SPEAKER_01 0:00

In Tragedy, a true crime podcast, we discuss missing persons' cases, violent crime, and other sensitive topics that may be difficult for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Our show is a place where every story matters and every voice deserves to be heard. To support this podcast, you can subscribe at www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com for early access to new episodes. And join our Facebook community, Tragedy, a true crime podcast, for updates, discussions, and ways to support the families we feature. Welcome to Tragedy, a true crime podcast. I'm Elisa.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

And I'm Michael.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

And this is our special Christmas bonus edition. Merry Christmas, Michael.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Merry Christmas to you and for everyone who's listening.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

It's been a really nice Christmas for me. This is my first one where I run the air conditioner.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah, and I bet you that's a bit different for you, but running the air conditioner almost every year for me is pretty typical.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I'm enjoying it very much. We have a lot to talk about today.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah, um, this bonus edition is really just going to be about Ian Rogers.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yes. But before we talk about Ian and the truck, we do want to let everyone know that we have launched an Instagram page. So if you are on Instagram, you can find us uh at Tragedy, a true crime podcast. We'll be putting a lot of our images from today's episode, some of um our flyers from all of the cases that we have covered. So come on and find us on Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

All right. So let's talk about the truck now. Everyone knows that we found the truck. That's been in the news. We've talked about it on the podcast already. But one of the things that's interesting is there's a lot of detail and a lot of, I don't know, misdirection or just things misunderstood about how the truck was found, where it was found, circumstances around the truck that we just want to make a little bit more clear for the listeners. The way I think this makes the most sense to talk about is to start with the initial piece of information that we have, and that's the ping, the phone ping. And we know that, you know, everyone who's watched, you know, or even listened to the story, they've seen the video likely that Britain put out with Depths of History. So we know basically where he was and that he was going off the ping, and we have those coordinates, and that has already been shared. And what was interesting about where that's located at is you start thinking about the circumference of where that the where the accuracy would really be. What we've learned here is ping accuracy when it comes to you know triangling the phone percentage a phone position really depends a lot whether or not you're in an urban, suburban, or rural area. And the statistics around the rural area is between one and six miles, is where you would want to search if you only had one point of reference. And as far as we know, that's all we had. What's interesting about where the truck was found is it's it's it's exactly 1.83 miles away from where that known ping is located at. So it really makes me question how thoroughly things were investigated or reviewed. And in reality, we were told there were drone center, we were told there was even possibly a helicopters went up. And with the truck being 1.83 miles away, it's really difficult to believe that actually occurred. And if it did occur, how how thorough was that search?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

And to clarify, I believe you're talking about a search that would have happened when the ping information was received by law enforcement.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Yeah. I mean, when we talked about it before, we we kind of talked about, you know, why Britain, what type of information he was following, and it was the cell phone information that was received. I think it was three months after his initial disappearance. And that's what that's all we really had to go on at the time.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Yes, and we do know that there was a delay in getting that cell phone information. It should have actually gotten into the hands of law enforcement much quicker. There was some sort of issue, as we had discussed before, with the filing of the paperwork. So we're talking about a delay in even getting this information, but now in November, they have this ping information and they should have done a more comprehensive search.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Okay, now let's talk about why we think that. There's a lot of imagery we've been able to get our hands on. It's available on the public internet. We're going to provide links to that on our Facebook page. And you'll be able to see very clearly Ian's truck. You'll be able to see so well that you can even tell the ladders are in the back of the truck. That's how clear this image is. And based on what's being built around it, you can tell that this image was likely taken. We can't we can't date it precisely, but it was likely taken somewhere between the end of August and the end of September. That's kind of the range that we're seeing at based on a couple of pieces of information, one of which includes there's a certificate that we found.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yes, there is a property being built out there, and we learned that I didn't know this, but when you build a house, you have to file all kinds of paperwork. And one of them is called a certificate of com commencement. Correct. And uh we do know that the certificate of commencement was issued in July of 2024 for to start a build on a property that you can see in the image of the truck. So we can tell.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Well it's not in the image of the truck, but it's nearby.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Sorry, you're right. It's not in the image on this website. Once you find the truck, it's not really you can take a screenshot, but also once you find the truck, you can move around and see different places, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah. And this will be clear on the images that we provide on the Facebook page again.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yes. And you can scroll then to try to find a just if you're in that, if you're from that area, you can actually sort of see land markers and things that look familiar to you. And that's where we can find old plank, but we also see this property where there is um a small, like a trailer kind of thing, and this new house that's going up. And so that's how we know that this image was taken. Likely um the truck has been there since he disappeared or within three or four weeks.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Correct. And there's some measurements here that become kind of important. Like law enforcement told us that this was way off the beaten path. And I don't know if I'm willing to use that as a definition because when you start doing measurements on this mapping, this GIS software, what you're gonna find is the distance between like Old Plank Road and where the truck was found as the crow flies is 0.23 miles. And if you're walking, it's about, I don't know, 0.7 miles. I need to go through and measure it perfect pr precisely, but it's pretty close to 0.7 miles. And if you look at the ping, and this is when it begets particularly interesting, just like I said before, it's 1.83 miles. And if you start talking about that aerial photography and where they should have been searching, it's well within the six mile range if it was really being searched. Um, and what's really also interesting about the image is it's really clear. And, you know, in I know we're looking at it right now from a perspective of, oh, we're looking at it from the air, we know when the interest is taken, but this thing sits out, sticks out like a sore thumb. I mean, this is not difficult to find. It's very simple, it's very clear, and it's it's just really also very unfortunate.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Aaron Powell Yeah, it's not in a covered area, like off of a road or a path. Like you it's a very there wouldn't be tree coverage at any time of the year because we did think about that. You know, what did tree coverage look like August versus February versus November, different times of the year? But there is there wouldn't be any tree cover coverage over um where the truck has been located for quite some time. So it's not like a satellite would have gone by taken a picture and it would have been shrouded. It's going to be visible no matter what time of year a picture is taken.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Something else that was notable about the image is since you can clearly see the truck, you can also see the orientation of the truck on the trail. And this trail, this two-rut road, I think we need probably call it that because it's definitely you can tell vehicles go up and down. Even though, interestingly enough, uh ever all the signage in the area marks it as not open for auto, you know, any kind of motorized vehicles. So anyway, back back to the point, um you can see the orientation of the truck. And because of that, we can tell most likely where he came in from you know the forest roads and where he entered private property and where he was likely trying to get. Now we're not sure why he chose that, especially once it started to get soft, other than the fact that it's so narrow, you can tell from the imagery, that it most likely would have been really difficult to turn around.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yeah, it does look really lush in the satellite picture and on that website that we've been using. And to me, this is something that is new again for me. Like when I think Florida, like people who aren't from Florida, I don't think about lush forest. But that is definitely what it looks like. But there are established roads and two rut roads. Let's you're right, let's let's call it the same. Um, and it's easily to just backtrack, go backwards from where we know the truck was, and you can back it right out into uh more of those wider, sort of light, gravelly kind of roads, and then right on down into Old Plank State Forest.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Well, I want to be clearly to, you know, the people from Florida are gonna know that you're not finding gravelly roads in that area. Are they shells? They're more likely gonna be sandy roads or clay roads. So let's be clear on that.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yes, that's right. So what we believe happened is the truck traveled down tram, turned onto Old Planck, and then turned left onto Plank Grade, which is into Old Plank State Forest, and then likely turned left past a sign that says no motorized vehicles, made another left onto private property, continued around, kind of heading back towards Old Planck, but then got stuck in the process of all that.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Okay, so now let's get into like where did this image come from? We already talked about it come from the public internet. And one of the ways we were able to try to figure out where we should start looking is when we watched the news report, since we're familiar with the area, we already we could tell precisely where the original search that law enforcement was making on this day was happening. So once we were able to figure out that, they're not gonna get on AT ATVs, you know, six, 10 miles away from this thing. They're gonna get as close as possible. So with those two reference points, we were able to kind of triangulate where we should be looking. And that's when we were able to find this imaging.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Mm-hmm. And you're right. It wasn't very challenging. It was a pretty easily to find spot, like right off of Old Plank where they were launching the searches. So that piece of information also, I think, in conjunction with where the cell phone ping happened, really approximated where we started to use Google Earth and other satellite imagery websites to locate the precise location of the truck.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

All right, now let's talk about the actual terrain in the area. We had an associate go out and kind of check out the area and kind of get give us an idea of what it looked like, you know, on the ground. And one of the things that they indicated was how dense the vegetation was most around most of these areas. Um and so the conclusion we drew from that was the fact that let's say assuming Ian was in the truck, because again, we have to make that assumption, and the truck got stuck in that area, it's unlikely that he would have gotten out and then went off-road at this point or off-trail because it was so dense. And keep in mind, we're talking about August, so it would be even denser than the time this person was out there, as well as more riddled with snakes and all kinds of other things. I wouldn't have wanted to get into this really, really heavy stuff if I had an option of other trails and other opportunities. And what's interesting about that is he had lots of opportunities that you know he could have gone directly forward and it would have led him to Old Planck Road. He could have gone directly back and he would have just backtracked from the place he'd already been and was notably less covered in vegetation and easy to get out of, even though it would have been a longer walk. So there's a lot of questions on is this an area that you could become easily lost? And we're just not convinced that that's the that's the case. It doesn't seem like you could get lost here when you factor those types of details in.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, we also understand that the walk from Old Plank Road to the truck location is less than a mile. And that's following the two route road, which you can see on the Google maps. So you're going a little bit around this sort of circle landmark area, but it's not far. So I can see that if someone got stuck, they would just go forward, right? I have a really good sense of direction. And so I could probably speculate if I were standing at the spot and I had gotten stuck in this truck. I know I'm almost out. So I'm just gonna go ahead and go forward. Again, it's also, you know, it's summer, right? We don't necessarily know exactly what time this is. There's a possibility the sun was starting to go down, which is also an indicator of directionality. So someone is probably likely to walk out forward. And we also understand that you don't have to walk too far to then hear the traffic on the road.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Yeah. And let's and let's keep in mind too, let's make the assumption that he was walking along these roads. And let's even make another assumption that, you know, he was, let's say, under the influence or, you know, some kind of detail like that, because we still haven't really talked about why he was in this area. And let's say that he died. Let's say he died getting out, maybe OD'd or anything like that. He would have been found on this two-rot road. There'd be some kind of indication of that. And that's just not the case.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Yeah. Or leave a phone or keys or something. We do know that there have been two days of searching, and to our knowledge, nothing was found. No phone, no keys, no clothes, no sunglasses. We know he had sunglasses, no hat, nothing.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Aaron Powell Yeah, we have the indication at this point, unless they're holding back, which is possible, that absolutely zero evidence was found in the area of the truck once it was located by law enforcement.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Correct. So nothing in the truck indicating foul play, which I read on one of the news reports, and nothing around the truck or and nothing on the roads forward from the truck or behind the truck or in this 1,000 feet search radius that would happen. We have not heard of anything that has been collected as evidentiary. We've collected a lot of information about the location of this truck. So the question is, how does this help us to support Teresa and her search to find out what happened to Ian?

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Well, I would say now that we have this information, this additional information, there's a lot of speculation that we've talked about in the past about, you know, being lost in the woods and maybe dying in the woods, getting, you know, just not being able to find its way out. Looking at the maps, understanding where the truck is, understanding the terrain, there's just no way feasibly that he would have been lost in the woods. And if anything, this actually supports a little bit law enforcement not continuing the search on, you know, longer than they than they did this time, because uh I think it's pretty clear that he's not there when you consider there all these factors, and I think that's part of their decision making. Now, what's also part of the decision making was they chose not to search this area to start with. And I would say that's, I don't know, embarrassing. I think it's pretty embarrassing when you consider all the facts.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yeah, we can conclusively say that that cell phone ping information was received at the latest the end of November. And we can conclusively say that that truck has been here, been in that spot since September, likely August 26th, and and how close the actual truck is to that ping. And not finding that truck in November when they got that geolocation information is a travesty.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yeah, and it's so I know people in the community are pretty upset that how how this case has been handled, and I think they have the right to be upset. One of the concerns that I always have and we that we when we tell these stories and that we keep seeing over and over is various people being marginalized. And I personally think, based on just the poor performance of law enforcement here, that Ian Rogers was marginalized. And, you know, I think even if again, we've said in the past in other in other episodes, where even if people have made mistakes, even if they um, you know, have done things in their past that's not aren't necessarily things that we consider great or good at all, even things that have been harmful to themselves, it doesn't change the fact that this is a person that has a family has family, has friends, have associates that care about him and miss him and want they they want to know what happened. They want to know where he is, what happened, if he's still alive, um, if he's if he's if he's not alive anymore, they they have the right to know where their friend is.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

And let's remember that there wasn't a time frame between when people sort of thought maybe Ian was gone and when he was officially called in by Teresa as missing. Sometimes in cases like this, several days go by or even weeks before someone will call in and say they're missing their loved one. That's not what happened here. It was the day, like the day that he didn't show up to work, that his boss went to Teresa's house and she put this in motion. So this is no fault of the family because I have seen stories like this where people will point fingers at the family because, well, they didn't call it in soon enough or whatever. That's not what's happening here. This family did everything that they could in the immediacy of Ian not being at work that day and not coming home that night, and they were not supported, in our opinion, in the way they should be by law enforcement. Let's talk about a call to action. So in the past, we've talked about a call to action to the community, what do we need from the community, and a call to action to law enforcement. I'm just going to straight out say the community is doing a great job.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Fantastic job.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yes. Um, I follow all of the WCTV posts about Ian's disappearance, all of the WTXL posts, and all other news agencies. And let me tell you what's happening down here in Wakala County. People are questioning and commenting on what law enforcement has been doing all over these pages. You know, there'll be a post about Ian's truck being found, and people will say, What do you mean so many months later? What is going on? Why is this taking so long? Or, hey, also, can we please solve Jody Kilgore's homicide? So people here in Waucala County are taking note and starting to, and may have always been on board, and I'm just recognizing it more. Um, something else that kind of funny happened is there was a Facebook post. I think it was supposed to be sort of in in, you know, in jest, sort of in light. And it was an article about the shoe bandit and, you know, who's the shoe bandit and who's taking all these shoes. And there were several people who are like, are we kidding? Like, this is what the Wakala County Sheriff's Office is doing. They're trying to find the shoe bandit. Why don't they find what happened to Ian? Why don't they figure out who killed Jody Kilgore? Turns out it's a dog, right? So I get it. Like they thought it was kind of funny, but people here aren't, they don't think it's funny anymore.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

They're not laughing.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

No, they are not. Um, so I just want to personally thank people in the community and the neighboring communities who are on board with us and calling out law enforcement and and just asking for them to just do a little better. Please do a little better. Also, I have a concern with the amount of communication that is coming to um Ian's family. In particular, it does feel like his mom, Teresa, is not necessarily getting information in the way that we would like it to. It seems like it's coming secondhand to her, going through someone else who, frankly, isn't even blood related to Ian. Teresa is his next of kin. And we would just like to know why she isn't the first to know when these things are happening and she's getting information from someone else. So I would just like to specifically call out the Walcollard County Sheriff's Office and say, can you please reach out to Teresa first? She is his next of kin. 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 subscribe, 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 at TragedyAtrue 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.