1 | The Razor's Edge

One morning, I was walking by the smoky stone hut of a Nagababa, a type of Hindu holy man. He had been watching me come down the mountain and he waved me inside.

Over the next two weeks, we became friends, I think.

Three days hard trek to a lake at 13,000 feet, and then 10 days meditating in a place without vegetation or wood to burn. Then, three days back to a small village.

I've been cold, feeling a bit malnourished. I think that this is going to be a challenge on every level, and I'm nervous.

I've spent the past four years tracking Justin's movements and his life. I've spoken with friends and family who believe they know what happened to Justin, and I've heard all kinds of theories. But the thing is, I found something that no one else has. Something that was supposed to be impossible to find. Something that led me, 7,000 miles away from home, to a dangerous predicament.

There's a rumor that this couple was robbed for 6,000 rupees at knife point. Yeah, by four guys. By four guys on the way to Kyrgyzstan. I'm in a remote part of India notorious for murders, and I've just learned a couple was robbed at knife point on the same trail where Justin was last seen. If we're doing this Kyrgyzstan trek, would it be beneficial to have Alex and me walk slightly ahead of you guys, see if we can catch these guys.

Think we should bait them.

Four years ago, if you had told me I'd be risking my life, let alone leaving the country to look for someone I'd never met, I wouldn't have believed you. But that changed when I read Justin's final blog post. Because he signed it with a message. One that completely alters the understanding of his case. In his own words, he said,

I'm Liam Luxon. And this is Status Untraced. Episode 1. The Razor's Edge.

So when people ask what I do, I generally say I'm just a nomadic world traveler guy. I sold everything I own and quit conventional life when I was 32..

He told me that I should check out Adventures of Justin on Instagram. So when I went home, I did. Then I couldn't stop.

You see, I grew up a weird homeschooled kid, constantly feeling out of place. In my early teens, I found solace running through the woods and daydreaming about traveling to exotic worlds. I had that feeling of wanting to be a part of something bigger than myself. And I saw that in Justin, too. He was living a life I only dreamt of.

I've always been kind of a nomad. My family moved around a lot. I've had probably more houses than I have years of life. So it just feels very natural for me to just continue like this. And I feel like my life is about walking that razor's edge.

. But it was more than that. He was going to travel the world indefinitely. May 19, 2013, he announced the decision on his blog, saying, So this week I retired, and I'm in the process of selling everything I own, save a Royal Enfield motorcycle, my computer, phone, a change of clothes, a passport, toiletries, and credit card, which all fit into a backpack smaller than a school bag.

So the company did well enough that I was able to step back and still have a passive income coming from my ownership position.

He trained with Marines and learned methods to escape and withstand torture.

I mean, the guy had the skills to survive, anything, which makes everything about his disappearance all the more suspicious.

With no evidence against him, police couldn't continue to hold him in custody, and he was set to be released. But just three days before his freedom, everything took a turn.

He used his dhoti, a local garment, to hang himself. Police found the man hanging and tried to resuscitate without success.

Quoted by the Portland Tribune, Justin's mom said,

Unfortunately, all hope to find anything new about Justin seemed to die. with the Baba, and the Adventures of Justin Facebook page, which previously was a flurry of case, information and theories, turned into a place of remembrance. It is hard to see such a bright young light pass from this world.

Questions on his Instagram were left unanswered. A Celebration of Life event was organized, and, although there really wasn't closure, life moved on.

By the time I was reading all these posts, Justin had been missing for four years. People seemed to think he met his demise in India, but I kept going back to that final message from Justin himself.

It had been a week since Alex told me to check out Justin Alexander, and I was still hooked. I knew Alex said he did investigative journalism and was curious if he had thought about digging into Justin's disappearance for his next podcast. Although we didn't really know each other, I gave him a call and asked. To no surprise, he had, but had been looking for a partner. I had no clue where to start, but I offered myself up for the position anyways, and before I could wrap my head around it, our investigation had started.

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m. to noon, Tuesday, Street Committee. Got it. Do you generally take notes when this shit's happening, or should we just do it all?

Hey, Jay.

Very nice to see you. I'm, Liam, by the way. Very nice to meet you. This is Jason Schultz. I got to know Jason over the course of making this podcast.

But meeting for the first time? I'm nervous. Because I've never met someone whose friend disappeared.

The conversation drifts towards talking about Justin's lifestyle, and I asked Jason if he ever felt worried about him.

. It sounded like he was having some financial issues. And I used to ask him, like, hey, man, how do you never run out of money? And he would say, well, I got some residual income that comes in from, you know, the work that I'd done. But I know that he was struggling financially.

And I reached out, and I said, like, hey, if you need some money or something, I'm good to help you out.

And he said no. He said that he had some cash, and he said he has an expertise at being broke, and that he was okay.

But that's when I worried about it. That's when I had some worries. There's stories from that part of the world where they'll say, like, oh, the person didn't come back because they didn't want to come back.

And I texted him. And I was like, hey man, where are you? Do you get texts? That's the last thing I ever texted him.

The caption reads,

Incredibly trusting. So he was lured in by this guy's spirituality or potential. Yes, of course I had some unease. You want to be optimistic. The not knowing is the worst.

I've lost friends before. It's horrible to lose someone you love. But also, you know they're dead. So you can start mourning and start doing whatever you have to do to move forward.

Not knowing is like you're stuck.

Not knowing is like you don't know whether to move on.

Or if you're mourning, does that mean that you just lost hope? And then, of course, there's a lot of optimism. Because even when I started being like, I think my friend is dead. Other people were still saying, I think he's alive.

And then I'd be like, well, why am I going around saying I think he's dead and then other people are saying he's alive. That's a weird thing to be involved in.

Secondly, he may have been struggling financially, but it's unclear how or if this influenced his disappearance.

And thirdly, Justin said he planned to return to the U.

S. to apply for a 10-year Indian visa. So is it possible? he had a change of heart and decided to skip that step? I talk it through with Alex, and we agree that we need to get a better sense of who Justin is.

We need to speak with someone who can relate to his mindset. Someone who was a nomad at one point or another. And it didn't take long to be certain who we needed to reach out to next.

Or are you just going to wander in there expecting everyone to speak English? Are you going to go back there and expect them to feed you? To his credit, he responded by saying, yeah, those are legitimate concerns. I should have said something about that initially. I've done some research.

But I'm not just a thrill seeker. And I appreciate your pushback. Justin seemed to me as someone who was really looking for a depth of experience.

He sort of listed several things that to me would have been reasons not to go further. To like, go, get your shit back in balance. And then decide what to do. But for him, he listed those things and then he's like, but I'm going to go live in a cave or whatever the fuck it was with this guy. And I said to him, like, are you sure you want to do this, man?

He's like, no, no, I'm definitely going to do this. And I said, well, all right, do what you have to do, but make sure you come back. And that was, you know, that was it.

I feel like he overestimated his responsibility to an audience. You know, sometimes you meet people and it feels like there's a performative quality to their existence. And it's almost as if there's no time when they're not feeling the eyes of an audience on them. That can be a heavy weight to carry, you know?

But how do you experience the moment if you're watching yourself? experience the moment all the time?

And you start to see, like, I don't want to do this the rest of my life. So I do think that he was at a turning point in his life where there was an increased yearning because he felt less and less gratified by the current state of his life.

I remember when I was with him on that trip, where we recorded the podcast, we rode up to Pai. He was up ahead of us. We were going down this big hill. He was not wearing a shirt, of course, you know.

He's cruising along, and he's doing this weird movement. I thought, what's he doing? He's just stretching or something? Then I see that he's pulling his feet up behind his ass on the seat of the motorcycle. He's got no rear brake.

now, right? He's just cruising down this winding mountain road, and then he takes his hands off the handlebars, and he's got his arms spread open like he's some kind of a soaring eagle. Going down this curving road, no hands, no feet, on a fucking motorcycle about 45 miles an hour. You know, I have spent a lot of time on motorcycles. I would never do that.

Never in a million years would I do that. You ride a motorcycle already, you know. You don't need to push it further than that. Fucking. enjoy the ride and keep your shit together.

You know, I'm pissed off at Justin. I'm still angry at him for taking what I see as unnecessary risks and hurting everyone who cared about him. But on the other hand, you know, I have to admit I took the same kinds of risks, and I just was luckier. For example, the first time I was in Chiang Mai, I met these two British guys in a cafe in the morning. Turns out they were using heroin, and the reason they were in Chiang Mai was like the purest heroin in the world.

It was really cheap. So I ended up hanging out with them, and I tried heroin with them. Long story short, I overdosed. I could have died for sure that night, stupidly. So I have no judgment over Justin for pushing it too far.

Could this disappearance simply be the result of an accident? It's hard to believe. There's so many strange details in this case that it would be careless not to consider the other options. For one, foul play. There are rumblings on the GoFundMe and Facebook which point to the baba that Justin left with, the one who supposedly observed extreme practices, like cutting off his own penis.

His actions were suspicious. He invited an American tourist who didn't speak his language to a remote place in the mountains. He didn't report. Justin is missing. after they were last seen trekking together.

And just days before the baba was about to be released, he supposedly committed suicide in his prison cell.

Even with no clear motive, something about the baba is off.

Alternatively, there's reason to believe Justin might have chosen to vanish.

It's hard to say if the story leans one way or the other. There's not enough evidence. And we still really don't know Justin. Is he someone who would willingly disappear? And if so, what would cause him to do so?

That question led me to Sarasota, Florida, where Justin spent parts of his childhood.

It led me to a table where Justin reveled over many dinners.

And it led me to one of the most memorable conversations of my life, with one of the last people to be in contact with Justin, his father, Terry Shetler. Do you remember him?

As I get to know Terry, I ask how often he was in contact with his son. I wasn't prepared for his response.

Whenever he got a perception.

So where's Justin?

Testing, testing. Coming up on Status Untraced. Like he was saying his goodbyes to everybody. Yeah, it's Justin, like he never dies.

com or leave us a message at 507-407-2833.

. Status Untraced is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. I'm your host, Liam Luxon. Executive Producers are Alex Vestbested, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsey. Producers are Meredith Stedman and myself.

Supervising Producer is Tracy Kaplan. Consulting Producer, Jonathan Skeels. Associate Editors are David Basch and Charles Rosner of GetUp Productions, with additional editing by Sydney Evans. Artwork by Trevor Eiler. Original Music by Makeup and Vanity Set.

Our Theme Song is Colder Heavens by Blanco, White. Mix by Cooper Skinner. Voice Acting provided by Johnny Lavallee, Robin McAlpine, and Teodora Rummel. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group. Special thanks to Arshdeep Sharma and Kabir Sharman.

We'd be lost without you. And also special thanks to Maggie Gosicker, Rohan Sinha, Lauren Wiggins, Matt Schrader, Neil Strauss, Jason Kavanaugh, Tristan Bankston, Sunil Pattachero, Cole Sternberg, Ryan Suave, and Heather Luxon. Lastly, to you, the listener. Thanks for checking out our show. Please take a second to rate and review it in your app.

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