Chapter 2 "The Chase"

The Missing Childhood Podcast focuses on one true crime case at a time to help bring closure to families. This season, they are investigating the disappearance of Paul David Sanders. The podcast host has been struggling to obtain information from the Tucson Department for the Arizona Department of Public Safety about a pursuit involving Paul's truck. They have been in contact with other agencies, such as Oro Valley Police Department, who have been helpful in providing reports. The host believes that the Arizona DPS dropped the ball in their investigation. The Missing Childhood Podcast is a serial based true crime show. We focus on one case at a time and break it down into a manageable workflow. As we walk you through the case, we hope to bring out leads and help provide closure to the family. This season, we will be focusing on our efforts on Paul David Sanders. Let's review from the last chapter. In the last chapter, we told you who Paul was and the mention that a pursuit happened. Today, we get into those details or lack thereof. So the missing person report states Paul is missing from Mesa, but the truck may suggest otherwise. Robert was notified, his father, by phone that a registered vehicle in his name was in pursuit on August 12th by Tucson DPS. So I'm going to read page two again of the original missing persons report. And so we can kind of reflect back on last chapter and start touching more into some of the stuff that's in the supplemental report. On 8-14-2001 at 1700 hours, I responded to their address in reference to a missing juvenile. Upon arrival, I spoke with Robert Brewer. Robert told us that his son, Paul Sanders, had been gone since Sunday the 12th. Robert said that Paul had left the residence at approximately 1830 hours in his silver Chevy Z71 pick, which I did post a picture of that truck in the Missing Chapters podcast closed group. It is not his truck. It was just one I could find on the internet that resembled his truck. And we should make notation that this is the truck that Paul typically used, but it was registered to Robert. Correct. There are out there that dad was pretty upset about how the report was handled and his truck being stolen, but I want to preface that we do have the car facts. That vehicle had never been reported stolen. So then we found out about the pursuit in the original missing persons report. I started contacting Tucson Department for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which is their version. For those of you here in Missouri or other states, AVDPS is their version of the Highway Patrol. So I started contacting them and I put some screenshots as well in the group about how many times I contacted them. Just struggling, trying to get their report and so many missed opportunities there. So I requested, I have, well, I stopped screenshotting at seven attempts. This is going back as far as, what's the first one? 9-28-2022, which I know there was some before that actually. It was pretty close to when we first started helping, which was like July-ish, I think. I have the first FOIA request to AVDPS being on July 31st, 2022. Yep, I think you're right. You're right. I just stopped screenshotting and making copies of things after a certain point because, quite frankly, my computer is getting full. And it's starting to struggle on the lookout for a new computer. So we did find out, though, that, and I don't remember how we found out that Oro Valley Police Department assisted in it. I don't remember that. We actually found out because of the PEMA request. So when we started this, we didn't just like willy-nilly go, oh, what police department do we want to find out about Paul? We knew that the truck was found in Tucson and we knew that he was reported missing from Mesa. So our initial first steps was actually filing those reports to Mesa and to PEMA County. So Tucson and Arizona IAM. And in there, they reported the incident of when the first phone call was made, when they contacted Robert for the police chase, all these other things. And they said in their last report that the initial call was made by Arizona DPS. And it was followed up by Oro Valley, which, shout out to them, they are incredible, awesome, an amazing agency. And then it was also kind of touch base that they were communicating with Tucson and PEMA County. That's right. And then I found a continuation to the missing persons report. I can only, because it's not dated on this page, so I'm assuming that it was all on the 14th because it goes on in the original report. In 1931 hours, Paul was entered as a missing juvenile by a records clerk with Mesa PD with a photo of him attached, which I thought was weird that they had used the prior year school picture when we had new pictures of Paul. They didn't give him a new picture. I did kind of, it clicked when we were going through yearbook. So that's an old picture of Paul. It wasn't a recent one, which I did upload a recent picture of Paul as well, the most recent one. Yeah, that picture that was updated by Mesa PD initially would have been August of 2000 that was taken. And I know your update picture was basically May, June of 2001. Right. Yeah, because the one I uploaded was the last known picture of Paul. So it goes on to say that he left a message with investigator Keith Dixon, who was the head of investigations at the time, surprising the situation, and at 2130 hours, he spoke to him again to give him updated information. So that's what makes me think that this next page for the continuation report, it says 2230 hours, but it's not dated. But it says at 2230 hours, I received additional information from Deputy Gonzalez from Pima County Sheriff's Office. Deputy Gonzalez advised that the vehicle was located in Reddington Pass, mile marker 16, which is east of Tucson. When the deputy looked in the vehicle, he saw a wallet, a set of keys, and was unable to check the identification in the wallet. Deputy Gonzalez said he would send a deputy out to the vehicle on 8-1501. So it leads you to believe that this information came to him in the middle, pretty close to the middle of the night, like at 1130 at night on the 14th. And so the next day, they were going to go out and check the vehicle because now they've got a missing person attached. And we also have to take into consideration that Arizona is a desert, and a lot of these areas that are desert areas aren't well lit. And you probably, when you want to go look through a car, look for fingerprints, look for blood, look for anything, forensically, potentially, you want some light. And, you know, a couple hours in comparison to a couple days, I'll take it. Right. Well, and then you've not only got that, but now that he's missing, if there was a potential crime scene, you can't just go in and start rummaging through things. There's protocol, and I understand that. You can't just go in and search the vehicle because you want to. You can look in the window and see what you can see from an outside of the vehicle, but you can't enter that vehicle without a warrant. Correct. They didn't have enough information yet to get a warrant, but you can look in the window. There's no expectation of privacy from standing outside looking into a window. He could see there's a wallet, but that's why he couldn't check for identification because he would have had to cross that, breach that entrance of the vehicle, and you can't do that without a warrant. And, Carrie, you know this, but our listeners don't know this. I actually dealt with an abandoned car in my front yard not even a week ago, and nobody touched the car. They walked around it. They took pictures, and they were basically awaiting to see if there was a response within 30 minutes, and then they called the tow truck and moved it very fast. But it was completely different than how I've heard Paul's case was managed. Can you tell me a little bit about that? So, we know there was a pursuit. We know Arizona DPS was involved in the pursuit. How do we know that? Because they are the ones that contacted Dad to follow it up. We also know that because they found the vehicle. Pima County says, yeah, we found the vehicle. We start digging a little bit more and find out Oro Valley was involved. Now, like Jill said, Oro Valley has been outstanding to us, and I certainly appreciate all the assistance they have given us. They went out of their way of not only saying, yep, here's the report. I called them, and they went out of their way of giving me a direct phone number. They gave me a direct email address. She's like, yep, here's the report number because you can only go back 10 years with their FOIA system. So, I couldn't do a traditional FOIA, so she gave me an email address and said, just email me and tell me what you want. Here's the report number, but you've got to request it in writing. Sweet. I can do that. I emailed her, and in less than a week, I had an email back. And then about a weekish later, I get this mysterious envelope in the mail, and I'm like, what is this? Not only did she send me the report, she sent me the CAD information, everything for their supplemental reports and stuff. So, in the meantime, Arizona Department of Public Safety keeps telling me, we've got no record, we've got no record, we've got no record. And I'm like, so finally, one of the requests, I was even snarky enough because their response to me was, well, this is your third attempt. And I'm like, I'm going to send you 300 attempts if that's what it takes to get the information. So, if anybody who knows me knows that if you respond to me in a snarky manner, I'm going to respond to you in kind. So, I copied everything from Oro Valley, as well as some of the stuff from Pima County, as well as Paul Smith and Coon's report, submitted it all to them, and I said, I know I'm not an investigator, never claimed to be one, still don't claim to be one. However, I can count one and one equals two, and when I've got two agencies telling me that this pursuit happened, this pursuit happened. And when both agencies independently are telling me that your agency was involved, your agency was involved. Their response to me is, well, the only thing that we have is Trooper Peter Curley just requested a cancellation report. Do you want to pay for that? Yes. Yes, I do. Please send it to me in writing how much you guys dropped the ball and are now, by the way, could potentially be civilly liable for any damages that has occurred because they did not, Trooper Curley didn't want to spend the time to write a report. Apparently, report writing is not in his wheelhouse. So, now we've got all kinds of dropped balls. The report we got from, let me make sure I have the right agency. The report I have from Oro Valley is on August 12, 2001, at 2156 hours, communications advised, Arizona Department of Public Safety was in an active pursuit of a possible drug driver southbound Arizona 77 at mile marker 97. The vehicle had Arizona license plate MBK878, and I have said that so many times now and typed that number so many times, I now know all license plates by heart. It was, and the vehicle was gray in color. Myself and Officer Fott were at Oracle, I'm going to mess up the name of it, so here comes Kerry's Arizona speech lesson. Vistaroso? Is it Vistaroso? I have no idea. The ISPSO Commerce Loop standing by to possibly deploy stop stick. Communication advised the pursuit was still active and the pursuing officer was going code three, which means expedited emergency equipment, with lights and sirens, and they were approaching the county line. I continued to stand by, waiting to see the pursuit light coming southbound AZ-77 at Oracle Road to deploy stop sticks. While waiting, I saw a gray truck pass by at a high rate of speed. There was no patrol vehicles of any kind behind this truck, nor following a distance behind. I continued to wait. Sergeant D. Reedy was able to get behind this truck, southbound Oracle, from Tangerine Road, and determined it was the vehicle they were pursuing. Sergeant Reedy observed a near-miss rear-end collision with a truck and another vehicle at Perchview and Oracle. Oh, bad that I screwed that name up. Did I get it right? Oracle Junction? Perchview and Oracle? Perchview? Did I say Oracle? I was really close. Oh, no, no, no. You're talking about Perch Ridge. P-U-S-C-H? V-I-E-W. Perchview. Yeah. I was really close. You guys will see that Carrie gets a lot of speech lessons because Carrie cannot speak Arizonian. But luckily for y'all, I can speak Arizonian, and in the beginning of our research, a lot of the time, my job was to call because people wouldn't believe Carrie and another person that was involved were from the state because of how they said words. Yeah, we can't say those words. At least I don't call it Texan. No, never again. He advised they were now going Code 3. Officer Sicklebauer was able to set up at Linda Vista and Oracle West Stopsticks. His patrol vehicle was parked on Linda Vista, West Oracle, and advised for pursuing officers to go to the right as passing through. As Officer Sicklebauer deployed the stopsticks as a single unit, half in the slow and half in the fast lane, the truck went into the left-hand turn lane and avoided the stopstick. Officer Reedy's patrol vehicle was stuck by the stick and flat in the driver's side tire. The truck continued southbound at a very high rate of speed. Arizona DPS Officer Curley met with us and advised he did not know Oro Valley was standing by at this road. Commerce Loop was six or else he would have continued Code 3. Communications did advise they repeatedly told the AZ DPS communications of our standby status. The pursuit began in Mammoth, AZ at 2150 hours. So from point A, from Mammoth to Oracle Valley is way more than six minutes. Yeah. How far did we, wasn't that like 40 or 45 minutes typically? It is. From Mammoth to Oro Valley is 41 minutes and it's 35.7 miles. Right. And so the only thing I could think of is they heard about it as they were coming through Mammoth and just used Mammoth because it was close maybe at 2150 hours because I'm not quite sure how they only got six minutes in there. It sounds like they more than did the due diligence. We also have to take into consideration that when we're talking about Paul's disappearance, it initially said Paul went missing from Mesa. And I live in the Valley of the Sun, so Phoenix metro area. When you ask anybody, and I did, I asked ten different people I know and I said, hey, what's the quickest way to get to Tucson? And they said, oh, you take the 10 on down. And so other things have kind of come up where we discovered about this car chase and we were like, oh, it's the 77. You can't go from Mesa to the 77 without hitting Globe. Right. And that brings another kind of added facet is so did this pursuit or situation actually start in Globe, in Gila County? Right. Globe to Mammoth is about like, I want to say it's like 20 minutes. It's not far. And going down the 77, if you look stuff up on YouTube or anything like that, the 77 is how I imagined Arizona when I was a child. Very dusty, deserty. There's not a lot of turnoff. If you are going somewhere on the 77, you already know where you're going and you know how you're going to get there. Right. If you're new to the road. If you're new to the road. You should stop at Mammoth and get gas before you're heading on to Tucson. Exactly. It's one of those places where it's very small. It's an old mining town. There's not much there. Right. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it definitely is a sign that the car was initially spotted with potential drunk driver at Mammoth versus Globe or Dudleyville or Tiger or any of those other small kind of cities. And that 35, you know, 35-mile stretch, he made it in six minutes. You got to remember, Paul is 17 years old. I am a very new driver. But what we figured out, wasn't it around, like, only having his license for about six months? Yeah, six to eight months is what I was able to find out. So six to eight months, new driver. He's not from Arizona, so he doesn't know all about our roads. He might know that area and may have driven it going to see a family member or going to a U of A game or something like that. We're not going to discount that. But he also was living in Mesa. So his access to that road could be completely different. And most people, unless they've driven that road quite often, you're not going to be speeding, causing problems, doing anything like that without knowing the road. I mean, I know teenage kids are kind of cocky and think that they're invincible. And especially teenage boys, they're like, I'm made of steel, nothing's going to happen to me. But when you've only got your license six, eight months, and it's in a very remote area like that, I've been driving since I was 17. So over 30 years, I don't think I would have been cocky enough with my driving experience to be that brave to attempt it. And from all records that we have, you had to be a pretty damn good driver to evade him like that. I mean, he evades substance. All of these things he's been evading for at a high rate of speed. Not bad for a drunk driver. Not bad for a drunk driver. Right, quote unquote drunk driver. However, we don't know because we don't have anything. They did go on to add a supplemental report, Oro Valley did. It said no Oro Valley Police Department officer can identify the driver. In this case, it is an assist other agency and a copy of the case will be forwarded to the Department of Public Safety. They can't, DPS can't even say, confirm or deny whether they've got this report because they would have had nothing to it. So in my background in law enforcement, in order to have something to attach a supplemental report to, you have to actually have a report to supplement. So if Officer Curley never did a report, he only requested the report number to be canceled, so that way he didn't have to do the paperwork, there would be nothing for them to attach this to. So they would have just went, all right, I don't know what to do with this. And it probably just went in the shredder at this point. I don't know what else. But I guess that brings to a good question is like if, you know, things were tied that said, you know, Robert owned the car, his son was missing, and we've kind of talked about how, like, that information got passed around from Tucson to Mesa, and I'm going to guess it probably got sent to DPS for a be on the lookout for a kid. Right. I would think, well, as soon as Paul was entered as a missing persons anyway, that would have automatically, so most people are under the impression that you go to law enforcement, you file a missing persons report, and they say they're going to enter him into the system, that it doesn't go anywhere with that. When, in fact, when you enter that person missing into the system, it automatically goes into NCIC. And NCIC has a tendency to go ahead and distribute that information automatically to surrounding agencies. So my guess is DPS, well, first of all, my guess is the one that's going to be monitoring NCIC for the FBI within the state of Arizona. So because the FBI is who's in charge of NCIC, but they allow the state's private patrol agencies to actually kind of babysit it themselves. Because can you imagine there's how many law enforcement agencies out there? Just the FBI babysitting, that's a lot. It's already a lot when it's the state. We've got to also take into consideration highway patrols all over the state. And I know for Arizona specifically that if you do have a child that is a minor, it is entered into AZDPS. You can just Google search it, AZDPS missing children. You can type in their name, certain features, whatever. Even if there's a potential other car or maybe they were with something, usually that's entered. It's not like full swing like Missouri Highway Patrol that you get a poster and everything, but you get a little blurb. And that's great. I wish we could get a picture, but, you know, nothing's 100%. And this is AZDPS. I have to remind myself that, like, sometimes you've got to take what you can get, but everything can be improved upon. Right. So some agencies, not that I'm, like, patting Missouri on the back or anything, and we're really, really good at that kind of stuff. So in Missouri when you enter someone as a missing person and it goes into NCIC, Missouri we have MEALS, Missouri Uniformed Law Enforcement Services, system, system. I'm a presser, remember the acronym. So we have MEALS. So law enforcement enters into MEALS. And then a small section in Kansas City and a small section in St. Louis also has what's called Regis, subpar in my opinion, but, hey, I'm a MEALS girl. So when we enter into MEALS, a missing person, it automatically goes into NCIC, just like every other state, but it also Missouri has a pretty outstanding missing person section on the Missouri Highway Patrol website because as soon as we enter into MEALS and it goes to NCIC, it automatically uploads to Missouri Highway Patrol. They don't have to say, hey, I need this entered. Missouri automatically does it, which I think is pretty outstanding. And the flip side of that, as soon as someone is located that's a missing person and they remove the entry, it automatically comes off the website. So there's not a whole lot of making sure this stuff happens because it's already happening in the background. As you're doing the entry, it's only on for you. As soon as you have just the basic information, name, date of birth, and there's like two or three other things that are main identifiers, once you get that in there, boom, it's done. You can add supplemental and it will just continue to update that to your website automatically. But now that we're talking about how good Missouri is, and I understand you love your state, that's fine. We have to kind of take into consideration how much of this case is actually lost because one person didn't file a form saying, hey, I changed this car. This is where it started. This is where it stopped. Right. Exactly. So let me give them the benefit of the doubt and double check because as early as what date was it? July 31st. Yes. So, no, the most recent one I did. I just did another point. It was March of 2023. Right. That's right. So most of them, I get a response back like within two weeks going, nope, no such record, no such record, no such record, no such record. It doesn't exist. It never happened. So in March I entered another request, this time saying, I know there's no report, but I also know per the person who told me because I gave her name in the request that there is a record out there, the cancellation report, and that's what I want. And, yes, I am willing to pay for it. And I put it just like that in this report. Here it is, May 8th, and I still don't have a yes, no, or a kiss my butt. So I'm going to start harassing the ACDPS by e-mail because I'm good like that. I got their e-mail address and I'm going to start harassing them via e-mail until somebody answers me. So take a step back and kind of think, as angry and frustrated as you are, we kind of have to think and go, what questions are we trying to get answered from this cancellation report or any other kind of thing? Are we trying to find out if there's only one person in the car, maybe there's two people? Why did you suspect a drunk driver? Did we get to kind of know the person? Where did the pursuit actually start? Did it start in Mammoth? Did it start in Globe? Did it start somewhere in the middle? We don't even know for a fact where this thing started. We just know where Oro Valley found out about it. And I guess the other big question is, where did it actually finish? Because the last we know of is what happened to Officer Curley in getting stop stick. We didn't know, did he go south, did he go east, which way did he turn? Was he still at a high velocity of speed once he evaded police? And I guess the other kind of part is, we're in a truck. We're not in like, you know, a Honda Civic or an SUV of any sort. The truck has a bed. Did he notice anything in the bed? Did he notice anything in the cab of the truck? Did he notice the bed was covered? Was it covered? Was it full? Did he notice, like, if there was a toolbox in it? Was there any distinguishing features? Because that plays a large role of, okay, we know that it was covered. Okay, great, it was covered. By the time it was found, there was no cover on it. So what happened? Was it always covered? What did the truck look like before Paul even left? Yeah, we know that there was no cover on the truck when it was found, but we don't know. Was there something in the truck at the start of the pursuit? Was the tailgate down on the truck? Did the trooper at any point in time? So when I dispatched, I worked with multiple pursuits. I was involved in a lot of pursuits. And at least one time in every pursuit that I have ever worked, to my knowledge, at some point in time, that driver looked at the side view mirror to see who was behind him, made him move over. What is that officer doing behind him? They're going to look in that side view mirror as well as the rear view on the windshield. Did Curly ever make any kind of eye contact with him? Did he see him good enough at all to see if it was a male driver, a female driver, an old driver, a young driver? Was there more than one officer? Right. Without this paperwork, there is so much that is just lost in this case, which is heartbreaking. So that only leaves us to speculate, right? We know that from the information we've provided that the chase happened on the 12th, started in Mammoth, and ended in Oro Valley, correct? Or Oracle Junction? Right. Right. And at that point is where the officer would stop, speak, and the truck just kept right on going. And then late at night on the 14th, they find the truck in the Catalina foothills, which is about 45 minutes away? Right. So that's where we get to we follow it up with FEMA County to find out about the vehicle being located. And I have the supplemental report that was also in the missing persons report. We're starting to get to the point of the original missing persons report, though, that it's starting to get rather thin on information. The supplemental in here is on Wednesday, 8-15-2001, at approximately 0800 hours, I was notified a vehicle was located at the Reddington Pass at approximately mile post 16.2. I was notified the vehicle had been in a high-speed chase with ADVPS in Oro Valley, and that the suspect, Paul David Sanders, was reported as a runaway juvenile from Mammoth. The request by Mesa PD for FEMA County Sheriff's Department to recover the victim's vehicle had been made through communications. So, basically, they just sent a message, hey, can you guys go check out this vehicle? Maybe they'll recover it for us. Which, that's a track. That's typical. So I respond to the location noting a silver pickup truck. It was noted approximately 300 yards south of Reddington Road near the top of a peak. There is no known road to that location. The vehicle had been driven off-road and damage was noted to the undercarriage and body of the vehicle. Family members also arrived at the location to examine the vehicle. I initiated a search operation for the subject in the immediate area. Family members and I searched in the immediate area without finding any obvious signs of the subject. I coordinated with the Arizona Department of Public Safety Ranger Helicopter, in which searched the area, and subsequently, the helicopter crew informed me that no signs were noted in the immediate area. Volunteer time was able to secure the vehicle from the site and tow the vehicle to a storage facility. And then, that was on 8-15. The dates are all a little screwy on the report. I'm just giving it to you as it was in for me. I also have also part of the same original missing persons report. 8-13-13 at approximately 1830 hours, I was assigned to the Special Operations Air Support Unit. I was requested to contact a subject named Angela Rice, which is Paul's mom. I contacted her at her telephone by which, obviously, they redacted that phone number. This was a reference to a past case. Look, this is later on she calls to get an update. This is what I thought it was. You have the CAD information. So, Carrie, can you tell me what CAD is? Because not all of us are super in and hip with police lingo. Sure thing. So, CAD is shorthand for Computer Aided Dispatch. So, when you call 911 or you call the non-emergency line and you speak to a dispatcher or call taker, depending on the agency, they have a program called Computer Aided Dispatch. They all vary a little bit, but they all do the same basic function. They take the notes from the caller, any notes from the officers, any person placing involved in the, any information is put in here and it's basically like a huge notepad that's connected directly to the report. And when a report number is issued, it's issued through this dispatch program. It's a jack-of-all-trades program that you can put everything in, the person who called, so where the, whatever situation is happening at, the address there, vehicle information, people information, stolen property information, pretty much everything is in here. And so, when Oro Valley sent us the... Supplemental report. Right. Supplemental, thank you. My brain is mushed at this point tonight. They sent us a copy of the CAD, which they had as well, from the vehicle being located. And it gives the report numbers. I stand corrected. I did not get this CAD from Oro Valley. This specific CAD I got from Pima County. So, this is about the vehicle being located. And as I'm reading through it, I can see that now. So, there is two other report numbers initially tied to the vehicle being located. I can only imagine the initial report number was someone called and said, hey, there's this vehicle parked out here and something just doesn't look right. You might want to send the police out here to check it out kind of thing. And then the second report number, I imagine, is when they actually went out there because it's just kind of in a note called the call taker comment section. And we should mention, Reddington Pass isn't small by any means. By any means. It's very vast. It's beautiful. There's a lot of biking, a lot of hiking. A lot of people even go shooting out there. But the area where his car was found, the truck, it's not around any massive sites. There was a ranch around there at the point in time that was not really functional. So, it's just an absurd place. Should, Terry, do you want to talk about, you know, what happened when police actually found the truck? What happened to the stuff inside? You mentioned they found some cards, a cell phone. What ended up happening? So, they found his keys. They found his wallet in the vehicle. They found his cell phone in the vehicle. Family shows up. Law enforcement. At this point, they don't consider it a quote, unquote, crime. He's a missing kid. They just, instead of saying, kid's still missing, found the truck, he might be out here. They might want to, like, process this vehicle and see if there's anything hokey going on. They didn't. They just took all the property out of the truck, gave it to dad. Further towing took the vehicle for insurance to do what insurance does. The truck was never seen again. So, you're telling me that truck wasn't fingerprinted or photographed or anything like that? There was no fingerprinting done. There was no photographs of the vehicle taken. At least that's what I am being told by FEMA County, that the vehicle had never been fingerprinted. It had no luminol, no processing, no nothing. Frontier Towing picked it up, took it to the tow yard, never to be seen again. Was never held as evidence, nothing. So, yet another place that we completely lost a lot of information. And I will say, I will say I contacted Frontier Towing. In the beginning of our kind of hunt for answers, and they were like, hey, we don't keep records past seven years, which would have been great information. Luckily, because we had the FOIAs, we had the other records, we were able to get a VIN number and get the car facts. So, what can you tell me about that, Carrie? So, according to the car facts, there was a claim because the vehicle was damaged, it received a salvage title. But then a couple years later, it received a rebuild title, which means they were able to fix the vehicle and make it legally drivable again. There was no report of it being stolen, nothing else. The only thing that was ever reported that's attached to that VIN, which I have the full VIN number, the only thing that was on there was towed and an insurance claim for salvage to the vehicle, did a salvage title, they did a payoff on the insurance, the insurance just paid the note off on the truck in the amount of $14,575.13. That was the original amount owed on the vehicle. I don't know if that was still what was owed on it. That was what was owed on it when it was purchased. On 9-8-2000 is when the truck was purchased. I have the insurance company's name, I have the finance company's name. So, the only thing that happened is truck was bought, truck was wrecked, insurance paid off truck, truck got salvage title, truck had a rebuild title, truck is now out on the road somewhere again. So, we're trying to find a way to have the VIN search done on that truck to find out who owns it. I can't just give out a VIN number and say, hey, if you own this truck, please reach out to us. People think, well, it's been 23 years now, 22 years. There's no way. There is a way. DNA never leaves. I don't care how much you clean a vehicle. Well, we can even talk about what happened with Alyssa Turney. She also went missing from Phoenix, Arizona in 2001 and it was like, what, two, three years ago they found the truck and they were able to pull DNA from it. And that truck hadn't been in their possession since 2001, which I think is really important to recognize. Even though Phoenix is not Mesa or, you know, Gila County or Pima or Canal or every other county we've contacted, but people can take, you know, ideas from other agencies to do good work. Well, the advancement of DNA now is just amazing. It takes a microscopic amount from a microscopic amount to make a match. I mean, minuscule, a head of a pen amount of a blood drop that is not even really visible with the human eye, but it's found with stuff like luminol that's fluorescent when it's sprayed on bodily fluids. They could still take that minute diluted amount and still make a match with it. So why not try it? Right. If they could find that truck, they might be able to say, okay, so this person originally owned it because you can find out very easily by running a van on everybody who's ever owned that vehicle. How do I know? I used to do it. You could do it right through NCIC. I used to do it all the time. Maybe that's something we should leave this episode with is this information has been passed on to police. It's not like we're gatekeeping, we're holding anything back. When we find something that's important that should be shared and released, we're doing it because they have different powers than we do. Exactly. I mean, we can't go out and use luminol on things. We can't go say, hey, give me that truck so I can test it. We can't do any of that stuff. I have the investigator's name and phone number, and I can message him in a drop of a hat. He's more than willing to take the information. This investigator is more than willing to take anything that we can give him and look into it. I get emails, text messages, phone calls going, hey, dude, I just thought about this. He's like, good job. I'll look into it. I'll follow up. So this investigator is more than willing to do that. We should bring up is our next episode is going to be about MESA. And I will be your tour guide because I know a lot about Arizona. I know a lot about MESA. And I think it's really important to look at, especially with the other missing persons cases that are involved, how often things switch hands, losing evidence. But that's for next time. As always, missing chapters always ends their episode with a UP, which that means an unidentified person. So today, since we talked so much about Mammoth, Arizona, we're going to talk about it some more. This UP's number is UP6619. And this Caucasian male was found on February 18th, 2006, in the Mammoth vicinity in Arizona. And this is in Pinal County, which is just south of Gila County in Globe, and where the pursuit started. The estimated age range is 23 to 35 years old. His estimated year of death is 2001 to 2003. His estimated year of death is 2001 to 2004. And it's important to kind of listen along and kind of go, so why are we talking about him? He has a similar estimated year of death. He's about 5'9", and he's close enough in age. It states that he is white Caucasian. You know, some people, if they look at the bones and the bodies of somebody, they could make the suggestion that Paul was fully Caucasian. Pretty easily. Some of the circumstances of this recovery I do find interesting, and something just to have, like, a light bulb in the back of my head, was that a hunter located these remains in a remote desert area. That gives you an idea of how remote, how desert the 77 actually is. And if you look on NamUs at unidentified people at any point in time, you can see that Gila County has very few UPs. They even have very few missing people. So for this to pop up, and we know Paul's background, we're like, we've got to get him checked. Unfortunately, this isn't Paul, because if it was, we wouldn't be having this podcast. Right. But it's always, you know, leaving that around. I will mention some of his clothing and accessories, which are very Globe rodeo-esque. So if you do have a missing loved one that was potentially in Globe, Superior, Hayden, Winkleman, San Carlos Reservation, just kind of listen up. This person was wearing Wrangler brand jeans. Inside one pants pocket was one $5 bill folded around a domino and secured with a rubber band. I kind of find that to be really unique in comparison to other people. And then the other part. Probably carried around on the regular is kept that $5 bill protecting that domino for something. Yeah. Or like, you know, a lot of people would just keep money in a wallet. Right. But it kind of sounds like, you know, when you have like a money roll, where you roll up money and then you just put a rubber band over it. I've never heard of it with a domino. So that might be something that sticks out and somebody might go, you know what, so-and-so I know used to do that. And we haven't heard from him in years. Right. It looked like he was carrying more dough than what he really had. Exactly. And then in the other front pants of the pocket were four fragmentary $1 bills and 64 cents and change. So not a lot of money on. But the other kind of component that does make this different than other kinds of situations is his shoe wear. And he was wearing cowboy boots. So if you know anybody that was potentially in the Gila County area, the Pinal County area in 2001 to 2004 and matches this description, feel free to contact those counties and kind of have a conversation. The case number for this is ML06-0312. I have to tell you guys, if you don't know how to reach out to these families, or not families, these agencies to say, hey, this might be my missing loved one, this might be my missing friend, this might be my missing XYZ, and you don't know how to do that, feel free to reach out to us. We're more than willing to help you guys out. That's one reason we put these unidentified people out there. Because, yeah, we're working on Paul, and that's our main focus right now. If he's unidentified, has no voice, and we have zero issue with helping them speak. And if that means you need help to help them speak, reach out. And I will say, Carrie knows this for a while, my ongoing joke was, oh, I'm calling the medical examiner today because we found some sort of similarity. And most of the medical examiners, I'd say 99.9% of the medical examiners, they have the same goal as we do, as everybody else does, of getting these people identified and kind of trying to give some answers to the families of these people that lost a loved one. Right. Yeah, in fact, it was part of our ongoing joke is she would call me and say, I spoke to my bestie today, and I'm like, oh, yeah, which medical examiner was this time? How'd you get? Zoe Bruce. Zoe Bruce. Zoe Bruce. Bruce and Yavapai. Yavapai is his name. So we'd love to hear your memories of Paul, share stories, hear your thoughts and theories. To do so, please join us on our private Facebook group, The Missing Chapters Podcast. You can also email us at themissingchapterspodcast at gmail.com. Also, please like, subscribe, share. The more people that hear about Paul's case as well as the unidentified persons mentioned, the more we can help bring Paul or somebody home. I wish you all a great day. Thank you for joining us. I also want to tell you guys we appreciate our initial first listeners. We got six different countries, which is amazing. I want to give a shout-out to Arizona because that's where Paul went missing from and where I'm from, and I'm really excited that we had a lot of listeners there. So thank you guys for joining us this evening. We hope you have a great day. Bye. Bye. ♪