Bonus | The Adventures Of Justin
2024-04-19 00:36:01
In 2016, survivalist and world traveler Justin Alexander goes missing in the Parvati Valley while on a spiritual trek into the Himalayan Mountains. While the circumstances of his disappearance point to murder, a chilling message he left behind throws everything into question: “I should return mid-September or so. If I’m not back by then, don’t look for me.” Four years later, host and true crime newcomer Liam Luxon is introduced to Justin's story and embarks on an investigation into the mysterious case. "Status-Untraced" is a 10-episode journey that explores the secrets the Valley holds, the stones left unturned, and what really happened to Justin Alexander.
Status Untraced is released weekly every Wednesday, and brought to you absolutely free. But if you want to hear the whole season right now, it's available ad-free on Tenderfolk Plus. For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
He was a very, very serious nature student. I mean, he took it really seriously.
Many years ago, Kevin Reeve directed Tom Brown's tracking school, the Wilderness Survival Program, where Justin Alexander began his training. It was there, when Justin was just 16, that they met. Sadly, Kevin passed away in late 2023.. However, before he did, I had the opportunity to speak with him, and he fondly recalled those early days of teaching a young Justin survival skills.
Just a quick story. I had learned from a SEAL, it was called Hoju Jutsu, which is the art of tying, which he learned in a Japanese whorehouse. And he taught me how to tie people up in such a way that they couldn't escape. And I was talking about it, and Justin says, you all escape, you can tie me up any way you want, and I'll escape. I said, challenge accepted.
So I tied him up like you can't believe. Now this, I had him what's called chicken winged, which means his arms were behind his back and up really high. And then I took the rope over his ears and over his eyes. So struggling, really hurt. I gained so much admiration that day because he tried everything to get out of that rope and wouldn't quit.
He finally ended up hooking the rope on a screw and over his ear. But in the process, he nearly cut his own ear off.
And he came out bleeding, but he got out. And I looked at him and said, dude, if you could have just come and got me, I wouldn't have let you go. But he was not going to, he wasn't going to give up, you know. So we kind of had to practically reattach his ear. And he was okay after that, but he still had a scar on it the last time I saw him.
So anyway, that was pretty typical of him.
There were countless tales that we couldn't squeeze into the podcast. Stories from both Justin's close friends and from Justin himself. Whether it was death-defying stunts or moments of kindness, each story further illustrated his unique character and the profound impact he had on others. While it was impossible to include every anecdote in our episodes, we wanted to create a space to share these special stories here.
The last time I went to Nepal, I landed in Kathmandu, and the first night I was up on top of the rooftop with a bunch of travelers, and everyone was talking about all the hikes that they did. And someone mentioned that they really wanted to go up in this place called Mustang.
This is Justin on Dr. Christopher Ryan's podcast, Tendentially Speaking.
And then I remembered that my friend Tashi had told me about it, and I decided that, oh, that's the place I'm going to go, and I ended up getting an interpreter and went up there. I, uh, it's like, I think you get a five-day, you pay for like a five-day pass. to get up in there. You have to register to get into the district, and you have to have an interpreter with you, legally. Um, so I ended up paying a little bit extra and getting 10 days, and then, once he got me up there, I got rid of him and ended up wandering around on my own for the rest of the time.
I was up in the mountains for a little over three weeks, walked maybe three, four hundred miles.
Would you to push him off a cliff or something?
No, but I was like, well, I'm, I really don't want to have an interpreter. I want to be up here on my own. And he was really worried about, you know, cause he has a contract with a touring company and didn't want to have liability of losing me or something like that. But eventually I was able to pay him off and convince him that I'd be fine. and, uh, took off on my own.
So I ended up spending the first part of that and made a little video that's up on my Adventures of Justin blog and, uh, you know, wrote some stories and have some pictures, uh, that place is just magical and it feels like stepping back in time, which is the thing about travel that I love so much is the ability, not just to see places, but to, I feel like I'm able to time travel.
We'll play a couple more selects from Dr. Ryan's podcast, but I highly recommend checking it out again. It's called Tangentially Speaking and you'll find Justin on episodes 143 and 167..
We had, I think there were a hundred people. So we had 10 groups of 10, and the way it worked is we hooded them and handcuffed them and then loaded 10 people into each vat.
This is another story from Kevin Reeve. Justin once assisted as a trainer during one of Reeve's urban survival courses in Los Angeles. Over the course of a weekend, they taught participants how to break free from binds and escape restraints. On the final day, attendees were placed into a simulated kidnapping scenario. They had pillowcases, duct taped over their heads, hands zip tied, and were packed like sardines into the back of a sprinter van.
One, Justin was driving.
And they were in the back and we were going to drive them around and then park somewhere and they had to escape from there, and then we had people chasing them all day.
And we had a caravan of 10 vans full of 10 hooded and handcuffed people. So if you can imagine what that looked like. And we made a right turn in Santa Monica onto a street that was blocked by the police.
I'm sitting in the passenger seat, Justin's driving.
We pull up, the cops, you know, says, Hey, what are you doing down this road? It's closed. He says, Well, we made a mistake in navigation here. We'll just turn around. I'm talking to the cop.
I said, We'll just turn around and get out of here. And he says, You know, I could write you up and I could even arrest you guys for this. And I thought to myself, Boy, you have no idea. Because he couldn't see the people in the back. I said, If you knew what was really going on, we'd really get arrested.
And Justin was just smiling. He was just sitting there smiling. And the cop goes, What are you so happy about? He says, Oh, nothing. I'm just in a good mood.
And then we made a U-turn and all the other cars U-turned and we got out of there. But he was so calm. He thought it was really funny. And I was afraid he was going to say something. So, you know, that was.
that was pretty typical of the kinds of stuff that happened.
I mean, Justin, I'm guessing other people have said this to you. Justin is someone who I was talking to my daughter about it today. It's almost impossible to believe he's gone. Like, I think everyone still has this like, Oh, you know, he's been hiding out. He just wanted to do this off-grid thing.
You know, he's going to pop back up somewhere.
Some of the first people I had the chance to speak with were past instructors from the Wilderness Awareness School. And this is one of them, Ann Ospaldestin.
I knew Justin at Wilderness Awareness School. And he was, I guess, I think, probably 15 at that point. And, you know, already barefoot, long-haired, just like super, connected already to the woods and to everything.
Ann remembers the school as a magical place. Nestled on 18 acres, around 40 minutes from Seattle, Washington, this enchanted forest was filled with towering cedars, hemlocks, vine, maples, moss and ferns, centered around a serene pond, a true sanctuary.
Gosh, those first couple of years was just this pack of kind of feral kids running around in the woods. You know, learning to track, learning to make fires, even in the rain, learning what was moving through the forest by listening to the birds. It was just a really magical time. You know, Justin was really one of the core kids, one of the core players in that whole scene. I was trying to think when I talked to you, what stories I was going to tell about him, but one of the first ones I remember was John Young was teaching a class in the Stonehouse Bookstore in Redmond in Washington.
John Young is considered one of the leading experts of wilderness education. An author of several deep nature books, he taught at the school for a number of years.
And we used to play this game, it was an awareness game. The kids, they'd try to clip a clothespin on someone without being seen. But Justin was always taking things further than anyone else. So during this one class, John's up front telling stories, everybody's engaged. And Justin, from the back of this row of chairs, starts crawling, belly, crawling under the chairs.
And, like, you know, people are sitting there, so they're having to move their feet or whatever. And he's heading for Mark, the president of the board. And from across the room, everyone's watching him and trying not to laugh or let on. And he doesn't just have a clothespin, he has jumper cables. And he's crawling on his belly with this set of jumper cables that he manages to clip onto Mark's cuffs of his pants and back himself out of there without being caught.
And it's not until the break when Mark stands up and starts to walk and he realizes, oh, he's attached to jumper cables, he can't walk, that the whole room just erupts laughing. And Justin's so proud. It was the best. You know, everyone was so impacted by him. And, you know, he had the ability just to really, I think, make people feel special and feel seen.
Each person you talk to, it's going to be this incredible rabbit hole because he had such incredible relationships with everyone. I don't know. I mean, it's tragic, but it's also kind of weirdly beautiful that we don't know and that he disappeared in the Himalayas. I mean, if Justin were going to write a story about himself, wouldn't he write it this way?
Like, went and lived with a tribe in Indonesia called the Mentawai tribe and, you know, lived out in the jungle for 10 days with a couple of families. They do all the traditional tattoos, like the lines and stuff like that. Stayed with a couple of shaman. And, you know, they still hunt with poison, tip, bow and arrows and stuff like that. Where was that?
This is a small cluster of islands called the Mentawai, which is famous in the surf world because they have one of the most consistent surf and beautiful tropical island off the west coast of Sumatra.
Okay.
Sibirut Island is the one that I went to. It's the most southern of the cluster. And the whole interior, like all their elders, still live out in the old ways. And, you know, you end up taking a five-hour motorized dugout canoe ride up these muddy rivers to get out to this place. And I hired an interpreter there.
And, yeah, he took me up. And, man, it was definitely. I felt like I could have been a thousand years ago.
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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 around. She's, like, I can't.
A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's, 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, yeah, well, yeah.
No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical.
Oh, my gosh, you're exaggerating.
Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely?
Something's wrong here. Something's not right.
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+.
Me and him were kind of leading the charge on that. We were out in Idaho. It was like forest fires going on all around us. And we were tracking down these packs of wolves that had kind of splintered.
Tom McElroy, a tracker and survival expert, has taught over 15,000 students worldwide in the past 20 years, sharing the wisdom he gained from his formative years alongside Justin.
So the Forest Wildlife Service or whatever, didn't have information on lots of the packs. And so we would just go around and do like 20 miles a day, hiking up and down the mountains of Idaho, trying to catch up with these wolves. And just an amazing experience.
With a wealth of experience and deep knowledge in survival, Tom's stories are usually about adventure and the will to overcome. Yet this tale he shared veered into the unexpected. It's a story that teeters on the brink of tragedy. A testament to the thin line between life and death. A moment that could have ended everything.
So he did a lot of work with John Young. And John traveled all around teaching Native awareness, nature awareness. And Justin helped him.
As many found this to be a pivotal moment in Justin's life, Kirsten Young, one of Justin's past mentors, also shared this story with me.
So they did a lot of traveling. And at one point, I think they were traveling west on like Route 90 or something like this. They were going through Minnesota. And Ren, John's daughter, was going out with Justin at the time. And they were in the front of the truck.
And in the back was Jason Knight.
And somehow they don't know how, because Justin doesn't remember what happened. They flipped the truck over like 15 times across the median.
And Jason was in the very back of the pickup truck with a cap on it. And he just ping-ponged back and forth because he had been sleeping. And he drags himself out. And the car is on its side in the middle of the highway. And Ren was in the passenger seat.
Ren has to climb up over Justin to get out of the car. Justin is like unconscious in the car.
And they assume Justin is dead because there's just this bloody body all over the seat.
Jason says, just as he's pulling Ren out of the window, this huge semi-truck comes barreling down the highway at 80 miles an hour.
In the meantime, Justin was hanging in the seat. And this tractor-trailer hits into their truck.
And they say that the Hershey truck knocks Justin and the rest of the pickup truck another hundred yards down the highway at 80 miles an hour.
And so they were just like, oh, he's obviously dead at this point. And so, you know, Jason kind of like goes running with like a busted leg down the highway.
Now, John Young, who was in the pickup truck, John Young is ahead of them. He doesn't even know this is happening. And he's like trying to figure things out. Ren must have called him and he circles back around. And he just sees this like tractor-trailer, with all the shit all over the road.
And he's freaking out. But he also sees like a spirit of Justin standing on the side of the road. And, according to this story, he tells Justin to get back in his body.
The ambulances show up, I guess. They take Ren. They take Jason.
And they pull his body out and he's like just barely alive.
They take Justin to a hospital.
And so he spent two months or something in the hospital.
And the story was confirmed by Justin. when he came to. I saw John. He told me to get back in my body.
And so I didn't see him that whole time. And I heard how bad it was. But then, probably three months later, he came back to New Jersey and I saw him. He looked okay. Like he definitely had some scars on his face and stuff like that.
Nothing too bad. And I was like, oh, that didn't look too bad. You know, I thought you got in a bad accident. And I was just messing with him a little bit. But like, he gave me a look that I hadn't seen up until that point, which was like definitely a fear of recognition that he is very much penetrable.
There was a huge shift. I can't say exactly. He got pretty messed up, but not like brain damaged or anything. He definitely broke a few things. But not like you would think, being hit like by a tractor trailer.
You know, and I think it was that look that I'd never seen in him before, which was the fear of like, oh, my God. You have no idea what I've been through. And so, yeah, it was really interesting. for even six months, a year after that, like little bits of window glass would pop up to the surface of his skin. And he's just like, what are those lumps on your arm?
I was like, oh, it's just window glass. I have to go to the hospital every couple of months and they cut out all the window glass. And so at some point he got so sick of it that he would just have us take some obsidian from our flint knapping pit. And we cut open his little skin and pull out some window glass. And then he just saw it back shut himself.
I mean, that's how bad the accident was. It's buried tons and tons of chunks of window glass into his body that what, 15 years later, is still coming out. It's crazy.
And you were a monk.
Yeah, the story is in 2007,. previously spent the summer in Nepal and really, really loved the form of Buddhism that I saw there up in the mountains, like visiting monasteries and hanging out with these very peaceful red robed monks and sitting up in the mornings while they're reading their mantras by the candle. And I had a big curiosity about that form of Buddhism. And I went back to the U.S. and studied a bunch and was learning a lot and doing a lot of meditation.
When I got to Thailand, I was kickboxing and I broke my foot in my first fight and I wasn't able to train anymore. And I was kind of bummed out about it, because that's why I came here. And I ended up meeting a Thai guy who's my age. And he was like, I know you're bummed out because you can't train, but I'm going to take a bus a few hours away out into rural province down south of Chiang Mai and visit my family. If you want to see what real Thai life is like, this would be a great opportunity.
I said, well, hell yes. So I did that and his family really, really liked me. And one night we're sitting around as we would by a fire in the backyard and like grilling pork and drinking Leo beers. And I was asking him about the Thai Buddhism. And he said that traditionally all Thai males become a monk.
And what it is, is good luck for the family. It's kind of like good karma. I was told that if the son becomes a monk, then the mother and father are assured to go to heaven. So it's like a big deal. And I asked him, I said, well, have you done that?
Have you or Noom done this? He said, no, you know, it's not as popular anymore and you just don't really want to. And I was like, man, if that was a part of my culture, I would definitely do that because that would be so interesting. I'm very curious about it. And that was the end of the conversation.
And, you know, no one else in the family understood what I was saying because I don't speak English. And the next morning he came up to me and said, I had to talk to mom and dad about what you said last night. And they said they want to adopt you and then you can become a monk and then there'll be a blessing on the family. And I'm like, and it will get me and my brother out. It's like, whoa, man, you can't really say no to that.
And you were a stand in, a monk stand in.
So I just had to, there was a bunch of stuff I had to learn. I actually became a monk on January 1st of 2007..
Okay, Burning Man. Yeah.
What year was this Burning Man too?
Well, let me set it up by saying in 2014, we were both in Black Rock City, which is the name of the temporary city that's built for the Burning Man Festival.
Like I said in episode one, when we were in Venice, gathered around a picnic table, we met with Justin's friend, Jason Schultz. Hours flew by as we delved into the wealth of tales he had to share. Jason, with his knack for storytelling, brought Justin Alexander's adventures to life in a way that few can. As we draw this bonus episode to a close, we're excited to share a selection of those stories with you.
But just to give you an idea, even if you know where someone is camping, it doesn't mean you'll see them. Because there's so many people and it's just this crazy festival and there's a billion people around. So this story that I'm about to tell you is from 2015.. I knew I was going to go to Burning Man and he wasn't sure and he probably wasn't going to go. He hit me up and he said, I'm 580 miles away and I'd have to ride with my lights off under the cover of darkness.
He's talking about his motorcycle. I'm deciding tomorrow morning if I'll go.
So the next morning he messages me, okay, I decided I'm going for it. I've heard security is insane, night vision and stuff. Justin's riding in under the cover of darkness with his lights off to evade Burning Man security with no ticket. To crash the Burning Man festival via an unsanctioned path, coming in from a different angle of the wide desert. That's his plan.
And I got really sick. And then,
Justin's motorcycle parks outside my tent. Justin comes in the tent.
Justin found me. In this moment where I was so sick and so in a bad way, and you could think there'd be nothing good about this trip. This is one of the last times that I ever really got to spend time with Justin. Because, of course, I didn't know it, but our days together in this world were quite numbered at this point in the story.
So, the year before, he came looking for me a few times and he couldn't find me. This year I'm sick, I can't move, but somehow he finds me. And he comes into the tent. and Justin, pretty popular, and Burning Man was definitely a place where he could have spent a lot of time with a lot of people. But, for whatever reason, he wanted to hang out with me for a lot of that week.
And I was just sick in the tent, but that's where his motorcycle stayed.
And that's what became his little home, like, where he would come back to. And, yeah, definitely not a bad memory, despite whatever I was going through.
I don't look back on it as like, oh, I wish I didn't go out to the desert that year.
So, yeah, that's my Justin Burning Man story.
So, let me tell you about the time that Justin showed me Deep Creek. Myself and good old Baby Bird and Justin were hanging out. one day. I was living in L.A. Justin was visiting and started talking to us about his favorite place that he'd ever been.
Now, if you were telling me about your favorite place that you ever have been, I might be somewhat interested, because that's always interesting. But with the context of Justin's life, with the context that he liked to stroll through the Himalayas barefoot and look at the stars. Whoa, your favorite place in the world. And it just so happens. it's less than three hours away from where we're sitting.
We can just drive down there. Deep Creek Hot Springs. And he starts describing it to me. Yeah, you put your feet down in the sand and it feels, and he goes on and on and on. He describes this incredible place where there's these several hot springs of varying different temperatures.
And they're not sulfurous hot springs like when you get that eggy smell or something like that. The magnetic core of the earth is just heating the water up, naturally, and then it's pouring out from the rocks, and then pools are forming. And people have come along and built those pools up and stacked rocks to capture the hot water. So Justin's describing this place to us and Baby Bird goes, well, let's go. And he's like, OK, well, when should we schedule this out?
Like months or whatever. And we're like, no, we're going to go. So we put together plans to start ordering the gear that we need right now, because we don't have anything. I've never been hiking, let alone camping. So you're not allowed to camp at Deep Creek and you're not allowed to have fires at Deep Creek.
But some rules are meant to be. And we we did. We did stay there. So we needed to get some gear. And as soon as we had all the stuff, we packed into a car and we just went down to Deep Creek Hot Springs.
So the hiking is downhill. You're hiking down into the valley.
And I grew up. All I want to do is play Nintendo and stay inside. And I just wasn't ever interested in experiencing Mother Earth. It just wasn't something that I cared about as a child, as a teenager. Up until this moment in my life, because this trip completely changed how I feel about nature.
And I forever am far more connected to the Earth, the planet and experiencing all of its wonders.
And Justin really was the closest that I will ever know. Unless my life takes some kind of seriously bizarre twist to knowing somebody that was a real adventurer in that way.
Anyway, I've never been the same. I love nature. now. I've been back to Deep Creek fairly regularly. I try to get there at least once a year, which I mostly have since you showed me the place.
That's a tough hike. Oh my God, I'm coming out. Thanks so much for saying that. This is probably the best story that I can share about Justin's whole life. I put a lot of pressure on it.
But thank you so much for telling me how tough the hike out was. Because this, if there's one thing that I can take away from knowing Justin of what I strive to be in this world. It comes from this story. Hiking out of Deep Creek.
I had my backpack, my gear. We obviously were trying to hike out some extra trash, so we were all trying to carry a little extra trash. But it quickly became apparent, Justin was going to be the one carrying the extra trash. All of it. Because I was struggling.
And then, at some point, fairly early on in the hike out, Justin said, well, let me take your bag. And I said, no, I'm not going to give you my bag. I got it. And I'm still saying, he says, hey man, let me carry your bag for you. And I said, I can't do that.
That's like cheating. I'm not going to make you carry my stuff. And he said, well, you're not making me. I'm offering to carry your bag. And also, it's not going to be any trouble.
It's not a problem. I can do it. And you are already challenging yourself in a way that you've never challenged yourself before. You're already trying to climb this mountain to get out of here. And you've never done anything like that.
And it's already this incredibly difficult thing for you. So let me carry your bag. And you can still experience this incredible challenge for yourself. And I was like, are you sure? And he's, yeah, I'm sure.
So I gave him my bag. And he slung it over the shoulder with the extra trash bags and all the stuff that he was carrying. And, you know, whistled a happy tune as he calmly strutted up the mountain. But here's what I take from that moment. And here's what I challenge all of us to take.
Is that what Justin recognized was? you should strive to get yourself to a place where you're not just carrying your own weight. But you have the energy and capability to spare. To help someone else who's got a little extra weight right now. And help bear some of that burden and some of that load.
Because it's one thing to strive to be able to carry all your own stuff. And I encourage everyone to think of stuff in this case as not just a literal physical example. But I think we all know that we have some stuff to carry. And we're all on a journey to learn how we can carry our own stuff. But to not stop there.
And to say, I need to keep going because there's other people who need a hand. There's other people who I want to be able to extend my hand out to and say, Hey, I see the incredible challenge that you're facing right now. And I commend it. Let me carry a little bit of that extra weight for you while you rise to this challenge and grow. So I'm glad that you mentioned how tough the hike out was.
Because that's probably my favorite Justin Slow that I have. Of all my memories of Justin.
I want to thank everyone who interviewed with us. And give another shout out to Christopher Ryan. For allowing us to use vignettes of his podcast. They are some of the few long-form conversations with Justin that exist. So again, I recommend checking it out.
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I am sitting next to the creek, right behind our campsite. We, uh, up here at Deep Creek. Hiked up, it's about a two and a half hour hike.
And the final descent, you just walk into this like oasis of a valley.
And it's absolutely gorgeous.
And it's just, it's magical.
This place is something else.
This is not, uh,
not a place. I plan on forgetting.
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