The Vanishing Point: Episode 4, Off the Highway

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The Vanishing point, the last known location. It's an investigative priority in any missing person's case, but sometimes, logistically, getting there is easier said than done. The terrain of the Hoopa Reservation and the surrounding area is remote and sometimes treacherous.

In March of 2020, a woodcutter went to work just off Deerhorn Road in Hoopa. After a few days without word from him, his family became concerned. Soon after the announcement of his disappearance, his daughter received a text message from an anonymous number.

Texted you more than 10 hours and you're just responding now, are you not even taking this seriously? Do you think I'm here for all this rubbish?

These texts were then followed by this message in all lowercase.

Sending you a proof is as easy as anything. You also need to know. He is a bit sick right now, he has also refused to eat. You have to do this real fast so I can have him dropped off at the nearest gas station for you.

We've talked a lot about the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, but it's not just women who go missing here. These texts were regarding Virgil Bustle Jr. a member of the Hoopa Valley tribe. And that's our next case. I'm Slicia Stanton and this is up and vanished presents the vanishing point.

Do you guys want to go ahead and go into that other room right there with the table?

And stuff next to it.

We're ready.

Okay, so our team is in the MMIP office in Hoopa, where they're set to meet their next interviewee.

I've always felt his pain if he got hurt or something. One time and he got in a car wreck and he broke his leg and the next morning I couldn't walk on my leg.

This is Verna, the twin sister of 52-year-old Virgil Bustle Jr. Virgil went missing in March of 2020..

Growing up with him, we were inseparable. Now it's like, way different because he's not here.

When talking about her twin brother, you can sense that Verna still very much feels a profound connection to him. It's clear that his absence has left a huge void in her life. Recalling their final communication, she said that her worries first started when she hadn't heard from him in over two weeks.

I knew that something had happened because he usually stops by, and so I made a post on Facebook. Has anybody seen her for my brother? It's been two and a half weeks since I've seen him.

Shortly thereafter, Virgil's truck was discovered in the woods, but Virgil himself was nowhere to be found.

And then my niece, she replied to my post and said that she was cutting wood with her dad. And they seen his truck up at Deerhorn.

Virgil ran his own woodcutting business, and he used his flatbed truck regularly for work. It was something that Verna tells us her brother usually did on his own. Beyond the discovery of the truck and the piles of wood tossed in the bed, there were a few other suspicious discoveries. Virgil's keys and jacket were found inside the vehicle, the windows were left rolled down and his chainsaw was nowhere to be found.

It was nighttime when we located the truck and I used someone's phone to call Tribal security for search and rescue. Humboldt County Sheriff's Department went down, but there wasn't really no investigation. As far as I know. If they really investigated everything, they would have found something.

On April 9, 2020, Humboldt County Sheriff's Department, in partnership with the Special Services Unit, Search and Rescue Team and Volunteer Fire Department, conducted a two-day ground search. In the area that the truck was discovered. They also conducted a canine search. Neither would yield results. While the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office has not ruled out foul play in Virgil's disappearance, locals are confident that evidence near Virgil's truck confirms it.

They said that one of the places where my brother was cutting wood, you could tell that there was a struggle and that they drug a body.

An independent news outlet, red headed Black Belt, which focuses on stories in and around Humboldt County, also corroborated speculation that a body was dragged into a wooded area. They reported that the family is collaborating with an MMIP activist. Jesse Armstrong, quote. Armstrong recruited Kavern Hodgin, a Northern California tracker who has helped families find loved ones, to analyze the site where the truck disappeared, according to Armstrong. Hodgin saw signs of a physical struggle near the grove, where Bustle was believed to have been felling trees. And parallel drag marks from there, indicating a body was dragged, the tracker reports being able to track the drag marks to the home of a person the family considers a suspect.

It's been three years now since he's been gone.

What do you think happened to him?

I believe that he got his head shot off.

What Verna says is that she heard the incident happened over a girl and that he was cut up and put in a wood chipper. This is not the first time the team's heard this.

With Virgil, Oh, Virgil Bustle.

Mm-hmm.

That's Frank Subert, the man that we spoke to at the end of the road regarding Emily Rizling's disappearance.

Oh man, I've heard a lot of stories. I heard he was put inside of a chipper spread.

Out all over.

Why would someone want to hurt Virgil?

I don't know, Virgil was a pretty tough fella.

M.M.

So you'd have to catch him by surprise. So this person or this being or whatever that made him disappear is pretty strange.

Aside from just small-town talk, Virgil's family started receiving real tips.

There was an anonymous phone call here.

The anonymous caller claimed that Virgil's body could be located between a set of mile markers off the highway. The police looked into it and they did find a body, but it wasn't Virgil's.

Do you feel like you are in danger at all, or if family members are in danger?

Yes, I do believe. In the beginning, it was really, really unsafe. And I kind of still do. Because the one that supposedly cleaned up the mess and did something with my brother's body, she still stops by this place where I stay.

Verna says she believes that the group of people responsible for Virgil's disappearance live close by. It's unclear whether police have looked into these folks. With the case still being active, the details of the investigation are closed to the public. However, Verna believes that someone from that group took issue with Virgil. And she claims on more than one occasion that a member of this group has tried to intimidate her and keep her from speaking out.

And she was kind of luring me down down to her house, where her dad and her brother. They're responsible for his disappearance, and he's the one that is the one that killed him.

I'd heard there were maybe ransom texts and threats made after the missing person report.

Somebody had texted my niece, which is Virgil's daughter, saying that they had him and they wanted ransom.

Verna is referring to the same text messages you heard at the beginning of the episode.

Texted you more than 10 hours and you're just responding. I swear on my life if you ever provoke him and drop his lifeless body off the road.

No leads ever came of these messages.

This, unfortunately, is a common scam that has occurred for several missing persons cases. Scammers typically access the missing person's information from shared posts on social media and use it to scam missing persons families.

Eventually, Virgil's daughter texted the anonymous number back.

You're sick, you don't have my dad, you're pulling the sick fucking game to get money, fuck you.

Gone, most of them are gone, dead.

Can you describe what that group of people is like?

Cold hearted, their conscience is seared like with a hot iron, because they don't have no remorse.

Disappearances like Virgil's create rumors that often muddy investigations and strain law enforcement's already limited resources. And unless someone comes forward, his family may never find answers.

Now it's like, way different because he's not here, but I know that he's still with me.

If you could share a message with Virgil right now, what would you say?

I'd tell him that I'm sorry and that I love him with all my heart.

Each new disappearance in Hoopa pushes the previous one deeper into obscurity. Over time, these unsolved cases grow colder and colder, and the MMIP's office bulletin board is a haunting testament to this tragic cycle. As the team packs up to leave, they take one final glance at the board, and they're hidden amongst the many cases. They stumble upon a post that has clung to the board for far too long.

A majority of the cases in our database were actually mothers of children.

Native American women are 10 times more likely to be murdered than any other ethnicity.

Humboldt County Sheriff's Department Information Bulletin, August 13th, 1991.

So my first memory? well, I guess I was probably seven or eight years old.

This is Hoopa tribal member Allie Hosler of the Two Rivers Tribune.

I remember my uncle came to the house, I remember it was in the evening time, and he was worried because his wife, Chick White, hadn't come home. And in the days that followed, and she still didn't come home, we didn't hear from her. It was really unlike her to leave her children. And I just. I was a child at the time and I remember nobody knew what to do. And that was my first memory of hearing about a woman that I knew being missing.

As we know from the sheriff's department's bulletin, Andrea Chick White was last seen over 30 years ago after hitchhiking to Eureka.

When she was, I think nine months old, she was walking and talking. And I remember one of our cousins. She would just laugh all the time and say, Oh, she looks like a little Chickie, so Chickie is her nickname, but everybody called her chick.

This is Anna White, Andrea's older sister.

Chick was a beautiful young lady. She was a great mother. When I think of her, all I can think of is Chick and her kids. That was the most important thing in her life.

Prior to Chick's disappearance, her partner passed away, and unfortunately, she'd end up losing guardianship of her children due to substance abuse. She was fighting hard to get clean and regain custody of them. In fact, when she was last seen, she was actually hitchhiking back from a court appearance.

She was just so innocent and pure and trusting, so I wondered if that had anything to do with her missing status.

It's worth noting that, with this area being so remote, hitchhiking is fairly common. Hoopa is situated an hour away from the nearest major city. And moreover, as we've previously mentioned, this county grapples with the highest rates of poverty in the nation.

And I think a lot of that, and just the different hardships on the reservation for everyone, is dysfunctional family systems. Alcohol and drugs and Chick's issues were very compounded with our family situation and those issues on the grass. And I know she was in an auto accident, she had been drinking, that's what she was hitchhiking back and forth to Eureka to go to court.

Anna later learned that a woman approached police with a tip about the day Andrea went missing. That local woman said she gave Andrea a ride and let her out by an off-ramp on the way to Hoopa.

And when I found out about that lady, I called the Humboldt County investigator and I wanted to talk to that lady. And detective said she does not want to be contacted by the family or anyone. And I thought that was a little bit strange.

The Two Rivers Tribune wrote.

The woman who dropped her off on Highway 299 provided her name and information to the police. According to White's sister, Anna, the woman asked the police to keep her identity anonymous.

And that's the saddest part of everything. It seems like she just vanished, We don't have a clue of where she could be. Everything's open-ended.

Three years old when it first happened, I do have memories of family in the house staying over, and I'm pretty sure that's when it happened.

We spoke with Andrea's youngest son, Arnold. He doesn't remember much about his mother. Most of his memories come from the stories that his friends and family have shared. She was a free bird, an energetic spirit.

And I remember I woke up in the middle of the night and I go into the living room and I see my family sleeping on the couches. You know, because they're there for support. And I remember looking in all the doors, probably looking for my mom, you know, and my dad. He was in one of our corner rooms and I remember looking into there even. And I didn't see her, so I just kept going trying to find her. But that's probably one of the only memories that I can recall of being that young. The whole topic, subject alone was like the elephant in the room that nobody talked about ever.

It's pretty tough.

I just hate not having answers to questions.

Since his mother's disappearance, Arnold has heard many rumors and stories about what may have happened to her.

There's only so many things that could happen with somebody who's hitchhiking. They either got picked up and murdered, or she's being kept alive against her own will.

November 3rd, 1998.

If you're comfortable answering this, do you know if there was a connection between your mom and your dad?

My grandma, before she passed away, she mentioned this, that he had raped my mother, him and one of his co-workers.

Anna White also heard this story years ago. Andrea told her that she was picked up by two Humboldt County sheriff's deputies, taken over the hill on Highway 299 and raped.

They questioned.

We found those articles and records online. In 2020, a Sovereign Body Institute study revealed this individual faced multiple accusations of child abuse and sexual assault. Despite the numerous reports, he remained in his role as sheriff's deputy. He'd eventually be brought to trial. And while the first would end in a mistrial on August 25th, 1990, he was found guilty of child molestation. Four months later, the judge overturned the conviction.

One of the police officers that allegedly raped White was accused of sexual abuse on multiple occasions. There are other girls that he had raped too, Davis said. But I think my mom was the only one that was trying to come forward and press charges. According to Anna, the police officer came from a well-to-do family. There were rumors of people that he would follow around. He was a predator.

This is not an isolated event. While the team was in Hoopa, we heard a lot about police misconduct and distrust of law enforcement.

Our people have a lack of confidence in our police. And that ride you took to get here from town, you got to take that ride to go to jail. And there's historical stories of women being sexually assaulted by officers on that drive, of people being beat on that drive. I think Laura has heard some of those stories, too.

Laura actually wrote about this issue for the paper.

A report compiled by the Yurok Tribal Court and the Sovereign Bodies Institute on MMIW in California found that out of 165 cases studied, around one in five were victims of police brutality or lethal neglect. A law enforcement officer in Humboldt County, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, vehemently agreed that Native people have long been abused by the police system.

Humboldt County Sheriff's Office would not directly comment on these allegations. During our interview with Sheriff Hansel. He acknowledged that he is aware of prior concerns, but stressed that he's working hard to rebuild trust and foster positive relationships with the community. Still, when it comes to Andrea, we continue to ask ourselves, what made her our target, what factors make her and individuals like her more vulnerable to victimization?

I think a lot of the focus is on women because they're more vulnerable when it comes to defending themselves or being put in situations where they feel disempowered. I was reading a story last night about a woman who she said she had consensual sex with a truck driver who gave her a ride. But when I actually finished reading the story, I was like, that wasn't consensual at all. She was hitchhiking, he picked her up and he made her feel like she had to provide either drugs or sex. Or she was either going to get beat up and left alongside the road.

It's been over 30 years since Andrea Chick White went missing. But still, as much as it pains them, her sister, her son and the rest of her family, they've come to believe in the importance of sharing Andrea's story.

With missing and murdered women in general, or people, I think there's always just not enough information being spread around. You know, if you have information about somebody who has family that's missing or murdered, come forward with your information. Because even if it sounds crazy, anything could lead to something, you know, one of them could be that crazy thing that you're hearing. That's actually true.

I just hope that we're coming to a space of healing and we're still in the beginning phases of just establishing what MMIW is. I think the more that we do this, the more comfortable we'll get at it and the more awareness we'll bring. We miss her, we want to bring her home and we're never going to give up.

Our team embarks on a 300-mile drive to Kovalo. They plan to look into yet another missing persons case. While leaving Hoopa, they pull over on the side of the busy highway where Andrea Chick White was last seen. A national geographic photograph published in 2022, shows Arnold, Andrea's son, standing at this very location. He's at a grassy median, backlit by the sun and surrounded by little wildflowers.

Next time on the vanishing point.

I hadn't seen her for two weeks.

Before she went missing.

She called me on the 7th and said, Mommy, whatever you do.

Do not open the door for anybody.

And to lay low, I was like, Dears, what's going on?

I called her phone right back.

It just went straight to voicemail.

And I kept calling and it kept doing the same thing, so I never got a hold of her again after that.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Vanishing Point. This six-part series is released weekly absolutely free, but if you want to listen to it ad-free, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at Tenderfootplus..com or on Apple Podcasts.