Crime Junkie - MISSING: Bryce Laspisa

Episode Date: January 29, 2018

Bryce Laspisa started acting strange on August 27, 2013. Just a couple of days into his sophomore year, friends started to become concerned about his unusual behavior. He planned a trip home to visit his parents and what should have been a 7-hour journey turns into 30-hours of mystery that leave police and Bryce's family baffled when on August 30th at 5:30 am Bryce's vehicle is found overturned with no sign of Bryce. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.  Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-bryce-laspisa/   

Hi everyone and welcome back to Crime Junkie. It's good to see you Junkies again and Brett, good to see you as always. Of course, I'm so happy to be here. Today I have a really exciting story. So, Brett, like you know, one of the cases I'm obsessed with is the case of Mora Murray. And I'm not going to talk about that one because I feel like every podcast has. But I basically found the guy version of Mora Murray. No way, we haven't had a guy victim yet.

Yeah, this is a missing story of this guy and all the stuff surrounding his disappearance is so weird, so crazy that this is going to be the new case that I'm obsessed with forever. Before we jump in, as usual, Brett and I want to tell you guys about one of our favorite nonprofits. This episode of Crime Junkie is brought to you by Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana. So you're saying that Crime Stoppers just takes the tips and helps make arrests? No, they don't actually do any of the arresting. All Crime Stoppers does is they're responsible for taking the tip, keeping the tipster anonymous,

and then giving that information to police and police do all the arresting. So you're saying Crime Stoppers wants just the tip? I don't even know how to follow that up, but yes, Crime Stoppers is only responsible for taking the tips and their number one goal is making sure that the tipsters remain anonymous. As of early 2018, Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana is responsible for clearing over 7,000 cases because of their tips. I encourage you to get involved with your local Crime Stoppers, and if you want more information on Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana, go to CrimeTips.org.

Alright, Brett, so today we are going to cover the missing person case of 19 year old Bryce Las Pisa. Bryce was an only child to Mike and Karen Las Pisa, and they're all originally from Illinois. But in 2012, Mike and Karen were able to retire early. That is the dream. Fancy. And in the summer, they retired, and it was the same summer that Bryce was graduating

high school. So Mike and Karen purchased a home in Laguna Niguel, California, which it's the middle of winter in the Midwest. They have way better weather, I don't find them. Bryce registered for college at Sierra College in Rockland, California. I wasn't able to find any information on whether the family moved to California because that's where Bryce wanted to go to school, or if he found the school after they moved. But I'm inclined to believe the latter because Sierra is just a community college, and I

don't see that they have any kind of special programs that would draw him out there, so I'm sure his family moved, and then he found a college that he wanted to go to after. It's a little strange, however, that he would pick that college because it's seven hours away from his parents, where they lived in Laguna Niguel. And a lot of people say, like, why would he, he's already moving across the country. Why would he then want to move seven hours away from his parents? But I remember being 18, and I literally picked a college that was on the other side of the country from my parents.

Yeah, you did. So I totally get, like, the need for freedom, and even though, I mean, you're already moving across the country and the only people you know are your parents, like, you just need some space. Why not go all out? Right. So I don't read too much into it. Bryce is studying industrial and graphic design there, and by all accounts, he has a great

freshman year. He meets friends, he becomes close with his roommate, Sean, and he even gets a girlfriend that year named Kim, and they have a great relationship. With mom said he was a great boyfriend, and when his freshman year ends, he goes back to Laguna Niguel and spends the summer with his family. He goes back to Rockford in August, a couple of weeks before classes start. And when he goes back, something shifts in Bryce, and we're not exactly sure what it is.

Kim, his girlfriend, and Sean, his roommate say that Bryce starts drinking, like, a lot, which I get a lot is relative when you're in college because I could drink like four nights a week. I get it. I mean, there was a weekend where me and my roommate went to Vegas, did like a full-on Vegas trip, and then same night we came back, we went to the bars. Like, I would die if I did that now. But it was more they say than just like how often he was drinking.

They said even for college, it was like a little too much. They said on the weekends that he would finish off two-fifths of hard liquor just by himself. And his parents say, again, this is underage drinking, his parents say they never saw him drink while he was at home, and he seemed totally happy. He didn't display any strange behaviors. Granted, if I was underage drinking, I wasn't doing it in front of my parents. But there wasn't any red flags again the whole summer, and this is all happening. He's only been there two weeks, and his parents are like, we can't figure out what would have

changed in two weeks. And although he's consuming a lot of alcohol, he's acting fairly normal for the first couple of weeks he's back. And his friends aren't overly concerned. They think he's just partying like he's in college, and his parents have no idea that anything's even different. He starts classes on Tuesday the 27th of August, and he calls his mom that evening, said classes were great.

She said he seemed upbeat, totally normal. And that night, Bryce was playing video games with his friends, drinking alcohol, and it's reported that he took vivants to stay awake and to stay up through the whole night in gaming. And this is like another brand of Adderall, which again, off brand of Adderall is just methamphetamine. It just keeps you awake. If you don't have it, it does treat ADHD, but he's not reported to have that.

He was using it recreationally. I have no idea how long he'd been taking it or how much he used that night. He could have used it recreationally through his freshman year, maybe through the summer, or he could have just started that week weekend. We have no idea. But what we do know is that Kim and Sean say that he was using it at least over the two weeks that he was back for his sophomore year. Some reports say that he had been up for two to three days by the time Wednesday, August

28th rolls around. Right. On the 28th is when something drastically shifts in Bryce. Sean and Kim both say that Bryce begins to act really strange from the time he took the drug on the night of the 27th. In fact, he's acting so weird that that night Sean calls Bryce's mom because he's worried about him, which is kind of like a big deal. I can't think of a time where my friends were drinking or doing something they shouldn't

be doing. I was so worried that I called their parents. That seems really like this is a bad situation. From what I can tell, they didn't call his parents to say, oh, he's taking drugs and he's drinking. His behavior was changing so drastically. He just tells his mom that Bryce isn't acting himself and he's actually really worried about him.

A couple of hours after hearing from Sean, Karen, Bryce's mom actually gets another call from Bryce himself. This time, Bryce is actually at Kim's house, his girlfriend, which is about 90 minutes north of Bryce's apartment. He calls his mom because he's upset with Kim and she's keeping his keys from him and won't let him leave. According to Bryce, he and Kim had broken up the night before and what we learned is that on Tuesday night, the same night that his roommate says he started acting strange,

he sent Kim a text that said, you're better off without me. She asked him if they're breaking up and he says yes. So I assume the next night on the 28th when he's calling his mom, he's over there to talk about this breakup and when he was there, Kim says he's acting so strangely that she didn't think he was in any condition to drive. And I can't find any quotes from her saying exactly what she thought was wrong, whether she thought he was just not acting like himself or if she thought he was impaired from drugs and alcohol.

A lot of places online assume that she's worried about drugs and alcohol since she was aware of his increased use recently, but I can't find this confirmed anywhere. Either way, Kim tells Karen that she's keeping Bryce's keys and she doesn't feel like he's in any condition to leave right now. And Karen asks her to talk to Bryce on the phone and Bryce again says that he's fine and Karen says he sounds really lucid, like the conversation is normal, he doesn't seem impaired, he's not slurring his words and to her, he really seems like himself. And he tells his mom, you know, Kim's just upset because I broke up with her, she won't

keep my keys, I just want to leave. His mom feels really comfortable with his account and how he's acting so she tells Kim, listen, like I'm his mom, give him his keys, I don't care if you're worried, like he's acting fine, just let him go home. When she gets back on the phone with Bryce, she is worried, I mean, she hears that Bryce is not intoxicated to her, but with all this call from Sean, with this call from him, talking to Kim, she's like, you know what, Bryce, I'm going to get a flight out tomorrow to see you, something's wrong.

And he says, mom, don't make any reservations until I talk to you, I have a lot to talk to you about. She said that he didn't seem heartbroken or sad, she had no idea what was weighing on his mind because she had just seen him a couple of weeks ago and he was totally fine. But they hang up, Bryce leaves Kim, Kim's apartment around 1130 and his mom doesn't make any plans to come home. She's like, you know what, we'll talk tomorrow, it's been a long night. And at 1am on the 29th, Bryce calls his mom again and nothing crazy happens on this call,

I think he was just calling to check in. And she thinks he's back at his apartment and she says, okay, we'll talk again in the morning. What she doesn't know is when they ping that call later, it actually shows that he is about an hour south of his apartment, so he never even went home. When the parents wake up the next morning, they actually get a call around 11am, it's a voicemail from their insurance agency, State Farm, that their Toyota Highlander, which is Bryce's car, needs roadside assistance.

And I assume Karen tried calling Bryce multiple times at this point, but the next confirmed contact we have from Karen is to Shawn, his roommate. And Shawn says that Bryce never even came home. Bryce's parents then look through credit card transactions to find out where he was. And they can do this because he is actually using their cards. He gets a weekly allowance because he doesn't have a job while he's in college, so they're able to log in and see all of their transactions. And this is where crime junkie lesson number three comes in.

And for everyone who's listened to the radio show that I do, you guys already know this one, but I'm a big advocate of having an if I go missing file. And it's something that has pertinent login information for, I have, for mine, I have my Apple ID, so someone could track where my phone is. I have any credit cards or bank logins, so you can see exactly what transactions were made. And those are uploaded almost instantaneously, because if you don't have this, and no one knows how to get into this information, basically what you'd have to do is file a missing person

report, then police would have to subpoena your records, which could take days. And a judge would have to rule on it. And if you're missing and needing help, I promise you, you do not have days. So it's, again, people don't like writing down their stuff and having it somewhere. Put it somewhere safe where only you and one trusted person know where it is, but it literally could save your life. And because Bryce's parents were able to log in and see his credit card activity, they see that there's a charge from a place called Castro Tire and Truck in a town called Button

Willow, which is three hours north of Laguna Niguel, where they live. That's quite a bit. I did a little research on this town, and at least in 2013, at the time of the story, there was nothing there. Someone said that you make a pit stop in this town for gas, but there's literally no reason to stay. So when they see this transaction, they think, oh, great, like he's obviously farther south than his school.

He's on track to come home. He must have just stopped and needed assistance. And at this point, it's almost noon. Again, I have to assume the whole time they're trying to reach Bryce directly, but with no luck. So they actually call the repair shop and speak to the technician named Christian, who actually helped him out. Christian says, oh yeah, I totally remember your son.

He ran out of gas, so I got about three gallons, helped him fill up so he could make it to the gas station. And they kind of explained to Christian what's happened, and Christian actually is super nice and offers to go check and make sure that he's not still there or he doesn't need more help. So a couple of minutes later, Christian calls Mike and Karen and says, hey, I found your son. He's sitting in the exact same spot he was when I saw him at 9 AM this morning.

No mystery solved. They know right where he is. Oh my God. Christian goes up to him and puts Bryce on the phone and his mom talks to Bryce and she says, what are you doing? And he just says nothing. She doesn't even push him and ask him what he's doing or why he's been there, why he hasn't moved.

I mean, this is extremely strange behavior to me. And this one top of the fact that she got those strange phone calls from his friends already. And he's just like, oh, I have a plan to trip home and I'm not showing up like everyone had called you and told you he's acting strange and now he's acting stranger. So she doesn't ask where he's been all night or how he ran out of gas or even what he needed to talk to her about. Instead, she just says, okay, listen, you're three hours from home, please just fill up

your gas tank and get home. And Bryce does exactly that and he fills up his tank. And that was at noon. So his parents are expecting him home about three o'clock, right? Three o'clock comes and three o'clock goes and four o'clock comes well by 330 again, like they at least have some awareness. They're like, okay, something is wrong. And they start calling his phone and leaving messages.

He's out of touch for six more hours since they talked to him at noon. Like I can't imagine the panic. And by 6pm, there's no word from him. No one has seen him. So they file an official missing persons report in Orange County since that's where they live and that's where he's supposed to be by now. And what the police do, though they can't like subpoena his records right away, they do get in touch with AT&T and AT&T is able to do an emergency ping to locate his phone.

And they're super lucky because his phone is still on. And I can only assume he doesn't have an iPhone because my iPhone dies, like if I send four text messages, but they ping his phone and guess where it pings? Is it close or far? I can't decide which way I want to go. It pings in Button Willow, which is where Bryce was to fill up at 9 in the morning and then 12 when he talked to his mom. So he's been there for a full 12 hours now, right?

Right. Almost. He's been there for like nine hours, right? Sure. We should cut this out. We're bad at math. So since police are involved at this point, they send Kern County deputies to go check the area.

They find Bryce parked on the side of the road only eight miles from where he was parked at noon. Him or his car? Him with his car. Oh my God. Deputies talk to him and they say he was totally lucid. They do a field sobriety test. They say he doesn't seem to be under the influence of anything.

And they even do a search of his car and they find absolutely nothing. Like no drugs, no alcohol, no paraphernalia, nothing. So they ask him what he's doing and he says that he's just there to blow off some steam, which they don't think is super weird from a 19 year old boy. I probably wouldn't either. Officers ask him then to call his parents and according to reports after the fact, his response ranges from hesitant to really reluctant. And he, for whatever reason, didn't want to call his parents and finally police have

to actually dial for him. And when they talk to Bryce's mom first, his mom asks if he seems okay and if the cops thinks that he's capable of driving. And they tell her, yeah, he can drive. He seems totally fine. So they put Bryce on the phone and his mom asks, again, what are you doing? And he gives a very literal answer and tells her that he's putting stuff back in his car after the search.

Again, his mom doesn't push him to find out about why he's acting so weird. She just tells him, okay, listen, get something to eat and come home because I'm worried about you. Right. Yeah, totally. Later on, so they hang up with him. He's, you know, the cops had seen him. Cops say he's fine.

Again, they're getting reassurance. They think he's on his way home. So later that evening, they get a call from Christian, who again is the guy at the tire repair station who brought Bryce gas. But he had missed a call from them back when his family was frantically calling around trying to find him. And when they fill him in on what transpired over the last couple of hours, he offers to go and check again.

And Mike and Karen are like, don't even worry about it. Like at this point, it's been so long. Times gone by. He's going to be long gone. But Christian, I mean, he's literally like the nicest good Samaritan. He insists. He's like, I'm going to go check where the police were 15 minutes later, Mike and Karen get a call from Christian.

He's at the location where police stopped Bryce. And Bryce is still sitting there in his car. What? He's still just sitting there? Still sitting there on the side of the road. And at this point, Christian says, how about this, like, clearly you can't like, we're trying to get your son home and he's like not having it. So I'm going to follow him and make sure he gets on the freeway heading towards your house.

So you'll know he's on the road. You know he's moving. Right. Yeah. He's going to freeze and I assume that Bryce knows that he's, that he's being followed. Like I don't think he's being sneaky about it, but I couldn't find anything to say that for sure. Either way, 30 minutes later, he's on the freeway headed toward his parents and about

10 miles into the freeway, Christian hops off and turns around to go home. Over the next couple of hours, like Bryce and his parents exchanged a few calls. They're understandably super worried about him and keep calling to make sure he's on track every time. They keep asking him for landmarks like to just to get an idea like, okay, where are you? How close are you? It is late at night, but every time Bryce tells them it's too dark and he can't see

any landmarks. So instead, the only thing he'll give them is he says, my GPS says I'll be home at 325 every time. Like, well, my GPS says, my GPS says, but no landmarks at 209 a.m. He has a call to his mom and he says, listen, I'm too tired to drive. At this point, we know for sure he's been up for a minimum of 24 hours, possibly more depending on what report you believe. His parents are like, listen, we totally agree.

Like we don't want you getting in an accident, like pull over, sleep a couple hours in your car and then get back on the road. So at this point, they think he's taking that. His parents go to bed. It's two o'clock in the morning. It's been a crazy day and at eight o'clock in the next morning, the doorbell rings and they're like, oh, thank God, he's home. But when they open the door, they find police.

And police tell them that their highlander was found overturned and abandoned at Kasai Lake. And this is about two hours north of their home, one hour south of Button Willow, where he was last known to be. And when police investigate the scene, it looks like sometime before dawn, Bryce drove off the main road heading up a hill towards a cell tower. He passed the cell tower and then went down the hill and started accelerating through brush towards the lake.

Now from the top of this hill, it looks like you're really close to the lake and you'll hit it at the bottom of the hill, but really it's actually pretty far and there's a 25 foot drop off, which Bryce's car fell off of. And the car landed on its side and it appears that the back window was pushed out from the inside, so they think that he crashed the car but was still fine, so he went to get out the back and there were a couple of small drops of Bryce's blood inside the car, but nothing outside. So he wasn't bleeding, he obviously wasn't unconscious, he was able to move.

And Bryce left his laptop and his phone inside the car and he left a duffel bag and his wallet just outside of the car. But Bryce wasn't found anywhere near this crash site. Police do full searches of the area with helicopters, divers in the lake, they have ATVs, they're searching on foot, everything comes up with no sign of Bryce and the only thing they find are two pictures that confuse this case even more. More than just a car abandoned by a person? Way more, so there's this surveillance camera that snaps pictures of license plates that

go up the hill towards the lake. Bryce's car was spotted at 2.15 am going up this hill, they snap his license plate and this is just six minutes after he talked to his mom and said he was going to rest. So maybe he was going up there to rest, right? Really? Well, then the same camera on the same hill captures his car going up the same way at 4.29 am. And this is an hour before his crashed car was found.

So we have no idea where he was between 2.15 and 4.29 or even why he was up there. So there's two hours between his first sighting and his last sighting on the same camera going in the same direction. What do we think happened? So I don't know, like I have no idea if he was up there the whole time. If he went up at 2.15 and then drove around, there's really no information on like the mileage on his car or anything like that to tell us if he just sat up there. There's nothing taking pictures of license plate on the way down.

I don't even know which way he came out, but it's super weird that he would go to a spot and then come back to that spot two hours later, right? Totally, especially if he's trying to get home to his parents or somewhere or just to a place to rest. Yeah. Again, it's just more strange behavior, just adding to everything that's already like none of what he's done so far, I would consider normal. Definitely.

So on day nine of the search, they bring in bloodhounds who track his scent from his vehicle to across a roadway that's going over a dam in this lake all the way to a truck stop, but that's where the scent ended. Since then, there have been zero, zero other clues that surface about what happened to him. And as police circle back and interviewed Sean and Kim about what happened that night, they found out that before he left, he actually gave away his Xbox to his roommate along with a pair of diamond earrings that his mom gave him.

And that same night that he left, he sent his roommate a text message that said, quote, I love you bro, seriously, you're the best person I've ever met. You saved my soul. End quote. But in all the interviews done with Sean in the couple of days after Bryce vanished, he really doesn't believe he left on purpose. He said that he thought Bryce was just trying to find himself and Sean said that Bryce even told him he'd be back on Labor Day, which was just the Monday following his disappearance.

A lot of people think he could have just had a mental break, mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar, tend to manifest in men between the ages of 18 and 24, which could explain it. A lot of people point to the use of vivants and it could be that drug caused a reaction in his brain or that drug mixed with the mental illness presenting was just an added effect. But I looked at the side effects of vivants and a lot of people reported mood changes or unusual behavior or bad like come downs.

And I read a report of people becoming really depressed and it lasting a long time. So that combined with not sleeping for 24 or even up to 72 hours, depending on what report you would need. Could induce psychosis. Right. And I mean sleep deprivation alone can cause people to hallucinate or act erratic. So there are really a couple of main thoughts here. Detectives firmly believe that Bryce just walked away from his life and he is alive

and well somewhere. They think that that's what all the evidence points to. He was giving away his possessions before he left, which they say is a sign of depression and wanting to end your life or having no intention of coming back to your life. And they say, you know, we have the bloodhounds that tracked him to the truck stop. We really believe that he hitched her eye and he's living somewhere else as somewhere else. And they have like tracked his social security number or all of his bank accounts.

His parents like haven't changed the password on anything just so that there's a chance if he ever wanted to log back in and they would have a record of that, but he hasn't touched anything from his old life. But detectives are super firm like this is what we believe. He just wanted to walk away. His parents believe either two things. Their number one theory is that some kind of foul play is involved because they say there's no way he would not contact them for what is now over five years.

And they say if he's alive, then he doesn't know who he is likely because of the accident. But while I think he could be alive and not know who he is, I don't think you can blame it on the accident at all because it's his behavior leading up to the accident is the strangest part of the story to me. And finally, like it's not just like, oh, he hit his head really hard in the accident. Now he doesn't know who he is. Like he was acting strangely before the accident for sure. Yes.

And finally, there's a large group of people on in the online community who think he's still in the lake somewhere. They think that his intention was to commit suicide that night. And when he wrecked his car, they think he was trying to actually drive his car into the lake, but when it fell off the embankment and then he still survived, they think he just got out of his car, walked into the lake and drown. But I find that really hard to believe a because of the dogs that tracked into the truck stop. I know dogs aren't 100% right.

I tend to believe dogs over humans always. But I think like this lake was like in California, it was a pretty warm lake. I think when I read the temperatures of that lake tend to be like in the 60s, 70 degrees. So it's not like he would freeze. I think it's strange that his body wouldn't have come to the surface at some point. Like what are your thoughts on that? Do you think he could have drowned? I mean, maybe, but it just seems so unlikely in light of all the other things going on.

Right. His parents get a lot of grief online for their behavior and people often wonder like why on earth wouldn't you just drive up and go get him? And I kind of have that question too. After the first time, after the second time, I mean, there's how many two, three times that someone called and he was sitting in the same spot after you thought he'd left. But they say it was the middle of the night, hindsight's 2020. And again, you want to look at that and be like, I would do it totally differently.

But if you had police on the phone telling you like, no, he's totally fine. He's totally lucid. He's not acting strange. I mean, you would believe police, right? Totally. What, what, what reason not to at this point, like in that, in that place. So I think Bryce is really distinctive looking. He has bright red hair and red eyebrows and this huge smile.

So I think he could spot him if you saw him, which also makes me think more than anything that he didn't walk away. I think that if he just walked away from his life, someone would have spotted him by now. I'll post a picture on our website. We have a pretty large listener base now all over the United States and even some overseas. So I'd really love if you guys took a couple of minutes to go to the website, which is crimejunkiepodcast.com, check out his picture. Again, I really think it's, it's a picture that I think a lot, I see a lot of people

and they come and go. A lot of people look like everyone, but he has such a distinctive look that I know if I saw him on the street, I would recognize him. So I'd love if everyone would go to the site, take a look, just keep your eyes peeled. I mean, there's no way, I know we're not crime solvers, we're not detectives here, but the only way for missing people to get found is just for everyone to keep their eyes open. His parents can't be everywhere. They can't search everywhere, but we kind of all have to stick together and kind of do

it for him. As a reminder, guys, please go to the website, check out that picture, crimejunkiepodcast.com. You can also sign up for our quarterly newsletter there, and if you want to connect with us on social, you can follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast or on Twitter at crimejunkiepod. We'll be back next week with a brand new case. Crime Junkie is written and hosted by me. All of our sound production and editing comes from Brit Preywat, and all of our music, including our theme, comes from Justin Daniel.

Crime Junkie is an audio check production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?