodies near where Misty's jeans, socks, and underwear were found.

There are too many others to even name.

At that time, the Pacific Northwest really was a cesspool of unnamed serial predators.

But talking to Trina certainly raised some serious red flags for me about one person in particular, Ruben Schmidt.

Ruben's the 18-year-old who Misty called repeatedly for a ride home the night of the fair.

Trina told me unequivocally that she and Misty had always planned to call Ruben for a ride home.

The girls followed the plan, and according to Trina, Ruben bailed on them, said he didn't have gas or money to get gas.

Trina says that she left Misty waiting for a bus home to Spanaway.

We also know that around 9.20 p.m., a bus driver spoke to a girl matching Misty's description and told her, sorry, kid, you're out of luck.

There are no more buses going in that direction tonight.

So what if Misty Now alone and truly stranded in downtown Puyallup late at night, called Ruben again.

Desperate this time.

What if he finally caved and went to pick her up?

There's a reason I haven't dug too deep into Ruben as a suspect until now, namely, the fact that he's such an obvious suspect.

The original Puallop detectives did look at Ruben as a person of interest, and they seemingly ruled him out, or at least never pursued charges or anything close.

I'm not just talking about the original investigators in 1992.

There was also a more recent investigation of Misty's case led by a Puallop police detective named Jason Visnaw.

I reach out to him when I first arrive in Washington.

After a busy week, he responds that he's happy to meet.

A few days later, I head to the Pualip police station.

We sit down in a conference room.

Jason isn't the lead detective on the case anymore.

He's been promoted to captain, and he brings along the detective who is now leading the case.

This is the first time in years I've been working on a case completely from the outside.

I've gotten spoiled in a lot of my consultation work where I'm there at the request of the police in charge of the case.

In Mobile County, Alabama, I'm a sworn special deputy, and even Cherokee County in Kansas welcomed me with open arms to assist in a case there.

I have, I I think, a nice collegial relationship with Captain Visnaw, but I am under no illusions that here in Washington, I am anything other than a civilian, maybe even a bit of an interloper.

This has been a nagging concern for me, and it gets worse as Jason starts telling me the story of why he got involved in Misty's case in the first place.

Probably around 2006 or 2007, the the Tacoma News Tribune had been submitting public disclosure requests for the case file.

And the initial response was, no, this is an active investigation.

And the TNT is saying, you sure?

Because we don't see anything being done.

That TNT reporter asking for the case file is, of course, Sean Robinson.

the fishing vest wearing investigative journalist we met a few episodes back.

And as we heard from Sean, the city of Puallop ultimately sided with Sean, giving him exactly eight hours to review and make copies of anything he wanted from the entire case file.

Which was a terrible decision, really detrimental to the case in one way, but a positive thing in another way because the article that was written by Sean Robinson really highlighted some poor police work and drug the city and the police department through the

True, but fairly so.

The police work on this case was truly abysmal.

So when Sean's article dropped like a bomb in 2009, department leadership decided, whoa,

we need to do something about this.

What they did was to assign Jason to the case exclusively.

Which is really unheard of in law enforcement because our detectives have so many cases that they're working.

Puyallup PD isn't exactly the NYPD with thousands of officers and a huge dedicated cold case unit.

So this case is a big deal.

By 2009, Jason had a good decade of experience as an officer, but not much in the way of homicide investigation experience.

So Puyallup also calls up a retired long-time homicide investigator to work as a consultant.

Their first step is to clean up the original case file.

I took pictures of the actual case file when I first began because it was

a mess.

It was just a few binders and a whole bunch of loose papers just thrown in some boxes.

Everything was paper.

To have any hope of organizing this mess, PPD gets Jason his own war room of sorts, a giant conference room in City Hall.

And we had rows of long tables in this conference room.

We took every piece of paper out of this case file and every single piece of paper was laid out.

It's a massive effort, but finally he has the entire case file laid out, a step-by-step record of the original investigation.

And once he does, the issues are unignorable.

Understanding that law enforcement has come a very, very long way and is a far cry from where we were in 92.

That said,

the overwhelming opinion of the investigators at the time that she disappeared was that she was a runaway.

By all accounts, she was kind of a latchkey kid because her mother worked a graveyard shift and Misty was left to fend for herself.

I think the investigators took that information and the information that her mother was reported to be an alcoholic and just decided that her home life must have sucked and she just took off.

They didn't do a lot of legwork to say one way or the other.

They did get a tip from another student who claimed to have received a phone call from Misty like a week later.

And so I think they just took that and said, oh, there you go.

There's the evidence we needed to say she's run away.

She's out there somewhere.

The mind-blowing thing to me is that

she was with a friend the night she disappeared on September 17th, 1992.

Nobody talked to that friend until February of 1993.

That is the biggest,

biggest concern with the original investigation, in my opinion.

I appreciate that Jason acknowledges the issues with the original investigation.

That isn't always the case.

Some departments will twist themselves into pretzels to defend the indefensible in cold case review.

With all this information gathered and organized, he realizes he can't take anything for granted.

He needs to start from square one.

We spoke with every single person who might have had anything to do with the case.

We spoke with people who weren't spoken to in 1993.

The whole thing is just frustrating to come back and try to do things that you wish had been done in the first place because memories have faded, brains have been fried on drugs, and people just don't remember things that they would have known initially.

This is pretty much always the way it goes in cold cases.

It's the hardest thing about working them.

All the best intentions or new advancements in the world can't turn back time.

And we can do a lot to try to make up for past mistakes, but we can't ever really erase the big ones.

So they get some hazy recollections that don't carry as much weight as their original statements.

Did all of Jason's efforts turn up anything new?

Anything to help point the investigation in one direction or another?

We definitely learned some things that were new.

We learned some things that

we debunked some things that were documented in 1993

that were just not true.

Did not happen the way they were said to have happened.

Intriguing,

but vague.

He won't say more.

I try a different topic, forensic testing of the genes.

Jason acknowledges PPD's uncertainty about whether they really were the ones Misty was wearing that night.

We did a lot of forensic work, a lot of lab work to try to confirm that they were hers or not hers, and we still haven't been able to confirm one way or the other.

But when I ask about the actual results of all that forensic testing,

that's probably going a little too far.

Probably can't really talk about that evidence any further.

According to both Sean Robinson's reporting and my own examination of the handful of forensic testing documents Colton was able to share, there were a few interesting findings on the clothes recovered from the side of 410.

I want to be careful not to divulge anything that may jeopardize future investigation tactics, but I can say that there were human hairs found on the clothes that were tested, and results showed these hairs did not come from Diana or Misty,

nor did they match any profiles in CODIS, the National DNA database.

Over the years, some have used that to discount the genes as being Misty's.

I have no such inclination.

As all my favorite criminalists repeatedly point out, hair is so transient.

It could be anyone's from anywhere.

It's meaningless as evidence for elimination.

There were also numerous fibers found on the jeans, the socks, and the underwear, and state labs identified these as coming from the interior carpet of a particular make and model of vehicle.

That information has not been made public.

I know the make and model, but for investigative purposes, I am not going to share it.

There were also paint flecks found on the clothing, which were identified as nail polish.

The hair, fibers, and paint flecks were tested in 2006 to see if there were any links to the Green River killer.

They were also tested in 2009 in the wake of Sean Robinson's reporting to look for DNA profiles.

I was hoping Jason would help me suss out if any testing has been done since.

Most importantly, MVAC testing.

Taking one last shot, I ask if there's anything that really sticks in his head.

A potential witness he didn't get to talk to, or some nagging detail that keeps him up at night.

Sure, there are things like that that I'm not going to mention what they are.

Yeah.

We're all kind of laughing because at this point, it feels like we're playing a game, lobbing questions at Jason to see which ones he'll swing at and which he won't.

He is a worthy adversary.

I get it.

I'm not working this case for them, and while I wish it were different, I completely understand and respect the way he's handling the questions.

All the same, the vagueness coming out of PPD is deeply unsatisfying.

It's the same reason Sean Robinson pestered the department for the case file back in the mid-2000s.

They can swear up and down that they're working on the case and it's an active investigation and they know critical information.

But what good is that if the case is still just sitting cold 30 years later?

At what point do you decide the possible benefits outweigh the risks of trying something completely different?

The result is that, at least as far as Jason's willing to say on the record, anything is possible.

Nothing and no one has officially been ruled out.

There's nothing out of the realm of possibilities in my mind.

To me, there's no one who was floated as a suspect that we could absolutely rule out.

Every person that's brought up, like, oh, look, this bad person was in your area at the time.

And

Hickey, perfect example.

Robert Leslie Hickey is the man who abducted and raped a teenager from Puallop, then threw her over an embankment just a few months after Misty disappeared.

He went to prison, but after he got out, he did almost the exact same thing again.

When Jason says this, I feel the slightest shred of hope that he might start sharing more.

Could he have abducted and killed her?

Absolutely.

But he's quick to clarify that in his mind, the list of suspects doesn't end here.

There's a number of people that were at work in this area during that timeframe that could have done this.

And the biggest challenge is that we don't have Misty.

Even Ruben Schmidt, I wouldn't say absolutely not.

He's not a suspect.

Even Ruben Schmidt?

I do have a tendency to overanalyze language, but something about the word even makes it sound like Ruben is some way out of left field possibility.

We don't have any solid information to link him as a suspect either.

Jason says they did talk to Ruben as part of the reinvestigation.

They even got a DNA sample, but there's no word on if it was ever tested against the genes.

So there's DNA evidence on the genes.

We can only do a direct comparison.

There's no, we can't enter that into CODIS.

If I understand what he's saying, however vaguely, the DNA on the genes is only a partial sample, meaning it can be used for comparing to a known sample, but it's not a big enough sample to enter into a national database.

Again, though, Jason won't go further.

In other words, he won't answer my question as to whether they checked Ruben's DNA profile against the DNA found on the genes.

Presumably, if they did, it was not a match because surely they would have acted on that information.

But I am still wondering if they've done MVAC testing.

Jason won't answer that one on the record.

Frustrating as this interview is, I don't think Jason is trying to be antagonistic.

I think he's just worried about jeopardizing sensitive information.

Jason put a lot of time and effort on this case, and I think he truly wants to get answers.

Being assigned to this case in 2009 and spending so much time on it and hoping for a positive outcome, the idea is that someday you'll have resolution.

And now,

being so invested in it and looking at retirement and not just leaving with something undone,

but having Misty's mom pass away before any kind of resolution, it's heartbreaking.

We agree on that for sure.

And on something else.

Somebody out there knows something that they're not telling us, and hopefully at some point, somebody tells us something that we need to know.

Indeed.

Jason hasn't given me anything specific, but after speaking with him, I'm even more convinced.

I need to get a lot more answers on Ruben Schmidt.

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Luckily, there's someone who is happy to talk about all things Ruben.

Nobody knows for sure whether Ruben comes and picks her up.

Sean Robinson, the journalist who first reviewed the case file.

And Sean is an open book.

I ask Sean to take me through Ruben's movements, actions.

There are so many rumors swirling around this case.

I want to really break down what we know and what we don't about Ruben Schmidt.

Sean starts from the moment Misty discovers there are no more buses home to Spanaway that night.

The question is, what happens next?

Does Misty call Ruben again and beg him to pick her up once more?

Does he go to pick her up?

It's just not clear.

We just don't know.

What we do know is that the next morning, Diana gets home and Misty is nowhere to be found.

Her first move is to call 911.

Her second is to call Trina.

Diana's third move is to call Ruben Schmidt.

She wants to know, where's my kid?

Where's my kid?

Where's my kid?

Ruben hedges doesn't know.

He admits that Misty called him, but says he didn't have the gas to go pick her up.

That's it.

Later that day, Diana calls Ruben's house again, and someone else picks up.

Diana talks to Ruben's roommate, James Tinsley.

Just to clarify, because the word roommate is a little misleading.

James was a 14-year-old friend whose family was letting Reuben and several of his siblings stay with them at the time because they had been kicked out of their apartment.

In any case, James picks up.

And he says, I don't know, him and his uncle went to pick up Misty.

The mysterious uncle.

Since first hearing rumors of an uncle, I've wanted to know more about who this is, so I started digging into Ruben's family history, trying to basically build out a family tree through public records and old newspaper articles.

It's not an easy task.

Turns out, Ruben has a big family.

I've pieced together that his mom had at least 13 children.

One died in childbirth.

I found an article in a local newspaper archive from 1984 about Ruben's mom being discovered living in a station wagon with six of her kids while expecting another baby any day.

10-year-old Ruben was one of those six children.

Ruben has lots of uncles, as well as a handful of significantly older half-brothers.

One of his half-brothers is a guy by the name of Clint Garrison, who, I find out, is serving 106 years in prison for a series of brutal home invasion rapes in the Puyallup and Spanaway areas in 1994.

Clint is nine years older than Ruben, a half-brother from another father.

I wonder if in a family this size, Ruben might loosely call Clint an uncle because of the age difference.

With a record like that, I wonder if Clint could be the quote-unquote uncle who Reuben went with on the night of the fair.

I bring up these older half-brothers with Sean.

As I understand it, they're actually half-brothers.

There's three of them.

Yeah, and one of them, I'm very interested in.

One of them is a home invasion rapist.

Yeah.

Who could not have done it?

He was incarcerated.

He was incarcerated.

He is not the one.

Turns out, Sean's already determined that Clint Garrison was in prison at the time of Misty's disappearance.

So that means we can rule out whether Clint was with Ruben the night Misty disappeared.

There are two others, Mark and Eric Garrison.

I've learned from from a source I cannot name but who is close to the family that Mark exhibited a pattern of some seriously problematic behaviors.

The source shared personal stories of interactions with him that are concerning.

He also has six convictions on his record, including felonies before and after Misty disappeared.

He has twice been convicted of violating domestic violence court orders.

These raise red flags for me in terms of criminal psychology and behavioral analysis.

But no one has explicitly given me tips about him being involved in her disappearance or about anyone other than an uncle.

So for now, I can rule him out.

As for Eric, I found 12 convictions on his record, a combination of felony and misdemeanor charges for robbery, burglary, theft, and criminal trespass, going back to 1989.

While not great, these are not nearly as concerning as violations of domestic violence court orders.

My source did not say a single word about Eric, his behavior, or any potential involvement, so I am failing to connect him to the case.

Plus, it could also be that this uncle was Ruben's actual uncle.

I turn back to the Schmidt family tree.

Ruben has at least two uncles on his dad's side and at least two more on his mom's side.

His mom's brothers have not been in trouble with the law as far as I can tell, so I rule them out.

All this reminds me of something Misty's brother, Colton, told me.

He said that not long after Misty disappeared, Diana had a chance encounter with Ruben at a convenience store.

When Diana tried to speak with him, he turned and ran out of the store.

Diana saw him hop into an orange pickup truck and speak rather animatedly with an older man in the driver's seat, who then sped off.

Diana never knew what to make of it, but she felt sure that whatever was said, whatever sent the pair of them tearing out of the parking lot, had something to do with Misty.

She didn't know who was driving the pickup truck.

I've heard through sources who I cannot name for safety reasons that one of Ruben's uncles drove an orange pickup truck his dad's brother Uncle Don Schmidt and this makes me wonder is Uncle Don the person who Ruben got in the truck with after running into Diana is Uncle Don the person who Ruben left the Tinsley house with on the night Misty disappeared if so

were Ruben and Uncle Don in an orange pickup that night?

It certainly seems possible.

And to me, the clear next step is to further investigate Ruben Schmidt and his uncles.

Colton tells me that back in 1992, when Misty first disappeared, Diana felt the same way.

For months, she said the cops needed to look at Ruben.

Sean confirmed this.

Diana, who's like, Ruben, Ruben, Ruben, you need to look at Ruben.

Then in February 1993, the search party finds the genes, and the police start taking the case more seriously.

As they dig into the case, they investigate Ruben and I'm sorry to say, as I learned more about their investigation, I simply could not believe how it went.

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With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anabay has you covered.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

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In March 1993, Puyalla PD Sergeant Herm Carver talks to Ruben's boss.

They work at a barbecue spot.

According to Sergeant Carver's notes, Ruben's boss, quote,

feels Ruben knows something, talked a lot about Misty, end quote.

Ruben, who is young and immature, brags about things that he might know.

It's all this hearsay stuff.

Oh, yeah, I know where she's buried.

They're wrong.

The boss tells police that Ruben had made some suspicious comments about Misty and the jeans that had been found.

Specifically, the boss described a lengthy conversation that he had with Ruben about Misty and shared the following quotes from Ruben.

Yeah, I know about it.

I know exactly where she is buried.

They found the clothes, but she is buried six miles from there.

They're off by six or six and a half miles.

Is this stupid bravado by a teenager

can't discount it?

Or does Rubin know something about where Misty's body is?

Ruben's former boss has since died.

I cannot speak to him myself, but he confirmed this account to the News Tribune in advance of the publication of Sean's 2009 investigative series, The Stolen Child.

And Sean reported on what happened next.

After speaking with Ruben's boss, detectives head to the barbecue joint to talk to Ruben.

When he arrives and sees the cops, Ruben runs.

Eventually, they're able to talk to him.

Ruben tells them about the calls from Misty, the fact that he didn't have the gas to go get her.

It's all pretty consistent with what he'd told Diana.

As far as those suspicious things he said to his boss, he tells police he was just trying to get his boss, quote, off his back.

But then he says more.

And now it gets interesting.

According to Puyalla PD officers' notes, Ruben says he sometimes has blackouts and thinks he had one that night.

He can't remember anything that happened after Misty's last call.

He does remember driving out to his grandmother's farm the next day, a farm that just so happens to be way down Highway 410.

A farm that just so happens to be around 10 miles from where the genes were discovered.

From an investigator's perspective, it's not just fishy when a potential suspect in a case pulls out the blackout card.

It's almost always regarded as complete and total bullshit.

It's just that much worse when that person also admits that he drove out to his grandmother's farm, which just so happens to be in the exact same direction where critical physical evidence was discovered.

When I drove out 410 to see the spot where Misty's jeans, socks, and underwear were found, retracing the route from downtown Puallop, I kept asking myself, Who would have a reason to go all the way out to this specific area so far from Puyallop?

Well, now I have one answer to that question.

But Sean Robinson tells me that in 1993, Ruben Schmidt initially told police that the day after Misty disappeared, he made this drive, but can't remember why.

He does say, yes, I drove up to my grandmother's place in Buckley, which is just dense woodland forest land, and I don't know how I got there or what I did, and I don't remember.

Sometimes I have blackouts.

Like, okay, he's saying he drove out there.

At the same time, we're hearing repeatedly that he was telling Misty, I don't have enough gas, I don't have enough money for gas.

How does I don't have enough gas and I don't have enough money translate to I can drive 30 miles or whatever it is to Buckley, to Grandma's farm in my

gas-guzzling Chevy Nova.

He got money and gas somehow, somewhere.

This is a really good point.

If Ruben managed to drive the 30 miles out to the farm, either he was lying or he found a way to get gas or he got a ride from someone else.

Maybe an uncle in an orange truck.

Either way, for Sean, this still leaves one big open question.

Did he give her a ride?

We do not know.

Did he tell the cops, I drove up to an area that is not that far from where these genes were discovered?

Yes, he did.

Did they polygraph him about his statements about, oh, they've got it wrong, she's buried six and a half miles away?

Yes, they did.

Right.

The polygraph.

According to Sean, after telling the police his story, Rubin asks the cops, can a polygraph or a hypnotist help me find out if I did anything that night?

They oblige.

Sergeant Carver writes in his notes, Rubin proves to be an unusual polygraph subject, nearly fell asleep on numerous occasions, very little galvanic skin response.

Another detective writes, quote, the results were inconclusive but leaned towards being truthful.

However, Schmidt was putting himself to sleep during the actual test, which may have altered the results.

Schmidt was awake and alert prior to and just after the examination.

It was apparent that he was trying to manipulate the results.

Hypnotize himself is too strong a word, but if he just understands, it's based on your heartbeat and your tension, and you just have to stay calm and breathe deep.

Well, it's also been months and months that he has thought about it since then, so just the natural anxiety or response you would get thinking about something like that would have begun to have diminished.

But we don't know.

Polygraphs are not the most reliable tool in a detective's kit.

They're not admissible in court.

But back in 1993, there were plenty of people, including detectives, who put a lot more stock in them.

The Puallop detectives seem to have followed the thinking of the time.

Instead of pressing on Rubin's absolutely bizarre story, the detectives turn their attention to someone else.

They discover this business with Trina and Michael Reiner.

And then they're like, oh my god, that's the guy.

That's got to be the guy.

That's got to be the guy.

Understandable.

Understandable that they would look at him.

He's hanging out with a young girl.

He was

in

the scene in the moment.

And you can see from the records that the Puyallup cops were elated at that time.

They thought they had it.

Even when Diana was still talking about Ruben, they were like, no, you know, the one detective, Hermkrier, was like, Ruben did not do this, and pounds his fist.

I have tried to verify Sean's account of Herm Carver's behavior.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to reach Herm, and no one at the PPD is able to verify that this is exactly how it went.

But we can say with certainty that for the next several months, the cops are laser-focused on Michael Reiner.

They talk to Trina about him, ask if she thinks he might have gone back to the fairgrounds and found Misty.

She says she doesn't know for sure, but doesn't think so.

They speak with his friends.

They have an undercover cop buy his car off him, and they search his car in April 1993.

They send samples to the crime lab.

According to Sean, they decide to hold off on speaking to him until they get the results, but the results take a while.

In July 1993, they interview Michael Reiner.

The next month, in August, they polygraph him.

According to investigators' notes, as Michael Reiner passed the polygraph, he is eliminated at this point of being involved.

The lab results from his car soon come back and they showed nothing of evidentiary value to Misty's case.

With no other leads, the police then turn back to Rubin.

In September 1993, nearly a year after Misty disappeared, Puallet PD officers finally speak with Ruben's so-called roommate, James Tinsley.

Sean reviewed James' statement to the police, and it's fascinating.

James tells police that Misty called Ruben looking for a ride that night, but Ruben, who was 18 years old, had a girlfriend with him.

a girl who Tinsley allegedly reported to the police was only 13 years old.

James reportedly adds that the girl was jealous of Misty.

She didn't want Ruben to go, so he said no.

But then, eventually, the girlfriend left.

And according to James, Ruben did the same.

Five or ten minutes after the girlfriend left, Ruben also left the house.

Again, I reached out to Ruben to verify this.

He did not respond.

Sean published pieces of James's statement.

The officer asks, did Ruben say where he was going?

James, who was 15 years old at the time, responds, quote, no, he just left.

Just weird, because he usually either tells me or he takes me and he just left, got in his car and left.

The officer asks if James remembers when Ruben came back.

James responds, quote, no, I can't give you an exact time.

It was sometime, it was sometime kind of late, late, kind of late on that night.

He estimates that it was sometime between 11 p.m.

and 1 a.m.

The officer then asks if Ruben ever said where he'd gone.

James says no, and then adds, quote, I didn't ask him, especially after we found out she was missing.

It was embarrassing.

According to Sean's reporting, James said that Ruben didn't seem concerned about Misty's disappearance.

He said he thought Ruben could be capable of kidnapping and killing somebody.

He added that Ruben had, quote, a really, really short temper.

There's so much to unpack here.

The 13-year-old girlfriend, the really, really short temper.

Why didn't James share all of this with Diana the day after Misty disappeared?

Why didn't he tell the police what he did tell Diana that Ruben left left with his uncle to go pick up Misty?

Why didn't Ruben tell police what he told Diana?

That he went to a party?

And the timeline.

James says Ruben came back sometime between 11 p.m.

and 1 a.m.

According to the Puallet PD officer's notes of their first conversation with Ruben months earlier, He had told them that he drove out to the farm the next day.

Fine.

But in another set of those same officers' notes, they write that Reuben had, quote, had a blackout and woke up at his grandmother's property near Enumclaw.

And in yet another set of notes, the officers say the same thing, that Reuben, quote, told us that he woke up at the farm the next morning.

So which is it?

Did he drive to his grandmother's house the next day, or did he wake up there the next morning?

If he woke up there the next morning, how does that line up with James saying Ruben came home sometime between 11 p.m.

and 1 a.m.?

I'm not sure what to make of any of it.

I attempted to find James Tinsley to see if he would speak with me.

As I searched, I came across several drug-related arrests and two convictions.

Sean Robinson reports that when police attempted to speak with James during their reinvestigation of the case, James' mind was drug-addled.

This, combined with the cases I found on his record, tell me that a conversation would likely add little value at this point.

So, all we have is James' original statement made in September 1993.

At that time, he was a 15-year-old kid, and I don't know of any accusations made by anyone then that he was using any substances.

His memories are relatively fresh, the details at least reasonably reliable.

So I think they're worth taking as seriously as we would any other witness statement.

While James's statement raises questions, there's one thing of which I'm sure.

Ruben left the house the night Misty disappeared.

Now, one might think that the obvious next step would be to search Ruben's car for evidence.

Unfortunately, the police can't do so.

Because on June 24th, 1993, according to state records reviewed by Sean Robinson, Rubin's 1974 Chevy Nova was, quote, crushed at a wrecking yard.

Was she in the car?

We don't know because by the time they got onto this, the car had been sold and scrapped and there was no way to search it for DNA.

So they never got the chance.

They can't prove she was in the car.

It's possible that Ruben's Chevy Nova had nothing to do with the case, even if Rubin was involved.

Regardless, it's still odd that he decided to have it destroyed after police turned their attention to Michael Reiner.

And not searching it sooner is a failure on the part of the police at the time.

If the car did hold any answers, they were lost forever in a junkyard somewhere in western Washington.

The detectives at least get one thing right.

They drive out to the farm with Ruben.

And while there, they start to understand why Ruben keeps saying the search parties are looking in the wrong spot.

Sean published pieces of the police officer's notes.

They wrote that Ruben thought the clothes were found near a bridge about six and a half miles from the farm.

In reality, they were found slightly farther from the farm, about eight miles as the crow flies or about 11 miles driving.

They wrote, quote, this was interesting as he had told his employer Rodriguez that Misty's body was actually buried from six to six and a half miles from the clothes, which would put it in the area of his grandmother's farm, end quote.

Rather than searching the farm, though, the detectives decide to simply give Ruben another polygraph test.

He passes.

The detective writes.

It appears that Ruben Schmidt was not involved in the disappearance of Misty Copsey.

He, however, has no alibi as to his movements during the evening of her disappearance, as well as no memory.

He claimed that he had a blackout.

He acknowledges that he left the residence of James Tinsley, but does not remember what he did.

Investigation to continue.

Investigation to continue.

Except

it doesn't.

This effectively marked the end of Puallop's investigation of Misty's case.

This is so frustrating.

Over the years that follow, according to his criminal records, Rubin has been charged with multiple offenses demonstrating concerning behavior, including domestic violence and restraining order violations.

Behavioral patterns matter, and they should have carried a lot more weight than a passing result on a polygraph, particularly when potential manipulation was noted from the first test.

Still, it would be a mistake to focus entirely on Ruben.

There are too many variables, and there were too many active predators working in the immediate area, targeting girls just like Misty.

None of them can be written off just because there's one dangerous young man in her life.

When you think about Misty, the eternal problem is nobody.

So you're stuck with maybes.

You're stuck with could have beens.

Could it have been Gary Ridgway?

Yes, it could have been.

If this ever gets solved in some way and we ever find Misty's remains and it turns out that he did it after all, I will not be surprised because it's absolutely possible.

I wrote about how this area was sort of a shark tank for predators, And he's

the shark.

He is the big one.

But there are others.

Is it possible Misty got snatched by one of these random predators?

Yes.

But at least for his part, Sean doesn't think that's what happened.

Because I still live in that area.

I will drive past the fairgrounds and that 7-Eleven that's still there.

And I go and pick up my my meal right at the spot where the phone booth was where she made the phone call and I'm like, God, I just wish I had a time machine and I could just

see

what happened and whether she was picked up in a Green Nova or a Cordoba or something.

I mean,

I believe she would not have gotten into a car with a stranger.

I'm not saying it's impossible that somebody like the Green River killer could have just snatched her, but I don't think it happened that way.

I think she

saw someone she knew, and that's my best guess.

It's clear that Sean Robinson sees this as so much more than a story, that he truly cares about Misty, about Diana, and about what the injustice of it all means to his community.

I agree with Sean.

It's possible Misty was nabbed by a total rando, a monster who stumbled upon her that night.

But it is far more likely she was picked up by someone she knew.

Everything we know about violent crime aligns with this.

And after everything I've just heard, I think there's a damn good chance that the person who picked her up was Ruben Schmidt.

I asked Sean for one more small favor.

Where exactly is this grandmother's farm?

The one that Ruben admitted going to the night Misty disappeared.

Like, if we're going to go out there and poke around, I want to see the land.

You know, they went out there.

By they, he means Jason Visna and Puallet Police during the reinvestigation.

As I understand it, again, mostly because Sean Robinson reported it, in September 2010 and May 2011, Jason organized a search of the Schmidt farm, about 45 acres of land combed by volunteers and cadaver dogs.

I asked him about this search and he said they didn't find anything of substance.

Sean pulls up a map on my computer and starts zooming in on an area down Highway 410.

You go that way and you're going up toward the jeans.

You go this way and it's like this weird little turn and it's like right in here.

Okay.

Now that I finally have the location, I've got to go see this place for myself.

My producer, Tessa, and I are sitting in the car, pulled over on the side of the road as I start searching land records.

I'm trying to figure out who owns this Schmidt family farm today.

I'm no stranger to knocking on random doors unannounced, but I'd like to know whether I'm about to meet Ruben Schmidt's grandmother or someone else entirely.

Parcel and sales search.

Hang on, let me try again.

I admit that doing this on my hotspot, crammed behind the wheel of a Jeep isn't exactly ideal.

Eventually, I figure out that Ruben's grandparents, Fred and Vera Schmidt, owned the property until Vera died in 2012.

Fred had died years earlier.

It looks like the property sat mostly unoccupied for a few years.

A couple named Aaron and Lindsay bought it in 2016.

This is all the information I need.

I think that we just go.

Okay.

I plug in the address we got from Sean Robinson.

I can't help feeling a bit of deja vu.

Up until the very last few turns, it is the exact same route we took to the spot where Misty's jeans were found.

We follow the same route, turn for turn, eventually finding ourselves on Highway 410.

After passing through the small downtown of Buckley, we make a turn and find ourselves in more open farmland, eventually turning onto the road the farm is supposed to be on.

Is this private?

No, it's a real road.

Okay.

This is remote.

It's very remote.

The road is paved but very narrow.

A wall of rocks and sky-touching evergreens on our left, and a steep drop-off into a ravine on our right.

Also, thick with trees.

A farmhouse comes into sight just ahead of us.

Oh boy.

Is it that?

I think it's that.

I think it's that.

Oh my god.

Whoa.

Yeah, that's it.

We can see a white farmhouse, an old barn to one side of it, and a collection of small outbuildings peppered around the property.

Down a steep hill, there's a loud rushing creek, and of course, lots more trees.

It's really quite beautiful, quite peaceful.

But it is

eerie.

It's also very isolated.

It's so private.

They could do whatever they wanted.

They can take all the time they need to effectively dispose of remains in any number of ways.

The farmhouse seems to be new, or at least a major renovation of what would have been here for all the years the Schmidt's owned it.

The barn and most of the other little buildings look quite old.

Definitely at least as old as this case.

Is there anything of evidentiary value hidden in them?

What about that creek below the property?

Where does it lead?

And how much of this rugged terrain has been properly searched?

I drive down the steep driveway.

No one seems to be home, so I park, walk up to the door, and tuck my business card under the doorframe.

As we're driving home, Tessa starts searching posts in a Facebook group dedicated to Misty's case, looking for any information about the Schmidt family and this farm.

Suddenly, she gasps.

We switch on the recorder.

This was posted in 2014.

Someone named Haleem Khan posted.

Does anybody know how I can get in contact with Misty's family?

I am the nephew of the man believed to be the suspect behind her disappearance.

I've done a pretty deep dive into Ruben's family tree, and it's a complex one, no doubt, but I've never seen a nephew named Haleem Khan.

This guy claims that he's been told many times to keep his mouth shut, but clearly he's not doing so.

He goes on to say that his, quote, mother and uncle know more than they'd like to tell the police.

Tessa keeps reading.

Okay, so then the administrator of that Facebook group says, what are your mother and uncle's names?

And he says, Julian Ruben.

Ruben's nephew, the son of his sister Julie.

I've seen the name Julie within Ruben's giant family tree.

This supposed nephew goes on, saying that his mother had some involvement.

She knew where and how Ruben ended up at my grandmother's house the night of the disappearance.

She helped Ruben hide out at my grandmother's house.

And then when people questioned him, she coached him to pass the lie detector test.

Clearly, that means there are family details that are not part of the same story that's been told over and over and over again through 10,000 games of telephone.

Clearly, there's more than Ruben has ever told the police.

And I'm determined to figure out what he's keeping so close to his chest.

Coming up on who took Misty Copsy.

She mentioned it to me about, you know, Ruben was the one who had something to do with that girl that was missing.

And I was like, what girl that was missing?

there was a red shed that was broken into the door panel was broken inside that the only thing that was kind of rummaged through was an old toolbox like wooden truck bed toolbox if you profile that this was someone that knew her.

Otherwise, if it was just a serial killer and picked up, they would have just dumped the body.

What's the sense of going to such detail to hide it?

I mean, I think that's what's important about this: is that normally it would have been just discarded.

That's what I would say, that it's a known relationship.

If anything I say can help bring them closure somehow, then let's rock it because

they deserve it.

It's not fair.

Who Took Misty Copsy is produced by Arc Media for ID.

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