This is Neil Strauss, host of the Tenderfoot TV True Crime podcast, To Live and Die in LA. I'm here to tell you about the new podcast I've been undercover investigating for the last year and a half. It's called To Die For. Here's a clip.

All these girls were sent out into the world, and they were told, Try to meet important men. Try to attach yourself to important men.

The voice you're hearing is a Russian model agent telling about spies sent out to seduce men with political power.

The war in Ukraine is also being fought by all these girls that are all over important cities.

For the first time, a military-trained seduction spy reveals how the Russian government turned sex and love into a deadly weapon.

If you want to kill your target, it's easy.

You just seduce him, take him somewhere, start having sex, and then he's very vulnerable so you can kill him easily.

To Die For is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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 Tenderfoot Plus. For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.

You're listening to Status Untraced, a production of Tenderfoot TV in Association with Odyssey. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast. This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.

Jonathan Skeels kindly shared his Dropbox containing hundreds of videos and photos from the 2016 search, and we begin to comb through it. These are the most notable finds. Number one, photos showing the contents inside Justin's backpack from Colga. It includes 20 unused pills of Xanex, a total of 120 tabs of Viagra, three boxes of Durex condoms, and $720 in US cash. Number two, there are videos of the interrogations of Baba Awat and Porter Anil Kummar. They can say something about what happened that day.

Why didn't he say that before?

Most of the interrogations are conducted in Hindi, so I send them to a translation service and a way to response.

And finally, number three, a video shot by Jonathan Skils and an Indian mountaineer that captured one of the most important moments in the in the search.

I saw the flood. Flood, flood. Yes.

The mountaineer creeps along a ledge of tall, dry grass. At a steep plunge below is the river.

Oh, my God. This is what I spotted here. I see the flood of the guy who is missing. Oh, God. This is the flood, right? It looks like it. It's fresh. You can take out the... Oh, shit.

Is that his clothes? It's a lighter?

Yeah, I see a lighter also. Don't walk around. I'm not touching anything. Oh, fucking hell. Fucking Baba. Why did he fall here. He can't fall. I'm sure he can't fall. So You won't see fruit here like this, and you won't see clothes like this. Again. Should we open it to confirm it's his?

Using a stick, they poke at a backpack rain cover that has been rolled up. Inside is a brown fabric shal and a gray head wrap.

What the fuck? What the hell? It's not. It's Justin.

Skils takes hold of the camera, and his attention is drawn to the mystery surrounding one particular item. The Fluit Staff.

It looks like there's an impression, like someone was sitting almost.

Like a flag pole, the Fluit Staff has jammed straight into the ground. Right behind it, a slight impression in the grass, as if someone sat down. I can't make sense of it. It's as if these items were intentionally left behind. Sometimes I get the feeling I'm lost.

Just hiding it is 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 4, Under One More Rock. I don't know what you think about. If this is where she was and her son's all the way in India. Yeah. It's like a completely different world. It's almost too massive to even comprehend. Are we late? Are we on time? Right on time. Alex and I reconvened and quickly made plans for another trip, this time headed north to Salem, Oregon, a small town an hour outside of Portland. We've intended to make a trip here for some time to visit Justin's mother, Susie Reeve. She's invited us to an Italian restaurant in town. And as we walk by, We spot her sitting by a large window. I think that's her right there. Hey.

How's it going? We're doing great here.

Susie welcomes us with warm hugs, radiating kindness. She's draped in a Bohemian blouse and adorned with turquoise jewelry. I imagine she would have glowed in the sunlight if it weren't for the dreary skies. Though, given the situation, everything feels a bit gray. We try to keep the conversation light-hearted. But naturally, we find ourselves talking about Justin.

For me, it was the greatest experience to be a mother and to be his mother. But some Someone had said to me, Oh, you were Justin's best friend. I'm like, No, I would never see myself that way. Do we have a great relationship? Yes, in many ways. Did he keep things for me to protect to me because he was a protective son? Yes. He would tell me after the fact when he had done something that was dangerous. He didn't want me to worry until it was all better.

Occasionally, as Susie shares anecdotes about her son, her eyes cloud and drift towards the window, as if in a distant place. The loss of losing her only child is something she says will never heal, but she tries to cope with trips to Utah.

I'm going back. That's like my sacred place. It's where I go. It was very healing for me after justice. Murder, which it's been hard to say that word, but somebody would always come up in a conversation, Oh, you have family or your kids, or somebody who didn't know me. Well, I had a son. He recently passed away. But I was angry that I had to say that because my My child had just been murdered.

This is also part of the reason we're here, to try to better grasp the murder theory. Where did it originate from? What evidence points to foul play? And why does Justin's mother so full-heartedly believe her son was killed? We wrap dinner and meet her to shared office the next day. Susie walks us through experience, much of it familiar, but some stories are new, such as her struggles with contacting the US Embassy for help.

How did you feel trying to reach out to the Embassy and just nobody seemed to be getting back to you?

Crazy frustrated, angry, just beyond angry. Yeah. By that time, all I cared about was getting there, boots on the ground and begin. I just felt I had to move now. I couldn't wait for anybody.

The first article announcing Justin's disappearance was not from India, but the Portland Tribune on October eighth. In it, Susie is quoted saying, I want to make noise. I want people aware of this.

And the Kulu police, they were not initially supportive. They were just like, Yeah, we've heard this before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were just discounting our interest. He's just gone missing. He's probably out doing drugs. It was very difficult to convince them. We had to show pictures of Justin being healthy and strong, and that he was a very skilled tracker. We had to show them aerial photography of the path going in and out. There was only one way in and out, and he just completely vanished. It was very, very tough.

Two days after arriving in Kulu, Susie filed an FIR, First Information Report, the official missing person submission. Thanks to Jonathan Skeels, I now have a copy. Signed by Susie Reeve at 2:37 India time, the FIAR ends with the following.

We suspect Baba or his porter have done something wrong or not telling the truth and are potentially responsible for his kidnapping with intention to murder.

It's the first documented record of any criminal accusation against Baba Rawat and Aneel Kummar. After the FIAR submission, India media outlets such as Midday, The Indian Express, and Hill Post started reporting on Justin's disappearance. According to Susie, law enforcement also became more proactive in the case, particularly regarding Barbara Watt.

Police knew that they had to be on board because it was getting too much notoriety. I had been on TV. The articles in the newspaper had been… It was all over about Justin in his situation. We were rattling a lot of chains. They're like, Well, do you want us to have this guy arrested? I'm like, Yes. They couldn't believe it. They just didn't believe it. It was very, very difficult.

I ask what made Susie so sure of Bob Ruat's guilt, and she refers to her last call with Justin.

And this last experience he had with Ruat. I didn't feel good about it. In fact, I felt it was dangerous stress. It sounds strange, but just in my mother's heart, something was not okay. I felt that he was a nefarious character in my heart and in my gut. This is a nefarious character.

What about Aneel, the porter that was with him?

Did you ever feel that he had some involvement in the disappearance?

Let's put it this way. It was a team effort. I know that later that the porter helped in the search effort when I left. People that light fires, arsonists, or do crimes often return and observe. He changed his story three or four times, just like the Baba. The Baba changed his story about five or six times. And by the way, he's left India. Nobody knows where he's at. They think he went back to Nepal. And Rewaat wasn't Indian after all. He was Nepalese. No, it was a team effort. This I'm sure of. That's all I can say to you. It was both of them. It was a team thing.

Did you guys ever see a body of Rewaat?

I wouldn't want to see. I wouldn't care. Maybe somebody helped him. I'm not saying that they didn't do that because they wanted him gone. However, the fact that it ended that way caused a lot of problems.

After Bob Roovaht's death, the Indian authorities cleaned house. The prison guard was suspended, and every officer involved with the case, including the superintendent, have since been discharged or restationed across India. The FIAR's mention of kidnapping and murder definitely made waves and put a spotlight went on Justin's disappearance. But something about it leaves me uneasy. Were these murder claims based on anything solid? Or was Barbara Watt simply a convenient scapegoat to provoke a response from high-ranking officials, someone to shoulder the blame and perhaps offer a needed sense of closure. The truth is, we still need more evidence to untangle these mysteries. So I turn our conversation with Susie Reeve to an idea we haven't previously touched on, hoping to open new doors.

When you were in India, but Justin's Google account and his password, you haven't gotten access into that yet, correct?

No, and I have connections at Google. Yeah. And if that was possible, it would have been done by now. I think there was a big search for his phone. That was the big thing because that's where he did everything. He recorded everything on his phone. People asked me for Justin's password. I've had so many people ask, and I just- Don't have. Mm-mm. Tried everything.

Justin's digital accounts are of interest because they could hold a wealth of information, like location tracking and final communications. With no leads, we postpone looking into the accounts. And as our interview winds down, Susie makes a kind offer.

I have a lot of magnificent experiences and stories, but they're a little too woo for you guys. But I have his first pair of shoes, and I have the flute staff downstairs. You said you might want to see it. I would love to see them. So before we I can go. I can just... Because my car is right out here.

She leads us outside to her car, parked on the side of the street. One by one, she pulls Justin's trinkets and personal belongings out of her trunk.Oh, look at this. Wow. That Do you want to try it? She encourages me to try on and feel the weight of Justin's brown leather jacket.

This is the head wrap.

I run my fingers over the tattered gray head wrap.

But here it is here. Seeing it now in the real flesh, not just seeing it.

And then she presents an item that has been circling my thoughts, the Flute Walking staff. That has some…

That's a sturdy tooth. Yeah.

By the time I met Susie, I had been looking into Justin Alexander's disappearance for nearly a year. I had immersed myself in everything he'd shared online, from his writings to every picture and video on Instagram. I'd met up with his friends and spent hours talking. So many hours, they can't all fit into this show. After following in Justin's footsteps for so I'm starting to feel like I knew him, and holding these personal items now makes it even more real. These are the last traces of a man, of a son, who had so much more to give. And knowing this, feeling it in my hands, makes everything unknown in Justin's disappearance harder to bear. One by one, I hand the items back to Susie Reid. I wish her a peaceful retreat to Utah, and we plan to keep in touch. Back in Los Angeles, Alex and I strategize on how to track the porter, Aneel Kummar, and access Justin's digital footprints. Both missions are way outside our realm of expertise, so we make a call.

Hey. I'm merging you in. Perfect. All right. I believe I have told you guys here. Hi. Good morning.

Morning. This is our first time meeting, but a voice I'm familiar with. Jaden Brandt is a private detective and founder of Origin Investigations, who aided in his searches for Hadeya Shabani and Elaine Park, the missing person cases that are the focus of the podcast To Live and Die in LA.

Hey, correct me if I'm wrong, is he actually trying to investigate this case, not simply documented, correct? Correct.

There has been a decent amount of investigation into the guy that went missing.

There is one suspect, though, that was arrested and then let go. He's either an Indian national or he's Nepal national.

And so our goal is to try to track him down.

Whether we're looking for a subject or we're trying to get information on an individual or company or things like that, doing that here in the US is a very straightforward process. Overseas, it's much more reliant on your personal currency. If I'm headed to China and I need to speak to someone there, I don't even begin to look for anybody. I just make a phone call and have someone else do it. So that's going to be challenging. Not impossible. It's just a matter of getting the right resources or getting on the around and making it happen over there.

Jaden's foreign connections are predominantly in China and Thailand, but he offers to dig up what contacts he can for PIs in India. Independently, Alex and I plan to do the same. I then asked Jaden for his advice on accessing Justin's digital accounts and if it's possible to make a request from companies like Google.

Okay, so what do you guys have now in terms of... You have devices of his?

We have nothing of his currently.

Okay. In terms of getting it from Google, that's not really going to happen. Because first thing I'm thinking is if you can get access to a phone that has his same number, you can start to look at trying to get in some of those accounts through two-factor authentication.

Two-factor authentication is an extra layer of security on your online accounts. You've probably seen it before. You log in with your username and password, and then to confirm it's really you, a secret pin is sent to your phone. This security is also used when resetting your account passwords. So what Jaden is saying is if we could somehow get a hold of Justin's old phone number, we might have a shot at changing his passwords, meaning we'd basically have a key to his entire online world, stuff like email, Google, and iCloud. We don't know who currently owns the number, so I call Justin's mom, Susie, to figure it out.

Alex and I have been talking about maybe there's a way that we can get into his Google account and track the location. So if you have his phone number and you figure out if that phone number is still active or if it isn't active.

Okay, I'm going to interrupt you here. Because I have had this habit for four and a half years of every so often calling Justin's number.

Yeah.

I just called and I leave messages. I had this experience where it said it had been read. Then I didn't get a response. And They contacted Jonathan, and he said that they probably already reassigned the number.

This is true. Your number can be reassigned if you don't pay your phone bill.

I don't know what's going on. I will give you the number. Hold on.

So I'm going to need to reach out to those people and try to explain the scenario, because the idea is that we're going to try to go to his Google account and then say we forgot the password because it should send a two-form authorisation code to the phone and then hopefully find something.

Well, I'm okay with whatever you need to do. Shall I give you the number? Absolutely.

Yes, please. Okay, I'm on the phone, bro. Perfect. Perfect. From your knowledge, that was the one he was calling you from?

Yeah.

Okay. And then the other question is, what email do you think he would have had attached to his Google account?

Probably com, but it's disbanded. Jonathan and I just checked that last month, too.

The other thing that we could look through, Justin had an iPhone, right?

Yeah.

We might be able to get his Apple We'll have a Google account through that somehow as well, actually. So that would be our possibilities there. But we'll try the Google one first. Okay. And this may be a complete dead end, but whatever option we can possibly take to maybe find something.

I have a similar conversation with Justin's father, Terry Shetler. And with both parents' permission, I launch into tracking down the current phone number owner. I call Justin's number, It rings, and I get a voicemail.

Thank you for calling.

This number is now owned and operated by a private company in Northern California, and I spend the next couple of weeks trying to get in touch with someone. Finally, their secretary, who for the sake of the podcast we'll call Savannah, picked up. She didn't recognize the number, and after talking to her boss, insisted that the company didn't own it. A little thrown off, I called the number again. And yeah, I was absolutely sure the number belonged to the Northern California Company. Except this time, I noticed something strange about the voicemail. It sounded exactly like Savannah.

I know this is asking you a lot, but could I actually have you just call that number? Because it goes directly to a voicemail, and it sounds a lot like the same voice, which I believe is your voice.

Savannah calls the number herself and agrees with me. It's her voice. She promises to look into the ownership of the number and what they can do to transfer it. So while Savannah begins that process, I decide to look into one more lead, a tracking expert who analyzed the location where Justin's items were found.

When everybody was worried about him dying in India, I remember just being like, It's Justin. He never dies.

Tom McElroy, a wilderness survival instructor, met Justin when they were both young adults, training in the art of survival. Susie put me in touch with Tom, saying that the two men had been like brothers since they were teenagers.

He's the guy that gets hit by a truck, and he falls out of a tree and cracks his head. But he always just pops back up and sews his head together with some duct tape, and then he's fine. This larger-than-life guy that seemed like nothing could ever get him.

Tom wasn't initially involved in the search, but decided to fly to India midway through October.

I think I was teaching a class or something right at that time, and so I didn't go right away. I also wasn't sure if I was going to be the most helpful person. I was thinking more like somebody that spoke the language and knew the culture would be better because I was just another guy walking around, looking under rocks. And it just turned out that a week later, they needed more help. And so I basically packed all my stuff and was on a plane that evening, 30 hours later, being on a helicopter, flying up to 10,000 feet to go look for Justin's body. So it all just moved really quick at that point.

I noticed the words Justin's Body, and ask why that's the verbiage he uses.

I think at that point, I really had given up hope that we were going to find Justin just hanging out and okay way. But at the same time, of course, every time I turned a corner on the trail, my mind was totally waiting to see Justin wrapped in blankets walking around the corner with a busted leg, just feeling, Oh, my God, Tom, what are you What are you doing here? But then we walked down to where they found his flute, and I looked up this cliff. Something very clearly heavy went off the cliff because there's just broken branches all the way down the cliff to where Justin's stuff was found. There were some branches, two inches in diameter that were snapped in half, going down the cliff and fairly fresh. And it wasn't like a steep cliff. I never in my life would fall off a cliff like that, and Justin was more agile than I am. Even if you did fall off of that cliff, you'd probably be able to grab something on the way down. It wasn't that big a deal.

Reiterating Tom's observations, he says, Standing where Justin's flute staff was found, there appeared to be one distinct line of broken branches from something that fell down the cliff face to that spot. He also said, Search teams possibly experimented with throwing logs and rocks higher up off the cliff to see how they fell. In addition to that broken line, he observed two other tracks here.

I could find a trail of two people. It was a very obvious track. If I had gotten there before anybody else had gotten there, I would have been able to track it. But the fact that Jonathan and a bunch of people had already walked down there, I couldn't tell the difference between his tracks and tracks from before that.

Tom inspected this location two months after Justin was last seen. So really, these tracks could belong to anyone. However, further up the cliff, he made another discovery.

So I hiked slightly off the cliff and then found there was a jacket actually stuck halfway off the cliff that nobody had found. They took the jacket and they said they did some forensics on it and didn't find anything that indicate that it was his jacket. But yeah, the jacket never led to anything. We never saw it in a picture or anything like that. So who knows? It could have just been there for years.

Tom says he then reached the top of the cliff, where the trail is.

So I saw two sets of tracks coming in and standing at that spot. And so the tracks didn't look like they were a month old. They looked more recent at the time. But everybody told me, Nobody's been out here.

Tom later found out that statement wasn't true. He came across photographs of search teams actively walking in the area earlier in the week. The discovery muddled his entire analysis, but one thing remained clear.

I was like, Okay, confirmed. Something heavy went off the cliff and broke branches all the way down. And so from there, I just assumed that that's a likely story of what happened, why his stuff was there. So I was like, Well, either his body continued all the way down the river, and it's It could be anywhere. We're never going to find it. Or there's probably a 50 % chance that it got caught underwater. But the water is moving so fast, it's all glacial melt. So it's freezing cold, so you can't just jump in and find out. So we came up with a plan to get these grappling hooks made out of rebar and had a GoPro with an underwater flashlight and some big long poles. And I hiked back up there with Chris and these young guys that were putting together a search crew. And then we checked the grappling hooks in that spot a bunch of times, and we never pulled up anything. After that, we basically called off the search. It was just too impossible to get back up there with all the ice. You always think like, God, if I just lived under one more rock or if I hiked down to the river one more time, maybe I'm going to find it this time.

And it was very sad to walk away from that.

Tom's findings provide the clearest picture of what actually happened at the site. Yet I can't get past the flute staff, jutting straight out of the ground. How did it end up like that?

Before it got to me, I was like, There's no way somebody didn't plant that staff in the ground. Then somewhere in there, I just was like, Well, it doesn't make any sense any other way. We got a bunch of logs and threw them off the cliff, and every single time those logs would hit where that staff was, and then the logs would continue to bounce into the river. I mean, if his body's following you, if he was still alive, and he's like, and just hits with the staff, I don't know. Yeah, it's weird.

I agree with Tom. It's weird. The way the walking staff was found, it's like something out of a mystery novel. There's only a few scenarios that make sense. One, Justin fell off the cliff and in a desperate attempt to save himself, jammed the walking staff into the ground. Two, he planted it there himself before vanishing into thin air. Or three, the staff was put there by someone else. Whatever happened here is anyone's guess? Was Justin pushed or not? If foul play, why wouldn't a murderer dispose of the evidence? The river was just over the ledge. I'm at a crossroads in this investigation. Obligation, feeling like I've hit dead ends. Short of hopping on a plane to India, I'm running out of leads. That is, until Savannah contacts me with news, and I call Alex to fill him in.

I'm on my way to Sprint store to see if I can talk to them, and then probably head back to T-Mobile after that, hopefully with some result.

Savannah got approval to transfer Justin's old phone number. While that's excellent news, I soon find my challenge isn't over. I take a visit to T-Mobile, and the employees claim the transfer request can only be dealt with over the phone. But when I dial up T-Mobile text support, they claim the transfer request can only be made in store.

So I'm just sitting in my car on the phone, and then I had to take it in there, give it to the manager. The manager had to talk to him. The whole thing is just so utterly absurd.

This whole ordeal drags on for days. I'm on the phone for hours. I pour my heart out to multiple T-Mobile employees. And at one point, call me a complete idiot, I almost accidentally lose ownership of the number entirely. But I don't give up. I stay vigilant, and the process pays off. I get access to Justin's old number.

But we did it. We fucking finally did it. It only took me six hours of being at T-Mobile over the last couple of days.

Wow. Wow. Okay, we got to get it in a Google account. I know.

Alex and I meet at an office in LA. I bring a newly purchased iPhone and the SIM card associated with Justin's number. How are you feeling? Fucking nervous. I power up my computer. We're going to try to get into one of Justin's email accounts.

Should we just try it?

Click Forgot Password. Okay. The last password you remember-We start with a Forgot Password method. I'll try another way.

Get a verification code.

Oh, God, this is so fucking crazy. This is the thing. The number is send.

Should be coming back there.

Right. A two-form authentication pin is sent to the iPhone. I use this pin to reset Justin's email password. And like clockwork, we're in Justin's Yahoo account. But it's not what we were expecting. Weird. It's empty. That can't be right, is it? Do things just get deleted after a certain point? There is no data in Justin's email accounts. No received emails, no sent messages, no saved draughts, no search history, nothing. Hoping beyond hope that some piece of data must exist, we log into Justin's Google account and open his Google location tracking.

Go to manage your Google account.

Here you go. We're discovering. Location history is paused.

Fuck. It's been turned off. He doesn't have it. Anything.

No luck with Google, but I want to try to turn over one more stone, Justin's iCloud. Hang on.

Let's try to get this Apple ID.

Please, Continue. Text message. Cool.

Enable.

What is this? Holy shit. Dude, we got them all. Holy shit. We're in it. If you have tips or For information on the individuals in this podcast that you'd like to share, please email us at statusuntrace@gmail. Com, or leave us a message at 507-407-2833. Status Untrace is a production of Tenderfoot TV in Association with Odyssey. I'm your host, Liam Luxon. Executive producers are Alex Vespestead, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. Producers are Meredith Steadman and myself. Supervising producer is Tracey Kaplan. Consulting producer, Jonathan Skiels. 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 Robin McAlpine. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media & Marketing, and Nord Group. For more podcasts like Status Untraced, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app, or visit us at tenderfoot. Tv. Thanks for joining me on Status Untraced. For ad-free listening and exclusive content, dive into tenderfootplus. Com right there in the show notes. Tenderfoot Plus is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other podcast players.

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As a comedian and a retired detective, listening to network news robots talk about crime is like swallowing balloons filled with ice cream. It's the most bland way possible for me to consume something I'm passionate about. So I gathered up some friends to make our own show. Every Monday through Friday, my team and I glove up and sift through the bowels of the Internet. To bring you the latest top crime stories. We're talking cold cases, high cases, organized crime, disorganized crime, sex cults with snakes, sex cults without snakes. We'll keep you updated on all of it. Plus, we'll round out your week every Saturday by taking you back in crime with the historical crime story narrated so beautifully. You'll wish God gave you three years to listen with. I'm Todd McComas.

I'm Laura Benson. I'm Eric Quintana. And I'm Jessica Noel.

Join us on this Day in Crime, available now on Apple Podcasts.