Missing at the Holidays

0:00 To listen to ad free episodes and premium bonus content. Visit sinspod dot co slash Apple to subscribe on the Apple podcast app on your mobile device. Hey listeners, we want to hear from you. Head over to our fan list page and send us your questions, leave us voicemail, or subscribe to ad free and exclusive bonus content. Visit fan list dot com, slash sins and Survivors to connect with us today. The following The episode discusses topics related to domestic violence, including detailed accounts and descriptions that some listeners might find distressing or triggering. Listener discretion is advised. As of twenty twenty three, there are approximately twenty three thousand, five hundred and seventy six open missing person cases in the United States. Each year, more than six hundred thousand people are reported missing in the US. While a large number of these cases are resolved relatively quickly, a significant number remain open. For instance, in twenty twenty one, out of five hundred and twenty one seven hundred and five reported missing person cases, more than four hundred and eighty five thousand were resolved within the year.

1:07 However, more than twenty thousand missing person cases remained open. These figures demonstrate the complexity and scale of missing person cases in the United States, with a notable portion remaining unsolved each year. Hi, and Welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence. I'm your host Sean, and with me, as always is the one and only John. I am the only John in the room. In this week's episode, we're going to change the normal format and talk about some cases that we've learned about in the past year. Many of us are gathering with family this time of year, but unfortunately, many families will have empty seats at their tables, which is obviously very, very difficult.

2:00 All the cases we're going to talk about today are unsolved cases. Jason Landry, Vladick Castle, Daniel Robinson, Ryan Shduka, kay Alana Turner, and Oakley Carlson are all considered missing and all of their families are desperately searching for answers on their loved ones. Whereabouts will also share what you can do to help in the efforts to locate them or raise awareness of the cases. So the first case we're going to talk about is Jason Landry. Jason Landry has been missing since December fifteenth, twenty twenty. The three year anniversary of his disappearance just passed in the past week. He was twenty one years old when he disappeared. Born on July twenty ninth, nineteen ninety nine, Jason is the youngest child of Kent and Lisa Landry. Jason has an older brother and sister. Jason's been called a prankster of fun loving guy, someone who is outgoing, extroverted and just loves being around peace people. I know his favorite candy is Swedish fish. When you visit his family's Facebook page about his disappearance, they've just done a beautiful job documenting little moments of Jason's history, including a photo from every one of his birthdays from one year old all the way to twenty one years old, with the cakes and the gifts that made him smile. It's beautiful and you really get a sense of the kind of guy he is. He was last seen on Salt Flat Road in Luling, Texas, which is between San Antonio and Houston, and the circumstances of what happened

3:34 to him is that at the time Jason was a student at Texas State University and it was the holiday time. Winter break was coming up and he was driving home to Houston to spend the holidays with his family. He drove a tan Nissan Ultima and as he was driving, he was using the Ways app to navigate, and he had left campus pretty late that night, around eleven o'clock and according to police, about a half hour into his drive, Jason got to Luling, Texas and as he's driving, he stops using Ways and begins to use Snapchat, and the police say shortly after that his digital footprint just ends. What the police think happened is that Jason made a wrong turn.

4:19 He should have turned right onto Magnolia Boulevard, but instead he went straight through that intersection and ended up on Salt Flat Road, which is a very secluded road. So at twelve thirty one am, his car was discovered. The lights were on, the keys were in the ignition, and the investigation led them to make the conclusion that Jason overcorrected while he was driving on that gravel road. He spun out, crashed into a tree and a barbed wire fence. His rear window of the car was broken. Because they believe he hit the tree. The investigators found items belonging to Jason placed in the road about one hundred yard from the crash. It appeared as if Jason had stripped out of his clothing, including his watch that had been placed neatly on the ground, and he walked away from the car, leaving behind all his belongings such as his backpack, laptop, toilet trees, his cell phone. He had some kind of what's been described as gaming equipment with him, so I'm not sure if that was like a PlayStation or xbox or switch, but all of that was left in the car. They found a little bit of blood on the shorts that were in the street, but not like a scary amount.

5:32 They would think that he was massively injured. They think that maybe he scratched himself on the barbed wire fence when he was getting out of the car. There were nine days of searches in the area immediately after the accident, but Jason was not found, and in February twenty six, twenty twenty one, Texas Search and Rescue did a three day search with more than one hundred volunteers. They covered more than thirty one thousand acres They used dogs, people on horseback, drones, sonar, helicopters, and even searched underwater. But Jason is still missing, and just this past October they did another search and nothing has turned up. John and I got to hear directly from Jason's family at the True Crime and Paranormal Podcast Festival this past August. You can learn more about Jason's story if you listen to podcasts such as Voices for Justice, Weird True Crime, and Navigating Advocacy. Jason at the time he disappeared six foot one, weighing about one hundred and seventy pounds. He's a white male with brown hair and brown eyes. At the time of his disappearance, his hair was a little bit longer, it was a medium length, and he had a goatee and his family has said that he has a scar on his ankle. And his family is really asking for more leads. They need people to print and post up flyers of Jason wherever you can, wherever you can

7:05 permission to post flyers, or they recommend they have a QR link to their missing person's flyer, and they recommend you could print that out and put it maybe in your car window and people could see it and then scan it with their phone and then they get a digital version of the flyer so they can share it with other people. The family in the community that surrounds Jason's family, they want to find Jason. They just endured the three year anniversary with no answers. So please listeners follow the Missing Person Jason Landry facebook page and show this family some support and if you know anything, the family is essentially begging you to leave a tip. You can leave an anonymous tip because they really want to find Jason. So next up, we'll talk about Brian Vladick Hassle. He never really went by Brian, so I'm just going to call him Vladik. So he has been missing since November six, twenty twenty one, and he was missing from Orlando, Florida. First, we want to give a little background about Vladik, and we're covering these cases very quickly.

8:13 There's a lot more detail to each of these cases, and we really recommend that you check out some of the podcasts that go into much more detail about the individual stories. This is just sort of the highlights that we're giving here and to highlight that they're missing, and then the calls to action about what you can do. So, Vladick and his older sister, Arena, were adopted from Russia in two thousand and four. Vladik was five and Arena was eleven. They both experienced some pretty intense neglect in their home life and while living in this orphanage in Russia, and they were adopted into an American household, and again, the other podcasts will go into a lot more detail about their families and their family relationships and all that important stuff. Their adoptive parents divorced in two thousand and eleven, which was extremely disruptive for him and his sister. And his sister actually ended up moving out after the divorce at only about age sixteen, and this was adding trauma onto what was what they had previously endured before they before they had been adopted. So he was last verifiably seen at a Foxtail Coffee, which is a chain coffee place in Georgia and Florida, the one on University Boulevard in Orlando on November sixth, twenty twenty one. There are some alleged sightings of Vladik as late as the fifteenth of November, with claims that people said that he was saying things like he was going off the grid. And one of the things that a couple of the

9:48 podcasts that we listened to about Vladik mentioned that he often talked about walking off into the woods and he wanted to go live in the woods, and especially you know, in his la years, you know, getting closer and closer to twenty twenty one, he started talking about these things. He talked about living off the grid. He even talked at one point about walking you know, walking away into the Appalachian Trail, which of course was you know, very very concerning to his family. He started acting quite differently in twenty twenty one, according to his family and from the interviews that I listened to, and he started doing things like giving away his possessions. At one point he smashed his cell phone, and he also developed a fixation on heaven and had a bit of a focus on religion as well. So it seemed clear that he had some undiagnosed trauma from his background in Russia absolutely, and also the divorce of his adoptive parents, and that also that he was experiencing some mental health challenges. And we first heard about his disappearance listening to the Vanish podcast.

10:54 It's episode three fifty three, so we really recommend you go check that out. Over an hour long and it goes into a really in a mess amount of detail, and they actually talked to a couple of his sisters about the case. Vladeck was five'ot eight, between two hundred and ten and two hundred and thirty pounds. He had dark blonde hair, blue eyes. The family is asking that you spread awareness by sharing his poster and they they say, and we agree, it doesn't really matter where you live. Sharing his poster on whether you print it out and put it up or you share it on your Facebook feed, to raise awareness of his disappearance, get his picture out there. They also have a link tree that we will share in our show notes with helpful links. And if you have any information about Flatte's disappearance, please call the Orange County Sheriff's Office at four oh seven eight three six four three five seven. Next, I want to talk about Daniel Robinson.

11:56 I first heard about Daniel Robinson at Crime Con in twenty twenty two. I actually was able to hear Daniel's father speak about Daniel's case, and I think that it's really important that we keep sharing it and keeping Daniel's name out there because he still has not been found. He's been missing since June twenty third, twenty twenty one, so it's been about two and a half years. David was twenty four years old at the time of his disappearance. He disappeared from Buckeye, Arizona, which is just west of Phoenix. Daniel is a geologist, so the day he went missing, he was at work.

12:37 He was out at a work site in the desert near Buckeye, Arizona, and a coworker reported that he left the work site about fifteen minutes after arriving. He was driving in his twenty seventeen blue gray Jeep Renegade, and he was heading out into the desert when he was last seen. On Tuesday, July nineteen teenth, twenty twenty one. Daniel's vehicle was found about two and a half miles from the work site in a remote part of the desert. It was flipped over and in a ravine. His clothing was also found in the car. The airbags were deployed. His cell phone his keys were also in the car. The Buckeye Police Department did a search by ground and drone but no trace of Daniel was found, and this event happened very close to the Gabby Petito disappearance. Later, Gabby was tragically found murdered. But when I first heard about it at Crime con, Daniel's case was obviously one where there was a discrepancy in the resources and media attention. Daniel went missing just a month before Gabby did. He's twenty four, she's twenty two, but her disappearance was taking over. Everyone was talking about Gabby while Daniel was missing, and folks were not focused on finding him. I got to hear, as I said, from Daniel's father. His father's name is David, talk

14:07 about his efforts to locate Daniel. He has poured his whole heart and soul into this. Other podcasts that have covered this in more details so you can hear and learn more about Daniel voices for Justice, Jen Y, many others. His family describes him as having a real sense of adventure. He's five foot eight. He's an African American man. He weighed one hundred and sixty five pounds at the time of his disappearance. He has black hair and brown eyes, and he was born missing part of his right forearm, including his hand, and Daniel's father is fiercely passionate about finding Daniel. He believes the police did not do enough when this first happened to help find him, and he has spent a lot of money funding searches, and at least twice David's searches have turned up the remains of other individuals, so's he's in the right area. He's searching wherever he can, spending a lot of money doing this, and he could really use the support. He relocated to Arizona from his home in South Carolina because, as he says, he wants his boots on the ground looking for Daniel. He says, quote, I cannot stop searching for my son. I cannot stop making sure he receives a justice he deserves and the respect he deserves. So when you visit the website, please help find Daniel dot com. Please help find Daniel dot com. You can donate to his GoFundMe that helps fund these private searches. You can sign up to

15:41 search yourself or volunteer to help in other ways, and you can also print flyers you can send if you know anything about his disappearance, you can send in a tip on the website or call the tip line at eight four four six h two zero six to zero. And David has a YouTube channel where he shares information updates on Daniel's case all the time, so I recommend you subscribe and take a look at that as well. So the next one is definitely a bit of a mystery. This is the story of Ryan Stuka. So we really recommend listening to some of the great podcasts that have covered his disappearance, and I'll mention those in a minute. It's definitely a mystery and it invites speculation that's not really something that we engage in, but we recommend you go check those out for sure, and I'll list them in just a minute. So Ryan Stuko was born March seventeenth, nineteen ninety seven, and he went missing from sun Peaks Ski resort in British Columbia in twenty eighteen February seventeenth, twenty eighteen. And again it's hard to overstate how weird this one is and how much of a mystery this one is. Ryan was working and living at sun Peaks. He decided to work and live there and pursue his passion of snowboarding for a season. So one night, he was out with

17:11 his friends and they were at what's called a silent disco, where everyone is listening to the same music on their headphones, but if you were to walk into the room, there's no music playing because it's just playing on everybody's headphones. Sounds like fun. I've never done it, but it sounds like it'd be a lot of fun. So he went with his friends and around between one thirty and two am, they got up to leave, and they thought he was coming with them. They've said that they thought he was getting up that he would be right behind them, And they headed up between one thirty and two am from this party, and when they got outside and they started walking home, they looked behind them and he wasn't there. And he hasn't been seen since. There were people who showed up at the party at two thirty or two thirty or so in the morning and they report not seeing him there. There has never been any evidence of foul play. Important to note that this happened at ski resort, and the night this happened, there was I believe eight inches of snowfall that night. So again, this whole thing invites a lot of speculation, but It's an interesting one to look at how the ski resort is laid out and the very few places that he could possibly have gone in the course of that very small window of time. We first found out about this case from Hailey Gray, amazing researcher, and the two podcasts that I listened to that covered it were True North True Crime, which

18:45 I love. They focus on true crime in Canada, really great stuff and do a lot of coverage of Indigenous people and disappearances and navigating advocacy another great one. Ryan was twenty years old at the time of his disappearance. He was described as six feet tall, lean, athletic, about one hundred and eighty pounds, which I guess you'd expect from a young guy that's living on a ski resort and snowboarding for a season, totally get it. Blonde hair, brown eyes, and he was last seen wearing dark jeans, a blue coat and a burgundy baseball cap. His parents are Heather and Scott and he has two younger sisters. So the family is asking that you again share his story. You can join the Facebook group, which we will share the link for, and if you have any information, you can contact the Kamloops, Royal Canadian Mounted Police or crime stoppers with information. And another thing that will be participating in is his family really appreciates when Ryan liked dinosaurs, so they have this tradition where people travel with what they call a shtucosaurus. It's a small green dinosaur and you leave him places to raise awareness of Ryan's disappearance and

20:18 travel with him, takes photos with him, and it's just another way to spread the word. So we'll be doing that on our trip that's coming up soon, and then we will send him to a friend in British Columbia where she will hopefully do the same thing, and we'll provide links just like the other ones, so you can you can help the family out. Hi. It's Sean and John from Sins and Survivors. We think it's so important to bring you new podcast episodes centered on the victims of domestic violence, but we need your help. Head over to sinspod dot co slash Patriot and join one of our membership tiers starting at only three dollars a month with a discount.

21:03 If you purchase a full year, you get access to our behind the scenes Swing Shift episodes where we talk about the episode right after we record it and tell you more about our theories on the case, going beyond what you just listened to. And you'll also get ad free versions of all episodes and will even send you members only shwag. You get all this and you can feel good about yourself that you're helping defray the cost of producing the show every week. So head over to sinspod dot com slash Patreon today. All right, the next case I'm going to talk about is kay Alana Turner. And as John said, when we came up with the idea for this episode, we asked our colleagues in the true crime community what cases they thought could use some more attention, that the families could use a little extra support, And there were so many names that were shared, but kay Alana came from the team at Weird True Crime. They asked us to include kay Alana's story and we are happy to do so. Kay Alana is missing, actually relatively recently compared to these other cases. She's only been missing since March tenth, twenty twenty three, so it hasn't even been a year. She went missing from a town called Tomball, Texas, which is outside of Houston. When kay Alana

22:33 disappeared. It was about a month before her twenty eighth birthday. Kay Alana is a musician from Beaumont, Texas, and her Instagram is still up. Her family did take it over to make some posts about her disappearance, but you can watch videos of her playing the theremin, which is a really cool instrument to watch somebody play, and acoustic guitar. I watched a couple videos of her covering No Doubt and The Bleachers. She's really talented, really charming, and I hope you check out her Instagram because I think she's got this great personality. So on the evening of March ninth, twenty twenty three, kay Alana was staying at a friend's house. Her friend's name is Britney and she lives in Sillsby, Texas. So for reference, this is about an hour and a half northeast of Houston and about one hundred miles from Tomball, Texas, where kay Alana was last seen. So on the morning of March tenth, Brittany, the friend leaves for work and she assumes that Kayalana is just you know, still in bed sleeping. But later that morning, Kayalana is seen on the doorbell camera walking in front of Britney's house and knocking on the door and looking very confused, and Brittany doesn't know why she didn't just go back in the house because Kayalana knew the code to the door. It had been the same for years. So kay Alana knocked on other doors in the neighborhood. She was seen on other ring cameras going door to door in the neighborhood, knocking on the door, and then Kaylana got into her car and drove off, and Brittany and Kaylana's boyfriend both tried to contact her,

24:10 but there was a lot of confusion and just kind of contradictory, contradictory communication between the three of them. We don't need to go into all those details, but her family has mentioned that Kaylana had begun taking some new medication and it's possible that she hadn't slept in a few days, which may sort of explain how she was a little bit confused or disoriented. So that day, Kaylana contacted a friend that lives in Austin, Texas, and she asked for directions to his house, and it's assumed that she got lost or confused or perhaps thought she was in Austin, because she stopped in a neighborhood in Hockley, Texas, which is about thirty five miles northeast from the center of Houston, and she begins ringing doorbells and looking for her friend. At this point, it's three point thirty in the morning, so she drives away again before the police could make contact with her, and around six am, a homeowner in Tomball, Texas, finds her asleep in their driveway and she was sleeping very heavily. Her family says she sleeps like a rock and the homeowner couldn't wake her, and the whole event drew a crowd in the neighborhood. The homeowner notified his hoa. There was an officer from the Harris County Sheriff's office who showed up, and he finally woke her up, and she was startled, and she seemed kind of to be in like a sleepwalking state, and she tried to drive away across the lawn of the house, which she was blocked by another car that was parked out front, and so the officer used a two by four to break the window and attempt to get control of the

25:44 car, so this obviously frightened Kaylana even more. She drove through a pasture and into the woods about a half a mile and then her car got stuck in the mud and she just got out and went on foot. She left behind her phone and her purse. She made it to a creek called Spring Creek. She left her shoes behind as she crossed the creek on a log, and it's been noted that her shoes were full of the glass from the broken window. She ran through another person's pasture and a yard and likely made it to Decker Prairie Rose Hill Road, so she ran across these pastures in the woods and into another residential area. The police used a helicopter to try and locate her or her heat signature, but they couldn't. Her parents reported her missing, but the police initially canceled the missing person's report and listed her as a fugitive instead because she had ran from the police, which delayed searches.

26:41 She is listed as a missing person now, but her family and I believe that that shouldn't have ever happened. As of now, there are no leads, but it's possible that when she reached the road that she may have hitchhiked gotten a ride from someone. You can hear more about this case on the Vanished podcast or Missing Even. Crawl Space did an episode on Kayalana. She has brown hair in the photos her hair that I saw. Her hair is very long and straight, and she has blue eyes. She's five four and weighs about one fifteen one twenty. She's twenty eight years old and when she was last seen, she was wearing a hot pink maxi dress or what some call described as a hot pink gown, and she had no shoes on.

27:30 She has multiple tattoos, including the number twelve above a red bow on her right collarbone, and the phrase Jesus lived and died for all your sins. Damn right, He'll rise again on her back again. She was last seen near Decker Prairie rose Hill Road, which is near Highway two forty nine, which crosses over into Montgomery County, Texas. So her family they are facing their first holiday season without her. They have posted on Kayalana's Facebook page that kay loved Christmas, she kept it in her heart all year long, and that she was always looking for ways to do something good for someone and help someone in need. They are having a very hard time keeping their traditions going this year. You can help them out by printing and distributing flyers, liking their Facebook page, and donating to their GoFundMe, and all the links will be in the show notes. The last one we're going to talk about is Oakley Carlson. We're doing a special feed drop episode next week where we're going to have true crime cases with Laney's episode on Oakley Carlson in our feed.

28:41 So Laney did an amazing job talking about Oakley's case. She goes into a great deal of detail about the case. So please come back for that next week and listen to that get all the details. So Oakley Carlson was born on December sixth, two thousand and sixteen, in Oakville, Washington, and she has been missing since February tenth, twenty twenty one. And again we're going to keep it high level here. She was born to her biological parents, Jordan Bowers and Andrew Carlson, and her parents have a long history of substance abuse. And Andrew has a history of domestic violence. He was booked for assault and domestic violence in twenty eighteen after Oakley had been removed from their care. Oakley was fostered by Jamie, Joe and Eric Hiles and lived with them for two years. The Hiles home, unlike Jordan and Andrew's home, was an extremely loving and supportive environment for Oakley, and the Hiles had set in motion actually adopting her. Unfortunately, though, she was returned to her biological parents despite an absolutely staggering array of red floh going on in the home, and by twenty twenty her biological parents kept her from the Hiles entirely and we really know nothing about what happened that year. There were several incidents

30:15 as late as December twenty twenty, where after Oakley had been returned to her parents' care, it was reported that she did not look well. She looked very pale, and February tenth, twenty twenty one, was the last credible sighting of Oakley. Six months later, Andrew reported a fire in their home on November sixth, twenty twenty one. It was very weird. He called the fire department but said they didn't need a response. He just wanted it on the record for insurance, and he blamed Oakley for the fire. So between between then and now, several CPS reports were filed by the Hiles and ignored. Oakley's elementary school principal, Jessica did some investigating and got the sense that something was very, very wrong and she was very understandably concerned that she hadn't seen Oakley in a long time. Eventually, Jordan and Andrew were booked for obstruction of justice and on suspicion of manslaughter. There were blood spatters found in the home and they were also charged with neglect for not giving their children vital medications. Various interviews with their other children led the police to believe that Oakley had been murdered. Andrew was given twelve months in prison but was released early, and Jordan was given twenty months in prison. And what the family's asking, and when I say the family, I mean her adoptive family,

31:47 that you share Oakley's story and her flyers, and we will share the website where you can go and learn more and find the flyer and join the Oakley Carlson Oakville, Washington Facebook group and donate to the reward fund too. There's currently I think an eighty five thousand dollars reward for information leading to information about what happened to Oakley, and you can also voice your opinion to the Washington DCYF Secretary Ross Hunter, and we will provide his email address for that. These are just a few of the many stories that are out there. Navigating Advocacy dedicated their entire month of December to covering a different missing person each day.

32:31 They asked us to cover the Caleb deal case, which I felt we couldn't do well in this short format we're doing for this episode, but we will add the link to the Bring Caleb Home Facebook page and to Navigating Advocacies episode on him as well. Our friends at PNW Haunson Homicides covered the Highway of Tears story of missing and murdered Indigenous women in that area, the reports of how many women have been murdered or went missing in this area at least forty and the Wikipedia article I looked at real quick lists well over sixty women ranging in age from infant to eighty nine years old, going missing along the Highway from nineteen seventy until today. And we're hoping to collaborate with PNW in the new year on a special episode on missing and murdered Indigenous women. Leon Laurelis's family, Gabby Petito's family, Katie Palmer's family, Alyss Attorney's family, and of course to the families of the cases we've covered this year, Camille Dardaines Dotson, Tiffany Booth, Tabitha Tozi, Fukeo dej Odem and her children, and Mason Dominguez's family too. In just a few months, Maura Murray's family will mark the twenty year anniversary of her still unsolved disappearance. Sean and I will be taking a break next week, but we will be bringing you true crime stories with Lady's episode on Oakley. We just started this podcast journey

34:04 and we appreciate the connections we have made so far, and we want to say thank you to our podcast colleagues who are passionate about justice for families and keep these names out there and support these families in their darkest times. As we say, what happens here happens everywhere. Thanks as always for listening, and we wish you all the best in twenty twenty four. Thanks for listening.

34:46 Visit sinspod dot com slash subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and threads at Sins and Survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at questions at sinsensurvivors dot com. If you are someone you know as affected by domestic violence or needs support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website, Sins and Survivors dot com. Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, is research, written and produced by your hosts Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, sinsensurvivors dot com.

35:39 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.