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Vanished: The Last Terrifying Clips of Missing Lives
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#MissingPersons
#UnsolvedMystery
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#FoundFootage
#MissingPersons
#UnsolvedMystery
#DisturbingVideos
#CreepyEncounters
#TrueHorror
#VanishedWithoutATrace
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TravelTranscript
00:00Sophia McKenna. On the night of May 27th, 2018, 20-year-old Spencer Mugford met up with his friend
00:06Sophia McKenna in the parking lot of the University of Connecticut Avery Point where Spencer was a
00:11student. At the time, Sophia was in a toxic and abusive relationship with a guy named Austin
00:16Cordova, which had gotten worse in the months leading up to that night in May. According to
00:21Sophia's mom, Austin was seeing someone else while he was still dating Sophia, after which Sophia
00:26also decided to date other guys. When Austin found out, he went to Sophia's apartment and tried to
00:31kick down the door, allegedly threatening to end her life. It was after this incident that Sophia
00:36started to spend a lot of her time around Spencer Mugford, whom she had met while working at a local
00:41spa. They dated for a while, but it didn't take long before they decided to go back to just being
00:46friends. A couple of weeks later, Spencer took on another job on a charter boat, taking people out
00:51on the water for half-day fishing trips. That night in May, Spencer and Sophia met at the parking lot
00:57and got in a massless sailboat they took from the University campus and headed toward the New London
01:01Ledge Lighthouse, a popular tourist attraction in Connecticut that's known as one of the creepiest
01:05buildings in the state. A little after 1am, Sophia used Spencer's phone to upload a video to his
01:10Snapchat story, where he can be seen paddling on the water aboard the tiny massless sailboat.
01:15Yo, we're out here in the ocean. With us. That is the land. Like, we still have to get to there. Wait, where? Oh, we're up up there.
01:33In the video, Sophia points the phone to the shore and jokingly emphasizes how long they still have left to get to the
01:40lighthouse, and the two friends seem in pretty good spirits as they travel toward the lighthouse.
01:45A few minutes later, at around 2am, after finally arriving at the New London Ledge Lighthouse,
01:50Spencer posted a picture of Sophia in front of a no-trespassing sign to his Snapchat.
01:55That was the last time either of them was ever seen again. The next day, Austin reached out to
01:59Sophia's mother, Michelle, and said that he was worried because he hadn't heard from her, though they
02:03had plans to go shopping. That's when Michelle realized she had a bunch of missed calls from an unknown
02:09number from 2.05am to 2.09am the previous evening. And when she called the unknown number back,
02:15she realized it was Spencer's cell phone. Fearing the worst, Michelle reported her daughter missing,
02:20and at around 6pm that same day, the Coast Guard launched an official search, during which they
02:24found Sophia's car parked at the Yukon parking lot with their phone still inside, which would explain
02:29why she used Spencer's phone to call her mother the evening prior. The Coast Guard also found Spencer's
02:34shirt tied to a boat cleat on the dock of the New London Ledge Lighthouse, which meant that he had
02:38probably used his shirt to dock the sailboat, except the sailboat was no longer there.
02:43While all of this was happening, Austin and his dad decided to start their own private search for
02:47Sophia and Spencer, and as they were flying over the water, they spotted the Yukon sailboat flipped
02:51upside down near Truman's Beach on the north shore of Long Island, around 13 miles from the lighthouse.
02:58Strangely, they found a series of unidentified fingerprints on the sailboat, which were never
03:02analyzed. On May 28th, just one day after the disappearance, the Coast Guard suspended the
03:07search due to the harsh weather, with plans to relaunch the search if they found or heard
03:11anything new that could help them track down the missing two. On June 8th, 11 days after the
03:16disappearance, Spencer's body was found floating in the ocean by a fisherman, pretty much in the
03:21opposite direction from the sailboat that Austin and his father had found a few days earlier.
03:25Both alcohol and THC were found in Spencer's system. Even though the official cause of death
03:30was labeled as accidental drowning with no signs of human-induced trauma, it didn't take long for people to start
03:36coming up with some dark theories as to why Spencer had drowned while Sophia's body hadn't been found.
03:42On July 22nd, 2018, the Facebook group Finding Sophia McKenna was formed, where people came together to try to
03:48piece the puzzle of Sophia's disappearance. Although the cause of Spencer's death was pretty clear, it seemed strange to a lot of
03:54people that the search had been called off so quickly, and that Spencer's phone records were never released.
03:59It also seemed a little suspicious that the fingerprints on the sailboat hadn't been analyzed, and that Sophia hadn't called
04:04911 on the night of the disappearance, even though she clearly needed help.
04:09The heap of unanswered questions made a lot of people point fingers at Austin, alleging that he had somehow
04:14murdered Spencer and later took Sophia to another location before murdering her as well.
04:19As of August 2024, there isn't much evidence to support this theory, and even Sophia's mother
04:23claimed she never believed Austin was responsible despite their troubled relationship.
04:28Based on the information that surfaced during the investigation, it's very likely that the sailboat
04:32became untied and started floating away at some point in the night, and that Spencer may have drowned
04:37trying to bring it back to the dock. But what happened after this is anyone's guess.
04:42One of the most popular theories that spread online was that after Spencer drowned, Sophia was left alone
04:47at the lighthouse screaming for help. According to this theory, a lone boater may have stopped to offer help
04:52and then kidnapped Sophia to either murder her or sell her to traffickers.
04:56This is a pretty unlikely theory, especially because the chances of another boater going out to the
05:01lighthouse so late in the night are pretty slim, but there's no definitive evidence to prove this
05:06isn't what happened. Another theory that was thrown around on TikTok and Facebook was that Spencer and
05:11Sophia had allegedly gotten into an argument at the lighthouse, which led to both of their deaths.
05:16However, to me this is even more unlikely than the lone boater theory, as the two appeared to be
05:20really good friends and didn't have a history of violence. I mean, if you look at the Snapchat video
05:25that was uploaded to Spencer's story just a few minutes before the calls took place, it's pretty
05:29clear that they enjoy each other's presence, and something very unexpected would have had to have
05:33happened to result in such a tragic accident. As of today, the exact cause of Sophia's disappearance
05:39is still unknown. Though, the cops and Sophia's family now fully believe that Spencer drowned while
05:45trying to bring back the sailboat, and Sophia probably didn't want to call 911 out of fear of getting in
05:49trouble for trespassing. It's impossible to know if she drowned while trying to rescue her friend,
05:54if she fell into the water by accident, or if something else happened to her while she was alone
05:59at the lighthouse.
06:03Nancy Ng
06:04In October 2023, a group of 12 Americans traveled to Guatemala for a Be the Change yoga retreat next to
06:11the beautiful Lake Adilan, the deepest lake in Central America. Among those 12 people was 29-year-old
06:17Nancy Ng, a California woman who had been to the same retreat the previous year with the same
06:21instructor, and had enjoyed it so much that she decided to go again in 2023. At around 10.30 a.m.
06:28on October 19, 10 people from the group went kayaking in Lake Adilan. Before paddling to the
06:33middle of the lake, a video was taken of the entire retreat group, where Nancy could be seen waving at
06:38the camera as she paddled a few feet from the shore. She seemed happy as she made her way to join the
06:55rest of the group, but sadly, this is footage of the last time Nancy was ever seen. After the video
07:01ended, everyone in the group paddled in separate directions with Nancy kayaking toward the middle of
07:06the lake along with Christina Blazek, another woman from California. What happens next depends on who
07:12you ask, but according to the owners of the kayak rental company, the group came back from the excursion
07:16a few minutes later, with a lot of them looking pretty nervous and on edge. That's when they noticed
07:21the group had one less person. Nancy hadn't come back. Strangely, nobody in the group seemed to want to
07:28talk to the owners. As per the owner's testimony, the retreat goers went home as quickly as they could,
07:33failing to even pay for the kayaks or provide an explanation as to what happened to Nancy.
07:38According to witnesses, Christina Blazek looked visibly shaken and had to be calmed down by the
07:42rest of the group as they made their way back home. This is where things start to get a little weird.
07:48Even though the group wasn't scheduled to go back to the US for a few more days,
07:52they all pushed up their departure and went back home just eight hours after the excursion.
07:57According to Eduardo Ramad, the organizer of the Be The Change retreat,
08:00the group immediately reported the disappearance to the Guatemalan police. But according to the cops
08:04themselves, the group took almost 24 hours to notify them that Nancy had gone missing.
08:09Strangely, when Eduardo first notified Nancy's family of the incident, he didn't specify that
08:13Nancy had gone missing in the lake. Instead, he tried to get away with vaguely implying that she
08:18wasn't coming back, which led Nancy's family to initially believe that she was planning on
08:22permanently relocating to Guatemala. By that time, the Guatemalan police had already launched a search for
08:27Nancy, but after 72 hours, the search was suspended, leaving Nancy's family to fund the
08:32rest of the investigation themselves. While all of this was happening, Nancy's family tried to reach
08:36out to Christina Blazek, as she was allegedly the last person who saw Nancy missing. But she refused
08:42to talk to the family and took an entire month to give her statement through her lawyer once she was
08:46back in the US. According to Christina, she and Nancy had crossed paths at the deepest part of the
08:51lake as they were about to head back to the shore. Out of nowhere, Nancy decided to hop out of the
08:56kayak to go for a swim. The water was pretty rough, and Lake Aditlan is over 1,000 feet deep,
09:02which is why Christina allegedly cautioned Nancy against going in the water. But based on Christina's
09:07statement, Nancy didn't listen to her and jumped off her kayak at the deepest part of the lake,
09:11leaving her kayak to float away in the strong current. Sensing that Nancy was about to be in
09:15serious trouble, Christina paddled as hard as she could to retrieve the kayak and bring it back to
09:19her, but by the time she got back to where her friend was swimming, Nancy was gone.
09:23Refusing to put herself in danger to rescue Nancy, who was now submerged under the strong
09:28currents of Lake Aditlan, Christina reportedly paddled back to the shore screaming for help,
09:32but by the time she made it back, it was too late. Strangely, the Guatemalan police said Christina
09:37gave them her statement about the incident and was very forthcoming with them, but when Nancy's
09:42family reached out to the Guatemalan authorities, they couldn't find any records of Christina's
09:45statement on their files. At this time, allegations started being thrown around that Nancy had never
09:51been offered a life jacket before she went on her kayak. But the owners of the kayak rental
09:55company went on record to clarify that that was completely false and that the only reason Nancy
09:59could be seen without a life jacket in the video was that she decided not to take one. Because
10:04Christina refused to talk to the victim's family, they took matters into their own hands and did
10:08something that was honestly pretty messed up. They revealed Christina's name publicly and accused her of
10:14withholding information from them. As soon as they did that, Christina started receiving death threats
10:19from people all over the world. The case garnered a ton of attention on TikTok and Facebook, with
10:24dozens of internet sleuths leaking Christina's address and cell phone to threaten her and make
10:28her life a living nightmare. As the case gained more and more traction online, some of the wildest
10:34theories started to get thrown around, with many people alleging that Nancy had been murdered by her
10:38retreat group in a cult sacrifice or as a part of an elaborate hate crime on account of Nancy's Asian descent.
10:44What's really strange about this case is how different everyone's testimony
10:47is about how the group acted when they realized Nancy was missing. If they had acted a little
10:52more transparently, it honestly wouldn't be too hard to believe that everything Christina said was
10:56true, but because they acted so shady and stayed silent for so long after the incident, it's
11:01understandable why everyone on the internet accused them of hiding something. As of today,
11:05many witnesses still haven't given their statements, and there are even allegations that
11:09the group bribed the Guatemalan police to let them leave the country early, but there's no definitive
11:13proof that this really happened. My personal opinion is that Christina is probably telling
11:18the truth and that the group most likely didn't have anything to do with Nancy's death. I'm not
11:23justifying the way they acted, but to a certain extent it's understandable that they'd be nervous
11:27after the incident considering that they were in a foreign country where they didn't speak the
11:30language and didn't know how the police would react to Christina's version of the events.
11:35Still, their suspicious behavior leaves a lot of room for doubt. Hopefully more information will
11:40continue to surface on Nancy's disappearance, but for the time being, this case will have to remain
11:44a mystery. Patricia Meehan
11:50On April 20th, 1989, a woman named Peggy Bueller drove down a dark country road near a small town
11:56in Montana named Circle. Suddenly, she saw a woman driving in her lane on the wrong side of the road
12:01heading straight toward her at a pretty high speed. Peggy swerved and was fortunately able to
12:06avoid crashing head on. Unfortunately, Carol White, the woman in the car behind Peggy,
12:11wasn't as fortunate. Carol had witnessed the near miss just seconds earlier and had attempted to
12:16swerve out of the way as well, but was struck head on by the woman driving the wrong way.
12:20Shocked from the crash and understandably a little dazed, Carol stepped out of the car and tried to
12:25find the woman who had caused the accident. A few seconds later, a blonde woman in her mid-30s
12:29crawled out of her wrecked vehicle and stood on the side of the road. According to Carol,
12:34the woman didn't say anything. She just stared at her with a blank expression. Shortly after,
12:39Peggy Bueller looped back around to make sure everyone was okay after the accident,
12:43and that's when she saw the blonde woman climb over a fence running parallel to the highway.
12:48In her witness statement, Peggy said,
12:50As I looked out across the accident, I noticed someone on the other side of the fence,
12:54standing there like a spectator, not like it had happened to her.
12:58By the time the cops arrived, the blonde woman was gone, but they managed to identify her thanks
13:02to her license plates as 38-year-old Patricia Meehan, a resident of Bozeman, Montana, where she
13:07worked as a rancher in the summer. For five days, the police combed the area with dogs and helicopters,
13:13but found no signs of Patricia, only a series of footprints about a mile away from the crash site
13:17that eventually disappeared. According to police reports, Patricia had been on her way to her
13:22parents' house in Pittsburgh before the crash. Interestingly, the cops later found that
13:26Patricia had spoken to her parents on the day before the crash, and had told them that she
13:30was under a lot of stress and wanted to move back in with them for a while. Because Patricia was a
13:35pretty stable woman and didn't have any problems with alcohol or drugs, her parents were caught
13:39off guard at the request, but accepted under the conditions that she'd see a therapist before moving
13:43back in with them. So, before heading to her parents' house, Patricia scheduled an appointment the
13:48following day with a specialist and prepared to make the trip to Pittsburgh. It's unknown why she
13:53passed through the town of Circle, which isn't exactly on the way to Pittsburgh from Bozeman,
13:57but it's possible she may have gotten lost. With no real leads other than Patricia's identity and
14:02her family's statements, the cops tried to find a viable explanation as to where she could have gone.
14:07After a while, they narrowed it down to two possible theories. Either Patricia had hitched a
14:12ride after disappearing into the darkness, or she stowed away on a hay truck that the cops had seen a
14:16little more than a mile from the crash site. This is where things get a little strange. Over the next few
14:22days, a bunch of people started calling the cops claiming that they had seen Patricia Meehan at
14:26different truck stops and diners along I-70, acting dazed and confused and asking strangers for rides.
14:33By the end of June that year, more than 25 sightings had been reported to Patricia's parents,
14:37who had both traveled to Montana in hopes of finding their missing daughter. Interestingly,
14:42a lot of people who claimed to have seen Patricia verified that it was her when her parents showed
14:45them pictures and videos of her, but every single one of them had failed to report the missing
14:49woman to the actual cops. It was as if she was doing everything to stay one step ahead of the
14:54cops and her parents, even in her seemingly confused state. In the fall of that year,
14:59more and more sightings and reports of Patricia started surfacing. In September, Patricia allegedly
15:04hitched a ride from a woman in Victor, Montana, who offered to let her stay with her and her
15:08husband for the night. The next day, they dropped her off at a truck stop to bring her closer to some
15:13friends she said she was visiting in another part of the state, and by the time the couple realized they
15:17had a wanted missing woman on their hands, Patricia was gone. While all of this was happening,
15:22Patricia's parents found a roll of undeveloped film in one of her cameras, where they found a pretty
15:27haunting self-portrait that was taken shortly before the accident and disappearance. In it,
15:32Patricia can be seen staring at the mirror with a vacant expression and a camera between her hands.
15:37As far as we know, this was the last time Patricia was ever photographed. As of today,
15:42at least 100 people have reported seeing Patricia Meehan since her disappearance,
15:47but the authorities haven't managed to locate her. With the extremely bizarre nature of the case,
15:52everyone from the cops to internet sleuths to the general public has been left wondering what on
15:56earth could have happened to Patricia, and this has obviously given rise to all kinds of theories
16:01to explain her disappearance. According to one of the most popular ones, Patricia may have suffered
16:06from amnesia after the crash, which is possible when you consider the state of mind she was in
16:10before she made the trip to Pittsburgh. Multiple psychologists have weighed in to explain that
16:15a period of intense stress combined with a potential head injury could have resulted
16:19in full-on amnesia, which hauntingly could have made Patricia want to travel across the state in
16:24a desperate search for her lost memories. This would explain her dazed and confused behavior,
16:30but doesn't explain how she managed to elude the authorities after over 100 people across
16:34the country allegedly saw her and interacted with her. One of the darker theories is that
16:39Patricia caused the accident on the road on purpose to take her own life, which explains why she
16:43would take a detour to Circle instead of taking a more direct route to Pittsburgh. Although this
16:48is definitely possible considering she was depressed, it begs the question of why she would
16:52schedule an appointment with a therapist in Pittsburgh if she was planning on taking her own
16:56life just a few hours later. According to other sources, Patricia may never have hitched a ride
17:01from anyone and potentially just wandered off into the woods before drowning in a nearby body of water.
17:06This would be extremely strange considering that so many people pretty much swore on their lives
17:11that they had seen the exact woman in the pictures Patricia's parents showed them. But
17:15stranger things have happened, and a couple of detectives have mentioned this is definitely possible.
17:20Because the incident happened so long ago, it's unlikely we'll ever know what happened to
17:24Patricia Meehan, and this will probably just have to remain one of the strangest,
17:28most haunting unsolved disappearances in history.
17:34Kaylin Louder
17:36At around 9pm on September 26, 2014, a woman named Kaylin Louder made a panicked 911 call in
17:42which she alleged that there was a fight going on inside her condo's clubhouse. When she asked if
17:47any weapons had been involved in the fight, she claimed she had heard gunshots. When the cops arrived
17:52at the condo, they saw a wedding reception full of happy guests and had trouble believing what Kaylin
17:57had told them. According to the police report, one of the guests admitted he had previously lit a
18:01firecracker, which Kaylin may have mistaken for a gunshot. Strangely, a few hours later,
18:06Kaylin once again called 911, but hung up before the dispatcher picked up. A few minutes later,
18:11the cops called her back, and they reported that she sounded pretty confused. Although the cops had
18:16trouble understanding what she was saying, Kaylin did confess that her roommate thought she was
18:20acting delusional and paranoid. A little after 8am the next morning, she once again called the cops,
18:26and this is a call that is most often referred to as one of the most disturbing recorded 911 calls
18:31publicly available. I'll play a fragment of the call so you can hear it for yourself.
18:35Okay, say your address one more time. I'm having a hard time hearing you.
18:46Get them out of my house. Okay, do you know who this person is?
18:49No, I don't. I just know that there's an intruder in my house.
18:53No. You don't know who they are? No, I don't.
18:56Where weapons involved are mentioned? They're not talking or responding. I'm just telling them to
19:02leave so I can hear them taking things. So you haven't seen them, you can just hear them?
19:09Yes, correct. During the call, Kaylin tells the dispatcher that there's an intruder in her
19:14apartment, but then contradicts herself several times and starts saying a bunch of things that
19:18just don't make any sense. At one point during the call, Kaylin's roommate Carol walks in her room
19:23and sounds pretty confused at the allegations that someone broke into their apartment.
19:27A few seconds later, Kaylin explains that the previous night she had seen multiple people
19:31stalking her through her window and apparently were planning on breaking in.
19:35Okay, where exactly are you? I'm in the back bedroom.
19:41Where did the suspect enter the building? There's only one door. Get out of my house.
19:47Is there anyone else in the building who belongs there? Yes, there's six apartments.
19:52Okay, is there anybody else in your apartment that should be there?
19:56I believe she is here. I have a roommate. Hey, Carol, lock the door.
20:07There's something going on there. Come here.
20:15They might have left.
20:16Okay, what's going on now? They've left now?
20:26Yeah, so I'm just looking to see if anything's been taken.
20:32Someone opened the door and I heard them come in. Don't do that, Carol.
20:37If the door's still locked, it's impossible.
20:40They must have a key or something. Because when I took the dog out, I heard people talking.
20:48There was people last night sitting outside the window.
20:53And so they were scoping us out or something.
20:56Why is the door still locked?
20:59Well, I can't explain that. But I heard two people talking.
21:04Strangely, Carol points out that the door to the apartment is still locked and has been locked all
21:10morning, which would obviously make it impossible for someone to break in. But Kalen still sounds
21:14pretty upset and convinced that there was an intruder in the apartment. Even though it was
21:18relatively clear from the call that there hadn't been a break in, the cops still went to Kalen's
21:22residence to make sure she was okay. And once there, they confirmed that there were no signs
21:26someone had broken in. Later that day, at around 6pm, the condo's security cameras captured Kalen
21:32outside of her apartment walking barefoot in the rain toward a little creek close to the condo entrance.
21:37The footage shows her carrying her dog as she walks back to her apartment from the creek.
21:42It's unclear if she's talking to herself or to her dog in the footage,
21:45but her behavior definitely seems a little bit off.
22:00A few seconds later, she can be seen running back to her apartment,
22:11as if she was running away from someone.
22:22Tragically, that video was the last time Kalen was ever seen alive.
22:27Later that day, she went missing after leaving her phone, her dog, her shoes,
22:31and her wallet at home. During the investigation, her family revealed that she never left her dog
22:36Phyllis alone for more than an hour, even taking him along to special events such as weddings and
22:40graduations. From the start of the investigation, the cops alleged that Kalen appeared to be mentally
22:46ill. Although police calmed the entire area, the initial search for Kalen was unsuccessful,
22:51and it wasn't until two and a half months later on December 1st of that year that her body was
22:55discovered by West Valley City work crews looking at a drainage pipe. Disturbingly,
23:00the work crew noticed her body sticking out of the water in the middle of the river,
23:03partially hidden by plants. But because her body had been decomposing in the water for so long,
23:08it took the cops a while to determine her age and gender. And even when they confirmed her identity,
23:13it was impossible for them to determine the cause of death, which added another layer
23:16of mystery to the case. From the moment the body was discovered, Kalen's family claimed that
23:21foul play had been involved, but this was impossible to confirm due to the level of
23:24decomposition in her body. What's strange about this case is that her body was found pretty far
23:29away from where the authorities speculated she had accidentally fallen into the creek and drowned.
23:34The river she allegedly fell into is pretty shallow, and even with the heavy rain,
23:38it seems unlikely that her body could have been carried all the way to where it was found without
23:42getting snagged on a branch or stuck in the mud. Even though the authorities chalked up the whole
23:47thing to an accidental drowning that stemmed from what they assumed to be a psychotic break,
23:51there are a lot of details in the case that simply don't add up.
23:54For starters, Kalen didn't really have a history of mental illness. Although she was finding it hard
23:59to find a job, and had allegedly been a little down for a few months according to her father's
24:03testimony, pretty much everyone else in her life had described her as stable and relatively happy.
24:08However, earlier in 2014, Kalen had gotten a job at a school, but was let go a few months later,
24:13which, according to her dad, made her a little depressed. In the weeks leading up to her
24:17disappearance, she had been rejected from another job opportunity, which probably didn't do wonders
24:22for her emotional state. I was able to find that there had been some events in Kalen's past that
24:27may have contributed to her deteriorating mental state. Three years after she graduated from college
24:32in 2006, her twin brother accidentally murdered their uncle while they were both under the influence
24:36of drugs, for which he was sentenced to five years in prison. Even though the incident obviously
24:41shook her up, she remained pretty stable and never showed signs of her mental health deteriorating,
24:45at least not to the point where it would seem normal for her to suddenly start making disturbing
24:49911 calls where she appeared to be delusional. From what I found, there are two main theories to
24:54explain what happened to Kalen. The first theory is that Kalen suffered from a sudden psychotic
24:59break due to all the stress she was under from not being able to find a job. The investigators who
25:04proposed this theory claim that Kalen probably walked barefoot in the rain until she was so tired that
25:08she fell into the river. This is definitely a possibility, but one thing that stands out to
25:13me about this theory is that nobody reported seeing Kalen walking around on the street on
25:17the day of her disappearance. The second theory is that even if Kalen was a little paranoid,
25:22she wasn't wrong about someone wanting to harm her, and if she truly was being stalked by someone on
25:27the night before she called 911 to report this supposed gunfight, they may have gotten to her
25:31before the cops could intervene. Still, based on her roommate's testimony, it's possible that Kalen was
25:36really just imagining the whole thing due to her worsening mental state, but we'll likely never
25:41know. The case just left dozens of big unanswered questions. For starters, who was Kalen really
25:47talking to in the surveillance video? Was it just her dog? Was she talking to herself? Or was she
25:52talking to someone else? Why was she walking barefoot in the rain in the first place? And if
25:57she was paranoid and delusional, what could have triggered her mental breakdown? With over 10 years
26:02having gone by since the incident, it's very likely that whatever happened to Kalen Lauder on the
26:07evening of September 26, 2014 will remain a mystery.
26:14Dale Kerstetter
26:16On September 12, 1987, a 50-year-old security guard and maintenance man named Dale Kerstetter went to
26:22work as he usually did at the Corning Glass Works plant in Bradford, Pennsylvania. At 11pm,
26:27he began his night shift as a weekend security guard. The next morning, at around 7am, the day
26:32shift security guard named John Lindquist came to relieve Dale from his shift, but he was nowhere to
26:37be found. John immediately went to the cafeteria to see if Dale was there, but the only thing he found
26:42was Dale's lunchbox with his food still inside. Strangely, a few minutes later, Dale's truck was
26:48found in the parking lot of the plant with his keys, a pack of cigarettes, his backpack, and an empty
26:53pistol holster still inside the truck. Sensing something was wrong, the cops brought search
26:57dogs to the plant to find Dale. A few minutes later, the dogs traced Dale's scent to the second
27:02floor, where the plant's glass furnace was located, along with some pretty valuable platinum pipes.
27:07This was pretty strange, considering that Dale rarely went to that part of the building and had
27:12no business going near the pipes. That's when the plant manager decided to check the security
27:16footage from the night before, and what he found was pretty disturbing. The footage you're seeing
27:21now is the original footage of the incident, which is now extremely grainy due to the slow
27:26deterioration process of the old footage, and it's pretty much useless for the purposes of this video.
27:32The video you're about to see is a reenactment of the footage, which is supposed to be perfectly
27:36accurate as per my research.
27:54In the footage, the manager saw a masked man walking around the plant, apparently scouting the building.
27:59Shortly after, the man ran up to the second floor of the plant, where the highly valuable platinum pipes
28:03were located. A few seconds after this, Dale can be seen speaking to the masked man while he appears
28:08to be coerced out of the room, and as the masked man drags him out of the room by the arm, Dale looks
28:13straight at the security camera.
28:28At one point in the footage, the masked man can be seen dragging a heavy bag out of the building
28:32with a manual forklift. That night, a quarter of a million dollars worth of platinum pipes were
28:38stolen from the plant, and Dale Kerstetter was never seen or heard from again.
28:42In the aftermath of the mysterious disappearance, several theories were brought up to explain whether
28:47Dale was an innocent victim or an inside man in the high-stakes robbery. According to Dale's family,
28:52it would have been extremely unlike him to participate in a crime like this, because he just wasn't that
28:57type of guy. He was described as an honest, loyal, family-loving, and fun-loving man who
29:03just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. It's possible that Dale might have
29:07spotted the masked man at some point during his shift, and when he went to investigate,
29:11the man may have coerced him into cooperating and then murdered him. If this theory is to be
29:15believed, then the bag that the man was hauling out of the building with a forklift could have
29:19contained Dale's body along with the platinum pipes. But other employees at the plant seem to have a
29:24completely different opinion based on their experience of Dale. For starters, whoever
29:28removed the platinum from the tank was very familiar with the layout of the plant. They knew
29:33exactly where the most valuable materials in the plant were, as well as all the tools they would
29:37need to extract the platinum pipes from the tank and quickly exit the tank area. Even though Dale
29:42had never stolen anything and was generally a good person, he had gotten into trouble several times
29:47with his employers for being a slow worker and having a bad attitude. In the investigation,
29:52it was also revealed that Dale was around $40,000 in debt after being demoted from his job as a
29:56trade worker at the plant, which meant he not only needed money at the time of the robbery,
30:00but wasn't at all happy with his employers after he was forced to take a $7,000 pay cut.
30:05This led some people to believe that he may have been in on the crime, which would explain how the
30:08masked man knew his way around the plant so well. Still, his family claims he would have had several
30:13other legal ways of obtaining the money before resorting to a high-stakes, premeditated robbery
30:18and disappearance without a trace. One of the things that makes the disappearance so ambiguous
30:23is Dale's behavior in the security camera footage. For starters, it's hard to tell if he was truly
30:28being forced to walk out of the room with the man, or if he was just pretending to be coarsed,
30:33and when he looks up at the camera, it's really anyone's guess if he was silently begging for help,
30:37or if he was performing a sort of gesture of defiance toward his former employers. To this day,
30:42it's unknown if Dale was murdered after being the unwilling witness of a crime,
30:46or if he was an inside man who left his entire family behind for money.
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