3 | The Legend You Live

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Put this in your back pocket, you can just hand it to him.

It's kind of funny how this comes full circle.

Nice to meet you.

Our host welcomes us inside his bungalow home, a familiar place for Alex, who's spent countless hours in this same living room, piecing together another missing person. case. One interview into another.

The whole way through. Alex knows, too, this is my day, like, boom, boom, till 9 p.m. But then the rest of my week is, like, just empty.

This is Neil Strauss, a New York Times bestselling author and the host of the podcast, To Live and Die in LA.

All right, so let me go to my computer because I might want to read his.

Yeah, that'd be great.

While Neil has experience with true crime, that's not why we're here. We're here because he knew Justin Alexander.

So I ran a men's group called The Society. We have survival intensives where they learn how to, like, evade interrogations and survive, like, torture and escape from handcuffs. And Justin joined in 2012 and was just like a really positive, interesting, connected guy. I really, really liked him.

As we're chatting, Neil grabs his laptop and pulls up a document he says he hasn't read since 2013.

So yeah, so when someone joins the group, the first thing I do is I talk to them for half an hour and I see, like, who they are and what they're about. And I'll ask them a number of questions. And then I'll sort of read between the lines of what they say. So his goal is he wanted to improve his confidence, learn to command a room in any situation, be generally happier and more awesome, and become the best person he can be in just about every arena, which is so, Justin, because he wants to do everything, right? The best in everything is a very ambitious goal.

It's interesting that he puts it that he wanted to be single, though. That was, like, something that was important on there, too.

Yeah. Like, I remember him saying, like, I normally break up with someone when they ask me to marry them. You know, so he definitely was your classic avoidance.

Which brings us back to your original assessment of him, in a way.

Right. So this is what I wrote at the time. And this is, I had not met him yet. We just talked on the phone for half an hour, which was interesting to look back on it. when Alex contacted me.

Only once I saw the killer, once I saw the killer up close.

I'm Liam Luksin, and this is Status Untraced,

I don't fucking know what happened. But my feelings, for what I know about Ashish and the area, and what travelers do there, if he did get involved with some crooks, I am like 90% sure that it had to do with Ashish.

You probably remember this voice from the last episode. This is Linda Berrini, Justin Alexander's former romantic partner and first responder. on his disappearance. She's the one who told me about the mafia who lurk in the Parvati Valley, and the dangers of dealing Hashish.

And I think the porter, the famous porter, yeah, I think that's a key element.

As a reminder, there were only three people on Justin's trek. Justin, the baba, and a porter, a guy hired to carry supplies.

I don't remember if he mentioned the porter or not. It's like I've been racking my brain for years trying to remember that detail, but it's not clear, and that's very unfortunate. Because what do they need a porter for? For a kilogram of rice?

This porter's name is Anil Singh Kumar. He might be the only person from the hike that's still alive, but he's nearly impossible to find. The names. Anil and a surname, Singh in Kumar, are extremely common in India. It's essentially the American equivalent of Matthew Johnson.

As far as I know, they don't know anything about the porter. I don't know if you were able to get some more information, but there was this porter and then there wasn't.

While Linda was the original point of contact, she never actually made it to India.

At some point, I got pushed out of the equation, and they wouldn't listen to me. I was a pain in the ass. I was a pain in the ass, I admit it. But it was a bunch of people that had never been to India.

We really need to speak to someone who had boots on the ground, so I ask who I should reach out to for more answers.

Did you talk to Jonathan?

I recognize the name. in connection with articles about Justin's disappearance. He's reported as Jonathan Skeels, one of the two men who found Justin's belongings off the hiking trail.

I know that everybody was trying their best. I know it. I know it in my heart, including Jonathan, you know. But it also seemed very detached, you know, like people cared for a couple of months and then, you know, the thing froze over, and then that was it, you know.

Well, thank you for being willing to talk about it. I know it's a lot.

I want to find out what happened. If somebody figures out what happened, I will help a hundred percent.

While the offer for help is reassuring, this is the last I hear from Linda. I don't hold it against her. I come to find that's just how this group of people around Justin operate. Spontaneous, constantly on the move, and rarely checking their inboxes. I learned this the hard way.

Hello. Hey, what's going on? Hey, how's it going? Good, good. We got a good connection on my end.

Thankfully, he did.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011,, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast.

Like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls.

With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low.

Everybody thought I was holding something back.

Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah. No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical.

Leroy was the new Dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder.

A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical. Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Did you know Justin before this as well? Yeah, yeah, we had met in 2015 and stayed in contact.

He was friends with common friends.

Surprisingly, Jonathan Skeels, the man who spearheaded the ground search for Justin, hadn't known Justin very long. Only a year. So I ask why he decided to look for him.

I was like, well, I've been to the area where he's missing. I have lots of very influential friends in India. I have the financial means. I have the time. I'm pretty savvy.

We continue to talk, and it becomes evident that Skeels, like we've been told, possesses the secrets of the search. Intimate details we couldn't have learned anywhere else. With what he shares, Alex and I are able to piece together a timeline of the 2016 events. We're going to take you on a journey through this timeline, and I want to emphasize that these details are crucial. Because when you see this case in its entirety, the facts appear in a whole new light.

I should return mid-September or so. If I'm not back by then, don't look for me.

Justin puts on his Instagram and blog the ominous message, saying he's headed with Baba Rawat to a spiritual ground called Montelay Lake. Two days later, he makes what will be his final post to Instagram and last calls to his mother, father, and Linda Berrini.

She was like, yeah, I feel something's wrong. Have you seen Justin? I was like, no, but he's up there and he's planning to stay for a while, you know, so I wouldn't get worried about Justin. He's a big boy.

A few days later, with no word from Justin, Chris hikes eight kilometers into the mountains to a campground called Kirganga. It's where Justin started the trek, and where he was supposed to have returned.

And when I did go, the Baba was back. He was in his hut, but there was no Justin. So I went over and interrogated him gently, you know, and I think at that time he had told me that they were walking back together and that Justin had decided to turn around and go back towards the lake with another group of trekkers. And I found that a little bizarre. I told Linda what I had heard, but that's kind of like when we started to feel that, yeah, there might be something a little weird going on.

September 30th. Linda Barrini informs Justin's mother, Susie Reeb, of the concerns, and the next day they launch a GoFundMe titled Find Justin Alexander, with a goal to raise $25,000.. Word of Justin's disappearance spreads, and a friend of the family reaches out with a tip. They found a pivotal photo of Justin on Facebook. It was uploaded by an Indian hiker who supposedly passed Justin on the trail.

I have to go to India and figure out what's happened to my mate.

I don't know when I'll be back.

Sunday, October 9th. Skeels meets Susie Reeb at Heathrow Airport. Together, they embark on the long flight to New Delhi, where they meet with embassy officials, plead for help, and then continue north to the mountains. It's like an 8 a.m. arrival.

10 a.

And did you and Susie do the questioning? Yeah, I got video of us hearing him explain his side of the story.

Is that something they usually allow you to do? I'm sure that wouldn't happen in Mumbai or in Delhi, but in these podunk little backstations, you know, there was a lot of attention being brought to it, so they were trying to appease me in any way.

As Baba Rawat is interrogated, officers and locals who are in the room translate his words.

The first story was that Justin went back up into the mountains after they had a disagreement. The next version was Justin was ahead of him, and it was pretty clear that his story was changing. There was just too many versions.

The porter is also questioned, but let go. In the following days, Skeels gathers stories about the Baba's reputation.

He was very much a fake holy man. He was out there stealing from all the different camps. You know, he had a serious drug habit.

October 13th. As urgency mounts, Susie Reeb files an official missing persons report, and Skeels pays for a helicopter to scour the vast mountain terrain. We just went flying around, just getting a survey of the area,

just hoping that someone crawled out behind a rock with a broken leg, you know, waving a flag.

Unfortunately, nothing is found.

It's well accepted that the river, it, tears up bodies and stuff that's never found. They talk about this one instance where a bus went off the side of a cliff and the river never gave the bus back or the 50 people that were in it.

They descend the mountain, scanning on and off the trail.

A couple hours later is when we were leapfrogging each other to vantage points, looking down around the river. That's when he spotted his flute. We found a bunch of items. There was like a headband he was wearing and a lighter and a couple other bits. It was the only point on the trail that's like knife edge.

October 21st, just after 7 p.

There's two ways that story ends. He committed suicide because he was ashamed of what he did. or, you know, maybe the local police were liking all the extra attention that was being bought because of the missing American and maybe they just, you know, kindly strung him up.

October 23rd, a peculiar update is made to the GoFundMe. The porter, Anil Kumar, is now assisting police search teams in the mountains.

No, no.

Maybe he went over at a certain social class and I started speaking English. Did you get like a guide or anything to help you through there? I had at my disposal this guy to help out, but I didn't specifically get a guide, no.

We went back with the Indian forensic team. It was kind of a different job. All the flows off the side of the mountain were starting to freeze over and it was getting cold. At that point, they're like, well, prime suspect's dead. The family is acceptive that their son is not coming back, so their interest in solving the mystery waned pretty quickly.

Days later, a final team hikes to the location where Justin's items were found. They hope to uncover more belongings or a body, but they return empty-handed.

Oh, like, if you had the name of a police officer and you wanted to track him down? Exactly. Oh, no. No. No, you'd have to go to the area, find out who was involved, look at old reports.

I have mixed feelings about this search. On one hand, I'm impressed by Jonathan Skeels. He sacrificed weeks of his own time and leveraged every resource he could muster to try to find Justin. He didn't have any experience in this type of work. He didn't even know Justin that long.

Hey. Hey. Yeah.

So we're going to have trouble really getting more from him, I think.

Yeah.

For the next six months, Alex and I continue to research the case. And we keep coming back to the interrogation videos of the porter and the baba, which Skeels claims to have. When we last talked, he wasn't prepared to share them with us. But to get any further on this case, I need to know what was said in that room. So I come up with a plan and purchase a ticket, determined to change Skeels' mind.

Hello, this is Cabo. What's up, dude?

What's up? Hi. Good to see you. Two hours northeast of Cabo San Lucas, I pull into a gravel drive. Okay.

I think four days ago. Okay.

I've gotten to know Skeels well since our initial call. But to get to know each other better, we decided to meet up. It's happenstance that he's here in La Ventana, Mexico, at the same time as someone else I want to meet. So he offered that I could crash at his place.

I've got a mezzanine up here for you. Thank you so much. Not much of a balcony, but the sun comes right in.

La Ventana is known as one of the best locations in the world for kite surfing. And in the distance, surfers rip through the blue ocean waves.

I mean, motorcycles, is what connected all of us. But we weren't really what you'd call motorcycle guys. We were just kind of Peter Pan, fuck-off sort of guys that wanted to feel freedom.

This is Justin Chatwin. He claims to be a full-time drifter. But what he's best known for is his acting work. Namely, playing the character Jimmy slash Steve in the series Shameless.

This idea of just nomadism, like let's just live for today, and wherever we end up tonight we'll get a hotel, and then tomorrow we worry about tomorrow.

I mean, we talked about it, but it wasn't like.

Well, Johnny, you actually did it. You never really went home.

As Chatwin mentioned, he, Skeels, and Justin Alexander connected over their shared love of nomadism and motorcycles. Although Skeels and Chatwin stay in touch, they actually haven't seen each other in a while. In fact, the last time they were together was in 2016,, when they learned Justin Alexander was missing.

Most of us didn't know him. He was an acquaintance of mine. He wasn't even a friend. Would you call him a friend?

No.

You'd call him an acquaintance.

He was an acquaintance, like a guy who was like, oh, cool, definitely a possibility of becoming friends.

Yeah, that's true. I would completely agree with that.

Chatwin says he first crossed paths with Justin Alexander in May 2015 while motorcycling in the Mojave Desert. They kept in contact through Instagram and eventually reconnected at a party in Big Sur.

And he was kind of, he was pretty quiet in crowds. Didn't say much, but really good one-on-one.

And the ladies loved him.

And the ladies loved him.

After that party, Chatwin remembers leaving with Justin.

We got gas together, and then I said, see you later. And when I left, I felt really sad. I don't know, I felt, it was almost like I felt sorry for him. Like I felt like he was really lonely and wanting companionship and wanting a friend.

And that was the last time you saw him?

I think that was the last time I saw him. Yeah, I was like looking forward to getting to know him more, but hung out with him maybe four times.

Maybe once.

Yeah.

You know, people often ask me why I went. You know, why did I drop everything to go? do it? Because I met him that one night. That's the only time I ever met him.

It just didn't seem very dangerous to me.

Did I?

things. You sounded traumatized.

Oh, really?

And dark. And I was like, oh, this is serious.

It's all a bit of a blur. I mean, those days were pretty intense, that first couple months in India. I was always getting the half-truths out of Linda and then had one epic blow-up with her. Like, Linda, I need all the information this time, not just the parts that you want me to hear, because I'm out here going in front of the police, and if it turns out that, you know, something ill toward was going on, they could put me in jail.

And then, so what did she give you?

You know, for a long time she held out that he was carrying these vials of LSD.

Justin's father also mentioned the LSD vials, but this knowledge was never shared with the police or media. What was reported is that Justin had two backpacks, one which he took on the trek and is missing. The other was found at a guest house in Colga.

What was in the bag?

Well, so in his bag was just, like, regular little bits of clothes, like his, you know, medical kit, survival stuff, his passport and his credit card. And before I even got there, I was in contact with Chris, and, you know, Chris cryptically told me that there was, like, a kilo of hash in his bag.

A kilo of hash is 2.

And I told him, you've got to get rid of that, because that would have immediately become the focus. And I needed the full support of the local police in conducting the search, so I told Chris. I said, just make that disappear.

But was he.

He wasn't flush. So I don't think he was trafficking. I think he had purchased advantageously and was, you know, selling it to other travellers just to fund his travels.

You think he was selling, huh?

Well, he reportedly had two vials of LSD, and one had dried up, and he was upset about that. And then he had, like, 120 tabs of Viagra.

Justin wrote online that he planned to travel more after India and possibly the rest of 2016,, so carrying medical supplies in bulk wouldn't be unusual. But 120 pills of Viagra? That's a striking number.

Yeah, I questioned why he had it. I mean, you know, maybe he was selling that, too. I don't know.

I don't know. I've traveled a lot, and I've always said if you're looking for trouble and you're mixing in kind of darker worlds, you're going to find it. And it just sounds like that whole drug culture in India, it just seemed shady.

99.

These two debate theories for what feels like hours, and I take a step back to just listen, as Skeles seems to be revealing details that he hadn't previously shared with me. It's then that Chatwin asks Skeles his thoughts on what really happened, and I'm left stunned.

I'm confident that he was murdered. What's that? I'm pretty confident that he was murdered.

The reason why is what kind of gets me.

Well, okay, so this barber probably lived on, like, $100 a month. So if you suspect, you know, the foreigner has $300 bills in his pocket, he's got a phone, he's got maybe some other valuables.

But why Justin, then? Like, you, could pick an easier target.

The weakest link could have killed Goliath on this corner. Just the one place where you'd be walking behind someone and you'd just tap them, and they would have gone right over and not been able to self-arrest. And when the barber is questioned, he wouldn't have one story and change the story or get back and not report the fact that the guy was missing, right?

Maybe they're afraid that they'll be blamed for his murder. Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't necessarily consider that, just because of how shifty the guy was.

The guy getting hung out of nowhere in the jail cell makes you go, there's something else. Like, that's what makes me go, yeah, maybe there is something more. Did you guys interview other babas that knew him?

Yeah, everyone spoke badly about him. He was the bad baba.

Why would Justin pick that baba to go into the mountains with?

He's the guy that he had struck up a relationship with.

Trusting the wrong people?

Yeah, trusting the wrong people again.

I don't dismiss Skeels' theory. His assessment is the closest thing we have to a possible motive for murder. The problem is, as Chatwin just demonstrated, it can be easily challenged. In an attempt to open the conversation and try to hear their thoughts on other scenarios, I ask if either of them believes Justin could still be alive.

I mean, one of the hashtags that he used a lot was, live your legend, you know? The whole thing of creating your own legend is definitely something that he was playing with.

But he wouldn't have done this to his mother. He had such a tight connection with his mother.

But haven't you ever had that thought of just, what if I just could get away from everyone and everything and just one day just start over as a new person, without all my old shame and old feelings, and just recreate myself? I fucking have had that thought. What if he actually did it?

What do I think? To be honest, I really don't know. When I look at the facts, this is what I'm certain of.

I'm thinking kind of like how remote this area was. Sure.

Yeah. Eventually, to prove with certainty that Justin was murdered, Skeels offers to show me what I've been looking for.

Such a remote, wide place. Well, these were trekking trails. that was one trail up, one trail down. Yeah. Beside a river.

He opens his laptop, and, within a drop box, close to a terabyte in size, are all the photos and videos from the 2016 search,

So, this is what I spotted here. I see the flute of the guy who is missing.

Oh, God.

This is the flute, right? It looks like it. It's fresh. You can take a look. Oh, shit!

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