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- [00:01]
Troy Taylor
Hey, among the missing listeners. Before we get started today, I just want to say thanks for sticking with us through this unanticipated break. This podcast is produced week to week. It takes about 50 hours to produce a single episode, and over the past few weeks there's been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes. Not just on the podcast itself and where it's going to go in the future, but also in Elaine's case. Even after all this time, things are continuing to move and shake. While I'm over here in Australia processing data, looking back over old records and reviewing new leads, there are people actively working on the ground in la. And I truly believe between all of those who are actively working Elaine's case, we're getting closer to answers every single day. Aside from that, there's a whole lot of really exciting stuff happening that will increase the exposure of Elaine's case and hopefully shake some trees. I can't share what it is just yet, but it's seriously amazing stuff and I'll fill you in as soon as I get the go ahead to do so. All of this to say thank you for being so patient. I'm super glad to report that we're now going back to weekly episodes through the end of the season. Anyway, I think I've kept you waiting long enough. Let's get started on today's episode. Foreign I've always had this intense fascination with the Butterfly effect. No, not the 2004 Ashton Kutcher film of the same name, though let's be honest, that movie is fantastic. But I mean the concept within Chaos theory often attributed to the meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz. Thank you, Google. The idea that one small thing can have a huge impact on something else in the future. You think of where you're at in your life now and look at every tiny step it took to get there. All of the good, all of the bad, every single event, every phone call, every fight, every decision. It all had to happen. Just as it did for you to be in this very moment listening to this episode, thinking about Elaine Park. For me, personally taking on Elaine's disappearance, letting it become an all engulfing obsession, kicked off a chain of events that would eventually change my own life forever. But it's the application of the theory in the context of Elaine's disappearance that really fascinates me. The idea that one piece of the puzzle connects to the next in a complex web of decisions that only has a single possible outcome. Whether Divine was responsible or not. Whatever the ultimate cause of Elaine's disappearance was the decision to head to his house that night was a major factor, a turning point. There is, of course, the converse argument the destiny is always preordained, that perhaps whatever happened to her would have happened anyway, just maybe in a different manner. But that's an immeasurable factor, a supposition. On the flip side, working with what we know, it's a quantifiable fact that the steps taken and the decisions made led to the outcome that we know. That Elaine left Devine's house was never seen again. When Elaine drove out of the gate at the gated community where the compares resided, she had a decision to make. To turn left or to turn right on Cold Canyon Road. If you watch closely on the CCTV footage from both the gate cam and the neighbor of the compare family, you can see that she makes the call to go left. Ultimately, that path, if you follow it down, leads to Pacific Coast Highway. But if she turned right, well, that also leads to Pacific Coast Highway. Sometimes, perhaps, these small decisions make all the difference to the outcome. And then perhaps, sometimes they don't. Perhaps destiny finds its way around some decisions, like the decision to turn left or right, but the decision to go to divines that night, was it destiny, the decision that drove an outcome that was absolutely devastating? The question is, would that outcome have occurred either way? It's a question we'll never really know the answer to. After Elaine's disappearance, the world changed. It triggered a tsunami that would impact so many different people's lives in so many different ways. For Elaine, her world ceased to exist that day. For me, my life would be upended, changed forever. But for a whole lot of other people, it would be the beginning of a roller coaster ride that most of them, like Susan, would forever be wishing they could get off. What was quite likely the end for Elaine was the worst kind of beginning for so many others. I'm Troy Taylor, and this is among the missing. So we're seven episodes in now. We've explored a whole lot of craziness around some of the people in Elaine's life, run through the timeline before she disappeared, and explored some of the absolutely heartbreaking things that happened to and around Elaine before she disappeared. What we haven't done yet is look at what happened after she disappeared between the days of January 28 and February 2 when her car was discovered. I'm going to lay out some of it here. And in future episodes, we'll come back for a more detailed breakdown and analysis of what it all means and how some of it could potentially tie in to Elaine's disappearance. First up, let's talk about the day she disappeared. And some of it, to people who already know her case, is pretty mind blowing.
- [06:02]
Susan
Saturday, January 28, 2017. The day Elaine disappears.
- [06:08]
Troy Taylor
Elaine leaves Divine's bungalow at 6:04am, walking briskly out the gate toward her car. It's a chilly morning in Southern California, sitting at around 43 degrees Fahrenheit, and that's 6 degrees Celsius for you guys in the Southern hemisphere. She reaches her car and as I mentioned in episode one, the CCTV footage cuts off at exactly 6:05am to the second. From that point, it's kind of hard to determine exactly what time things happened from what's laid out into Live and Die in la. Elaine's car exits the gate of the gated community at 6:07am but the timestamp on the license plate camera at the gate says it's 7:14am when she exits. It's been reported that the time of 6:07am was verified against a neighbor's CCTV footage as accurate by either Jaden Brandt or the original detective working Elaine's case from Glendale Police Department Detective Kryvak.
- [07:03]
Susan
Detectives.
- [07:05]
Troy Taylor
Without any further details, it's difficult to know exactly how that verification was performed. But what I do know is that on the neighbor's CCTV footage, the car that drives past does fit the shape and size of Elaine's Honda Civic. After she exits the gate, she turns left and after a few seconds, her car disappears into the darkness. And as far as anyone knows, it's not seen again until the 2nd of February, where it's found on PCH. Only that's not necessarily true. See, here's the thing. There's some footage that hasn't made its way out to the public yet that suggests that maybe Elaine's car was seen before it was discovered on 2 February. For one thing, there's a photograph taken from Dan Blocker beach or thereabouts, facing the direction of the Malibu RV park, which is opposite the location where Elaine's car was found. The photograph was date stamped January 28th, the same day Elaine disappeared in it. There are a whole lot of cars lined up along the roadside, including a pretty sizable white rv. And right in front of that rv, positioned with its rear passenger side tire slightly over the shoulder line, just like Elaine's car was, and positioned perfectly in line with the reflectors on the road, just like Elaine's car was, is a car that looks remarkably like a grey 2015 Honda Civic, just like Elaine's car was on 30 January, three days before Elaine's car was discovered and two days after Elaine disappeared. There's also footage from a drone that a tourist to the area recorded. He comes up from what appears to be the RV park, turns right and proceeds to fly over pch. It's a crystal clear day around sunset. You can see the sun at the horizon off to the west, the last of its rays gleaming on the calm water. There are people running along the beach taking advantage of the last few minutes of the day. There's the tail end of the RV park, right up near the sign. And then again, there are a whole lot of cars parked along the shoulder. And one of them sitting in front of what appears to be a white van is a grey sedan, rear passenger side over the shoulder line, positioned perfectly in line with the reflectors on the road, just like Elaine's car was. And like I said at the beginning of the segment, I'll let you digest that for a bit because that is huge. We'll talk about what it means and how it maybe fits into things in a later episode. But for now, let's get back to the timeline. At 6:26am on CCTV footage from the 76 gas station just west of the RV park, a car that slightly resembles Elaine's makes a U turn on pch, turning onto the same side of the highway her car was found. I say slightly because honestly, no amount of enhancing would get this footage, at least at that distance, which looking like anything more than a bunch of pixels. But the time does fit. According to my bestie Google Maps, it takes roughly 18 to 19 minutes to get to that spot from the gate of the compare gated community. If she left at 6.07am, it ties in almost perfectly. Coupled with the photograph from Dan Blocker beach and the drone footage of pch, it definitely suggests to me at least that in all likelihood it is Elaine's car. And that Elaine's car was on that spot on PCH from the morning of 28 January. At 6:28am, civil twilight begins. And according to historic records from both timeanddate.com and wunderground.com it was a clear day with no rain and wind of about 3 miles per hour. Perfect weather, at least based on that information, to watch the sunrise. Okay, so this one's pretty interesting. You might Remember from episode four, on January 11th, Elaine removes Divine from her Find My Friends on her iPhone. Well, at 6:28am on the morning she disappeared, she added him back again, giving him full visibility of her location. From what I understand, the only other person who had access to her Find My friends was was Sadie. At 6:54am, the sun is done rising for the day. At 7:13am, according to Live and Die in LA, there's a cookie on Elaine's phone for the Pandora app indicating she began listening to music. I did a whole lot of digging on that and it turns out Elaine had a Pandora plus account on a trial subscription. Why that's relevant is the timeout that's built into Pandora. On a free Pandora account, Elaine, at Least back in 2017, the music timed out roughly one hour after someone started listening for Plus. It was around two hours and for premium, roughly five hours. Elaine's phone received a timeout notification at 9:32am asking if she was still listening, which suggests that she either started playing the music at 7:13 and didn't interact with it after that, or she stopped interacting at around 7:32am, give or take a few minutes. At 8:51am, Elaine receives three messages from Susan asking her to pay her the $20 back she committed to paying the night before. At 10:15am, Devine calls Elaine three times in a row, but none of his calls are answered. At 1.10pm, Sadie messages Elaine asking what she's doing today, but Elaine doesn't respond. At 1:33pm and 1:34pm, Devine tries to call Elaine again, but again his calls go unanswered. At 1:36pm, Susan tries to call Elaine twice. No answer. At 2:25pm, Elaine receives a Snapchat message from her friend Cody. However, the message wasn't saved to the Snapchat Service. Finally, at 3:42pm, Susan tries again to call Elaine and her phone dies. At 4.47pm, 6.11pm, 6.50pm, 7.32pm and 8.05pm, Susan tries again to call Elaine. And according to the To Live and Die in LA podcast, just before midnight that same night, Susan contacts the Crescenta Valley Sheriff Station to ask about reporting Elaine missing. I asked Susan about why she did this, because from all reports, Elaine would go away for a few days quite frequently. So I wonder what stood out enough this time for her to contact the Sheriff's department the same day Elaine disappeared. She told me quite simply, it wasn't like Elaine to not communicate at all. Sure, she'd go away. She wouldn't tell Susan where she was going, but she would reply to text messages and she would answer the phone. She says she was still worried about Elaine's car battery given what happened the Thursday morning before, and she just had a general feeling of unease.
- [14:01]
Susan
Sunday, January 29, 2017 One day after.
- [14:06]
Troy Taylor
Elaine disappears At some stage during the day, Divine retweets, if a girl leaves some shit at my crib, it's getting thrown out instantly. Susan attempts to call Elaine at 8:23am, 10:22am, 1:51pm, 2:43pm, 9:39pm and 10:15pm Outside of that, nothing much happens on this day.
- [14:31]
Susan
Monday, January 30, 2017 Two days after.
- [14:36]
Troy Taylor
Elaine disappears at 7:50am, Susan tries to call Elaine again. At 9:40am Susan contacts one of Elaine's friends for the first time. Reaching out to Sadie via Facebook messenger, she explains that Elaine's blue duffel bag, black backpack and makeup were missing and that she hadn't been able to get in touch with her since the Friday night Sadie tells Susan about the last time she saw Elaine on Friday and that she too hadn't been able to get in touch with her. At 11:48am Susan calls the Crescenta Valley Sheriff's Station again and is advised that she's in Glendale Police Department's jurisdiction. After this, Susan calls Glendale Police Department to formally report elaine missing. At 3:45pm a patrol dispatcher attends the house in Lacrecentre to take the details for the missing person's report and at 4:25pm the report is officially lodged in the GPD system. The missing person's report mentions Devine and states that they'd broken up one to two months earlier and that he resided in Calabasas. At 4:27pm, Susan calls Sadie and Sadie mentions that Elaine's boyfriend's name is Devine. After Susan notices a Miami area code phone number on Elaine's phone bill. At some point in the afternoon, Glendale Police Department make contact with Ray, Elaine's dad, to let him know she's missing. Ray then makes several attempts to get in touch with Elaine, calling her twice at 7:06pm, 7:07pm and 7:14pm Wednesday, February.
- [16:06]
Susan
1, 2017 Four days after Elaine disappears.
- [16:12]
Troy Taylor
At some point during the day, Susan leaves a dated note on the whiteboard in Elaine's room which reads Elaine, as soon as you decide to come home and you are home, please let me know at your earliest I am so worried. I do love you Mom. Susan and Jeff visit Glendale Police Department in the morning to check in on what they are doing on Elaine's case and to ask them to obtain a copy of the CCTV footage from the Compare property, but they advise her they have no grounds to do so and she is welcome to request it herself. At 1.28pm, Susan contacts Devine for the first time to let him know Elaine is missing and to request a copy of the CCTV footage. She calls him again at 1:41pm, but it would appear the call isn't answered. At 2:14pm, Tonia Compare calls Susan. They discuss Elaine's disappearance and Tonya provides Susan with their address, agrees to meet with her the following day.
- [17:06]
Susan
Thursday, February 2, 2017, the day Elaine's car is found.
- [17:12]
Troy Taylor
Aside from being Ray's birthday and the day Elaine's car was found, this was also the day Susan and Jeff first visited the Compare property to speak with Tonya and Divine. In Jaden Brandt's original interview with Susan and Jeff, Jeff says he and Susan were on their way to the Compares, retracing Mulholland Drive when he was pulled over by Highway Patrol for driving in the carpool lane. He explains the situation to them and the officers direct them to the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station to see if they can be of any assistance. Susan and Jeff arrive at the Compare property on time but find that Tonia and Devine aren't home. Not long after they arrive and Tonia explains they've been out at the market. Susan and Jeff both say Devine told them Elaine got up singing and dancing and acting strange at 4am, got dressed faster than Devine had ever seen anyone dress, and then left, only to return shortly thereafter because she'd forgotten her keys. Tonia went on to tell them that neither she nor Devine had any more information that Elaine had left the property and that they had not heard from her or seen her again after that point, Tonia agreed that she would arrange for a copy of the CCTV footage to be provided to Susan. However, Tonya. Tonya went on to provide the copy directly to GPD rather than to Susan herself. Finally, before they left, Tonia suggested they check Cold Canyon Road, which essentially runs directly from outside of the gated community's gate down to Malibu Canyon Road and was one of the two ways Elaine would most likely have traveled to pch. Jeff goes on to drop Susan at the Lost Hills Sheriff's station at around 1pm and leaves to take his son Travis a doctor's appointment. Susan meets with one of the deputies to inform them of what's happening and to ask if they're able to assist them with a ping on Elaine's phone. They run a historic ping, essentially looking for the last time, Elaine's phone hit a cell tower before dying and discover the last ping was on the day she disappeared. Saturday, 28th of January, 3.42pm the exact time Susan tried to call Elaine and the time it appears that Elaine's phone died. The ping returned a location of 3700 and a half Coral Canyon Road in Malibu. And how the address can have a half in there I still haven't been able to get the answer to. It pinged off a tower that was directly adjacent to the location where Elaine's car was eventually found. Less than two hours later, Jeff arrives back at the sheriff's station and he and Susan are on their way home when they receive a call at around 4:30pm that let them know Elaine's car has been located. Susan and Jeff head directly to the location on PCH and meet with the patrolman who located the car. Susan surveys it from the outside, unable to touch or enter it for fear of contaminating what might be a crime scene. A volunteer search and rescue team is pulled together and they commence searching the beach. Helicopters also search the general area, but in both cases, nothing is found. Later that night, Detective Krivak from Glendale Police Department arrives on the scene, assesses the car and arranges for it to be towed back to their department, leaving Susan and Jeff with one answer and a whole lot of new questions. From there, a major search operation was launched, including the use of bloodhounds, drones and feet on the ground. We'll take a greater look at the search and rescue effort and explore the broader timeline in a later episode. But suffice to say, the discovery of Elaine's car at the time felt significant and left everyone who cared about Elaine feeling hopeful they would soon have a resolution one way or another. There's not a single person in Elaine's circle who would have thought that night that there wouldn't just be no resolution, there'd be no answers at all, and that the search would be continuing more than eight years later. Okay, let's jump back a couple of episodes to the autopsy of Michelle Westervelt. First off, don't get too excited. I haven't heard a peep back from the LA County Medical examiner. I've followed up a couple of times now on whether there was another sample submitted for review. And nado, no response. I'd like to say I think they're just running an investigation into it in the background and that they'll come back to me as soon as they have answers, but, well, I'm not convinced that that's the case, but I do still have something new for you on it. After finding out about the discrepancy between the cause of death reported by the hospital and the cause of death reported by the ME I reached out to a friend of mine in the ME Space to ask a few questions and gain some insight into her view on the autopsy. She's asked to remain anonymous for now, but here's an idea of her background and why she's qualified to make this analysis. First, she has a background in supervising a forensic morgue and has herself performed more than a thousand autopsies in her time. And she's worked directly with the FBI on some major murder investigations. In other words, she's seen a lot. I laid out a summary of what I'd found interesting in the autopsy. The hospital reports they found high levels of cyanide in her bloodstream. She didn't recover from four doses of Narcan. However, she remained awake for six hours. The hospital determined she died of cyanide poisoning. The ME Then appears to say the hospital didn't test for cyanide. He orders a blood test postmortem, and the vial is damaged in transit and can't be tested. It doesn't appear that a replacement test is ordered. The ME Rules the death and overdose of fentanyl and methamphetamine with no other contributing factors. And I tried to boil it all down to a few questions. Is it normal for no additional test to be ordered after the first one is damaged? Is it possible for cyanide poisoning to present in a similar way to death by drug overdose? In particular, the ME Notes that there was lactic acidosis. Is this possible in cases of cyanide poisoning? Does the ME Usually disregard the tests the hospital has performed, or is it a case here that he might have just missed the fact that the hospital had tested for cyanide? On the back of it all, she came back with the following. The decedent and yes, in case you're taking notes, I did finally figure out how to pronounce that correctly, has a history of drug abuse and asthma, and calls for her own ambulance, indicating she began feeling unwell after using fentanyl. The report does state that she was administered four doses of Narcan, at which point she became alert and admitted to using illicit drugs. So it does seem like she responded, even be it briefly to the Narcan. Her admitted drug use is confirmed by a presumptive positive dipstick test at the hospital, which is positive for methamphetamine and fentanyl. The decedent's autopsy is mostly unremarkable with the exception of ischemic changes of the small intestine and kidneys, which is indicative of lactic acidosis, hypoperfusion and multi organ failure due to a lack of oxygen in the blood commonly seen in drug overdoses. Firstly, I must explain that hospital doctors are not forensically trained and their testimony on cause and manner of death in forensic death cases should not be trusted. Medical examiners are the only doctors trained to determine cause and manner of death, especially in forensic unnatural cases. Therefore, the hospital doctor, saying it was their opinion the death was due to cyanide poisoning, was at best grabbing at straws after seeing elevated cyanides in the urine. A test for cyanide poisoning was not performed in the hospital. However, the presentation of cyanide poisoning and fentanyl overdose is the same in that they both cause lactic acidosis, hyperperfusion and multi organ failure. Cyanide poisoning is extremely rare, while fentanyl overdoses are regretfully common. Cyanide is a very volatile compound that dissipates in blood samples over time. Cyanide is present naturally in small doses within the human body and can even be present due to the metabolic conversion of other compounds like prescription drugs to cyanide or thiocyanate, a cyanide byproduct. It's possible that the sample that was sent to nms, which is a very reputable forensic lab, I might add, it was deemed too late in the game to send another sample that would yield an accurate result due to the time that it elapsed and or deemed unnecessary after the toxicology screen came back positive for extremely high levels of fentanyl. A fabled dose of fentanyl for a decedent with no other mitigating Factors is about 3mg ML. The decedent in this case registered at 13mg ML, which is an extraordinarily high level of fentanyl. Even a person who's developed a tolerance for the drug after many years of drug use, as is the decedent's history, would have a hard time surviving that dose. Given the circumstances of the investigation showing that the decedent admitted to using fentanyl regularly and on the day she died, tested positive in hospital and then positive again at the medical examiner's office for fentanyl, it would be very, very unlikely she died of cyanide poisoning. Can it be ruled out 100%? No, but it would be Highly unlikely. So unlikely that the ME didn't bother sending another sample to nms, which by the way, does cost the state significant extra money. In regards to the medical examiner disregarding hospital tests, I would say not exactly. They'll take the results of hospital testing into consideration and use it to bolster their own results. But because this is a forensic case, there is a need for testing to be performed while maintaining chain of custody on the samples. Maintaining a chain of custody is not possible in a hospital setting. Medical examiner collected samples are considered evidence and therefore undergo a meticulous paper trail when being sent out for testing, where each person along the way signs for the sample, ensuring that at no point along the way it's tampered with. In a hospital, the samples pass through many undocumented hands, hands that don't necessarily know how to handle evidence. For this reason, medical examiners would typically only rule cause and manner of death based on their own samples, especially in cases that end up in court. Otherwise a judge might throw out that evidence in a trial. If the hospital had tested for cyanide, there should have been a report attached to the hospital records. A death investigator would have without question acquired those results if they in fact existed. The decedent died in the er, so it doesn't seem like she was even admitted to hospital long enough for such in depth testing. When a person dies and the case is taken on by the medical examiner, the hospital staff technically are supposed to go hands off and do nothing further with the body whatsoever, so as not to disrupt evidence. But while super helpful, that's only one side of the coin. Obviously the other piece of the puzzle is the ER side of things, in particular around the testing for cyanide and why the ER doctor would declare the cause of death as cyanide poisoning rather than just an overdose of fentanyl in this instance. While I didn't speak to an ER doctor myself, I did speak with someone I know who is also investigating Elaine's case and has spoken to an ER doctor he's close to, as well as doing a deep dive into the toxicology side of things. And here's what he found. A fatal dose of fentanyl for an opiate naive user can occur at 3 milligrams per milliliter. But Michelle was far from a naive user. It was a chronic addiction for her and it was the primary reason for her multiple visits to rehab. At the kind of level Michelle was at, a 13 milligrams per milligram level, which is the level that was found in her bloodstream could potentially be fatal, but that's not even close to being definitive. And chronic users have been known to survive levels as high as 50 to 90 milligrams per milligram. The other thing to keep in mind is that Michelle managed to stay alive and alert in the ER for six hours before she passed away. Six hours, which is highly unusual for a fentanyl overdose. It's a super fast acting drug which generally appears to result in death within a few minutes up until around an hour, with the patients quickly becoming hypoxic, suffocating and going into cardiac arrest. Six hours of alertness is definitely more consistent with cyanide poisoning rather than a fentanyl overdose. It's also key to note just how rare it is to see someone with high levels of cyanide in their system. That's not something they see on the ER every day. It is super far and few between. And those who do come in with those levels tend to be victims of major fire. And even then it's extremely unusual. Then there's the fact that there's no chemical crossover between fentanyl and cyanide. In other words, there's no possibility that a fentanyl overdose could cause that level of cyanide in her body. Finally, one of the things the ME suggests in the autopsy is that the ER doctor tested for cyanide in Michelle's urine. But as it turns out, they don't actually measure cyanide in urine. They measure a chemical called thiocyanate, which is a metabolite of cyanide in urine. So if a urine test was run, it was to measure the level of thiocyanate, not cyanide. Which then again poses the question about why the ER doctor would determine that there were high levels of cyanide in the bloodstream and that it was the cause of death with no other contributing factors. Unless there was a blood test confirming it. So where does that leave us? Well, not much closer to the truth, I guess. But here's something to consider. An ER is a busy place. There are people going all over the place, running reports, running tests, trying to help their patients. Sometimes reports fail to make their way into the paperwork. Perhaps there's a chance that that might have happened with Michelle. And whether the ME ever submitted another test for cyanide levels in Michelle's blood, well, I guess it's back to sitting in the waiting room on that. You ever get the gut feeling like something's off before you even know why? That sixth sense that kicks in and won't shut up until you pay attention. That's exactly what happened the moment I saw it. The login to Elaine's Instagram from Ukraine. Now, I don't know about you, but Ukraine is not exactly the first place I'd expect someone to be checking a missing woman's Instagram account from. And this wasn't some random failed login either. This was a successful login. Someone had gotten into her account fully in on January 27th at 11:15am the same day Elaine stayed overnight at Devine's place. And less than 24 hours before Elaine would go missing, that one data point sent up so many red flags I practically had to duck. My brain started racing. How did someone get her password? Why now? And who exactly was logging in from across the globe? I called in a favor from a friend of mine. Someone who's, let's just say, very skilled at digging through digital footprints. The kind of person who can find things that most of us don't even know exist. Together, we traced the IP address to a small Internet service provider based in Kiev. On paper, they were your standard local isp. They provided services to residential homes and some small businesses. But they also offered something else. Content delivery, network services. Now, if you haven't heard that term before, like I hadn't, it sounds pretty innocuous. Kind of like digital plumbing, right? But in practice, it really just means they were providing VPN services. And that's where things got interesting. Because suddenly, the whole picture shifted. This might not have been someone in Ukraine at all. It might have been someone sitting in the US Maybe right there in California, using a VPN that routed traffic through Ukraine. That's the thing about VPNs. They're great for privacy, but they're also great for hiding. And whoever this was, they clearly wanted to be hidden. Unfortunately, that's where it hit a wall. Without a subpoena or a warrant, we couldn't dig any deeper into who the user really was. No legal leverage meant no access to logs, no user data, no further digital trail. We were stuck. I shot Susan an email, filled her in on the find, and then did what I always do when a trail goes cold. Logged the info, filed it under the who knows section of my ever expanding Elaine park case file, and turned my attention back to the mountain of other information Susan had passed along, including data extracted from Elaine's icloud. Not long after that, all too familiar. Ding. Rang through another email. Susan had replied. And it turns out that Ukraine login wasn't a one Off. There'd been another login attempt, this time on Elaine's YMail account, and whoever was behind it seemed to be targeting her icloud. Specifically, the account tied to her imessages and her full phone backups. We're talking about the digital core of Elaine's life. Photos, messages, files, everything. Luckily, this time, the hacker. And, yeah, I'm calling them that. Didn't manage to get in. Susan flagged everything to the Glendale pd But as usual, since their working theory has always leaned toward hiking accident, the digital intrusion didn't exactly set off alarm bells. Still, the more I thought about it, the more it nagged me. Because this wasn't just about someone logging into a single account. This was a pattern. It was bigger. When Susan and I first started trying to access Elaine's online accounts to gather as much data as we could, we kept running into these bizarre obstacles. Not just one or two, multiple. Take your Instagram, for example. When we first tried to access that, it turned out someone had changed a recovery phone number. And not just to another US Number. This one had been updated to a Brazilian number. Of course, that meant two factor authentication was basically dead in the water. Thankfully, after some serious creative thinking, we managed to get around it and recover access. And that, of course, is the very Instagram account that showed the Ukraine login. And as you can imagine, looking back on it, after I found the Ukraine login, I couldn't help but wonder, was it that Ukraine login that whoever changed the number to a Brazilian number was trying to hide? But you know what? Trying to get access to Elaine's Instagram page was one thing. Her Facebook was an entirely different kettle of fish. Elaine used Facebook messenger pretty frequently, so it was a top priority. We figured there were probably private messages there, chats, plans. If there was anything suspicious to find, we thought we might find it there. Susan took the lead trying to access it, but when she went to complete the two factor authentication, she hit another roadblock. And, yeah, same issue again. The phone number linked to Elaine's account still showed the last four digits of her number. But the country code. Well, this time it had been switched to Nigeria. Yeah, Nigeria. So now we've got a Brazilian number tied to her Instagram, a Nigerian country code tied to her Facebook, a login on her Instagram from a Ukrainian IP address, and an attempted login to her ymail and icloud from another Ukrainian IP address. It's like the United nations of account tampering. To make matters worse, Elaine's email had been scrubbed from Facebook As a recovery option. So we had no backup method to verify anything. It was like trying to unlock a door that no longer even had a keyhole. Susan and I jumped on a FaceTime call and tried everything. Passwords, Elaine might have used, known devices, even those annoying password hint questions. Nothing worked. Every single route was blocked. And unless we had a warrant, which, of course, we didn't, we had no other legal option. We were locked out. Period. To this day, that Facebook account is still inaccessible. And what's worse, it's changed again. The Nigerian country code. It doesn't even show up anymore. It's just gone. And all of that, it doesn't scream random, it screams intentional. It looks like someone systematically targeted Elaine's social media and email accounts. Probably to keep anyone from digging a little too deep into things. So here's where I'm at with this. It's clear, at least to me, that this wasn't just digital noise or coincidence. It looks like someone wanted to control Elaine's online footprint, to hide it, to scrub it clean. And they were careful about it. The question is why? Who would go through all that trouble if there wasn't something important, maybe even incriminating, inside those accounts? The truth is, I don't know. But what I do know is this someone out there has the answers. Maybe it's the person who accessed the accounts. Maybe it's someone who knows them. Maybe it's someone listening to this podcast right now. And if it had nothing to do with Elaine's disappearance, if it was all just coincidence or some random hacker playing games, then I hope they come forward and clear the air. But if it was connected, well, the truth has a way of getting out eventually. It always does. When I first started looking into Elaine's case, I was all fresh eyes and full of energy. Totally bushy tailed. I thought I was some kind of armchair detective, piecing things together from the sidelines, imagining I could spot what others had missed. And spoiler alert, I had no idea what I was in for. Like most people who fall into cases like this, I started with what was already out there. I combed through forums, old news clips, interviews, social media posts, anything I could find. I built timelines, compared statements, cross checked details. I was looking for cracks, inconsistencies, something that didn't quite add up. And to be honest, at first it felt like I was just chasing shadows. But here's the thing about this kind of work. When you do spot something, even just a small detail, it hits you hard. Your mouth goes dry, your heart kicks up like it's trying to break through your chest. There's this jolt of adrenaline, like your body suddenly knows you might be onto something. It's exciting, but it's also terrifying. That's exactly what happened when I came across a photo of Elaine's blue duffel bag. I'd seen it before. There's footage of it sitting in the backseat. Elaine and her friends Sadie and Daisy were driving around LA in Elaine's Snapchat memories. For this photo, it looked different. It was older, more worn, a bit dusty, faded. The kind of aging you'd expect to see after this many years. But what really jumped out at me wasn't the wear and tear. It was a stain, actually. A couple of them little droplet shapes, almost like a splatter. Yeah, a rusty, dark red splatter jaw through the floor. I didn't hesitate. I called Susan right away, and she had the exact same reaction I had. She hadn't seen it before either, which meant no one had flagged it. She immediately contacted Detective Kim at gpd, and he agreed to run urgent testing on the stain to find out if it was indeed blood. While I waited on those results, something unexpected happened. Susan sent me a video. At first I thought it might have been something from gpd, outlining the results of their test. But no. It was a test being done, but independently. Not by gpd. By two new people investigating Elaine's case. Their names were Navaz and Carrie. It was the first I'd seen of them, but it certainly wouldn't be the last. Carrie had a background in forensics, which explained how they were able to run the test. But what I didn't realize until then was that Susan had been dealing with roadblocks from gpd, delays, lack of communication, and the inability to get information back. So she decided to bring in outside help. She wasn't waiting around anymore. Nevaz and Carrie were based in la, which gave them a huge advantage. They weren't just analyzing from afar. They were physically there. Searching, reviewing, going through everything Susan had collected over the years. CCTV footage from the compare property, surveillance from the 76 station. They were piecing together their own version of what might have happened to Elaine and where she could be. And full transparency. There's a bit we don't agree on. Their theories don't really match mine. Their style is very different. They came in with their own lens, and at times it clashed with mine. But you know what? They owned their view. They pushed out their theories, and they did what they needed to do to make them work and they were doing something I couldn't do, getting boots on the ground. And pretty quickly they came to a detailed conclusion of what they believe happened to Elaine. Some of it, I'll be honest, didn't sit right with me. It didn't fit what I believe based on everything I'd seen and studied and all of the research that I'd done. But some of it, some of it was worth serious attention. There were places in their theories, details, possibilities that were absolutely worth exploring. Here's Nevaz to run you through his view on things.
- [42:34]
Susan
So basically, here's the approach that we had is that I've never listened to the podcast Kerry did. Kerry asked me to look at the case. And by looking at the case, I look at it more from an Occam's Razor point of view, like, what's more likely, what's not more likely? And I look at it more from a point of view of following in the footsteps of the missing person. And I think that's really been very crucial, especially in this case, because there's so much backstory that everybody's been following that gets the whole situation misled. And that's just my point of view. But then at the same time, from us following in Elaine's footsteps that morning, because that's been our main focus is if her car was found there and there's got to be, or when she shared her location with Divine, that at least puts her at a location at a certain place. So then we actually just broke down. What's the most likely scenario of why she did that? And so one of the first things that me and Carrie did is we met down there at. I think it was like five, six o'clock in the morning. To see what that environment looks like. Now, that's key. There is no light step. One time when my wife. My wife was driving and I got out the car and my wife walked around the car and it's so pitch black that I didn't even see her, like, right in front of me. It's like pitch black, dark. So the first time that me and Carrie went there, we didn't intentionally do this, but we actually did exactly what Elaine did in order to meet up at the right place, the right location. Because where she parked her car is only known for two different things. It's known for overflow parking and for overnight parking. The reality is that most of the people that park there, they don't want to be bothered. People don't park there to go to the beach because the beach is probably about 30, 40ft down on a slope, on a very steep slope. To park there in the morning to go to the beach is very unrealistic. It's Basically people with RVs and they sleep in their cars or whatever they do. Other than that, everybody parked there once the parking lot in Colson's Canyon is full. That's where you park. What we found is there's a video on YouTube that is for Solstice Canyon Park. It's a video that some, a random person posted of going to Solstice Canyon Park a month after Elaine went missing. And they were at the gate when the gate actually opened. So what that does is that it actually lets us know that at that period of time, the gate did not open until 8 o'clock in the morning. We feel that Elaine's car is parked there because she couldn't park her car inside of Solstice Canyon. And there's no place else other than across the street from 76 gas station, which sometimes there's cars there. But it's sketchy because your car can go off the side into the little creek that nobody really parks there unless it's. You can see it. But. So our thought was this, right? Is that, okay, so if she parked a car there. If you look at the video that I shared of the 76 gas station, there's no place that the people, the two people that walked across the street could come from other than the direction where her car was found. And then like, what, like I said too, is that being that people park where she parked to walk to the park. I mean, that those people didn't go to the gas station, they went straight to the park, just walking down the street. So that's why we feel that it was obviously two people. And obviously there's all this questionable shit about Divine. If you were going up Solstice Canyon Road, that is probably the most grueling hike you could ever do. Even in a car. It's hard on a car just going up and there's not a residence for at least, I think, almost two miles. And there's no, there's nowhere along that little path or along that road that is dangerous enough for you to. Or at least between where Solstice Canyon is all the way to the first houses, there's nowhere that someone could fall and not be able to recover. That's where in the footage that I shared, it was like, I think it's 30 minutes after Elaine shared her location, those two people will walk down to Solstice Canyon. Now, the interesting thing is that when me and Carrie go there, or we don't start walking to Solstice Canyon until the sun comes up, just because you can't see anything. So once the sun comes up, that's usually when you start walking, which is exactly when these people started walking. Then what we started looking at was the cell phone pings. And the list of cell phone pings that Susan gave us, we tried to replicate that on foot, walking into Solstice Canyon park, every single trail. And the only one that we found that that matches up to Elaine's cell phone pings is the trail that goes all the way down Robertson Road, all the way to the ruins, because there's ruins at the end. And then it goes up to Rising Sun Trail, which is a uphill hike, and it comes back. Now, that's the route that we found that matches all of the cell phone pings on foot. Okay, so then. And when I. Cell phone pings is like. What I'm saying is that there's only certain locations that you can actually get reception in that park. And you have to be at a certain elevation. And so when you take Rising Sun Trail, it has certain locations that actually hit. The one location it hits perfectly is what we call Thumb Rock. Okay. So as we've gone through that whole trail many times throughout these years, the one place that we consistently know there's going to be cell phone service is Thumb Rock. Because some rock is pushed so far out to where you get almost a clear view over the mountains. And I think it's 600ft, the elevation of it, so you're pretty high up. She really got perfect reception. There wouldn't be any gaps in her. I guess there would be still gaps because you get perfect reception once you get up to the elevation. But the hike itself probably takes 30 minutes to get to the top. We once had decided that we wanted to. To track down Thumb Rock. And so the day that we did it, like me and Kerry, we both went like a few feet apart, and we just went through the path of least resistance coming down. And as we were coming down, that's when Kerry found Rip Tree. Now, it's not something that's easily accessible to anyone. You can get to it from the bottom trail, but you have to go over these rocks and you have to go through some bushes. I actually got a 3D model of the mountain and I started dropping things, like, digitally, like in. As a 3D model, I dropped like a body. I drop a ball to try to see how far it would go. And almost every single time that we drop would always go to the location of or the vicinity of Rip Tree. So that's what kind of got us thinking. Okay, so there's something to this. And now when we started going there. And that's the other thing, too, is that when I try to do my best to take as many pictures so I can show people, but when you're there, it is. It's the weirdest feeling because all of the graffiti is facing uphill. It's not facing downhill. So everything except for the rock is actually facing downhill. But the cross and everything is facing uphill. And as soon as you get into this little clearing thing, it's a perfect view to Thumb Rock. It's probably the only, like, picturesque view of Thumb Rock that you can get in this whole area from the ground floor or from the lower part of the mountain. So the very first time we went there or we found the Rip Tree, Carrie found a little fragment of a bone at the base of the tree. And so she wasn't able to determine if that was a person or an animal, the bone that was there. So the problem is that where Rip Tree is, it's right at the bottom of the, I guess, of an incline or decline, or whichever one it is, it goes straight up to the Thumb Rock. And it's not easy because there's all the foliage and it's pretty treacherous. When Divine started calling her, because I. I believe that Divine was with her. Right. So let's say if you fell from a distance. Let's say if. Let's say in this scenario, if Elaine fell and he's yelling for her and she's not answering, the next thing he would probably do is call it. And that's what I think happened, is that he called her and she wasn't answering. And then another interesting thing is that the exact time that he called her is. Is we've replicated as far as the same time it takes to hike up all the way to Rip Tree. So the line from Rip Tree to Thum Rock, you. That's like. It's like probably maybe about 100 foot strip that you actually get perception coming down. So this is the only place on the whole mountain that you get this. So that's why we think that. That Divine called her to try to hear where her phone was, because then he could find her. What I think happened is that he got to the car and then drove back in there and was trying to. To see what was going on, because I look at it More from the scenario of how would I do it. Like, how would. If a situation was. I was in that situation, obviously I would have called 9911. But at the same time, you're going to go back to the scene of what happened. That's when he got the cell phone. That's the. Now here's. This brings us to where me and Carrie left off. So we actually flew a drone over there, and then that's when we found that picture, which we think to be bones, let's say 100ft from Rip Tree. The problem is getting there is I have not been able to find a clear path. There is that she fell, rolled down. And obviously with trees and all that stuff, it's possible that's where she's at because it is at the top of the ridge, which to get up there. I haven't figured out how to get up there other than coming from the top of the mountain and coming down. Here's the other interesting thing is that Elaine did know this location when I looked in her laptop. Found in a laptop. But one of her bookmarks was this trail for Solstice Canyon Park. And it was a recent bookmark, too. I think it was maybe two or three months before she went missing. Last time we talked to Detective Kim, when he was working the case, we asked him, like, dude, what do you guys feel happened? He was like, it was a hiking accident. He bluntly told us a hiking accident, which is crazy for him to say when we know that he's seen the phone. And that's why we're more inclined on that. But then I think that because of all this situation that's going. Going on with it, they can't really explore anything. But ever since then, we've been more motivated on the. That's what kind of started us searching more in the. In Solstice Canyon. The Rip Tree right there. If you've seen it, I swear to God, man, if you've seen it, you'd be like, this has something to do with a missing person. Not for a dog. It's just the feel of it. It doesn't look right. And where it's at, it doesn't make sense. It's not like a. Like some kid just came up there and was like partying up there or anything. It doesn't make sense. And then to actually carry spray paint with you to leave something and there's no other spray paint anywhere else. Like, we've looked all this whole area and I've never found spray paint anywhere else of those colors anywhere else. So on the rock. Okay, so here's the thing that we figured out from being there. You have to see it in person, but I'll try to find the pictures that we had that we actually tried to take to enhance it. But whoever it was, they came year after year to this location. So the first time they spray painted, it was in black. The second time they came, it was in white. The third time was in pink. Because you could see the layers of it and just the erosion of the different paint layers. I was able to determine that it wasn't like, at the same time. And just because everything is. It's kind of like the person just did it all in black. And then I don't know. But anyways, so on that rock, there was writing, and it said it started with the E L. And we think it says Elaine on it, but they spelled it wrong. Like, I think the I is before the A or something like that. But on the rock itself in black, the very first time they went there, it says the letters are J, A N, and then it says 29 on it. Like, this is very significant. It's not like something that's just random.
- [55:16]
Troy Taylor
There's been a whole lot of searching done in the Solstice Canyon region so far. Aside from a few pieces of clothing and something that might be human bones or animal bones or, hell, maybe just pieces of petrified wood, nothing of evidentiary value has ever been found yet. Because while Nawaz and Cary's theory had a few loose ends that needed timing when combining it with someone else's theory, someone who also believed that Elaine was in that area and was one of those people who had also searched extensively, there was a whole damn lot that started to look like it made sense. And what's this guy's theory on what happened to Elaine when she got to Solstice Canyon? Well, for now, let's just say they don't roar, they meow. But that's next time on among the Missing. Thanks for listening. If you're looking for more of among the Missing, jump on over and take a look at our subscription offer on either Apple Podcasts or Patreon. There's some really great content on there already, including expanded interviews and our first subscriber only bonus episode. She said she want to disappear. And an extended version of my chat with Nevaz will be available in a couple of days time on Patreon. There's also copies of the photograph and the drone footage from PCH on the 28th and 30th of January. If you know anything about what happened to Elaine or where she is, a Reward fund of $25,000 cash is still on offer. If you'd like any more information on the reward or you have any information relating to Elaine's disappearance whatsoever, please visit our website at among themissingpodcast.com where you can send us a message or leave us a voicemail. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok at among themissingpodcast. If you've got any questions you'd like to be addressed in our Q and A episodes, please visit our website at among the missingpodcast. Either send us a message or leave us a voicemail. Among the Missing is a production of FTM Media, produced by Troy Taylor, Mark Tarulli and Fred Scherzer, written by Troy Taylor. Our theme song is Lucid Symphony by Dirty Freaks. Elaine park is still a missing person and her case is still open with the Glendale Police Department. If you have any information about her whereabouts, please contact them on 818-548-3135 and mention Elaine's case number 171512.