This is a studio both and production.

You know, it's weird.

There's the trees, there's.

Something you look like the tire tracks.

You're going straight this way, but it ended up the pool pretty had an angler.

Yeah, and that's like a really like if he swore, he go at and swirl.

Don't know how he would clumb up.

I think he would do well.

And why are you swarving adah?

Yeah, but that angle with those tire tracks, I don't know.

I'm not that spurt on this, but that doesn't seem if it makes much sense.

It's also like you almost have to intentionally get it through these trees.

It's like a car can fit for here.

Maybe there, but you have to be very.

Intent about how you're doing it.

I mean they were a little smaller back there.

Its like, but.

What you have to confare.

This is true crime bullshit.

I'm your host, Josh Hallmark, and this is a serialized.

Story of Israel Keys.

Israel Keys admitted to moving, stealing, and disappearing cars in conjunction with his abductions, murders, and robberies.

He talked about setting them on fire and submerging them in bodies of water and as both credible reports of encounters with Keys, and Keys's favorite media would suggest he was also likely wrecking cars, either as part of the abduction process or as a means to disappear a car or stage a car accident.

This is something that comes up in his favorite movie, Death Proof, his favorite book Intensity by Dean Koon's, and in the book Found in His Shed where he raped and murdered Samantha Koenig.

Mister Murder, also by Dean Koons, and that's a book we're going to get into extensively this season because it's essentially a playbook for how Israel Keys operated.

In fact, if his mo is inspired by anything, it's Mister Murder.

As an example, Mister Murder uses a homemade silencer in order to kill an older couple during a home invasion.

When he's done, he knows that he's supposed to break down the silencer and dispose of its individual pieces in separate locations while on his way to the airport, But after putting all the hard work into building his silencer, he's not quite ready to destroy it, so he drives fifty miles to another city in another state and uses it to rob a convenience store and kill the clerk, which is you know, familiar.

In another chapter, Mister Murder kills someone, steals his car, uses it to commit a second crime, then abandons it in a parking lot of an apartment complex, and that's where he steals a second car in order to return to his own car, which was parked some distance from the original crime scene.

All this is to say, reading Mister Murder is a surreal experience for anyone even remotely familiar with Keys and his crimes.

But I digress.

Keys wrecking cars and staging car accidents comes up a lot, not just in his favorite media and interviews, but in The Name is forty four, and even in cases we've previously discussed as possible Key's victims.

From the Name is forty four, Lori Anne Boffmann's car was found wrecked and abandoned, and Tony Luzio's car was eventually found submerged in a pond, although it wasn't recovered until after Keyes's death.

Then there's potential victims like Brianna Maitland and Sheila Kathleen mac Broome, whose cars were found abandoned with significant damage to them, Not to mention the arsons of Jeremy Burt's, Kelly Sue Akronix, and John Hanneman's cars, as discussed in the previous episode.

Then, of course, there's the multiple accounts of people who reported that keys tried to run them off the road.

Ill Courier's co worker at the UV campus in two thousand twelve, a woman who is driving on Interstate seventy in Colorado in two thousand five, a woman on a rural Mississippi highway in two thousand eight, and Mollie, whose detailed and highly credible account of being chased by keys along Routes one twelve and one O one on the Washington Peninsula has come up numerous times across multiple keys media.

And as we.

Discussed in episode two ten, there's the suspicious grill guard keys installed on his F one fifty truck shortly after moving to Nea Bay.

And finally, and perhaps most profoundly, Keyes himself wrote about doing exactly this quite clearly and graphically in his suicide.

Note where will you go, you clever little worm?

If you bleed your host dry back in your ride, the night is still young?

Should you like to push back?

The black neat rose off to the right a graveyard appiers, lines of stones, bodies molder below.

Turn away, quick, bob your head to the seat.

As straight through that stop sign, you'll roll.

Loaded truck with lights off, slams into your broadside, your flesh smashed as metal explodes.

You may have been free, you loved living your life.

Fate had its own scheme.

Crushed like a bug.

You still die.

I've long suspected that there are at least several Keys victims whose cars were either in accidents or staged to appear as though they were in accidents.

And it's something you can sometimes hear when listening to Keys discuss moving cars and presumed accidental deaths.

There were a couple of times that I moved cars and stuff of theirs.

But it's not like I kidnapped dumbers.

Were they in the cars when you when you moved them?

Did you do that to cover up that hide the crimes?

Was just to throw it?

Yeah, throw it off for a while, Right, said you did move their cars?

Yeah, a car car that belonged to at least one right, And the purpose just we went through that fast.

The purpose of moving the car.

They weren't in the car, but it was to do what.

Just to throw it off, distance it or whatever, just to okay, moved it away from a scene or something from.

It always surprises me, you know, like some situations you read about the paper, like so and so disappeared presumed boating accident, for example, will they find their boat?

You don't know what really happened to that person.

And that suspicion is what led me to Foya, a case I stumbled upon several years ago while looking into some of Keyes's earlier suspicious travels, specifically, in November nineteen ninety nine, car rental out of Tacoma, Washington.

It was Thanksgiving weekend and just six weeks before Keys was to be deployed to Egypt for six months stay.

He rented a car from the USAVE Auto Rental at the mall across the street from Fort Louis and disappeared for four days.

Although to say disappeared is not entirely accurate, because based on FBI interviews in my own conversations with people close to Keys, we have two very likely but unconfirmed destinations for this road trip.

His childhood girlfriend Annie's family's house in Callville or his younger sister's house in Gresham, or again, based on FBI interviews with Annie, In the late spring of nineteen ninety nine, sparked by the death of her stepfather, she and Keys rekindled their teenage romance, and while he was stationed in Fort Louis, they began writing letters back and forth again, and that summer Keys rented a car and drove out to Callville to see her, And while she couldn't remember specific dates, she told investigators that Keys rented cars and came out to visit several more times in the following months, although she doesn't call out any holiday visits, which you'd think one would remember more clearly than a random weekend.

From what I've heard, it's also likely he was visiting his sister for Thanksgiving.

She had just eloped, moved to Oregon, and had her first child, and Keys was apparently visiting her often during this period.

In his own words, he was very protective of her, particularly after she ran away from home and was essentially disowned by the Keys family.

According to the Keys psych report, she's the only sibling he talks about having a bond with, and her birthday well, it's just a few weeks after Thanksgiving, So while we don't know for certain where he went that weekend.

We know he was almost certainly visiting a loved one.

You talked once when the interviews about kind of having trying to set up alibis during some of your crimes.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on what kind of alibis you'd set up and would you pass your cell phone off to other people to hang on to or different things like that, or is it more just no.

I never was specific in anyone you ever passed her, and a lot of stuff that I did with that was no.

I would do it.

In conjunction with something else that was going on in pretty tight timeline, if you could say so that if it ever came up, then.

It's not like I would be in a situation where I had to explain where I was for days on end or something that was more along the lines.

But I never had any say.

Alibis like people who would would vouch for me or something.

Now, but the title I would make it look like it was difficult for you to ride.

And that's what takes us to the strange car accident that occurred near Mount Rainier on Sunday, November twenty eight of nineteen ninety nine.

No one knows when or exactly how Gary Shawn Bryant's car ended up in Lake Creek on the outskirts of Morton, Washington, Nor is it clear when Geary was last seen prior to the discovery of his car, but at six fifty one p m.

On November twenty eighth of nineteen ninety nine, Geary was reported missing by the Washington State Police after his car was discovered wedged between a boulder and the banks of Lake Creek near its confluence into the Tilton River.

The major discrepancy within the case files centers on Gary's date of last contact.

On one report, it stated to be November twenty eighth, the day his car was found, but on another it's reported as November twenty seventh, and unfortunately, neither report specifies the details of that last contact, what time it occurred, who it was with, where, the general nature of it.

Five foot seven, Gary was thirty two when he disappeared.

He was married with three young children.

He was an out of work logger and lived in a trailer in a wooded area along the Tilton River about three miles northwest of Morton.

The status of his relationship with his wife is unclear.

She only comes up once in the files, and it was to sign off on the release of his medical records.

But based on real estate records and background searches, it appears that Gary and his wife may have been living separately at the time of his disappearance, and while we don't have a lot of information surrounding his last known whereabouts, we do know that upon the discovery of his car, the Lewis County Sheriff's Office sprung into action.

Gary's car was discovered at around six p m.

On the twenty eighth, and a search of the surrounding area involving Helico cadaver dogs, search and rescue, a dive team, and horse mounted officers began at approximately eight a m.

The very next day, But despite seventeen people searching a nine mile span of the Tilton River and its shores over ninety nine collective man hours, not a single piece of evidence was ever recovered, including Gary, and the cadaverdogs didn't hit anywhere, including the area immediately surrounding Gary's car.

At some point between the discovery of his car and the search the following morning, the Lewis County Sheriff's office laid out a theory for what they believed happened.

A report from the morning of the twenty eighth reads as follows.

The search request is a result of a vehicle accident that occurred in Morton, Washington.

During the investigation, it was believed that the victim, a white male approximately thirty years old, had failed to negotiate a corner at approximately seventy miles per hour.

The impact ejected him out of the car into the rising Tilton River.

And while I suppose this could be a reasonable presumption based on the scene, superficially at least there's a lot about the state of the car, the road, the presumed accident occurred on the placement of the car in the creek, and both Lake Creek and Tilton River that cast doubt on this theory.

And unfortunately, local law enforcement had tunnel vision when it came to the theory.

They never looked at this as anything more than a car accident.

They never interviewed any one in Gary's life, they didn't do a thorough analysis of his car.

They just chalked it up to being a car accident.

And by June of two thousand, Gary had been pronounced dead and the case was cold.

After going through through the files and photos over and over again trying to make sense of a situation that didn't make much sense, French from the research team and I went out to Morton to see the recovery site in person.

But before we get into that, here's what you should know.

First, Gary's car went into the creek, not off some main road or highway, but off of a gravel road that essentially operates us the driveway for a small ready mixed cement plant.

There's no conceivable reason Derry would be on that stretch of road, let alone driving seventy miles per hour down it.

Now to be fair, the road Westlake Avenue is adjacent to Highway twelve, but it takes a bit of effort to get to it from the highway.

This is by no means a situation where you're driving along a highway and then accidentally end up on some side street.

From Route to weelve, you have to make a ninety degree turn on to seventh Street, then drive about seventy five feet before making another ninety degree turn onto West Lake, and from there you have to drive half a mile past a cemetery and a waste management plant before getting to the alleged crash site.

Essentially, it takes quite a significant amount of intention to get to where Gary's car ended up in the creek.

Secondly, while Lake Creek and Tilton River were in the midst of historic flooding at the time of Gary's disappearance, his car was only submerged at its deepest point up to the top of his driver's side wheel well, approximately twenty seven inches deep in a narrow creek.

Because the car was at a slant, that front end driver's side tire was the only tire in the water.

And Finally, other than a fairly minimal amount of front ends damage and a busted out windshield, the car was in pretty good shape.

It did not, by any stretch of the imagination, look like a car that drove off a steep embankment, through multiple trees and thick brush into a creek at seventy miles an hour.

So we had questions about the topography, the trees and foliage between the gravel road and the creek, the visibility of the car from the highway and surrounding areas, and the tire tracks and skid marks that even in photos don't really make sense.

So just a few days shy of the twenty second anniversary of Gary's disappearance, French and I drove the half mile stretch of road, passed the cemetery to the cement mixing plant, and much to our luck, as we pulled up, so did a friendly and talkative cement mixer.

Do you know that this rook was recently?

Yeah, it just got chip sealed this something.

Was it dirt before then?

No, No, it's it's up been kind of those drava from there on and that's county though the city ends and then it's county except promote.

It's really kind of weird.

And it's when the city's.

Down at that end of the road that this is county to here.

But they chipped.

Heel the whole thing.

This place.

It's been operating the whole time.

Yeah, it was actually it was not Cali Portland's.

Then they bought them out, No.

Three in two thousand and three.

Okay, it was central ready mixed.

At the time.

Do you ever have any problems with people breaking in or not?

Here?

Not here?

No, not in no long time.

Somebody screwed with it, like twenty years ago.

But that's what they do.

Oh, I think they were trying to break in, you know, but it didn't.

Was the gate here at the time, Yeah, yeah, we're always at the gate.

How'd they get through the game?

Well, they can just park out here and then park over the game.

They're not a high fence.

Since then, we put in security in the buildings and emotion sensors.

Unfortunately, he wasn't working at that particular plant when Gary went missing, so he didn't have any information about the disappearance.

However, his comments about the scene being just outside of town jurisdiction and in county territory were both interesting and familiar.

It's something we know that keys played around with jurisdictional lines that could muddel investigations.

In fact, earlier that morning, I'd been at Lake Quinault, where del mar samples car was recovered along the Quinault River, and much like Gary's, del Mar's car was recovered just across the county line and at a clearly marked juncture from state to county operated roadway.

Our new friend also mentioned that the plant had been broken into about twenty years ago, around the same time that Gary disappeared, and he eventually expressed doubt that someone could accidentally drive into the creek from Westlake Avenue and then somehow disappeared completely.

And he wasn't the only one.

As French and I walked along the creek, we ran into a local who was smoking under the highway overpass.

Also, I don't think even if you're not wearing a seatbelt, I don't think you die in that accident.

Unless he ended up in the water.

Pill Uh God, how you doing.

Looking at a carcrat that happened.

Here or wok?

You remember that?

Yeah from twenty years ago?

Yeah?

No, uh you know they then Ah, this was supposedly yeah, yeah, exactly, Well but there didn't you even on the road.

Maybe couldn't foll That's how we're trying to figure out.

Huh weird, Yeah, weird.

So if this one supposed to be threw off the road, got lodged in and then got into the river and they were up the count.

Really, yeah, so that's the And there was no blood evidence or anywhere.

You never found the person.

Noah, that said ended up in the recreating them how they lived anywhere?

I taught you they Yeah, Mike, blood in the wooden shield didn't end up on the other side as far as like that a dud angle, So I don't know.

But then this guy that we're looking into, he was in the area at the time too.

Really, yeah, that's.

Suspicious.

Yeah, i'd say, very dismissive.

Yeah, how'd you get ejected?

And then the matt managed to float all the way down the.

Creek under the river and gone, And yeah, that's highly.

High.

God, it's highly unlikely for a lot of reasons.

For one, Gary would have needed to not only be ejected from the car through the windshield of his early eighties Mercury Cougar, but he'd have to be ejected more than four and a half feet across the hood of the car, and from there he'd have to float approximately five hundred feet down a narrow and serpentine creek before even getting to the tilt and river.

But the most unbelievable thing about the scene is how Gary's car even got to where it ended up.

And it wasn't just the four of us at the creek that day who were suspicious about this alleged accident scene.

If one thing knows its tire tracks, because if it's keys, I'm assuming he's putting it in neutral and pushing it down here.

Well, that's the thing, Like I think the tire tracks are just like too perfect.

Yeah right, Like Mike, like.

I could see him, like, how would you go getting the tire tracks and.

Then mutual and roll it down.

Because it I feel like it certainly makes more sense that it would roll down there and then.

Get lodged in the way it did it.

Yeah, if you're rolling seventy, I mean this is enough the whole.

That's how enough of a root that you could cover the ground and even give like all or something.

I don't thinking that amount of invention in the roof just getting stuck y in the countia tip into the water and there's not a lot of damage with the body clock just like it looks like.

If that roll in.

So here's the thing about those tire tracks.

They lead directly into a tree, a large and very old tree that you can even see in the photos from nineteen ninety nine.

And between the end of those tracks and the tree was a fence which is still broken to this day, and essentially a short cliff into French's Point.

A car going seventy miles per hour or even forty miles per hour is likely going to flip.

But what it's not going to do is somehow get down this cliff and then drive around another tree.

I had Kaz, another researcher for the show who recently worked on a crash reconstruction case way in on those skid marks, and here's what she had to say.

If those skid marks belonged to his car, he was not going seventy miles per hour like the file indicates.

The skid marks would have been darker getting lighter to the front of the marks if he applied the brakes.

The only way for him to go over the cliff at seventy miles per hour is if he didn't break at all.

Also, I think it's logical deposit that if he was skidding out around the curve, the car would have started to rotate even slightly and rolled down the hill, as opposed to taking a header off the road, which is what French and I and our new friends thought.

There's also the matter of the other three trees between the car and Westlake Avenue.

There are four fir trees between the road and the creek bed.

All four are in the nineteen ninety nine photos and are still there, and undamaged to this day, and we couldn't think of a reasonable way that a person could accidentally crash through the fence, through those trees and get to wear Carrie's car ended up.

It would take intention and precision, and most importantly, the car would have to be entering from the exact opposite angle that Gary's car would have gone in had he failed to negotiate the corner.

There was also no glass or blood anywhere on the hood of the car, not a single shard nor drop.

If someone got into this accident and flew through the windshear, you'd think there'd be some evidence of that at the scene, especially given that the creek water only went at its highest to the front driver's side wheel well.

And finally, beyond what it would take for Gary to get to that particular stretch of road, and the complete and utter lack of reason for him to be there in the first place, there's no way he could have mistaken Westlake Avenue for the Highway.

He lived in Morton for over a decade at this point, and most recently lived two blocks from where his car was found.

Within the case files, which are largely duplicate copies of reports chronicling the search and copies of Bryant's medical records, there is a single and somewhat ambiguous reference that at a minimum shows some level of skepticism around the alleged car accident.

It's a two sentence handwritten note from the lead detective looking for case M M to pick up Northwest Harrison area.

Possibly a slingshot used.

Unfortunately, that's the entirety of the note, and there's no indication of why the officer thinks a slingshot may have been used, or whether this was followed up on, and it's never mentioned again.

But after doing some digging, I was able to determine that Harrison refers to Harrison Christian, which was a construction company several blocks down Westlake Avenue from Lake Creek.

I reached out to the Lewis County Sheriff's office for clarification around the note and to ask some questions about Gary's marital status and his last known contact.

The officer I spoke with had only recently been assigned to the case and said that essentially, if I have the case files, I know what he knows.

He had no information on the slingshot.

Bryant's person nor his last known contact, but he did say this he thought the photos of the accident scene didn't make sense.

The photos didn't line up with the narrative, and the seats they appeared to be pushed all the way back.

Gary Shawn Bryant was five foot seven.

On November twenty ninth, the day after Gary's car was recovered and the day the search was being conducted, a rural convenience store forty miles north of Morton was robbed at gunpoint at around six thirty pm.

According to the Tacoma News Tribune, a young man walked into the store and bought a beverage.

After paying for the drink, he ordered the female clerk to keep the register open, at which point he reached in and emptied it.

While the robber was emptying the register, the store's owner entered the area from the kitchen and chased him out of the store.

The robber got away with all the register's money and ran through a wooded area to a nearby church, where he was seen speeding away in a Chevy astro van.

And while there's no video surveillance nor a detailed description of the robber, the account sounds very similar to this interview with keys.

Armed robberies.

That's those days.

That's better, especially if it's like a small town.

Remember the first one I did and was freaked out, and.

But then once I got in there and actually I was doing it.

I remember one of the ladies at the counters, she was.

About the same age as my mom, and just the look on her face and was like, I still think about that.

I think she couldn't believe it.

Not just that, but she was just terrified.

You know.

It's like and I hadn't really done anything.

It wasn't even like it was.

It wasn't that crazy of a robbery.

It was just.

Where was that at?

That was a long time ago?

When was that?

I'm always surprised that as much stuff of that as I've done, I'd always crossed my mind that at some point somebody's gonna have a gun.

And I knew that like the full time, and for some reason, like you kept telling myself, I was like, you really need to get a bullet proofess, cause one of these days, somebody's gonna have a gun.

I just never did.

I don't know, did anyone ever pull a gun on you?

No?

So how old were you with the personal robbery.

I don't remember.

Was it before this instead of what you or?

Yeah it was in Washington?

Was a store or a bank like a store?

Yeah?

It was just sure do you remember the name?

Yeah?

What do you remember?

Why?

Why did you do that?

Has it?

I mean, I don't know.

Was it for money then or still?

Well?

It was for money?

But do you know how much money you got?

No, it wasn't very much.

In Tupper Lake, Keys ran from the bank through the woods to a school where his car was parked.

In Alito, Keys parked his car at a nearby church to watch the Alito house burn down.

Keys talked about schools and churches a lot.

He knew them as places that were generally empty at night, with little to no security, where you could park a car for extended periods of time without looking suspicious.

And they both come up a lot in cases we've looked at.

Susie Lyle is believed to have disappeared from the Sunni campus.

Laurence Spear was last seen several blocks from both a middle school and Indiana University.

Kimberly Ann Forbes's house was separated from a church by a large wooded area.

Giovanna Tyler lived across the street from a school.

Sheila Kathleen mac Broom's church was burned down several months before she disappeared.

Keys admitted to escaping a different bank robbery through a school parking lot.

Kelley Sue Acronet was last seen at a rite aid, which was also separated from a nearby church by a large wooded area.

And Gary Shawn Bryant's car was found in Lake Creek, directly between a cement mixing plant and a heavily wooded Mormon church.

The route along I five from Gresham to Fort Lewis runs just past Morton, Washington, but if you're adverse to traveling interstates, the quickest route between the two cities takes you directly past the alleged crash site, the convenience store that was robbed, and the Morton laundromat.

A hamper of laundry was found inside Gary's car.

If you're traveling from Calville to Fort Lewis, however, Morton is a little bit out of the way well usually.

According to multiple reports, the snow Qualmie Pass along I ninety was open but practically impassable over Thanksgiving weekend that year.

Snowfall had reached blizzard levels.

Visibility was extremely low, and there were long stretches of interstate covered in ice.

The fastest alternative route from the east side of the pass takes you directly through Morton.

Keys returned his rental car on the evening of Monday, November twenty ninth.

It's highly probable he would have been in the area of the convenience store when it was robbed, and very plausible that he could have been in Morton or near Morton when Gary Shawn Bryant's car went into the creek.

Where will you go, you clever little worm, if you bleed your host, dry back in your ride.

The night is still young.

Set light to push back.

The black neat rose.

Off to the right, a graveyard appears, lines of stones, bodies molder below.

Turn away, quick, bob your head to the seat.

As straight through that stop sign, you'll roll.

Loaded truck with lights off, slams into your broadside, your flesh smashed as metal explodes.

You may have been free, You loved living your life.

Fate had its own scheme crushed like a bug.

You still die.

Drive it through.

A wo if I.

Waste of stay.

List thrown out the corn and shroud bas ghostly realize I'm not getting older, but I'm not getting younger.

Let's look different when I'm looking over my shoulder.

Mountain mystery, love it all, love with it.

It makes me wander, But why would I even got a sacred boy?

I gotta get caught.

Nothing really feels right, and I feel if I bishop.

I realize I'm not.

Getting older, but I'm not getting younger.

Okay, let's look different when I'm luck at over from my shoulder.

Hey, let's look different when I'm lucky.

When I'm lucky,