SPEAKER_02 0:00

On Tragedy, we cover cases that involve real people and real events. Episodes may include discussions of violence, criminal behavior, and loss. We share these stories to honor those impacted and to raise awareness, but they may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

And I'm Michael.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

And for the past few weeks, we've been exploring what may have happened to Michael John Olson. And Michael went missing in December of 1979 from West Palm Beach, Florida. And tonight we'd like to welcome to the podcast someone who's been really integral in keeping the story in the spotlight. And that is Paige Kneenobber. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Well, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

All right, we're going to get right into it. Tell us what your connection is to Michael and what you would like our listeners to know about him.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Well, it we grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis called Edina. And it's a big suburb, but at least when we were growing up, it had a very small town feel to it, where, you know, everybody on the block knew each other. And I think there was even kind of a little main street. And you know, Mike's neighborhood, Arden Avenue, kind of epitomized that. They had their own little Arden Avenue Fourth of July Parade, which was a parody of the big community Fourth of July Parade. And we went to, you know, went to a school where my graduating class was 500, but it was one of those schools where if you didn't know everybody, you at least knew of everybody because you had crossed their path in some way, shape, or form. So I had graduated with Mike or Michael's, you know, younger brother Jeff, and a year before his his younger brother, um, and had I've been, I believe I'd been in Little League with with Mike, and I had friends who had been on the golf team with him and had worked with him at the local country club. So that was kind of my small town in a big suburb, you know, connection with with Mike. And uh I had been away at college, I was a freshman when this had all happened. And this was back when people used to communicate via mail. And remember getting getting a letter from somebody with, you know, an update with what things were happening in Edina, and they had added that Mike Olsen disappeared down in Florida. And, you know, when you're 18 years old, that's just what a weird concept. You know, you know, somebody who you knew even, you know, uh tangentially or whatever, it would had had disappeared. You know, what how does that happen? So that was kind of my connection to him was through school and through youth athletics.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

So you talked a little bit about how people started to find out about this disappearance. Can you tell us um what you know about the day he disappeared, the events leading up to that, and how the family learned that he was missing.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

He had uh gone down, oh he was he was always interested in working in the golf business. And not as a you know, a professional golfer, but as you know, like working in the management, the country club, that kind of thing. So he had gone to the University of Minnesota for a year, and then through one of uh his contacts, one of his supervisors at the country club, Edin of a Country Club, let him know that there was this country club down in Florida called the President's Country Club in West Palm Beach, and not connected to the current president who's in West Pallen Beach. It was a very upscale country club, and one of the things that they did every year was bring down a group of young men from the northern tier states to work their busy season because they had a clientele that if their tea time was 9.06, they expected to hit the ball at 9.06. So they brought in extra bodies to help. And so for you know, for Mike, this was you know tremendous opportunity to get some PGA accreditation through work and get some experience. And then, you know, here's a bunch of young guys that, you know, late in the afternoon, early evening, when everybody was finished golfing, they got to go out and golf on one of the you know premier golf courses in America. And he'd been down there, he'd driven down with his brother Jeff, and had been there for 10 days or two weeks and been kind of bopping around from motel to motel as all these young guys were trying to get settled and pair up and find, you know, roommates for the season. And he had gone out, it was a Friday, he had not worked, but had spent the day trying to find an apartment, and everybody got together at the Howard Johnson's where they were staying at, and you know, the plan for the evening was that they were gonna go out and uh eventually meet up at a at a nightclub. So Mike and one of his co-workers, Jim, headed out. They went to a place called the Palm Beach Kennel Club, and then they went to a bar called the Wild Side, and then they went to another dance club. And at some point, other members of that crew, the bag room crew, tried to connect with them or find them, but they were never at the bar that they were supposed to be at. They they had changed plans or something. And at about five in the morning, uh Mike, who had been driving, dropped off his co-worker Jim at his car that was in a church parking lot near the kennel club and said, you know, I'll probably be a little late, see you in a couple hours, and headed back to the Howard Johnson's. And somewhere between the Belvedere Baptist Church and the Howard Johnson's, which was a mile and a half away, he disappeared. And so the next day, um, he didn't show up for work. And my my understanding was that that one of the supervisors in the um at the country club could was known and but for better terms, was kind of a hard ass. So Mike didn't show up on time, so they immediately called the hotel to be like, you know, get up, wake up. And there wasn't an answer in his room. So they called back later. And eventually somebody from the hotel went down and checked his room, and all of his stuff was in there. So the next day they went over and didn't show up the next day. They went over to the Howard Johnson's and, you know, checked, and somebody they went back in, checked the room, and all of his stuff was still there. It wasn't until the next morning that his supervisor Jim, um, there's a couple of gyms involved. His supervisor Jim reached out to the West Palm Beach Kennedy or West Palm Beach Police Department and filed a missing persons report, at which point Mike had been out of the pocket for 53 hours. So it had been a long time before a report was finally filed. And my understanding is that somebody from the country club actually called while all this was going on, called Mike's old employer at the Adina Country Club and just said, Hey, you know, has he called you or anything? He hasn't shown up for work. Well, this is so unlike the guy that his supervisor at the Adina Country Club immediately called the family and said, You need to call West Palm Beach. Something's going on. And the family was already aware, because he had a scheduled phone call with his brother the night before that he had missed. So my understanding is that that's how the family found out that he was missing and uh the police department got involved.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Can you clarify for me? Because I've done a little bit of um reading up on this case. Can you just clarify that the gym that he was uh at the Kennel Club with, and then the other guys that worked at the bag shop at the club, they weren't all together that night. They had separated or split up.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Yeah, one of one of the guys in the bag room, Brad, uh, he and Mike, he was staying in the same hotel, and he and Mike had decided that they were gonna get an apartment together. So Brad had headed out to actually look at apartments that night. And then there was one or two other people from the room who were going to, or from the hotel who were gonna connect with them at a place called Mr. G's, which was a dance club. Mike and his his co-worker who weren't went out with him that night is they they apparently changed plans because they didn't go to Mr. G's, they went to a place called the Wild Side instead, and then later went to Mr. G's. But the the guy who had gone to meet them at Mr. G's eventually just gave up and left because they hadn't showed up.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Had they arranged a time to meet? Because obviously this isn't this is before cell phones.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yeah, we can't just like say, hey, where are you? No, no.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

My understanding was you know, uh that there was a time that they were gonna eventually connect to it. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Okay. Um that's helpful. Do you is there anything that you know of that Michael was involved in that might have put him at any kind of a risk? Because when we have a missing person, you know, there are several different things that may have happened.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Well, you know, I remember I got I got back that summer, the following summer, and I remember, you know, it it it came up in conversation a few times. They know that Mike Olson had disappeared in Florida. Well, in 1979, why would a 20-year-old from Minnesota be down in Florida? Exactly. But which was not further from the truth, and by the way, it was so completely out of character with the guy or his family. No, there were absolutely no indications. No, you know, one of the first things uh the West Palm Beach Police Department did was they contacted law enforcement in Minnesota and they had never had any interaction with him. The challenge was that he had the day of the disappearance gone out to try to uh apply, I think, to a rental agency that searched for apartments or something. And he had cashed a check for $700 from his father that was meant for rent. And so he had the equivalent of about $3,000 in cash with him. And by any uh anything that I've heard about the Palm Beach Kennel Club at that time was that it was in transition and it was kind of a seedy place with kind of some shady characters, not the kind of place where you would have a wallet with the equivalent of $3,000 and be flashing it around. But when you're 20 years old, you're omnipotent. You don't think about risk or anything like that. You don't know any better right now. No, and then you know, I then they went to this place called the Wild Side to see a Sugar Ray Leonard flight that a fight that was uh being telecast from Las Vegas. I used a thing called newspapers.com and had done some searches about the wild side and it lived up to its name. It had had a lot of violence and shootings and stuff. So what happened was after Mike's disappearance, the country with future seasonal hirings, the country club gave these young guys a list of places that you do not go to. Don't go to these places. But you know, he was out and he had money with him. It's possible, you know, that that somebody saw that and uh saw an opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Well, when you said that, it made me think of, you know, I mean when I was in the military, um, the Navy gave us a list of places not to go, and guess what would be the first places we went. The first place on the list. So I'm not sure how effective that would have been anyway.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

So I look back to when I was 20 years old. I was the stupidest 20-year-old out there. Oh, yeah. And same here. I'm I'm surprised I'm still around. I mean, I just, you know, but they were just out, you know, they were living, you know, he was having the time of his life. He was getting to work in a job that he loved, getting to golf for free, and hanging out with people who were absolutely dialed into the same mindset that he was. They all wanted to work in the golf industry. And what's really for has been sad for me is that, you know, tracking down these guys, uh several of them went on to careers in the golfing industry, which was, you know, they they went on to live Mike's dream. I mean, it's just it's so sad.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yeah. I I do understand that you talked about the potential of um a good chunk of cash. And if I'm not misunderstanding, it seems like they were driving around in his car, which from what I can understand was also a very nice car. Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah, he had a brand new Pontiac Grand Prix. And he hadn't had it for very long. And um one of the things that, you know, Mike's father he was quoted in a uh Minneapolis newspaper article, I think it was for the first anniversary. And just he, you know, they'd gone down there, and it's a big change from Idana, Minnesota to that part of Florida, and and learning about how there were all these gangs that would target you for your car. And, you know, he had learned, you know, what a chop shop was, and that they could take a car and make it disappear in 60 minutes. And that had actually been one of the rumors that had bounced around in the bag room was that the car had ended up being shipped to the Bahamas, which apparently in that era, that was something that was was common that you stole a car and you resold it in the Bahamas. So yeah, you did have an you did have a brand new car and he did have some money on him. So he was, you know, he had a target on it.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

And something else that I think is interesting about this case is the geographical proximity of all of these places, from the hotel that he was staying at to the kennel club to where the car was parked. It seems like this was a pretty tight area, even though they were going from place to place, they weren't going far.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Oh my God. Absolutely. Um, I flew down there for the first dive that was going to happen. And uh flew into West Palm Beach, got my rental car, and you know, I've uh I've been to Florida many times. I'm from Minnesota, that's what you do. But I hadn't been to West Palm Beach. And, you know, from getting from the airport to the location of the first dive, it was like eight minutes. And then everything was so close to the the hotel to where the a country club was six or seven minutes. It was a very tight, compact little area.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Now, this brings me to what I wanted to make sure we also address are these search efforts. So you you mentioned the dive. Can you tell us what you know about any of the search efforts?

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Well, that was one of the things that first uh, you know, in 2025, it's you know, you hear all the time about these cars that are found in the water that had been there forever. And in talking with people that were at the country club and still live in southern Florida, several of these people still are down there, and they immediately say, Oh, yeah, we always thought he was in the water. But when you look through the police report, it barely got a mention. Uh, I ended up talking to the family had been so disillusioned with the police. Uh, after their very first meeting, they went out and hired a private investigator who ended up, he was kind of the magnum PI of Southern Florida. I mean, even if you look at photos of him, he looked like a movie star. And he had been the private investigator of the rich and famous for decades. So when he retired, uh, there was a big magazine article in Miami about him. And he was referencing, you know, the case. And uh so I thought, you know, we were trying to get the the police files were so sparse that we were trying to get any kind of information. I thought, you know, we got the the the Mike's father had kept notes and it was a meticulous note taker, very intelligent guy, who thought maybe the private investigator would have still have his files. Well, he had passed away, and as part of his directive when he passed away was that all of his files would be destroyed. Um, but I was able to get in touch with one of his associates, and this was a guy who had ended up working for him, but wasn't working for him at the time, but had been with the Westpall Beach Police Department. And he was familiar with the case. He said, I'd always thought that he was in the water. Well, he said, I was just so disappointed that they didn't search for him in the water. And I said, you know, how do you know that they didn't search for him in the water? He said, I was the dive guy. I was the dive person for the police department. They never asked me. They asked to borrow my boat, and that was in the police report where it was a quick notation that they borrowed a boat to look at a body of water. But his thing was, um, you know, they they they never looked in the water. So when I first stumbled on this thing, I pulled up an aerial map of uh West Palm Beach from 1979 and then one from today. And directly behind the hotel is this wedge-shaped pond. And I thought, he's there. He's coming back, it's five in the morning, he's been out all night, he pulls in, instead of taking you right into the hotel parking lot, he takes a left, boom, he's in the water. So I reached out to I I found a uh dive company that trains police divers. And I reached out to them and I said, you know, for a training exercise, could you go and look in this pond? And they just no. I said, no, no, we don't go in there because of alligators. So great. So then I went and I went to a Southern Florida Dive Enthusiast social media page and asked, simply, I said, is anybody up for an adventure? And almost immediately was contacted by a dark water adventure, darkwater dive of Jacksonville. And they asked, they said, We'll we'll be down there in two weeks. And so they came in and spent an afternoon. It was very rudimentary. Uh, they were using a rope with a magnet on it, and then they had divers in the water. So they did the pond behind the hotel, and then they did some bodies of water on either side of Congress. Mike would have left the church, gone up Congress for about a mile and a half, taken a right, and then boom, been right in the Hojo's. Uh so they checked bodies of water on either side of that. And then they, you know, if Mike, maybe because he'd been drinking, decided he wasn't going to take even at 5 a.m. a reasonably busy road, he would take the back roads to get back to the Hojo's. Um there are a number of ponds and canals and places back there, and they searched those and they they didn't have any luck. But what's happened with this this story is every time there has been any kind of coverage, like a podcast like this, anytime there's been anything, almost immediately somebody will reach out and go, Hey, I've got such and such skill set. I'd love to help. So after the NBC story about uh Darkwater Dive, Sunshine State Sonar reached out. And they have state-of-the-art equipment. They're fantastic at what they do. They had just, when they reached out to me, they had just helped Miami Dade close a case from 1984 where a woman had put her children to bed, left suicide notes with them, and then vanished. They found her in an afternoon. So I was like, okay, that's that's credentials. So they have for the last year gone in and just hit every pond or canal within miles of this place. And so they've they found a hundred cars so far, but not mics.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah, one thing that we you know, obviously we found out about this case through them. And one thing that was really compelling about that story is um they indicated that there was one particular time that they had found so many cars right there on top of each other that they had used up all the available towing resources in the area and actually somewhat, I think, angered local law enforcement because of the amount of towing that was happening in these various areas.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

You know, the the family uh had immediate disillusionment with West Palm Beach Police Department. When their first meeting with them, first of all, they were kept waiting for hours. When they had their first meeting with them, they were told flat out, Mike's a big boy. Mike doesn't need your permission to get in his car and go for a drive. Can you imagine that? And this and it continues today. Uh, it's very difficult to receive any reply or anything from the West Palm Beach Police Department. And so the day that they had the dive that shut down, you know, the tow truck service, the cold case detective and an officer showed up. And instead of, you know, I'm not suggesting that they give them medals or anything like that, they threatened them with arrest for diving illegally.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yeah, one of the things that we asked when we talked to them is I was like, Do you get permits? They were like, no. No, we just kind of make it kind of go. And you're and you're describing why, because that would just delay what needs to happen.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

You know, somebody was asking me, you know, how one of my friends from high school was like, How much money have you spent on this? And I say, nothing. These, these, these dive recovery teams, they're cowboys, man. They're then they're modern cowboys. They're doing it for the adventure, they're doing it for the notoriety, and they're doing it for the competitiveness, and God bless them for doing it. And, you know, and they have cleared. I I reached out to at the West Palm Beach Police Department. And then you have the Palm Beach Sheriff's Department. Okeechobee, which is a busy street, the Hojo's was on the north side of Okeechobee by about 200 feet. It was in the West Palm Beach Police Department jurisdiction. Everything south of Okeechobee. Is the sheriff's department. So when we reached out to them a year ago or year and a half ago to say, you know, could we see you at your files, or could you at least tell us is there anything in your files? They were like, we've never heard of this case. And you're like, are you kidding me? But they work hand in hand, like so many different law enforcement agencies welcome, you know, solicit, reach out to Sunshine State sonar and say, please help us. And then you have the West Palm Beach Police Department, who's like, no, you know, it'll arrest you.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah. One thing that we've discovered as we've kind of grown as a podcast is we've had a number of conversations with various reporters, various contacts, law enforcement agencies. And, you know, it's interesting. We were, you know, we were working with the Waucala County Sheriff's Office and we were just kind of getting stonewalled the entire time. And what we found is this is not uncommon. And they they indicated too the same thing that you're saying is there's some departments that will be, you know, highly communicative, and there'll be others that will completely shut you down, and there's really nothing nothing you can do to get through. And there's really not a lot of rhyme and reason for it.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

No, I reached out to the Palm Beach Sheriff's Department last week and just kind of updated them on what's going on, and and and they were were so nice and so welcoming and and promised to keep me in the loop. And which, you know, and I'm I know that they're obviously really busy and they don't know who I am, but they were absolutely, you know, gracious about it.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

So what do you think happened? What does your gut tell you?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

I think I think you have a couple of scenarios. One, he's in the water. And and and and that's what everybody thinks. You know, the Pontiac Grand Prix, brand new, he was learning how to probably still how to handle it. One of the sonar guys, that was his first car. It was in Pontiac Grand Prix, which is a classic hunk of American metal. And he described it as cornering like a tank. So if Mike is driving back, he may, you know, maybe he got lost or whatever. He he misjudges a curve in the road, it'd be very easy to end up to the water. Two foul play. It would require two people to get him and the car. They would have had to tag him and follow him all night long until he was free of his coworker, and then they could get him. Uh, carjacking, highly unlikely. There was only one stoplight on the way back to the Hojo's. And even at five in the morning, there's enough cars on that road that it would have been difficult to pull off. It would have had to be in the Hojo's parking lot. And there was a guest in the police report, and it was just a tiny little reference to this, and they never followed up on it, that they had heard a commotion in the parking lot or they'd heard a sound. I think they used the term noise or a sound in the parking lot, but that they had not chosen to look out the window or anything. So foul play. The third and third and a half possibilities are that, you know, he's a young guy, he's out at bars, maybe he met somebody. And he either told his coworker or he didn't tell his coworker, but he dropped his friend off at his car and then went back to meet somebody. And then maybe there's a boyfriend or a husband, you know, something like that. And then the final possibility, and this was brought up by Mike's supervisor at the country club, was that he believed that the story that was told to the police was whitewashed, was cleaned to protect Mike from any embarrassment because they absolutely expected that he was going to walk in the door any day. Like what 20-year-old hasn't gone off and done something stupid and then kind of dragged themselves in? So knowing that Mike's gonna show up any day, why tell the police everything? And then of course, when Mike doesn't show up, well, are you gonna go back to the police and say, well, you know, actually, we did this, this, this, and this. No, he's stuck with the why.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

So from your perspective, how has Mike's disappearance impacted his family? Even this it's what? Oh, it was just crushing. I can't do the math, but several years later.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Right. Crushing. I I you know, I can't speak for his siblings. I just know that through his Mises that at one point I really wanted to get the grandfather or their grandfather's notes. Everything he had saved everything, including like a tray liner from from the Howard Johnsons that he'd scribbled notes on and stuff. And it really it took them some time to really just sit down with their father and and you know and work with him because I I can't I I can't even imagine. The nieces um for me have always been the champions of the case. When I started first kicking this around uh in 2022, I think it was, anytime I went to, you know, starting to learn more about it, whenever I went to an article or story about it, they had already been there and they had, you know, commented about it and stuff. But I just I I know that it it's it's just left an incredible void in their life.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

One of the things I'm you know, anytime we're kind of wrapping up these interviews, uh is there anything that we haven't thought to ask yet that you would like to share?

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Uh well, I in uh I reached out to somebody I knew in in 2023 that you know I don't know what I'm doing. This is not not something I do. And uh I needed somebody to kick me in the head. So I reached out to a woman named Jenny Decker who researches and investigates this stuff. And like everybody else, I you know Mike's co-worker who he spent the night with, first of all, he he was interviewed four times by law enforcement. I would think that it would be incredibly difficult to lie on four occasions successfully to law enforcement. They never suspected that this guy had anything to do with it. The private investigator, when he retired and they did the magazine article about him, he ref referenced the case and he ref referred to this young man as uh something to the effect of, you know, if this guy's involved, I need to rethink every judgment call I ever made. With that said, you always have to go back to who was the last person to see him. And, you know, he is I've reached out to him and he's been able to supply some information about the night and stuff, but he was the person, the whole narrative, the timeline of everything that happened depends on this individual. And there have been a couple of things, and these are all subjective, that make you wonder, yeah, you know, maybe maybe more happened that night that he didn't tell the police, or maybe who who knows? But um, yeah, I mean, you always have to go back. And that's every time somebody new has come on board, they always start at the beginning with, you know, who is this guy you spent the entire night with?

SPEAKER_01 29:12

It's hard to avoid it. I mean, it's just, you know, no, no. Bottom line is this is the last person that we know have seen him. And, you know, his do we do we believe his story? Do we know their night changed throughout the evening? It's definitely one of the things when I first heard about this story. One of the first things I told Lisa, I'm like, I kind of want to talk to this guy.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

He's he's difficult to get in touch with. But, you know, and and and and again, 46 years is a tremendous amount of time. Uh, and you know, and and people, you know, every time I've reached out to somebody regarding this, there have been varying levels of emotion. When I finally got in touch with his supervisor, his reply was, you know, he said, I've always expected this call, I've always wanted this call, I always knew this call was going to happen. I, you know, I've prayed, I go to Google several times a year just to look for updates, see if anything had happened, anything had cracked the case and stuff. The young man who had gone out looking for apartments that night instead of joining them, he started crying when I reached out to him. When I reached out to this other individual, the person who had spent the night with him, his his response was kind of flat. He said, Oh, the guy who disappeared. And you know, and by the way, email is not the best conveyor of emotion. And I also found out just going through social media that we have a mutual friend. So I reached out to her and I said, you know, what can you tell about this guy? And she said, salt of the earth. So, you know, I he I think that he just was unfortunate enough to have been part of this story and probably, you know, has has chosen to move on with his life. And there's nothing wrong with that. No, no, no. You know, I just, you know, if when I was 20 years old, I had been part of an event like this and I was, you know, interviewed by the police, interviewed by the media, and somebody all these years later asked me, I don't know if I would just go, oh yeah, the guy who disappeared.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

Yeah, I mean I know where you're about to go with this. I'll let you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Um, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, one of the things that I've had to come to terms with, though, as we've gone through with these different interviews through various cases, is to be careful not to think that, well, this isn't how I would react. Do I think that's a strange reaction? The answer is absolutely. Um, but people, I've learned that people respond in different ways. Some people that you think should be broken up on something have no reaction. And people that were mildly involved have an extreme reaction.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

And people you would think would be banging down the door to talk are the actual people who don't want to say anything. And then you're like, but why?

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Yeah, you know, and my my wife and I are very different people. I tend to hold on to old friends and acquaintances that I've known for years and years. Anna is very much just like, you know, well, you know, she was my friend in college, but you know, she has her own wife now. And that's entirely fine. And I totally, totally get it.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

Yeah, we try to be really careful with making sure that uh just because someone chooses to not participate does not mean they have something to hide. No.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Right? We uh I was able to, you know, the the father had had had kept notes and he had in the notes a list of the young men who were worked in the bag room. And I don't know whether he was taking their names over the phone or or anything, but it was, you know, there were there were misspellings or phonetic spellings or something, or Brad B or something, or one of them was Tim J. Michigan. So uh I was able to track down pretty much everybody from the bag room. There's one person who absolutely denied ever working there, and then there was another person who just did not want to talk. And you know, I I totally get it. I mean, you're you you've moved on with your life. The one that denied ever working there is really interesting. Yeah. And you know what? It's entirely possible that, you know, and I forget who it was. You know, maybe you know, the father wrote down Robert C or something like that, and somebody pointed me in the wrong direction. Yeah, makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Well, we just want to thank you so much for coming and sharing this story. Is there are do you have any other last thoughts that you uh would like to share with our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Well, you know, the goal is there's one body of water that was not searched, and it's Clear Lake. And in fact, one of the guys who worked at the bag room now is a uh realtor down in Florida, and he was telling one of the other researchers, is oh, I've always thought he was in Clear Lake. If Mike he's coming back, takes a right, misses the immediately left into the Howard Johnson's, he's on the causeway and he's going over Clear Lake. That would be a place to look. It's 500 yards from the hotel. The challenge is that it's the West Palm Beach Water Department, their plant is on Clear Lake, which makes it a sensitive or secure site. It's it's uh administered by the Department of Homeland Security. There is no diving, no boating, nothing goes in the water. And there have been even, you know, even a couple of the dive teams have gone down there and stood on the shore just to surveil the lake, and there's been law enforcement response within four minutes. So I know I reached out to the mayor and didn't get a reply. Uh it would be fantastic if if they could eliminate, and this is all a process of elimination. If they could eliminate clear lake, well, then that takes something pretty big out of the equation.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

Yeah, that makes sense. We're familiar with the uh Department of Homeland Security being around dams and things. We do a lot of fly fishing. And so we'll we'll we'll get as close as we can. And then we're like, oh, we can't go any further. And we get it because you know, you don't want people blowing up dams and flooding areas. So like it totally makes sense. So that that's not foreign to us.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

No, these are not rollicking circus clowns. They have a serious job.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Absolutely. And I remember Mike uh with Sun Sunshine State Sonar mentioned Clear Lake, and then I looked at it on you know, Google Earth and I was kind of you know tracing out possible routes. And, you know, I I agree with both of you. I'm like, that needs to be searched. Right. Um that is a very big possibility based on what we know and the direction and the getting, you know, the factors around getting lost, you know, in that area. I mean, yeah, that needs to be searched.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Yeah, and and for for what it's worth, um the family had hired a psychic. It was, I think it's Laura Brown. I forget the name, but she was like a big deal psychic. And she had said Sylvia Brown? Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Uh okay. I just gave away my age. She used to be on Maury Povich. Sally Jesse Raphael. I I can even picture her in my mind. It's Sylvia Brown.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

I got half the name right. Yeah, they hired her. And she had said that he was in the water.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

Yeah, I remember her being um very matter-of-fact. She's not a storyteller kind of lady, because I've seen her on several things and people ask, and she'll give like a one or two sentence, and she is literally no-tacked. Like she'll just say it. She'll say, Um, you know, your level one has passed away, and then she'll go to the next. And it's like, she's she's just gonna say it and go on. But I know who you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

So you know, any other last thoughts, anything that's come to mind? Well, I just appreciate, you know, the fact that you're uh you're helping out. Again, every time there's been any coverage of this, and you know, when I when I first started out, just when I first rediscovered the story, I went out for cocktails with some friends from high school at this place called Lord Fletcher's in the Twin Cities. And one of the guys uh was retiring as the chief of police from one of the western suburbs, and he himself had just closed a triple cold case arson uh case, and he'd done it. And he was, I mean, it was just like, oh my god, I never knew you were this sneaky. He had used the NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities to run a story at the same time that they were inside this guy's house interviewing him so that it was on TV. So they're in the process of interviewing this guy, and there's the story on TV. And apparently you just started sweating bullets or something. But uh, you know, his thing was he he dramatically lowered my expectations. You know, very early on, I was just thinking, well, you know, maybe, maybe what I'll do is I'll get a collection and we'll, you know, from from you know, the students in Mike's class, and it's e Dinah, Minnesota, they have the money. Uh get a collection from these guys, and we'll put up a billboard in West Palm Beach. And well, what I found out was that there's not a lot of outdoor advertising or billboards in West Palm Beach. There's there's not knocked down there. So what he had said was, you know, only in movies does somebody drive past a billboard and go, oh my god, Alyssa. In 1979, I was working with this woman named Alyssa. And I remember she came in this one day, and you know, that only happens in movies. So he lowered my expectations. But his his thing was that my goal was to keep a light shining on it, and that nothing bad would ever happen from keeping, you know, attention on the case, and that uh he was sure that the West Palm Beach Police Department had file folders, file cabinets filled with hundreds of folders of missing persons cases, and that the goal was to be so annoying that they couldn't couldn't ignore me. So I've uh I've accomplished half of that, but they still ignore me.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

Well, here's the news we know that too.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

Here's the good news. We're gonna help you be annoying. We're gonna do anything. Thank you very much. We're gonna we're gonna help you be annoying. See that see how many more flashlights can we shine this direction?

SPEAKER_02 39:16

Let's just turn them all on. You've been listening to Tragedy, a true crime podcast. Our purpose is to honor victims by sharing their stories through the voices of friends, family, and those whose lives were forever changed. If today's episode resonated with you, we encourage you to follow, leave a review, and share the podcast so these important stories continue to be heard. Together, we can preserve their memories and ensure their voices are never forgotten. If you have ideas for cases we should cover or questions about what you heard, you can connect with us through our Facebook group, Tragedy a True Crime Podcast, on X at Tragedy Podcast, by email, Tragedy a True Crime Podcast at gmail.com, or by visiting our website www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us next time.