On the evening of January 12, 2018, 15-year-old Michael Dillard disappeared from his home in Calvin, West Virginia. He was helping his mom carry in bags of wood pellets from the car when he ran behind the house. His mom didn’t think much of it at first but when she finished carrying the rest of the bags in and couldn’t find Michael, she became concerned. She called family for help and then alerted the authorities. The weather quickly turned that evening as a storm rolled into the area, first bringing rain and then snow. That storm made searching for Michael very difficult that night. Many searches were conducted in the weeks and months that followed Michael’s disappearance but the only item that was ever found was a jacket. Since Michael went missing during the harsh winter months, they were hopeful that the spring thaw would yield some clues but Michael’s disappearance is still just as a much of a mystery as it was that stormy January night.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Michael Dillard, you can call 1-800-THE-LOST. You can also contact the West Virginia State Police at 304-872-0800. To contact the private investigator, John Bonazzo, please 304-415-8920. He is offering a $3,000 dollar reward. You can find more information about the reward here: Bonazzo & Suesli Investigative Solutions/Bonazzo Private Investigations.
To follow Michael's case on Facebook, there is a page and a group. Page link: Bring Michael Dillard Home. Group link: Where is Michael Dillard?
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hey prime numbers. You can listen to the vanished ad free on amazon, music download. The app today.
There's a lot of little little clues about things like. Hopefully, we pick up a net. Eventually, something will come up that we can connect all these things together and figure out. What happened well
It's really a strange taste. To be quite frank with you I mean. Usually there are some kind of lie.
Eat or evidence, yet either
You ever hear the library in this case there's nothing delegate either
Fifteen year old, Michael dillard disappeared from his home in calvin west virginia on the evening of january twelve, two thousand eighteen, he was helping us.
carry bags of wood pellets in from the car
he ran behind the house and his mom didn't think too much of it at first. But when she,
carrying the rest of the bags in and couldn't find Michael, she became concerned first, she called family
for help and then alerted the authorities, the weather
quickly turn that evening as a storm rolled into the area. First, bringing ray
and then snow
storm made searching very difficult that night, many sir,
just have been conducted in the weeks and months that followed Michael's disappearance, but the
The trace of him. That's ever been found was his jacket since Michael
missing during the harsh winter months. They were hopeful that the spring fall.
would yield some clues, but Michael
his appearance is still just as much of a mystery as it was that stormy january night.
Amerika and from wondering this is episode, one hundred and thirty of the vanished michael dillard story
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Having download the app and use code vanished for twenty percent off your next order. That's a real real dot com and code vanished for twenty percent off a check out term supply. I was,
data by Michael's, older sister, brittany, asking if I could feature his case on the show,
britain has many years older than Michael, but she lived just a few miles away and maintained a very close relationship with him in order to get a good
grasp on why Michael may have just run off that night. We have to go back,
explore a little bit of his history. Michael was it.
Did when he was a young child was adopted,
Four years old,
and he's. Always, then, am I really really friendly and sweet head? He, though, is applicable.
get hard very living as Michael,
a little older his family became more concerned about. Some of the behavior is that he was exhibiting. Had he headed pinnate ear. He got an attitude like my teenagers,
A year ago, while I get the deal with more than a year now,
from one february he had written a suicide note and my mom, founded and she's are taken in the council and the council were suggested that shit into the eu.
are they sent to the e r and he was hospitalized for a few days and they released him and then, as soon as he got home, he cut his wrists. He went back to the hospital and then
What about that? I get a lot of a lot of anger, refuse the water problem than they suggested that he go to like a long term treatments place, but he went to a long term. Commitment proteins for super delegations ends up arms and he was there until
December night he Michael was released at the end of december and had some time off a school since it was during the holidays break and then everything was going pretty good. He was really bored because that we had set up nowadays in the weather is really bad sitting at the far back to school. In the days leading up to Michael's disappearance here
turn to school? They had a bit of an extended winter break because they had a few snow days and then the heating system broke at the school by january. Twelve, the day that Michael disappeared, he had only been back to school, for four days
but things appear to be going well for him until he got off the bus that day then January twelve, when Michael went yet he had really bad depression and when he would get down, he would just like put a pet down. He wouldn't talk to anybody. He wouldn't he would not engage with the
Or he would just like kind of go into himself and usually what would happen if they go to sleep that he wake up fine and back to his old, like fun, love and joking and happy self, but on the twelfth he got off the bus, and he was in that kinda down mood and I was actually out of coffee at my house. So I'm gonna take a baby out. My mom brought me some coffee and he came to my house. He was acting really down. He wouldn't talk to me and my son
He has a one and a half at the time. Michael has always been really really close to my son whenever he was in the hospital. My son didn't get to see him for several months, and I mean he was just a little baby. You know and the first time he saw Michael, he went right to him like he didn't, have any kind of stranger danger or anything like that, and he Michael has always been like he just loved my son to death but anyways. So he is at my house and my son was trying to him toys and he was just ignore and he was putting his. He had a
face up against my door like against the glass in my door, and he wouldn't he wouldn't look at my son. He wouldn't look at me when I talked to us at all and that mom laughed and they got off the bus at that time at like three fifteen, then
Why am I happy twenty minutes? Then they went back to my mom path and they work
marion, and what pellets for the woodstove and I'm Michael was carrying two bags at one am almost like. Michael, don't carry two bags, you don't hurt your practices like big forty pound bag. He just went back out and he got timor and she's. Like Michael. I told you to security, one bag at a time. He said, I'm not going to listen to you and he put the bags down and he ran behind the house. Then, when she got finished carrying the rest of a man.
it's just, a matter of fact that Michael come in and the other kids were like now, and so she went looking for him and couldn't find him, and then she caught me and I came right over and she called my stepdad. He was working, he came, he came right home and we look all night and we've really been looking ever since we've had a bloodhounds come out and do searches twice. We had a hainan cadaver dog team,
come out and you search and they found nothing. Brittany spoke about getting that phone call letting her know that Michael was missing and I met
I would imagine that bad
Michael when they take off like this- and he gotten this long- and I remember I had just left my house- I mean it'd, been like fifteen twenty minutes. I went to the bathroom and I heard my phone in the other room ringing and ringing and ringing arena, and I was like fast as I could. I come back in there and I'm like what is going on.
My mom called me several times and I caught her passages like I can't find Michael, I keep am I going to wear it. I mean it was just a few minutes and then my heart just sunk. I thought that I thought that he'd hurt himself or something
No, that came right over. I had to pack a bag for my son because his dad was picking them up that evening and I came straight over. I was here how I would pay by five o'clock. I was I was here and then it was. It started getting so nasty outside
I called mom and I was driving around and I caught her and I was like you're going to have to call the police, because I can't see well enough and like they need the the little white spotlight on their car to be able to look pushy. She called nine one, one at probably five fifteen or five thirty.
Haven't you ever unlike him, not even an hour at the time that woman was god, sir,
The teams and the family have gone to great lengths to continue the search for Michael in the areas around the house and we've had divers. Are that a creek that goes close to the house and at like thirty feet, deep in places, and it's got really
with the current javert came in and fat and had tiger comparable.
go up and down and not that bad then go up and down, and he had let go
the thing on the end of the coal that he can look under the water and has never been any evidence.
As I mentioned, a storm came through that evening, which made it very difficult to look for him the night, then he went missing parted raining shortly after he went missing at five it if it got dark, really quick and then
They re all evening and through the night, is thirty turning to know about one o clock tat morning and then a snowed into the next morning. He mean there was like there's no track. There was nothing because he left you know before them now and then there is no on the ground when the actual search party came out there, but to their friends.
And here rusty flood rescue team came out to remember the next day or the day after that that there is already snow on the ground. He really couldn't see anything beyond.
The searches that were conducted they've asked members of the community to report anything on their own properties. That could be some kind of clue why we went door to door in the community two and a half people that are building like that and then they they put that on the news several times
most of the people in and then the area knew about it. Already over a week after Michael disappeared, they did find a clue. Michael's dog led them to his jacket. His jacket was found, it's kind of hard to explain, but if you go like if he were to have went behind the house and went down over the hill, he would have been able to cut through the woods and come out on the neighbor's property and his jacket was like some kind of balled up. It wasn't muddy. It was wet because it had had snow on it and stuff, but it was about three hundred yards from the house on the edge of the woodlawn and my step, dad
I was actually the one founded with with Michael dal said: the lad didn't find it. They went the opposite direction, lose researching Michael's case. I read an article that
They did that Michael's jacket was found in an area that had previously been searched
that made me wonder if it had been left there after the search or if it had just been missed. There was no agreement at the first summit.
play where that was there's like an old like junkyard, fair and my must that not went out the next morning,
asked. The man had ended the library there. If we can get those cars we went through.
half of them in the I'm. I mean that one that property went through the other half and we like look in the car to see if we could find anything. And, of course there is nothing in the car.
If that would indicate that Michael had been in because that's what we were afraid of is that he had taken shelter or one of those cars every night and had frozen to death.
finding. The jacket has led to some concerns that Michael could have been out there and developed hypothermia, which can lead people to shed their clothing another
we were afraid of is like what we were working with a private investigator and he told us that sometimes when people have a hypothermia, they'll take off their clothes and vermont, tricked them into thinking that they're hot and they take off their clothes and the
in fact, it wasn't like it wasn't torn up at him. It was his like place there, but people tend to like take off their clothes and making the bureau so that
I you know, whenever the weather got pretty air, we had the canine team come out and they went through all those things and those people are really professional and the the police are very happy, and so they did a very, very thorough search. And so we don't believe that he's out there that, like his body, is out there somewhere, we believe he's alive somewhere, he's somewhere away from
area. I spoke to John, but also he's a private investigator whose taken on Michael's case pro bono he's also over time.
West virginia state trooper I've read about
cases that involved hypothermia and potential terminal burrowing. It's an interest
concept and can explain why some people who get lost in the wilderness can be difficult to find a job
tell me more about this one hypothermia, certain people there's a planet
but those are were their body starts to think that its overheating, even though your freezing
we start to undress, could be an indication that he was going to hypothermia in certain grass.
I just don't know, and then you know hypothermic victims tend to you know they tend to call on the smallest confined spaces to try to keep warm. They cover themselves up
Could he rode in somewhere where such parties missed or his under something or hidden, something? You know like an old
google, chrome, Moreno down a whole or something like that. There's so much
I that area out that even you know, search parties. Murder will look something like that:
Michael did have a cell phone, but he didn't have it on him when he went missing vaults frustrating because
it can be used to track him in any way they have.
Unable to use the phone to check and see if Michael had been communicating with anyone
they got all everything under the sun and the only thing that was out of the ordinary on her phone with a picture of a woman that was sound pretty soon after he went missing, but maybe a month ago and the place they me permission to put that picture on facebook, and we found the woman. The police spoke to her in the inner, be her very in depth and search for how from seven as far as we know, she had no links. You Michael's its appearance. He had no idea who he was and make that she seemed really can t,
and they believed her. I mean she was believable so to see he was on dating websites and stuff and when I'm thinking that maybe like he was on a dating website or something and he accidentally downloaded her picture and then because it was a deleted picture on his phone so like I think that maybe he he did it back, then he deleted it and that's why, like maybe he was looking
the prince Albert and thanks to all marine happened, I'm like my friend as look at obey people picture
phone was locked down really really tight with parental control and because Michael's really impulsive- and he has the kind of history that he does- that we wanted to be sure that he didn't get messed up with anything online. So he could only talk to people that were allowed to be like to talk to on the phone, but he had the parental controls. The saturday before he went missing
through them and though he was able to like have unlimited access to the internet and he made a facebook and three different thing. The facebook odd hedy D, like a fake facebook, account
I saw it and I had them, take it down and they won't like reopen it for the police so that they can get whatever it was went down on his face. That's why we've tried beyond,
sickle cell phone could he have been communicating with someone using any other kind of device. He had access to my tablet that my parents don't have wifi there have that ideal man, though he paid the night with me on new year's eve, and am he had access from a tablet all right, but they did a dump on my tablet as well, and I get about anything the
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Well. I was speaking with brittany and wondered if she thought it was possible that Michael could have planned this out. Could he have had?
systems from someone we know
didn't find anything on his phone. That would suggest this, but that doesn't mean that
out of the realm of possibility? Well, I'm here
Fifthly, we kind of hope that, because that would mean more likely to be alive and save because otherwise running he would see
he's out there on its own, can certainly had like two dollars on and that we know, and he had on
very like a t, shirt and then that, like as like a little light, jacket or hoodie and then jeans, unless he had like packed a bag and facet like, we really hope that he planned this out, because we think that it's more likely that he's from her faith and he's a friend of people that he know that he planned it out. Then, if he just took off on a whim, but he was very, very impulsive, though I mean it. I wouldn't put it past him to take off and get in somebody's car and take off with him. I think too, like I think where Michael is fifteen
people have no idea what they're, like oh he's, fifteen years old, you know he can take care of himself and stuff and I'm like, but you don't understand, because you don't know, Michael you know like Michael, is just not he's not really capable of caring for himself. You know like he. I don't think that,
it would be able to have to stay alive and stay under the radar. This long, unless someone that's helping hand, I mean we were. We were very close, like tight, knit family and I just live a couple of miles down the road and, like I talked to Michael every day and especially cause he had a phone now and he would text like when he was in the hospital. He called me all the time he called home all the time like he. We were we're all really really close.
Mean not like there's a lot of bad fighting or anything like that. I mean we're we're pretty tight.
We know that Michael had a tendency to be impulsive, like many teenagers in Britain
just wondered how he could have gone this long without being noticed here that type of kid like he, he hilarious, but you never know what mike we're going to do and he is like he draws attention wherever he goes, though, like a really hard to imagine, Michael being able to run his fly under the radar without
somebody helping him. You know where he's at like all the time he's very loud he's just he's always doing something kind of crazy. A couple of days before he went by the day before he went missing. He was at a basketball game,
He was asking all the girls in the room ass if they had a boyfriend means he
what about it and laughing and joking and just going up to people that he didn't know and be like. Do you have boyfriend? You have boyfriend? Do you have boyfriend that kind of stuff I mean Michael, was just he drew attention wherever he went and there's always the hand of the the light
the party again since he searched and gone back and research the area extensively without locating Michael his family's hopeful,
still out there, they ve been exploring, differ.
Theories about where he may have gone,
One of them involves a possibility that he may have walked to a place where truckers stop and hitched a ride if he had when the path where, where his jacket with ballot, though obviously he had went that way at some point, both that that would have been what at that
part, and it is very rural area, but about me
Now, let's go down the road there is and the two different plan where they have travellers in and out in seven that's what one of the sergeant as they please
had really thought a lot about, as that may be, one of the I'm truck drivers picked them up because the initially the bloodhounds went up the hill towards those plants and they stopped at like this old rescue trailer. So we kinda thought. Maybe he'd went that way, but I mean if, if somebody is walking down the road there's enough traffic that somebody would have would have probably seen him, but then we had. We had reports that somebody picked him up and then the police went out to that house and they they said
Now, let me add there was no indication Michael had ever been there. I was wondering just how close this would have been to where he was last seen how quickly
gotten there and possibly gotten a ride out of town. It probably would take Michael a lot less time than it would take me
I mean maybe like it's probably a mile. I would think like an ad or something at the most I mean because it was it was raining and but Michael was he had long legs.
We said, but if he were to cut through the woods they wouldn't even be that far with this
theory about Michael getting right from a trucker people.
The area are aware that he's missing. But what, if someone picked him up? Who isn't from the area, he could have gone,
right from someone who doesn't even know that Michael was missing. That's what better way thought. Oh, I m wait. We do
They have a billboard em for Michael that might come in to summers, though it is like that, like the county seat, an area without really small
community we had it. It was on the north gown bad, and now it comes out down further moving around for the data, that is to say, which is really really time, but we're gonna go
but maybe it there wasn't her cover that that pick him up. Hopefully that thing hoopdriver would return
pick up another load eventually and maybe with the border, but we do have pliers up. Then the budget plan.
We live in a time were, hitchhiking is much less common than say twenty or thirty years ago. I think, most of
would be hesitant to ask a stranger for a ride or to pick up a hitchhiker, but that doesn't mean
that it never happens in some
people feel much more comfortable with the idea than others. Michael. What I mean you probably don't write em with anybody, especially the us at that.
What, if, for whatever reason, he was not thinking rationally at the time- and I mean he knew like mom kept she's like that. You know we gotta get these telephone because it can be a storm. You know, and she like he knew that there was a storm come in and rationally. He would know that that wouldn't be a good time
I got off, you know what I mean. So if you were, if you were going to plan it out, as is often the case, people have
forward with possible sightings of Michael, but we had several people come forward like weeks and months later to say that they think that they fall ham, butt every fighting so far
are not been provable or, and it's turned out to nottingham for a long time. We thought that people had seen him walking out the main road. This is where my parents live, but then the same person they fell again. Two days later, my dad thought it was hammer visitors at michaels. He just went into the woods at this one house, so my stepdad went flying there and he got out he chases his kid down in the woods and it wasn't Michael. It was another boy and he said that he was walking at that time right before the storm hit when they thought it was Michael and he looks a lot like Michael bennett. He's a neighbor, though
the the initial sightings that we have reported, we've gathered that they were probably with the way. There's this this one young guy, that walks up and down the road and and craig foe, which is a town that close by and he has red tennis shoes on and Michael, had red tennis shoes. I stopped. I don't know how many time like to look at that guy and he
comfort of the car and I'm like I'm sorry. I thought you were my brother damn I gotta don't pick up hitchhikers because I have a baby, so I wouldn't pick him up
I'm sorry he's like it's. Okay. I understand you know, but I can't I don't know how many times I stopped that guy and I think several other people did too he. He just knows that he hasn't same color. She says Michael, then it's a small enough community that everybody knows
Another one the sightings has been reported was of some one getting into a car not far from michaels
on the evening of his disappearance several months later. But what are the neighbour came forward and said that he thought someone get into a heart?
but all that we know about the car, but that was an older two door with red interior, because I like the way that the pine trees in front of his house to his like he could only see like, can see the light and the car he saw legs get into the car, but that's all he could tell, and so you know what
do with it, a car with red interior. You know, we don't know if that was Michael. We don't know if that was somebody else. They said that somebody else there used to be a guy that lived somewhere close by the eastern cab rides with people, and he is like right down below my parents how they live up on a hillside,
bottom when it held right there on the road and then he assumed whenever happened. Yet he assumed that it was part of the search party like that animals are many surgeon. They ve gone too far and went on. We ve never been able to figure something out
about that either a woman who believed she had spoken to Michael, also came forward. Brittany thinks that what this teenage
said to the woman- does sound like Michael
the area where this alleged sighting happened wasn't too far away either just about twelve miles. One lady said that she or the apartment, building and somerville she said that have fallen as she spoke to them and told him that he was missing. I hated to go
and he caught him. What a boy he said, I'm not a little boy! I'm a grown man. Nothing ever came about either because you never saw him again.
Well, and then there was another woman that came forward. She actually said something in the beginning like in the first couple of days, but she and she's saying it was the night before he went missing, which is not possible because he's with my stepdad, then she said that she saw him at the grocery store. That's right here in in craig's bill with an old man with bushy hair and a hat on, and that they were fought nothing but bananas, and it was right before clothing, so they thought that was weird and then he was in like a green two tone truck that we keep an eye out for green to tutoring trucks and stuff. But by the time that that came out, it was too late to check the cameras at the store and
They don't have any record of that on the like, on their registers or whatever, like with it. Just by fighting the bananas everybody kept saying they were seen them at walmart, seen them at walmart being a mom or save the police went and got the surveillance, and they found this kid that they that they thought it was Michael and he does look very similar, but it's not hand. We had several sightings of this kid and it was not Michael and then there was a kid that looked almost identical to him that was caught on a security camera.
And oh hi o trying to break into how- and I mean I thought it was Michael when I felt a picture and they did some investigation it with a local kid they had again about who they could actually what, but I mean it looks to me, as is that there are about it with him.
my god, my god, my god he's in ohio celebrated. Do it out of him and that's what we keep open is that you
well he's a man like that in the apathy and all about that, and he will do something illegal in the car and say where I think I've heard about the only way to find him unless he come aboard himsel going back to the evening
of his disappearance. Brittany said that he was acting like something was wrong when he was over at her house. That day did something happened. That was a catalyst first disappearance could something has happened at school that upset him. We haven't figured out at bath and am, and he would shake your head
what I mean I'm alive of Michael, like you, you never didn't know what with them a cinema like am I mean it can be the plight of little bang. Let you said something wrong
one or something, and he um you know would take it wrong and and then he wouldn't, usually he wouldn't say you know. I was mad because you said this:
least did speak to other students at the school and they mention some odd behaviour when the police and army the or he when they say
that he was poor and water on his back pack and like he was trying to get on a different over like he was, but it didn't make any sense.
Like what they said. So I mean we do where we don't have any idea what they meant, but they said that he was pouring water on his backpack. He was saying he was going to see his dad, but now his his biological father is is dead. He passed away years ago, and he was that he was going to see his dad and that he was pouring water on his book bag to try and get on a different path, which I don't know what what
I think. Maybe he was trying to get out of class and you sound like a book bag with wet, so he had to go or something I don't know, but I mean his book. Bag was at the school and there was nothing in it that would indicate like there was there's no evidence of anything anywhere. That's like that's the crazy thing about this whole situation. Is that like there's? No, we have no leads.
Nothing being a teenager is a tough time for most people. It's a huge
transitional phase, a knife. I looked back
One teenage- and I remember things that I did that may have been impulsive and even dangerous. Brittany work
with teenagers who are going through some of the same struggles as Michael here to britain in that gap, between being a kid and being an adult and you're trying to figure out like a place and you're trying to learn to assert yourself and
I remember it was nearly half an hour with he made her feel as though I am actually official worker with teenager, but have a lot of them are issues that Michael
and I never would have imagined that bad. My berwin went off like they're gone this cloud
We know that Michael had been treated at a facility leading up to his disappearance. Could he have
met someone there
your privacy laws. It's been tough to get more information about this possibility. We thought about.
and um. My mom actually contacted the hospital where he was and talked to them about that, and they said no. They don't think that he was close enough to anyone. They don't think that he had the opportunity to play anything like this and because they were always right there on him, especially because of his behaviors and stuff. But I don't know I mean I I think it's definitely possible, but the other part about that is that you know it's all protected by hipaa and all the other kids that were there at the time like I don't know how we would, because we don't know any of the names of the kids that were there. We don't. I mean we don't know anything about them, and you know they come from all over the country to go to the programs, though,
We've talked about, like I'm, my mom trying to get like his records and stuff and going through him and seeing if there's any indication of anything, but I don't even know if they would allow her to have his record. When I was speaking to the private investigator John, he told me just how frustrating Michael's case has been and how different it is from other missing persons cases he's worked on throughout his career. Well, if
It's really a strange case record frank with you. I mean usually there's some kind of life:
eat or evidence that either
You know that he's alive or he's deceased. You know in this case there's there's nothing to indicate either. So, if you know at this point I guess you're gonna have enemies is alive because nothing points to him being deceased.
There's not been any information obtained to my knowledge: you're, not permitted oasis integration, obviously, but I do speak to him from time to time, but
nothing. It's just that wherever he vanished. You know we found the positive since more easily
in other words, turned out to be dead ends or false information, or you know, miss miss identifications, but nothing I mean it's just
No no tips coming in.
Indications from anything else,
where he's gone or what happened to a more char state trooper arena with toy for push years investigations,
And noticed very different, usually one you know, I do have a list
orson arrive, investigated missing persons, there's been some kind of ever.
Or at least some kind of
information that would lead you to believe
know. One way he's either diseased or one where you alive. In this case, there is neither a different case. I've never seen a case
my twenty four years, where there is no
leaning of one way or the other. We talked
theories in this case. One is that it
someone or that this was set up ahead of time,
John gave me his opinion on that theory. I don't pick up a possibility
In his case, then in here is my reasoning. Why there's two reasons? First,
Well, they didn't. You know they did a dump on his phone. So when they found nothing usually there would be some kind of electronic evidence source speak that that would indicate that that he,
No, it met somebody on the internet and had met up with this person, but the whole circumstances behind the case,
surrounded by an impulsive action
was carrying. It would poets- and you know him
Look around him. She certainly carrying through money bags.
You know you need to carry one bag at a time and your rhythm, so she's time you know getting onto a little bit and he got upset they have already assumed. He went out to go, gets more wood. Pellets. He's he's gone so this this doesn't indicate that there was anything planned.
You know which is most what most juveniles runaway. Do they plan to meet up with somebody. This was an impulse of action.
was I'm outta here, I'm leaving a man, you know and then just disappearing from from that point, you know he did
I have a coat. He didn't have a cell phone, he didn't have any
personal belongings, so if he was reading
for somebody that he met on the internet, the internet. The first thing that you would do is take your cell phone with you, or you would take some kind of communication device which he didn't do any of that they didn't take us.
And you know when it was wintertime and it was cold and it was raining while he doesn't believe that this was planned. He does think that someone could have picked Michael up that night parrots always a possibility. You know this law was virginia people stop
people rods all the time, especially when you see a young kid walking, it's raining hey you want to lift. You know that that would that wouldn't be out of the ordinary. I mean it's very highly likely,
you gotta pick them up and given around somewhere it. I was turning dark. If it was not dork,
it was raining. I was cold and young kid walk along the street,
our roads are in fact we noticed point. I anything is possible
I you just can't out anything like. I said there is nothing to indicate either way
if he's alive or he's he's out there- and you know you know one other point. I'd like you know I guess to make. As you know, this kid that was kind of a trump troubled kid, he had some behavioral problems due to
environment that when he was younger, knew he was adopted here yet
troubled kid lesson from behaviour problem:
We would really stand out money. You know somebody would I've gotta noticed this kid locally, or is there something else that you would think that there would be some reports?
As I mentioned, John has taken this case on pro bono and he's also offered a three thousand dollar reward with them.
that a reward would motivate somebody to come forward with information to differ.
Call one
We know today, topic
saw you know about a week after the incident. I relay the information they please.
and then another individual call and I'm not
we're sure ruth dinners just some
seeking their lorries? They spoke to him on the phone, and course
really the relay that information on the state police they place, attempted the column,
Everyone giving any specific through just like our talk alone,
Oh you know. What did you? What did you say? Why talk your father? I want to know exactly every detail. Every word.
well, you just say you know he ran away from conversation. You need a lot more conversation to take
Time off but anyway, to make a long story short. I gave the information state police.
I call them and hung up on him. So I'm pretty sure it was probably just somebody trying to get a reward and stapley said. Disgust just looking at me like I'm, some charges
So what happened and Michael dillard on the evening of january twelve, two thousand eighteen? Did he
off in succumb to the elements, but just hasn't been found.
Where did he hitch a ride with someone
it'll. Be somebody out there helping to conceal his whereabouts. His
it was found not too far from his home. Was that planet there or did he take
off, because he was experiencing hypothermia, his
really isn't giving up hope that he's out there alive because they don't have any signs telling them otherwise an inch?
They find something they're, not gonna, stop searching if you
any information about the disappearance of Michael Dillard. You can call one eight hundred the lost you can
so contact. The west virginia state police at three zero. Four, eight, seven, two: zero, eight zero, zero.
The number to contact the private investigator John vanozza is three zero for four one: five eaten
two zero again he's off.
The three thousand dollar reward?
I'll put a link in the show nuts, with more information at the time of Michael's disappearance, he was described as food.
the five inches tall wing about one hundred and thirty three pounds with brown, hair and hazel eyes. He
the scar above his left eye scars,
his arms from cutting in quarters
scar. On his right hand, I like to think brittany and john for taking the time to speak with me,
If you have a missing love, one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a case submission form at the vanished pot cast out com? If you like to contact me, there's a page and a discussion group on facebook, among
twitter at the vanished part and also one instagram,
If you enjoy the show subscribe on apple podcasts stitcher, I heart radio wondering dot com or wherever you're listening right now. Do you want to help support the vanished?
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covering a case from california thing
for listening with the door. No blacker alexander,
or you'd think there would be some kind of indication either way and there's no one. I may have dodged on them just puzzling, to be honest with it, the
the
gonna walk,
dogs, school drop off meetings from tend to three take kids to soccer practice. Then
There goes the extra time for a job. That's ok! Maybe next week.
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hi lindsey, Graham the host of wonders, podcast american scandal. We bring to life,
the biggest controversies in. U s. History, presidential lies environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our new a serious, we look at the kids for cash scandal.
a story about corruption inside america's system of juvenile justice in northeastern pennsylvania, residence
begun, noticing and alarming trend. Children were being sent
waiter, jail in high numbers and often for
hitting only minor offences. The fbi began looking to local judges and when the full picture emerged it made national headlines. The judges were earning
fourchan carrying out a brazen criminal scheme, one that would
after the lives of countless children and force a heated debate about punishment and america's criminal justice system,
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Transcript generated on 2023-05-22.