S4E9: Where The Kings Might Be

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Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is intended for mature audiences and may include topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical and sexual violence, rape and murder. The names of survivors have been changed for anonymity purposes. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not reflect the views of Tenderfoot TV or Odyssey. Thank you so much for listening.

I'm so fucking scared. It's okay, I know, I know.

I know it's very scary.

She said that they found a head in the water and they think that it might be FLO and they want her to go identify it. That's all that I know. So I said, I would call you and I don't know any more details than that, okay?

The searching, the not knowing, and the constant fear of finding out the worst. A few months ago, I had just flown back from Alaska and I met my younger brother, Mason, at a local bar in Atlanta for a beer. The first question he asked me was, How's the case going? By the time the beers hit the table, I checked my phone and I noticed five missed calls from Blair Flo's sister.

This was unusual. I had an awful gut feeling. I stepped away into the bathroom and called her back.

Hello.

Fifteen minutes later, I'm back, sitting next to my brother who's looking at me like, I'm insane. And all I could say was, You're not going to believe what just happened. What my instincts told me was that Blair was seriously in distress and something bad had really happened here. So I started calling other friends and family at Florence for them to find Blair as soon as possible. To figure out what happens next, throughout the next several hours, I received various texts anxiously awaiting some form of update.

Who told her This are the police involved? Was it a real human head they found in the water, or is this Florence Ocpialek's body?

Then things became a little muddier and that skeptic part of my brain kicked in.

Did anyone actually find anything at all?

The rumor mill in a small town like Nome, Alaska, is incomparable to almost any other town in the lower 48. And I've seen my fair share of unsolved murders in small-town America. Osceola, Georgia, Crestone, Colorado, Browning, Montana. But Nome is different, much more isolated from the rest of the world.

And sometimes people simply start saying shit, and most of the time it's hurtful, negative and false. The tricky part is, sometimes they're telling the truth.

It's so easy for it to get lost in the sea of white noise. The following morning, I was up at 6am sharp in full investigation mode.

Calling and texting everyone I could think of.

Also, being conscious that a false alarm like this is devastating.

Ultimately, I did find the truth.

No head was found in the water, no body either, no clothing, nothing at all. Actually, just a couple of drunk townies spreading lies to Flo's sister, arguably in her most vulnerable state.

When the cat's out of the bag, that someone, anyone serious at all, is actively pursuing the truth in a disappearance, people start to act strangely. Sometimes it's almost like people can't help themselves and have to say something, no matter how nonsensical it is. And other times, people are intentionally making up false rumors to throw off an investigation. In this case, I think we're dealing with the latter.

Needless to say, things are complicated. The trickiest part in navigating a true crime investigation of this nature is knowing when to divulge what information and when and what to do. With all the tips we're receiving, literally daily. In the meantime, you can't keep chasing all the white rabbits, but you can't ignore them either. And right now, I'm sitting on a mountain of information and I'm hoping that somewhere in there is a real answer.

So it's been a while, I know I said June, and now it's August, I'm sorry. It's also been a while since Florence Akpialik went missing and Joseph Balderas 1,435 days since FLO went missing, 2,963 since Joseph did. And I'm emphasizing this truly because of how dumbfounded I've become by the lack of response in both of these cases by law enforcement themselves, whether it be the Alaska State troopers, the known police or even the FBI.

But to be honest with you, I never thought they'd help solve these cases, to begin with, if a loved one goes missing.

No one's first thought is a podcast being a real thing. It's the law enforcement that should be doing interviewing, not investigative journalists, not private investigators. You can give people authority, but you can't make them care. So let's zoom out for a second.

A lot, and I mean, a lot has happened since we left off and my brain feels scrambled. But maybe this is what it feels like when you're starting to get close to something, you can feel it blurry in the moment, but slowly it all starts to come into focus. And maybe it's just the wishful thinking in me, that magical thinking, or maybe sometimes you just strike at the right time.

I came to the known Alaska with zero expectations, but from the second I touched down there, I knew in my gut there was a serious problem with their law enforcement. Frankly, I don't care why these cases are unsolved, that's a different investigation altogether. I'm not here to poke at their mishaps, pitfalls and any mistakes that were made. But what I do care about, and what my stubborn self can care a little too much about sometimes, is someone standing in the way of finding the truth.

We're either going around you or through you. I have a team of some of my very best friends, day in and day out, night after night. We've never stopped dissecting these cases. And the break that we took was just what we needed for the dust to settle and for the case to start breathing again. And so let's dive right into it.

But first, let's recap where we left off.

He dropped everybody else off, but her, and he says, You know what? I could have killed you and nobody would have known about it. The gentleman who owned the tent, the miner, this miner, may have been involved.

You're in a town with 3,000 people, you're telling me no one saw anything, no one has come forward.

As a listener, you need to know that there have been two things going on here. I've talked a lot about serendipity and I don't know what it all means, but sometimes weird shit just happens, stuff you can't really explain. You may recall from episode one of this season, the email I received from D'Isla about Florence Akpialik's case. After we were looking into it, and before we ever told a soul about this season at all, I also received another email.

His name is Andy Clamser. One of Joseph's friends contacted me early on. Everybody was pretty consistent about what they said about Joseph. Charismatic, smart, loved Alaska. Planning to get married?

You're dealing with basically a successful professional person who just vanishes.

She's an attorney and a family friend of Joseph's.

Andy Clamser was our private investigator, put a lot of resources into using him.

I'm an attorney, I worked in the DA's office in Anchorage for a couple of years. I wasn't anti-law enforcement. I wanted to support the troopers and think they were doing a good job. The troopers did such a shitty investigation.

And bears don't eat backpacks.

Selina recorded their conversation. This is from eight years ago, right after Joseph went missing.

My reports are not written by the time I get back to jail, I have to do it later.

We're not trying to attack y'all at all.

And now a shit ton more questions. Unfortunately, we're trying to explain to you the Department of Public Safety's position. We've had to call off searches before when we didn't want to. But the decision is made not just from a standpoint of the time, but the lack of clues. Here's the thing.

The lack of clues is in itself a clue. What kind of clue is it? Well, we need to figure that out.

Between the year 2000 and 2017, there were seven recorded fatalities from grizzly bear attacks. While these fatal encounters most certainly have occurred and do occur statistically, they're exceedingly rare. Grizzly bears are scary, powerful creatures, and they can most certainly kill you. They usually leave behind a familiar, chaotic and graphic scene. Human remains are usually scattered about personal belongings left damaged, and there's general signs of a struggle, like disturbed vegetation, blood bear tracks.

These things are almost always found at the scene, but for Joseph, however, he just simply vanished. If he did die by a bear attack, then the bear itself left not one trace of it. Being killed by a bear is already a statistical anomaly, but this is an even bigger one.

Also, what's so weird is on his tablet, there was so much information about bear safety.

If you can tell the waves and some pretty good-sized swells, I'm not going to be out here too long. I just wanted to come get a picture of it, a video.

You see, there's beautiful women on there.

You having fun?

His fiancée was alarmed right away. His usual practice was to stay in touch with her multiple times a day. Joseph wasn't responding to anything, so for him to not respond to her messages was very unusual.

If she messaged him, he messaged her right back. Good morning meg.

Bye.

All right, bye, love.

Megan, I love you and I want you to have a great day today. And I hope you know well, I know that you know that you're the most amazing person in the world to me. Bye, my love.

Okay, me, too.

I love you meg. Easily our earliest hour to get off the phone. Good night love.

You mean everything to me. I love the song too. Gonna listen to it on the way to work.

Thursday night, June 23rd.

Pink and obviously first fillet job on the beach in 2016..

I love you. you're the most beautiful woman in the world. My love. I'm heading back out. Sweet dreams.

And you are the most handsome man in the world, my love sweet dreams. Have fun.

Thinking of you.

Couch shopping Wish you were here?

Good night, love you so much.

I'm honestly getting a little worried now because I haven't heard from you and I can't sleep. Please text when you can and let me know you're safe. I'm worried.

Today's date is July 28th. It's Thursday 2016, approximately 7.05 p...m. Alaska time. In the matter of Joseph Balderas.

The first private investigator keyed in on a woman named Christine, a friend of Joseph's who lived in Nome, according to witness statements and Christine's own personal testimony. She is the last person to have seen him alive that weekend.

Late in the evening on Friday, June 24th, Joseph was alive and well. We know this with great certainty. Based on the text with his fiancee and, more importantly, a phone call he placed to Megan earlier that night, sometime after Joseph spoke to Megan on the phone. He allegedly goes downtown to the local bars in Nome. At around midnight that Friday night, he meets up with his friend Christine, according to Christine, her sister Kim was there, also making it two eyewitness accounts.

Whatever happened to Joseph happened after midnight on Friday, June 24th. Over the course of the next few hours, Joseph's timeline starts to get a little confusing. The first private investigator interviewed Christine just a few weeks after he went missing.

June 24th, 25th and 26th were Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The 27th was a Monday. Okay, is that your understanding, too? Yeah, I have a hard time remembering what I ate for breakfast, so I know looking back a couple of weeks can be tough sometimes.

You went out with Joseph on Friday or Saturday? It was Friday because he texted me about 12.15, asked what I was doing, and so I called him. He's like, Well, I'm just getting some food. I was just wondering if you wanted to go out have a few drinks.

I said, Okay, well, I mean, we're not quite leaving yet, and I don't think we met up with him until about one o'clock, one o'clock in the morning. Yeah, so technically Saturday.

Yeah, and Plaris was the first place you went to. Yeah, we met up with him at Plaris.

Who's we, me, Kim and Joseph? My sister and I met up with him.

And we only stayed there probably for a shot and a drink, a shot and a beer, and then we went to and a shot and a beer. Takes about how long for you guys? We were probably there for 20 minutes and then after that we just started visiting with people.

And I don't know what he did after, but I know Kim and I had went to B.

O.

T.

You might remember this from Flo's case.

What, when's that 2.45? And would you have been at B.O.T at that time then? yeah.

Okay, so I'm going to estimate the time you were at breakers for how long? probably would say about a half an hour.

O.

T So, as far as this case is concerned, you would have no know about really where he went that night after. 2. No, okay, because I mean, I didn't text him, but I didn't call to check on him either because usually he goes home.

I mean, I've never known him to go to an after party. I mean, we didn't drink a lot all the time together. But I know that he's not one to go out and party because of his job, and so I would say he probably went home.

And this is when things get way more confusing, or, may I even say, concerning.

So Friday night, you and your sister go out, take me from there. Where do you go? And what time we went to Polaris?

And then we must have been there for like, half an hour. Maybe who's we? Me and her? Just you and her, yeah.

She said Joseph was on his layover and I said, Okay.

Then he comes and gets a beer.

Do you know about what time he showed up? Like, well, 30, maybe.

And then he had a beer and we went over to Breaker's and we stay there till about 2.30 and then I came home.

I usually tend to try to not go to Bot because I usually see people I don't want to see.

But I don't think we did.

He was there, he was only there with us at Polaris and then at Breaker's. You know, it was just that's where we hung out most of the night. And then him and Chrissy. I really felt like Third will.

Were he and Chrissy kind of kissy-kissy boyfriend-girlfriend, hold hands type relationship, or just more brother-sister type relationship? I thought about that They were like boyfriend-girlfriend.

Both Christine and Kim have very different recollections of that night. And hey, sometimes after a night of drinking, that can happen. Did we go here or there, or what was the last bot? But when someone goes missing afterwards, these details become extremely important.

In Christine's version, they parted ways with Joseph after. The second bar called Breaker's, and she spent the rest of her night with her sister Kim at the Bot bar. But Kim says she went to Polaris, then Breaker's, and then went home afterwards by herself, just her, leaving Joseph and Christine together.

Kim also seemed to have a different viewpoint on Christine and Joseph's relationship.

He fit right in and my family thought we should date, but him and I just friends, better off friends.

You called him and said.

We just talked about just generally, whatever I mean, there's really no specific, you know. Well, I'm going to go to the beach and it's nice out, I'm going to eat, I'm going to shower.

I'm going to clean up and then take the kids to the beach. About how long did you guys talk for? Probably about 20 to 25 minutes, nothing specific, just real like him and I were always real random.

Whatever came up is whatever we talked about, right? You don't remember any specific statements he ever made. If I'm going here, I'm going to do this or that. No, we talked about that at the beach.

And so 10.

27 was when I first talked to him that day, and then I got, I showered, I cleaned up, and then I called him.

30 a.

M. Joseph's family provided us his cell phone records, which list out all ingoing and outgoing calls and texts, and the length of the calls. The contents of the text messages themselves aren't logged, according to Joseph's cell phone records. The call Christine made to his phone that Saturday morning lasted 27 minutes, so not a quick call.

15, because it was about 12.

18 is. When I called him and he said he was coming to the beach, I said, OK, well, I'm already here. This is where I'm at. Look for my truck. He's like, OK, well, I'll have my blue truck.

I said, OK, I'll see you. And then a few minutes went by and then he came down there and then we were there. Probably until about 2.30 ish quarter to three, because by then it started getting really hot. Was he pretty hungover? And it didn't seem like it?

So you hung out at each beach for approximately how long, probably about until 2.30, quarter to three, just about two hours. We let the kids play, just hung out. And so I asked him what he was going to do because I was like, Well, it's nice out, I'm going to get ready.

I'm going to get things and go to camp. you're welcome to go if you want, my Graham's camp.

He's like, Well, I'm going to go fishing, and at that time I didn't think there was any fish, but it's just my judgment because there's usually not. He's like, Well, I'm going to go fishing, I said, where he's like, at the mouth, at Nome River Mouth.

I said, OK, so you don't want to go to camp? He's like, No, I said, Why are you going to go fishing? There's really no fish, you just get to go and look.

He's like, Well, I'll just go and look fishing where at the mouth of the Nome River.

And I kind of was like, why there's no fish? He's like, I'm just going to go look, so I said, OK.

And then that was that.

She then invites them to go to her family's camp with her for a get-together they were having. But Joseph declines, and he tells Christine that he's going fishing at the mouth of the Nome River. Then Joseph gets in his truck, drives away and was never seen again.

Here's Joseph's sister Selena.

Was he upset about anything not that I know of? Because he was excited that he had mentioned to me before, not the same weekend, but he had mentioned to me before that him and Megan were going to get married. I said, Okay, well, I started asking questions, I said, How long have you been dating? Wow, did you meet her?

What do you guys plan to do? Because he was moving to Juneau because his term was done here in August and he seemed excited about it. And I said, Okay, well, you guys have, let's see, you've been single for six years, right?

He's like, Yeah, and now you've been dating for what? Six months-ish? Yeah, it was five months, six months. And I was like, And you're going to get married? I was like, Don't you think that's a little dumb, Joseph?

So, in your mind, the question I asked you earlier is, Do you have any idea what happened? So, in your mind, one of the options that you don't think happened is. He just walked off, just on purpose, just trying to disappear. You don't think that? I don't know why he would do that.

I don't see why, I mean, I don't think so. So, you essentially are concluding that, well, you couldn't really get lost out there, but you're thinking maybe that nature had a role in this. I have no idea. I mean, I'm still having faith that he's out there somewhere.

Sometime after 2.

45 p.

M.

Joseph hops in his truck and drives off to go fishing, but no one has seen him since then, looking through Joseph's cell phone records. Something about that Saturday meeting at the beach that apparently lasted over two hours didn't really make sense to me. Here's why.

I can see the call Christine made to him at 10.

36 a.

M.

A 27-minute call, then, at 12.46 p..m. Christine calls Joseph's phone again. This call lasted about a minute and five seconds, based on Christine's account, this would presumably be the call she made. Where Joseph agrees to meet her at the beach. And if they spent over two hours there, then Joseph must have arrived at the beach pretty quickly after this 12.46 p..m. call.

But here's what his records show. After Christine's call at 12.46 p..m, Christine texts Joseph at 12.55 p...m. Then she texts Joseph again at 1 p..m. Then she calls Joseph a third time at 1.18 p...m. A call that lasted 48 seconds. This is about 45 minutes to an hour after Joseph is supposed to have already been at the beach with her.

Maybe her times are off, but then, at 1.32 p..m. Christine again texts Joseph By this point, if what she's saying is true, Joseph should most certainly be at the beach already. Especially if they stayed there for over two hours, like she says, and that he left no later than 2.45 p..m. to go fishing. So, in conclusion, we're pretty much missing an entire hour here.

Either that or Christine was calling and texting Joseph when they were together at the beach, when she was literally right in front of him. Hmm, I just don't like it. We only have Joseph's phone records to go off of. Joseph's actual cell phone is missing along with him.

So the only way we could find out more about what they were talking about that day is from Christine's phone.

The private investigator asked Christine if she could supply the text to his family.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

So it ended up disabling it and then I had to connect to iTunes to restore it.

That's not how you know, that's not what happens. So it was just this, like, really flimsy excuse, very weird timing, for sure.

You know how you can go back and say, OK, back it up to this day. It never did ask me, just asked if I wanted to set up as a new one or whatever. The other option was on iTunes one. That's not the laptop that I. I didn't sync this to a laptop because my laptop's gone, and so I didn't sync that one because that one didn't have iTunes.

I had to download iTunes Sunday to restore it.

Trying to make sense of it all is maddening. The reality is, we simply need more information. So we kept digging, going through files and papers all provided by the private investigators in Joseph's family. Before Christine was ever interviewed by the private investigator, she was initially interviewed by the Alaska State Troopers. We got our hands on the official police report.

According to the official police report, Christine claims that she was with Joseph at the beach on Saturday from approximately 2.

45 p.

M to 3.15 p...m. Wait, what? Christine told the P..I she was with him for over two hours and that he left the beach no later than 2.45..

So was she with Joseph for 30 minutes or two hours, and did he leave the beach at 2?

45. Or is that when he got there? There now feels to be way more than just a lot wrong with Christine's story. But why?

That's a question that's always bothered Joseph's family, and one thing you'll learn about the Balderases is they're fighters. Their investigation has never stopped. Two years later, Joseph's sister Selena managed to get her hands on another set of phone records Christine's phone records.

And they make things even more puzzling than they already are. Just like Joseph's phone logs, they don't show the contents of their text. But I can see way further back in their communication, going back several months, between April 29, 2016, and June 24, 2016. The night she met Joseph at the bar, Christine never once called Joseph, literally not one time, only texts.

But she texted him frequently. Then, all of a sudden, starting that Friday night, Christine calls Joseph a total of 16 times in a period of less than 24 hours. Then he goes missing.

What is the deal here?

And what about Joseph's last message to his fiancée Megan? That morning, around 9.30 a..m, He allegedly texts his fiancée Megan via WhatsApp, saying.

This was completely out of character for him. I asked the private investigator, Andy Klamser, to put me in touch with Megan Joseph's former fiancée to ask her about those messages. And the very first thing she told me has sent me down an entirely new rabbit hole. The tone and nuance of his last text message to me.

He said.

The roommate lied about his whereabouts on Saturday night. PAYNE I have a video, it has to do with Balderas. I'm scared.

Editing by Mike Rooney and Cooper Skinner, with additional editing by Dylan Harrington. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Additional production by Victoria McKenzie, Alice Kanik-Glenn and Eric Quintana. Artwork by Rob Sheridan. original music by Makeup and Vanity set.

Mix and mastered by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group. Special thanks to all of the families and community members that spoke to the team. Additional information and resources can be found in our show notes. For more podcasts like Up and Vanished, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app, or visit us at Tenderfoot..tv.

Thanks for listening.