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Welcome to the dark Side of podcasting.

Now to the latest in the death investigation of Utah CEO Aaron Valenti.

Now Valenti disappearing in California, and yesterday reports are that her body was found inside a park card.

Her voice was calm but distant.

She spoke in fragments as if she was somewhere else entirely, and then her final words, it's all a game.

It's a thought experiment.

We're in the matrix.

I'm your host Hopper.

Daily, and I'm Mackenzie, and this is.

The final trace of Aaron Valenti.

Today, we have a story that's gonna make you question everything you thought you knew about reality.

So, Mackenzie, quick question for you.

How would you feel if I called you out of the blue and just told you, Hey, we're living in the matrix.

I probably asked you what you've been watching on Netflix?

Fair?

But what if I sounded dead serious, no sarcasm, no joking, just calm and certain.

Then I'm probably really concerned.

Maybe start googling like how to do an exorcism on a podcast host?

Mm hmm.

See that's what makes this case sol unraveling.

Aaron Valenti actually made that phone call to her family and days later she was gone.

Oh thanks, Okay, welly, I'm not laughing anymore.

Yeah.

This one's one of those stories where you can't tell if the scariest part is what happened to her or what she might have known before any of this.

Aaron Valenti wasn't someone who seemed destined to be a tragic headline.

She wasn't some conspiracy theorist or someone with the history of mental illness.

She was a successful businesswoman, CEO of a company called Tinker Ventures, married to her college sweetheart, a psychologist, a Georgetown graduate, and by all accounts, she was just a rock star.

She was thirty three years old, based in Utah, and she had what a lot of people would call the dream life.

She was running a company she'd built from the ground up.

She was sharp, ambitious, the kind of person who saw opportunity everywhere.

Her company, Tinker Ventures, specialized in iOS, android and web applications.

But here's what's interesting.

She was also really into something called brain machine interface technology.

Okay, and what the heck is that?

Well, basically technology that connects your brain directly to computers.

So think of it, like being able to control your phone just by thinking about it.

That's site some science fiction stuff.

Mm hmm, that's what I thought too, But apparently it's very real.

And Aaron was working with some cutting edge companies in this field, and she wasn't just business minded.

Friends described her as funny, magnetic, and always up for an adventure.

She traveled, she pushed herself, and she had this energy that made people want to be around her.

So basically the opposite of someone you'd expect to vanish and end up on a true crime podcast episode exactly.

No criminal past, no mental health struggles that anyone knew about, just a young entrepreneur who seemed to be right in the middle of her prime, which is why what happened next just makes zero sense.

In late September twenty nineteen, Aaron made a Facebook post saying, quote headed to San Francisco in LA soon.

Who's around dm me?

End quote.

Then on October first, Aaron flew from Utah to California for a business trip.

Nothing unusual, She'd done this plenty of times before.

The plan was to meet with contacts in the Bay Area, attend a couple of tech related events, and then fly back home.

Everything seemed totally normal.

She spent a few days bouncing around between meetings, networking, just normal business trip stuff, and by all accounts, she seemed fine.

Friends she saw that week didn't notice anything strange.

So no signs that she was stressed out, upset, or you know, about to spiral into something no one could explain.

Okay, So how do we get from the cool, calm, quickted woman to a frankly call about the matrix.

That's the mystery, because on October seventh, everything just shifted.

On the afternoon of October seventh, Aaron was supposed to fly back to Utah.

Around three thirty pm, she called her parents from California.

She sounded distressed.

She told them she couldn't find her rental car.

It was a gray Nissan Morano.

Her dad, Joseph later said that she was talking a mile a minute, jumping from thought to thought and not really making sense.

It was the first clear sign that something was seriously off.

What do you mean she couldn't find a real car like she'd lost in a parking lot.

I mean, I've done that before.

Is that what we're talking about here?

Exactly same, I've done it before.

Too, but she was frantic.

She'd just come from a meeting on sand Hill Road, nothing unusual about the day until that moment.

But now she's wandering around, couldn't find the car, and her words just started to feel scattered.

She did eventually find it, so crisis avoided, but instead of calming down, things just got stranger.

She stayed on the phone with her parents as she drove, and the conversation started veering from confused to almost surreal.

Her mom, Agnes, later remembered, Aaron sounded completely disconnected, and then Aaron said the words her family will never forget.

It's all a game, it's a thought experiment.

We're in the matrix.

This was the moment her family knew they were dealing with something that they couldn't explain.

Ah, so this is the moment where their rabbit hole opened.

Yep.

And once she said that, it was like Aaron started unraveling in real time.

Okay, but wait, didn't you say her husband was a psychologist.

Wouldn't he recognize signs of mental health crisis?

Did he not see anything?

That's exactly what makes this so strange.

Her husband, Harrison said this behavior was completely out of character for Aaron.

She had no history of mental illness, no hospitalizations, no substance of use, just nothing.

If like her mind just flipped a switch from normal everyday Aaron to someone sounding like she'd seen behind the curtain exactly.

Imagine being on the phone knowing something's wrong, but you can't get to them.

You can't even see them, You're just listening to their voice drift further and further away.

The calls stretched for hours, and every so often Aaron would circle back to that same thought.

It's all a game, it's a thought experiment.

We're in the matrix.

Her parents knew she needed help, but Aaron was behind the wheel driving through the Bay Area and they had no way to pin down exactly where she was.

That's terrifying.

So she's just out there in a confused state, driving sepwhere around California.

As a family or luck one, I'd be so upset, spitting at home, not being able to get to her and help her get her the help that she needs.

The same I can't even imagine what they felt.

She was out there just moving between San Jose and pala Otto, and there was nothing that they could do.

Sometimes she'd say she was driving home.

Sometimes she'd say she was lost, but none of it really lined up.

By the time the sun went down, Her family was frantic.

As the night wore on and Aaron didn't show up at the airport, she missed her flight.

Her family knew this was big and something was really wrong.

So the family, desperate to know that she's say if they call the police in California and beg for help, They asked them to do a welfare check.

A San Jose officer actually called Aaron that night.

She answered the phone, but when he asked if she was okay, her reply was just unsettling.

She said, I'm just joking around, and then the line went silent.

After that, officers treated Aaron as a voluntary missing adult, someone who had simply chosen to disappear, and that decision would shape everything that followed.

So she told the cops she was joking.

That makes my stomach drop.

It makes me.

Wonder what was really going on, because at that moment she wasn't manning.

She was lucid, I mean lucid enough to answer to cover herself, almost like she'd realized she said too much to her family, So when the police stepped in, she had to play it off, to cover her tracks.

Mm hmm, exactly.

And here's the part that makes it even heavier.

The police were actually the last people to ever hear from Aaron after that call, when she told them she was just joking.

Every attempt to reach her went straight to voicemail.

Her parents couldn't get through, her husband couldn't get through.

The only line of communication just went dead.

So if she was lucid in that moment, if she really was covering her tracks, then the last thing she ever did was shut the door on her family, leaving them with nothing but questions.

That's just so terrifying for them.

I'm sure it was.

And yet, even as her family begged from action, police still didn't treat Aaron's case as urgent.

To them, she was an adult who had chosen to go off the grid, But to her family, every hour felt critical.

Days slipped by with no words.

Her husband, Harrison, even flew out from Utah to search for her himself, but still no erin no car.

Just the silence remained.

So at what point did this Ashley become a missing person case?

When did the police finally stop treating it by she'd just gone off the grid.

Well, that's where things get really frustrating.

Aaron's family did exactly what you'd hope they had, immediately contacted the police when they couldn't reach her.

They gave them everything, her description, the fact that she was alone, even the details of the rental car, a gray twenty twenty Nissan Morano license plate a dash lud Dash six four to one.

Good, so they had something concrete to.

Look for, you would think.

But here's the part that still stings.

The official missing person report wasn't filed until October tenth, three full days after Aaron disappeared.

Three days Why the delay?

That's an attorney when someone's out there in trouble.

The police ended up classifying her as a voluntary missing person.

Their reasoning Aaron was an adult over eighteen, with the legal right to disappear if she wanted to.

But her family knew this wasn't normal for her.

Right they did, and they pushed back hard, telling officers that Aaron's behavior was completely out of character.

But here's what's really frustrating.

Police just brushed it off.

They said, stress related spontaneous trips are common, So instead of treating Aaron's case like an emergency, it was just pushed aside, not top priority, just another missing adult.

Ah, that's so bizarre, it is.

And while the police are dragging their feet, Aaron's parents are growing desperate.

They're all the way in New York and Erner's is somewhere out there in California.

It's not like they can just hop in the car and go search for her.

They're relying on phone calls an officer they don't trust to take it seriously.

And every hour that passes by feels like Aaron is slipping further and further out of reach.

So what else can they do?

Like, what did they do next?

Well, they started a Facebook group called help Find Aaron Valenti and launch their own social media campaign trying to get the word out in San Jose and pala Alta, anywhere that Aaron might have been seen.

They shared her photos, they shared the car details, anything that might catch someone's attention.

Mark, Okay, that's a good move.

Now she was calling them on our phone though, like they at one time had contact on her cell phone, So at any point did they try tracking that phone?

They tried, but the problem was her phone kept bouncing off of different towers in the Bay area.

At times it looked like she was in pala Alto other times San Jose.

It gave them movements, but not an exact pin.

Harrison contacted Verizon and confirmed her last pings came from Menlo Drive, just north of the Albadden Expressway in San Jose.

For a short while, the phone even showed up pinging further north, but then it just went dark.

Her family clung to that last location, praying that it would lead to her.

Police allegedly searched that area, even checked local hospitals, but they found nothing.

That was the last digital trace of Aaron Valente.

That's terrifying to have a location and to know she was right there somewhere and still come up empty.

So what about the rental car?

So she was in a rental don't vehicles like that usually have GPS tracking?

Could that have located her?

Well, that's what you would think, right.

Most major rental companies equipped some of their vehicles with GPS trackers for fleet management, theft prevention, or just monitoring the mileage.

But in Aaron's case, her husband posted on social media after it happened, saying the car surprisingly didn't have any tracking devices installed, so no phone tracking and no GPS from the rental company either were left with the same problem.

There just wasn't a live digital trail to follow.

Yeah, that seems like a really unfortunate coincident.

It does.

So now we have Aaron missing for several days, her phone is now off, the rental car can't be tracked, and police aren't actively searching because they think she just left voluntarily.

This is so frustrating.

So did they finally find her?

They did, five days after she was last heard from.

But Mackenzie, it wasn't the police who located erin.

It was a close family friend who found the rental car.

Are you serious?

Mm hmm.

Aaron's gray Nissan Morano parked on a quiet street in a suburban neighborhood.

Nothing unusual at first glance, just another car in the curb, but it had been sitting there for days.

The friend walked closer, looked through the window, and that's when they saw her.

Aaron was in the back seat, no broken glass, no signs of a struggle, no obvious cause of death, just still.

The car had been hiding in plain sight, less than a mile from the police station.

While officers treated her as someone who had simply chosen to disappear.

Aaron was already there, parked, waiting to be found.

Wait in the back seat, not the driver's seat.

Yeah, the backseat, which only raises more questions.

If she had pulled over while driving, you'd expect her to be in the driver's seat.

But Aaron was in the back like she'd either crawled there herself or something else happened.

But we don't know.

No sign of a struggle, no clear signs of trauma, nothing that suggests foul play, just Aaron in the back of the car.

As her story ended without explanation.

So I'm assuming there's an investigation.

What did the investigation uncover?

How did she die?

Well, there were no signs of physical assault, no blood in the car, and toxicology reports came back clean, no illegal substances, nothing that would explain her death.

But suspense is killing me?

So what killer?

Well, that's where this case gets more mysterious.

The coroner couldn't find a clear cause of death.

Officially, it was listed as undetermined no foul play, but also no clear natural cause.

Not a heart attack, not a stroke, nothing you can point to.

Her car had been parked on the street for five days, and when investigators canvassed the neighborhood, residents gave conflicting accounts.

It says if Aaron's life just stopped, without warning and without explanation.

Conflicting accounts, what does that mean.

Some neighbors remembered seeing the car and thought it was strange it stood out in their tight knit community.

Others swore they drove by that spot every day and never noticed it.

Same car, same street, but completely different memories.

That is weird.

The investigation seems really.

Off, and that's exactly how Aaron's family felt like that urgency just wasn't there.

The mystery of her death was slipping through the cracks, and no one seemed interested in feeling it.

Her father, Joseph Valenti, didn't mince words.

He publicly said police had botched the investigation, failing to search the immediate area where she disappeared and only taking the case seriously after Aaron's body was found.

For her family, that wasn't just incompetence, it was unforgivable.

Aaron Valenti's body was discovered just days before what would have been her thirty fourth birthday.

But Mackenzie, we haven't even touched on the most haunting part.

Yet Oh wow, there's more.

Mmm.

Remember those phone calls that Aaron made to her family, the ones she kept talking about the matrix?

Of course?

Very strange.

Well, it turns out that Aaron wasn't just rambling about the movie.

What she was describing is something called simulation theory.

Okay, and you're going to explain that to us.

What simulation theory?

It's the idea that our reality isn't real at all, that everything we see, touch and feel is part of an artificial simulation, like a computer program imagine the matrix, but not as science fiction as the actual world that we live in.

So simulation theory suggests that what we think is reality might actually be like an advanced version of the sims but we're the characters and we just don't know it.

Okay, Hey, so I definitely have heard of those theory before, like in the movie Free Guy with Ryan Reynolds terrifying.

Yes, Free Guy.

It was actually a great movie and a great example.

But Aarin wasn't just tossing out pop culture references.

For Aaron, those last words weren't just random ramblings.

They sounded like a warning.

What do you mean, remember how I mentioned she was working with brain machine interface technology.

Yeah, well it turns out that she was working with a company called Control Labs, founded by Thomas Reardon, co creator of Internet Explorer.

Okay, so what does control Labs do.

They developed technology that reads intentions directly from your brain and connects your nervous system to everyday technology.

You could control devices just by thinking about it without any physical movement.

Oh wow.

Okay, so Aaron's literally working on technology that could connect brain to computers exactly.

And here's where it gets more unsettling.

Some of the biggest names in tech, the people building our future, have gone on record saying the odds that we're living in a base reality, meaning actual reality and not a simulation, are basically one billions.

Suck our powerball ticket.

So successful tech people actually believe we minoray be living in a simulation.

They do.

Elon Musk has said it, Neil de Grassi Tyson has said it.

The theory isn't just Internet conspiracy.

It's something that some of the biggest minds seriously entertain.

The argument is that technology advances so fast.

Think about how we went from basic video games to virtual reality in just a few decades, and it's possible an advanced civilization could create simulations and distinguishable from reality.

And when you put that next to Aaron's last words, it doesn't feel like random nonsense.

It feels like part of a bigger, darker conversation.

And Aaron was working on the DAC technology that can make all of this possible.

She was working on brain computer interfaces.

Yes, But here's what makes the case even more bizarre.

The final determination of how she died.

Oh good, what was it?

So?

After all the confusion, the searches, the unanswered questions, the official cause of death came back as natural causes, not a heart attack, not a brain bleed, not even an overdose.

The exact phrasing was sudden death in the setting of an acute manic episode.

In other words, Aaron's mind unraveled and her body just stopped.

No clear medical explanation beyond that, know why and know how.

But do you say that she had no history of mental illness.

She didn't.

According to her husband, who's a psychologist, Aaron had never been diagnosed with any mental health conditions, no therapies, no medication, no hospitalizations.

But sometimes disorders like bipolar can go undiagnosed for years, especially in a high functioning people, and when it hits, it can hit really hard.

So the strange phone calls the rambling to talk about the matrix.

Officially, those were seen as symptoms of a manic episode.

That's what the medical examiner determined.

So officially, but unofficially, what are we saying?

Well?

Officially, the medical examiner pointed out a thyroid condition that could have contributed, combined with the possibility of undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

They called it a perfect storm, mental health and physical health colliding all at once.

But unofficially people still wonder.

On forums like Reddit, some argue that Aaron was onto something, maybe connected to the emerging brain computer interface work happening at Control Labs.

One comment, or even put it bluntly, quote I one hundred percent believe she found something she shouldn't have, straight out of a movie end quote.

Others have tied her words directly to simulation theory.

Was she truly in the grip of a manic episode?

Or did Aaron glimpse the seams of reality unraveling.

That line were in the matrix.

It's so cinematic, it's hard not to wonder what she meant.

It is, And that's where the story sits now, teetering between a tragic medical event and the spine tingling idea that something bigger was at play.

So you had mentioned her company earlier.

What's happened to her company since then?

So after her death, Aaron was actually honored by the Utah Women Tech Council for her entrepreneurship in excellence.

Under her leadership, her company's work represented more than five hundred million dollars in revenue.

That recognition showed just how much of an impact that Aaron made to the tech world.

So shoot successful right up to the end, she.

Was, and that's what makes this so heartbreaking.

Aaron was brilliant, building cutting edge technology, running a thriving business, and shaping the future.

But at the same time, was she quietly struggling with something undiagnosed, something no one saw coming.

Now that's the question that lingers because none of it adds up neatly, not her final words and not the way her story ended.

This story is so chilling, and the fact that this behavior came on so quickly, there were no.

Signs, no warnings.

It's just almost unimaginable.

I could think it about the police.

If they had taken her family seriously right away, could things have been different.

Could someone have maybe stepped in gotten her help before she ended up dead in the backseat of her car.

Yeah, that delayed response definitely didn't help.

Her family was waving every red flag that they could.

Police just treated her like she was another adult who wanted to vanish.

If those warning signs had been acted on, if someone would have reached out sooner, taken her words as urgent instead of dismissing them, then maybe Aaron could have been found alive.

Maybe she could have been pulled back before it was too late.

Okay, Hopper, you know I got to ask.

Do you think the whole matrix thing was just part of her manic episode?

Most likely?

Yeah, acute mania can cause racing thoughts, delusions, even those kinds of grand reality bending ideas, but it's hard to ignore how strange it feels.

In her case, Aaron ran a tech company.

She was surrounded by people working on brain computer interface projects.

So for her delusions to center on the idea of living inside a simulation that's eerie.

And then there's her cause of death, not a heart attack, not a brain bleed, no trauma, just natural causes in the middle of a manic episode.

I just can't get past it.

It doesn't sit right.

It is really disturbing to think about.

It kind of makes me wonder if they were doing testing on her, Like, did something the company was working on contribute to all of this?

I wondered about that too.

Aarin wasn't working in a lab herself, but she was connected to Silicon Valley through her businesses and through her colleagues.

Around that time, there were companies pushing the limits of brain computer interface tech, literally trying to connect the human mind to machines.

There's no evidence anyone was testing on her or that her company had anything to do with it directly, but the overlap.

It's kind of unnerving a tech ceo with ties to that world suddenly spiraling into delusions about simulations and the matrix and then being found dead with no clear cause.

Officially, no, there's nothing to suggest testing, but unofficially, the timing, the words she chose, the industry she was immersed in, it leaves a lot of people unsettled.

It really is unsettling.

It also makes you think about how isolated people can become, especially when they're traveling like she was for work.

She was alone in California while her entire support system was back in Utah, Yeah, and.

New York, where her parents were.

But officially, Aaron Valenti's death was ruled natural, a sudden manic episode with no clear trigger, But unofficially her story refuses to fade.

A brilliant young CEO immersed in the world where the line between human thoughts and technology grows thinner by the day, suddenly just declaring we're trapped in a simulation.

Maybe it was the mania, maybe it was chance, or maybe Aaron glimpsed something we weren't meant to see.

And if she did.

Her warnings to Lingers, it's all a game, it's a thought experiment.

We're in the matrix.

Her last words question reality.

Her death left us questioning everything.

That's it.

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We'll be back next week with another mystery that still lingers in the shadows.

Until then, stay curious, stay safe, and remember not all secrets stay married.

The Final Trace is an Odie stew production.