A (21:02)
Tcbs. The first official police interview took place on June 29 at 8:30pm when deputies arrived at a mutual friend of the Masons, Vinay Money's house where Berwin had been staying following Mike's disappearance. According to the interviewing deputy, Berwin appeared to be extremely intoxicated and had a hard time walking or even balancing while standing up. Her eyes were bloodshot and watery, her breath smelled of alcohol and her speech was slurred. Berwin was interviewed in the driveway of Vinay's home off Kitchen Dick Road. Mike's truck was parked in the driveway and deputies noted that it was full of camping gear. The windshield was cracked and a side vent window had been broken. Berwin told investigators that she and Mike had been married off and on for 28 years. She said they married in 1982, divorced in 83, remarried in 97 and had been separated for the past two weeks. She said that she last saw Mike on June 20 at around 12:45 when he walked away from her while setting up their campsite. She said it was a campground they had been to numerous times before. She said that essentially from the time they arrived, they were arguing, but she couldn't remember what exactly they were arguing about other than Mike being frustrated with how slowly she was moving and setting up camp. She said that Mike had a temper from hell but stressed that he wasn't suicidal. She said Mike walked away from her very upset during the argument and that he was carrying a lawn chair and a shotgun at the time. She told deputies that Mike had gone gold panning at that particular campsite three different times in the past two months. She said that the last time she saw Mike, he was wearing a heavy camouflaged jacket, blue jeans, hiking boots and a red and black flannel shirt. Berwin expressed concern that Mike didn't know the river well despite having gone gold panning and fishing there previously. She also said that the longest her husband had ever stayed at the river was five days. She told investigators that Mike had locked his keys in his truck, so she walked up the road from the campground to get a ride. Following the argument, she said a man drove her from nearby the campground to the highway where her brother picked her up and drove her to the VFW in Sequim. She stayed at the VFW until around 6:30 when she got a ride home from her friend Vinay. In that same interview, Berwin contradicted herself, saying that on the 20th at around 4:30pm she returned to the campsite and that's when she broke the window of Mike's truck in an attempt to get his keys out. When asked about her contradicting stories, Berwin just stared looking confused at the deputy. To reiterate, she was so drunk during this interview that she couldn't stand up straight. She told deputies that their friend Tom was the last person to see Mike. In a follow up call on July 1, Berwin told officers that she broke the vent window on Mike's truck before leaving the campground. She said that after breaking the window she still couldn't get into the truck, so she started walking home and made it several miles before getting a ride from the passerby. She said she went to Tom's house the following day, which would have been Wednesday, June 21, to pick up the truck and her purse. After picking up the truck, she drove back to the campsite but didn't see Mike. While at the campsite, she saw a couple of camp chairs that she couldn't identify but thought might have been chairs that she had borrowed from her mother, so she took those with her when she left. She then returned to the campground a final time on June 28 to look for Mike, but Couldn't find him. In a second call the following day, Berwin told officers that a frequent patron at the VFW named Jerry told her that he ran into Mike at the campground on Friday, June 23 and had a beer with him, which would make Jerry the last person to have seen Mike and not Tom during this call. Berwin also remembered that Mike had been making bracelets for several family members while at the campsite. No such bracelets were ever recovered from the campgrounds, the woods, the caches or Mike's truck. Later, when shown photos of the green jacket found along the river, Berwin didn't recognize the jacket but did recognize the belt buckle. She told investigators that the package of tobacco and the cigarette rolling device did not belong to Mike. Mike only smoked Camel Lights and Marlboro cigarettes. When shown a piece of paper with Randy's phone number on it, she said she recognized it, then grabbed the paper from the deputy's hand and tried to put it in her pocket. The deputy retrieved the paper from her and concluded the interview. It's believed that in both follow up calls and during this meeting, Berwin was also drunk. On June 30, between Berwin's initial statement on Kitchen Dick Road and her follow up calls with investigators, an officer interviewed Tom. Tom initially told the officer that Mike arrived at his house on Wednesday, June 21 at around 5:30am he would later correct himself to say that this occurred on Thursday, June 22 at 5:30am he said that he immediately noticed Mike's truck's passenger side vent window had been broken. Mike told Tom that he and Berlin had been camping and gotten into an argument and that Berwin left the area. Mike asked if he could leave his truck at Tom's along with Berwin's purse for her to pick up at some point later that day. Tom agreed and the two had a couple cups of coffee before Tom drove Mike back to the campsite where Mike said he planned to stay out in the woods for a few more days. Upon arriving at the Masons campsite, Mike took Tom to the second campsite deeper in the woods where they'd later find the food caches and the lean to. While there, Mike retrieved his cached shotgun which Tom last saw him walking off into the woods carrying. Tom reported that Mike was wearing a heavy dark jacket, blue jeans, a baseball cap and dark tennis shoes and that he didn't appear to be in bad spirits despite the fight with Berwin. When asked, he said that he didn't believe Mike would do anything to hurt himself. Tom said he returned to the campsite twice to check on Mike. He couldn't find Mike nor most of his camping supplies on either trip. All that remained was some food and a fishing pole, and on his second trip out, he took the fishing pole with him for safekeeping. Tom told the officer that Mike had many food caches hidden throughout the woods, and later that night, Tom accompanied deputies back to the campground in an effort to find Mike's second campsite. But they couldn't locate it due to it being in such a densely wooded area and because of the darkness of the night search. On July 7, the lutes, the couple who camped near Mike the week he disappeared, submitted a written statement to investigators. It reads as the event below is what we the Lutes, remember about meeting a man who called himself Mike Kennedy at the Two Forks Campground on the afternoon of June 21, 2006. At approximately 3pm on the afternoon of June 20, we arrived at the Two Forks Campground at approximately 4:30pm we set up camp at site number four. For the next two nights we were sleeping in a tent and camping out of our car. We first noticed the late model Bronco truck parked in an adjacent site but didn't see anyone or a camp. The truck was parked there all night, but early the next morning the Bronco had been moved across the bridge and on to the other side of the river from the campground. We noticed it parked there that morning as we left for the day. We spent the day driving on the backroads and drove to the Tubal Cain trailhead. We returned to our camp at about 4pm to find our tent had been rifled through and our personal bags searched. One backpack containing two green rain suits and one small Coleman camp chair were stolen. Fresh beer had been spilled on the bed and some clothing. And at the point we entered the tent, the beer was still quite wet, as if it had just happened. We immediately looked around the campground and saw we were the only ones there. About half an hour later, a man calling himself Mike Kennedy walked into our camp. He asked if we saw anyone around because his Bronco had been broken into. He then said he had seen two guys in an older orange pit pickup truck driving away as he was walking up to his truck. It was right after that when he realized they might have broken his windshield and his passenger wing window in an attempt to break in. We must have talked for over an hour about different things. He said he was back there prospecting and that during the day he was looking for conchs on old dead trees because the river was running so high. He said he had a camp set up in the woods between the river and the road and that he was was moving the Bronco around to avoid the $10 per day camping fee. He said he could not drive the auto because error lights came on even though it would run. He said he called a friend who lived on Jimmy Come Lately Road to come help him. All the time we were talking to him, he was looking back at the road as if he was expecting his friend to come and didn't want to miss him. We never did see the friend and after a while he went back to the Bronco. About half an hour later, we walked over the bridge to the Bronco and Mike was there. We looked at his broken windows and glass on the ground that Mike suggested was from another car that had been broken into. Mike mentioned that he thought the person that broke in might have known him because someone knew where to look to find his gun. He was worried about leaving his truck there and we said he could park it in our site that night as we would be there until 10 the next morning. He moved his Bronco over to our site and parked it and left. The next morning. We got up at around 8am and the Bronco was gone. About an hour later, Mike came by the camp and said he moved the truck to the top of the hill because a car hauler was coming to get it. We Talked for about 20 minutes while we were breaking up camp and then he left. We then returned to our home in Dungeness. We left Two forks at around 9am on Thursday, June 22. Here are two photos taken without Mike's knowledge. Both were taken at about 7pm on Wednesday, June 21. The first of the two photos is a back shot of Mike sitting in the Lutes campsite. In it, he's wearing a dark colored baseball cap and a red and black plaid shirt. The second photo is of Mike's campsite that he built deep in the woods, which includes the lean to he built out of sapling branches, the campfire and two camp chairs. Draped over one of the camp chairs is a solid dark teal jacket which the Lutes note was the jacket he was wearing the last time they saw him on Thursday morning. And it should be noted that the man from Jimmy Come Lately Road that Mike told the Lutes was coming to pick him up was most likely Tom, who lived on Jimmy Come lately road. On July 13th at 3pm deputies located and interviewed Jerry, the VFW regular who according to Berwin, shared a beer with Mike at the campground on June 23. Jerry informed the deputy that he last saw Mike on Friday, June 23, when he ran into him at the Two Forks campground while scouting out the area for good fishing spots. He said he visited with Mason at the cocktail campground at around 8am Mike told him that some guy was coming to get him at around 9am that same day when he saw Mike. Mike was wearing a heavier coat, but he wasn't initially able to provide a more detailed description of the coat. Jerry told the deputy that when he had gone up to look at the river, he had a few beers with him. Mike offered to buy one off of him, but Jerry declined, declined his payment and gave him the beer for free. He recalled telling Mike about a fishing hole near an old log jam about three miles upriver. Mike told him he had been doing some gold panning, which Jerry thought was strange because the river was running pretty fast. When he saw Mike that morning, he noticed a rifle leaning against a tree, a backpack and sleeping bags. Jerry said said that he knew Mike through the VFW but didn't know him that well. He told the deputy that he knew Mike to be a moody person. While speaking further with Jerry about the coat Mike was wearing, Jerry described it as a wool jacket or coat with some green in it. He said that Mike usually wore a Levi's jacket. Jerry knew that Mike must have been having trouble at home or else he wouldn't have been in the woods alone. He said that Mike didn't mention fishing to him. He just discussed gold panning. And he told the deputies that he heard about a week after he visited with Mason at the campground that Mason was seen at the Tubal Cain trailhead. He said he heard this from someone at the vfw, but couldn't recall who. It's unclear in the case files how, but investigators eventually determined that the person who allegedly saw Mike at the campground a week after Jerry was a woman named Crystal who worked at an outpost a block away from the VFW. Police located and interviewed Crystal on July 14th. Crystal stated that she believed she saw Mike at the campground on the weekend before 4th of July while she was camping there. She stated that she arrived at the campground at around 5pm on Friday, June 30, and that a man resembling Mike was sitting on the bridge near the campground's entrance. She stated that she saw two camp chairs set up in the camping site just before the bridge, which she believed belonged to Mike. She stated that she and her husband arrived at the campground separately and that her husband Zeb arrived before she did, but she doesn't believe Zeb ever encountered Mike while there. She recalled that at the time the man she believed to be Mike was wearing a black and white white flannel coat, a baseball cap and jeans. She stated that Mike appeared pretty intoxicated. Crystal said that a lot of weird stuff happened at the campground that weekend. She had seen a couple of fights break out and that Forest Service had to eventually come up to break one up. She didn't know who was involved in the fights. She also stated that her husband's wallet disappeared while they were camping. Crystal told police that she recognized Mike as both a regular customer at the outpost as well as from his photos in the newspapers. Those are the five versions of events that influenced local law enforcement's timeline. And as you may have noticed, there are some major discrepancies amongst those stories. And those discrepancies center mostly around Mike's Bronco and several camping chairs. To review, Berwin says she last saw Mike at around 12:45pm on June 20 when she stormed out of the campground. She walked and hitchhiked to the VFW where she stayed until around 6:30pm when she got a ride home from Vinay. But then in the same statement, she says that she returned to the campsite at approximately 4:30pm on June 20 and broke into Mike's truck in an attempt to get his keys. And finally, she says she picked up Mike's truck From Tom on June 21st and drove back to the campsite but didn't see Mike. While at the campsite she saw a couple of camp chairs that she couldn't identify but thought might have been chairs that belonged to her mother, so she took them when she left. Tom says Mike dropped his Bronco off at his house on June 2022 at around 5:30am not the 21st, when Berwin reportedly picked it up from him and that when Mike dropped the truck off, its windshield was cracked and the passenger side vent window was broken. The loots say when they first encountered Mike at around 3pm on the 21st, their camp had just been broken into with a camp chair being stolen and Mike's truck had also just been broken into. They reported that Mike's truck remained in the area until the early morning hours of the 22nd and that when they left on the morning of the 23rd, Mike's second camp was still standing, which included two camping chairs. Jerry says when he ran into Mike on the 23rd, there were no camping chairs at his secondary camping location and Then there's Crystal's statement, which has a lot of issues. Crystal alleges she saw Mike on June 30 and that both camp chairs were present. However, on the 30th, search and rescue, the Coast Guard and Mike's friends and family were searching the campground all day. And no one else, including Crystal's husband, saw Mike there that day or at any point following Jerry's visit with him on the 23rd. Crystal also says she recognized Mike from his pictures in the news, yet didn't report the sighting for two weeks when the police appeared approached her. I don't quite know what to make of Crystal's statements, but I do have a very hard time believing that she saw him casually hanging out at the entrance to the campground on the same day that close to 50 people and a helicopter were searching the area for him. And a search of this magnitude seems like something that might stick out in someone's mind. But I do have a theory regarding this discrepancies amongst the other witnesses statements. Berwin tells investigators that she hitchhiked to the VFW on the 20th, then got a ride home from Vinay, which Vinay corroborated. More on that in a minute. So with corroboration that Berwin was at the vfw, as well as her having no reliable method to return to the campsite that afternoon, it seems unlikely that Berwin returned to the campsite and broke into the truck on the 20th. It also seems unlikely that Berwin retrieved the car on the 21st from Tom. Both Tom and the Lutes gave fairly detailed accounts that seem to indicate Mike took the car to Tom's on the morning of the 22nd, at which point the windows had already been broken. In fact, the windows appear to have been smashed on the 22nd in conjunction with the loot's campsite being ransacked and their camp chair stolen. And while Berwin claims she took two camp chairs on her second visit out to the campground, the one thing that remains consistent across all interviews is that Mike's camp chair stayed with him the whole time. So here's the timeline I've built in short order. On 6 20, Berwyn and Mike arrive at the campground at noon, immediately begin drinking and subsequently fighting. And Berwin leaves at some point between 12:45 and 4:30, at which point Mike begins moving their campsite to the more remote location in the woods. When the Lutes first arrive around four that day, they don't see any campers nearby and their campsite was the closest to Mike and Berwin's. On 6 21, Berwin somehow gets back to the campground and attempts to get the truck. At this point two things have changed. So since she drunkenly left, Mike has relocated into the woods and the lutes have arrived and set up camp near the initial campsite. Berwin says she sees camp chairs that she doesn't immediately recognize but assumes are her parents and takes them. The lutes report a stolen camp chair and beer spilled on their belongings. It seems likely to me that Berwin mistook the lutes campsite as Mike's went through it, spilled beer everywhere and absconded with their camp chair. She then tries to break into the Bronco by breaking the passenger side vent window but fails to gain access and leaves. On 6 22, Mike drops the truck and Berwin's purse off with Tom before returning to the campground. He then sees the loots off as they end their camping trip. On 6:23, Jerry runs into Mike at the campground and Mike tells him that some guy is coming to pick him up at 9 and that's the last confirmed sighting of Mike before Crystal alleges to see him a week later. During the search of the.
