Status: Untraced - E8: Don't Lose Your Hope

It started with a backpack at the 1996 centennial Olympic Games, a backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar.

I saw as soon as I turned the corner, basically someone bleeding out.

The victims of these brutal attacks were left to pick up the pieces. Forced to explore the gray areas between right and wrong, life and death, their once ordinary lives and mine changed forever.

It kind of gave me a feeling of pending doom.

And all the while, our country found itself facing down a long and ugly reckoning with a growing threat far-right, homegrown religious terrorism. Listen to Flashpoint starting July 25th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

As promised, here is Status Untraced Episode 8.

Malana is a picturesque town in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. It is secluded and cocooned in its cultural and social fabric. However, amidst that beauty lurks a dark secret.

We've heard whispers about this village, Malana. It's here inside the Parvati Valley, and known to produce what many say is the finest hashish in the world.

It's quite obvious that this activity is illegal. Why hasn't there been any sort of intervention that has succeeded in this production? This village, people there consider themselves to be the descendants of soldiers of Alexander the Great. If you go to buy something there, you cannot touch them, you cannot shake hands. You'll have to leave the money on the counter and they will come and pick it up.

So how does Malana brazenly run a drug trade? Well, it's simple they don't allow the police in. This story was aired on October 19, 2016, right when search teams were looking for Justin Alexander, Justin, as we know, was dealing Hashish.

But the biggest challenge, of course, is for the law enforcement authorities to implement the law.

Why would law enforcement turn a blind eye to an illegal drug trade? What's going on here? That causes them to blatantly ignore their duties? One way to find out pull on the thread.

Sometimes I get the feeling I'm lost. Yes, I admit it's never enough. Now I find in every mirror a ghost.

Only once I saw the killer, Once I saw the killer up close. I'm Liam Luxon and this is status Untraced episode 8. Don't lose your hope.

Yeah, Mushalik.

Since landing in India, I've found the stories we've been tracking have in a way shifted. Take, for instance, the death of the baba. What I gathered back in the states isn't lining up with what I've seen here. Alex and I are scratching our heads, second-guessing every statement we've heard, wondering what we are missing.

I was the first person from the two of us. It was just unintentionally that we fell into it.

As we've previously mentioned, our guides Kabir and Arshdeep are no strangers to the world of missing person cases, with Kabir just in from Delhi. We seize the opportunity to sit down with them both, curious as to what we can learn from the incidents prior to Justin's. Had you guys ever worked on a crime case before?

I was involved with one case way back in around the 2000s, you know, that's when a lot of Western people were going missing from the Hampta region in Malay.

Lots of foreign people, they were killed over there.

During that time, a lot of people got killed and it was definitely the same group of people, but no witnesses came up.

Kabir recalls a slew of horror stories about travelers who have mysteriously ended up missing or dead. And one case stands out. It occurred almost exactly a year prior to Justin's.

A friend of mine, a guy from Poland, while he was staying here, he found out that there's somebody, a Polish guy, who's gone missing. So he wanted to see if he could be of any help, and he asked me if you can help.

Bruno Muszalik, a 24-year-old from Poland, was your typical college kid full of dreams of seeing the world. He graduated and was recruited by the esteemed Ernst Young as one of a select group of standout candidates. But before he swapped his backpack for a briefcase, Bruno set out on a solo trip to New Delhi. In July 2015, he made his way to Manali, a town just outside the Parvati Valley, and hung out there for about a week.

Police in India is completely nothing, no modern equipment, nothing like a police should have, you know? So we were traveling from place to place and trying to collect any other evidences, testimonials, people who may deliver any additional details to this story.

The only clue to Bruno's whereabouts was his backpack. He left at a Manali guesthouse, a sign, like Justin, that he planned to return.

And he told me he saw Bruno in Leh with two Israeli girls.

Leh is a high mountain city north of Kulu.

We went there and talking to local people around and we found this guy in a shop. He was 100 swearing, I recognized him, etc. And Bruno was, according to him, was sitting on a sofa and he described those two Israeli girls.

Pyotr and Tomas went to extreme lengths to identify these two Israeli girls, including multiple trips to India and a trip to Israel. It led to nothing.

After that, we didn't find any more traces, so after one and a half month, we came back to Poland.

Weeks later, Pyotr and Tomas returned to India for a second trip and found another eyewitness, this time in New Delhi.

This lady recognized Bruno with two guys in Delhi after arrival. Those two guys, they were well known to the police as a drug dealer and illegal arms sellers.

From conversations with his son, Pyotr knew that Bruno had been spending time with a New Delhi local named Seluja. He didn't have any background on the guy, but feared he could be dangerous. Pyotr relayed the tip to the police, who launched a coordinated effort to find Seluja and arrest him.

So he wanted him to carry some hash out from here or something.

That was in a text.

That was in the text, yeah.

Seluja had been guiding Bruno on where to buy and sell drugs, so Bruno bought stuff in Delhi.

Acid and stuff.

LSD.

And stuff like that from Seluja.

How much did he buy?

No clue to that. He basically wanted to come to Parvati and use it as recreational.

And then Seluja was, you know, guiding him. Okay, you go to this guy and you bring some stuff for me also.

They tracked down Seluja's contact. He was in the ancient village Malana.

The Malana guy said I never met him.

Yeah, he said. He called him.

He called me, but he never met me.

The Malana guy was arrested as well, but with the case having gone cold, both men have since been released from police custody.

I think that in this region they are organizing rave parties, which is music party, drinking, drugs, all together mixed.

In the Parvati, raves are outdoor soirees attended by hundreds. They're almost entirely unsanctioned and tend to be deep in the woods.

So this is probably what tempted him to go to this region, and it's why he said he will be back within three days. So we were thinking that maybe they used him for illegal drug trafficking.

Years have passed and Bruno's fate remains a mystery. No further clues, no leads, just silence. There are eerie overlaps with Justin's case, Hashish dealings, dodgy meetups, and then, at nearly the same time of year, they're gone. What it means, if anything, I'm not sure.

We need to share the information because I have hope. Maybe when someone accidentally knows about the case of Bruno and catches a new trace, maybe.

This guy who's from Polish embassy. When we were leaving, I called to him to say goodbye and he said, Hey guys. One guy, he went missing for 30 years, he disappeared. Why he was hiding himself, Why he disappeared, nobody knows. And now he called me. He wants Polish passport and go back Poland after 30 years. So, he said, Don't lose your hope because some completely unimaginable things may happen.

As you may recall, a tourist named Daruw Agarwal recently went missing here. The case caught the attention of a Mumbai news team who's arrived in the valley to investigate his disappearance. We met with that team. They requested we keep our conversation off record. But before parting ways, one of their members, a local, discreetly pulled me aside. He whispered that he knew things about Bruno.

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, 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+.

The foreign media always said, you know, the Death Valley, I don't call it the Death Valley.

I find myself on a dirt path in a secluded forest, my heart racing with anticipation. There's a whole neighborhood back here which is only accessible via a rope bridge that hangs over the river. It feels like the kind of place you would go to. Stay under the radar, avoid the law.

Why should it be called the Death Valley? Because these guys are dead, maybe one of them is alive, maybe he's studying in some part of the country, maybe in Kerala.

Raaz, as we'll call him, requested we meet here. He asked to remain anonymous, but his eagerness to talk poured out like the sweat on his skin. What about Dhruv? What do you think?

We've got no clue, man. His parents tell us that he was going to lose weight. He thought he would lose 4-5 kgs if he tried to kill Ganga. That's a very stupid thing to say. Then the next day, the parents tell us, please check Malanna.

While he claimed to know nothing new about Dhruv Agarwal's case, Raaz has promised me some safeguarded clue about Bruno Mushalik.

Tell me, what do you want to talk about? what do you guys want to know?

Well, you were saying that you know some stuff about Bruno, and I'd love to dive into that. There's a thought that he was just buying drugs, or he was trying to sell them.

We met the guy who Bruno was in touch with in Malanna.

Okay.

We had to pay him a lot of money to meet him. Actually, he was waiting for Bruno to come to Malanna, but Bruno never made it to Malanna. So what the guy said is he got down at Katagla, he got down on the bus from there, and then he supposedly came to his party.

This is just all word of mouth.

This is just all word of mouth. Nobody knows what exactly happened, and I got news from a government official, which I cannot name anyone, but he's saying that he was murdered.

When Raz was with the Mumbai News team, he says, they poked around at Bruno's case a bit, and an individual they spoke to repeated a similar story.

I can't take names because we're not allowed to take the names of the guys who we spoke to. When I spoke to someone, he told me, Bruno was murdered by a guy called Leo.

Called Leo.

Yes, and it was related to drugs.

Leo is not an Indian name, and any other details about this guy is a dead end. We don't even know if he actually exists, and the individual who made this accusation isn't responding.

And he's refusing to take my calls now because the guys who were with me the earlier team, the Assholes, gave him his press card. I told that asshole, don't give your card to anyone, what you fucked it up. Some guy refuses to speak now.

Everyone has a different story, but with two sources allegedly claiming the same thing. We have to consider, like Justin's case, if murder could be a potential scenario. So I asked Raz if he had to speculate, why would someone kill Bruno?

You know what? Yeah, a lot of people from Europe and from the U.S are carriers of drugs, so there's a five times profit in it.

Chalice is concentrated. Hashish.

And when they would finish buying chalice and come down the way back, they would be killed by the same guys who sold them the chalice and the money would be taken back. People used to disappear. Nobody likes the people from Malana, these village people don't like the Malana people.

Because they have their own democracy up there too, correct?

Their own democracy. You cannot touch them unless you know them very well, but as an outsider, you cannot even touch them. The mindset is very different. They are friendly if you have money.

And then they kill you on the way back down is what it sounds like. Not now, Raz said it before calling his home the Valley of Death doesn't sit right with him. But from what I'm picking up, he's saying. The heavy drug scene and undercurrents of Malana kind of paints a target on the backs of foreigners thought to be walking around with wads of cash.

I have a question for you guys being Americans, I mean, when foreign tourists come here, don't you think you'll be attracted to the culture of this place? Of, you know, you'll want to smoke up? I think 99.9 of people will come and smoke for sure. So just a question for you guys, how is the place responsible for it? The place is never responsible, it's the individual.

There's a problem with speculating murder. Why risk everything and kill a foreigner for petty theft? Not saying that it doesn't happen, but murder over some cash or a bit of drugs seems extreme. So then we come back to why Bruno, why Justin?

Not openly.

There's mafia from the other country at the moment, but you know the locals, you can't call it mafia, but everyone does it.

There's no outside mafia, but everyone calls it mafia. Thinking about what that means, it's then a more sinister thought grips me. What if tourists aren't targeted by chance, but as part of a calculated plan? Who would profit from their disappearances?

This guy.

He's been highlighted by the police, the department and all as a rescue guy.

We believe.

From our research and things.

That he could be the culprit.

The people going missing.

You think he's like robbing them and then taking the stuff.

He's basically murdering them.

We were suspect that he didn't search the Bruno, only talk about the searching and did nothing.

Korkan is a well-known search and rescuer who we've been told to steer clear of. Bruno's father, before arriving in the valley, hired the search and rescuer to look for his son. A decision he now says he heavily regrets. For legal reasons. We've redacted Korkan's case.

The story with me. We pay him maybe $150 or $100 per day to search the Bruno, and he told us he searched the Bruno all the time.

Piotr was swayed by Korkan's online portrayal as the most heroic search and rescue operation in the Parvati. When Piotr and Tomas arrived in India, Korkan met them at the airport and escorted them to areas where he claimed to have explored for the search. At one of these spots, he introduced them to some women who he said assisted the investigation.

And it was completely different statements from those people, these ladies, Russian and Ukrainian ladies, they said that they never saw him. He came there for the first time ever, so he's cheating and lying from the very beginning.

Piotr immediately pulled the plug on Korkan, opting instead to invest $30,000 in the Israeli private investigation firm Magnus International. He was taken aback to later learn that Magnus outsources some of their work to Korkan.

And what's interesting about him, he finds the people who are missing, but only the bodies. But the guy he has contact with, mafia, he knows everyone in the valley, and for me, in my opinion, I'm sure he knows what has happened for me. He's a suspect.

Crooked tales surrounding Korkan keep reappearing. Later, Manu and Jagdish stop by our hotel, and Arshdeep translates their story.

He is not a technical guy, he has no knowledge about how to do the proper rescue with the equipments and all these things. He's just a name.

Manu recalls a baffling incident involving Korkan's company. They were hired to recover a body from the river.

They first let him do it, he took four days. He was like doing with the ladder. Then they thought, No, we do it this way, do it there. After four days, they said, Okay, you're done now.

Has anyone tried to report as being like a fraud?

No, no, he is very good dealing with the politics and administration.

Jagdish wishes to avoid making any comment about Korkan on record.

He says I don't want to make a personal comment regarding him because it's not a good idea to do that. But there are lots of rumors about Korkan at the moment.

I ask what rumor they hear most often.

But now it's a rumor that basically what he does. Even if the team finds the body, they try to hide it for a few days. So that the money is counting.

I'll admit I initially brushed off Korkan, he wasn't involved in Justin Alexander's case, so I didn't find him relevant.

Hello.

Hi, Mr.

Yes, sir.

My name is Liam Luxon, I'm a producer from the U..S. I'm over here, I introduce myself to Korkan, explain the podcast and ask for an interview.

I think better to come here.

Better to go there. Can you get me an address to come to?

Yes, sir.

Perfect, all right. We'll see you tonight, looking forward to it. It's then that I notice Arshdeep pacing the room.

I was saying.

When he's alone.

No, when you guys are alone.

I set my iPhone to record so the audio quality isn't stellar here. But what Arshdeep is suggesting is that Alex and I meet Korkan without him. Do you want to go out this office?

No, I organized a car for you guys. So that's what I feel. Because I don't want him to know that. Someone has been telling, Okay, we talk to this. It's what you have figured out yourself, so that makes him more comfortable. What do you think, Alex?

I think that's smart. I have reservations about conducting this interview without Arshdeep, but I get his reasoning. The more of us in the room and bringing a local with us, the more guarded Korkan might be. As I think about it further, I consider another possibility.

You can call us.

We can listen to you, the speaker here, just to hear the conversation.

I just got to put it on mute first, you got to put it on mute.

We can put it on mute.

The car is already outside.

Yeah, let's do it.

You're alone.

Yeah, I'm ready. The taxi pulls up outside our hotel. An ominous mist hangs thick in the air as I ride through the mountain roads.

All right, you got the slam.

Across the river lies my destination, a three-story brick fortress perched on the mountain's edge. A rusting lamp flickers above the main entrance. All right, thank you brother. I'll see you soon.

How you doing?

I'm completely on edge because it's me, Korkhan and six other men. I wasn't expecting to be here. There's a lot of people there.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a bad idea sending him alone.

Coming up on status untraced, All right. Listen, I have one last rumor that I need to ask you about.

Thank you.