In the summer of 1987, sixteen-year-old Theresa Bier rode into the Sierra Nevada mountains with a 43-year-old man who promised to show her Bigfoot, and only one of them came back. Twenty-four years later and a thousand miles north, twenty-year-old Madison Scott vanished from a crowded campfire party at Hogsback Lake in Vanderhoof, British Columbia, leaving behind her truck, her tent, and a mystery it would take twelve years to crack open. Two campsites, two missing girls, and the question of what… or who… was really waiting in the dark.
TW: Kidnapping/abduction of a minor, Grooming and alleged sexual abuse of minors, Child abuse and neglect
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SOURCES
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yor-says-7067739
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn0ROcjh7ys
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anniversary-1.6045039
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Madison_Scott
https://charleyproject.org/case/theresa-ann-bier
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/5to43o/taken_by_bigfoot_the_disappe
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https://oag.ca.gov/missing/person/theresa-ann-bier
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/r3co5h/where_is_theresa_ann_bier_s
uspect_russell_welch/
https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/tag/Bass+Lake+area+Sierra+Nevada
+mountains+disappearances#google_vignette
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TRANSCRIPT
Late in the morning on June 1st, 1987, the phone rang in the home of a 43-year-old Fresno, California man named John Richmond. On the other end was an administrator at his sixteen-year-old niece's high school. His niece, Theresa, who lived with him, had never shown up for school that day, and the administrator was curious as to why.
Thinking fast, John told the school that Theresa was home sick and he'd simply forgotten to call in. But he knew this was a lie. He hadn't seen Theresa since early that morning.
See, earlier, his friend, a forty-three-year-old man named Skip Welch, had come by and offered to take Theresa to school. There had to be an explanation for this, as to why Theresa never made it to her classes, he thought, but when he tried Skip, the landline just kept ringing.
So John started calling around to some of his other friends. Did any of them know where Theresa and Skip had gone? Tthe answer was not anything anyone would have expected.
But that morning would be the last time that John ever saw his niece.
By 9:30pm that night, John had called the fresno police to report Theresa missing.
Theresa Bier was sixteen years old, but those who knew her best described her as seeming a lot younger. At least emotionally. She was described as "childlike" and impressionable. Her teachers and administrators said she was a bit immature, and a slow learner.
Theresa lived in Fresno, California with her uncle John. one of her uncle's friends was a man named Russell Welch—known as "Skip." Skip was a forty-three-year-old widowed house painter who mostly survived off disability checks.
5 days into their investigation, police were able to locate Skip, but Theresa was nowhere to be found. they placed him under arrest on an outstanding DUI warrant. They took him down to the station, sat him in an interview room, and asked him point-blank: where's Theresa Bier?
At first, Skip insisted he had dropped Theresa off at school and that's the last he saw of her. But as investigators kept pressing him, Skip finally admitted that he had picked Theresa up from her uncle's house that morning and driven into the Sierra Nevada mountains.
But it’s not what you think, Skip said. And this is where his story turned into something the police could have never predicted. Skip told them that he and Theresa had gone into the mountains with a mission, they wanted to see Bigfoot. The two set up a campsite, and before long, Skip said, the cryptid emerged from the forest and presented itself to them. They had several sightings, in fact, and Skip told the police Theresa got so excited that she ran off on her own. The last time he saw her, Theresa was bounding towards the treeline, determined to go live amongst a family of sasquatches and Skip couldn't catch up with her.
So that’s why he returned to town without her.
Obviously, this did not look good for Skip. An adult man, who went into the woods with an underaged girl, and emerged alone. Now telling the police that she consensually went to go live with Bigfoot.
And it sounds ridiculous, to you and I. Well, at least to me I don’t want to make assumptions on your behalf. But the area that Theresa disappeared from, Shuteye Peak, actually has a long history with Bigfoot sightings….
Shuteye Peak in the Sierra Nevadas is an inviting destination for those who love the outdoors, but its hiking trails are not for novices. Standing tall at 8,355 feet, Shuteye is the highest peak on the eight-mile Chiquito Ridge, and its steepness and rugged terrain make it what backpackers classify as a "hard hike." But it's a hike that's richly rewarded by stunning panoramic views of the San Joaquin Valley, Bass Lake, North Fork, and Mammoth Mountain—a 360-degree vista open on all sides.
In 1971, two men ventured into these mountains and came back with an audio recording of what they claimed were Bigfoot vocalizations—distant yips and howls and knocking sounds, and strange voices that almost sounded like some unknown language. The recording became famous. It was called the "Sierra Sounds," and it cemented the Sierra Nevadas as a landscape where people believed the sasquatch roamed.
In the spring of 1987, Skip Welch approached Theresa and told her that he knew where Bigfoot lived. He said that he had seen one before. Now, this was really exciting to Theresa, like a lot of people in the area, she had heard stories of the Sasquatch and had always wanted to see one for herself.
Skip claimed to be a Bigfoot expert. He and Theresa could talk for hours about the subject—in fact, that was almost all they talked about. Skip eventually convinced Theresa that There was a whole community of Bigfoots living in underground caves in the Sierra Nevada mountains. And he had communicated with them.
And that’s when Skip convinced her to come along with him on one of his Bigfoot hunts.
They planned the expedition in secret—and on the morning of June 1st, Skip showed up at her uncle's house and pretended he was going to drive Theresa to school. Theresa played along. She stepped outside, got into Skip's truck, and he drove them seventy miles north into the mountains.
Now, Theresa Bier was missing.
Investigators needed to get to the bottom of what really happened out there, but the longer Skip sat with them, the more his story kept changing.
In one version, Theresa ran off with a young woman. In another, she ran off with other campers. And then the story was, Theresa had run off with Bigfoot—and now she was happier living with the colony of Bigfoots in the mountains than she was at home, and it was with the Bigfoot colony that she wanted to stay.
Investigators listened to Skip's shape-shifting story with increasing unease. He kept referring to Theresa as "Sam"—a nickname that only her family and close friends used. And then Skip volunteered something disturbing, kind of out of the blue. He insisted, without being prompted, that if Theresa were to be found, there would be no sign of sexual abuse. And Skip added that, although Theresa was willing to have sex with him, it just wasn't in his "nature" to do such a thing with a young girl.
Now police were really worried.
Skip eventually agreed to lead investigators to the spot where he claimed he and Theresa had camped.
He accompanied detectives out to Brown's Creek, about twenty-five miles southwest of Shuteye Peak, and walked them into a small grove of trees where they found a smoldering fire among the damp pine needles, and the picture-perfect remnants of what looked like a campsite.
Blankets were arranged in a deliberate-looking manner. There was a woman's purse, a bra, a T-shirt, a camera, and several photographs: pictures of the landscape, a picture of Skip Welch playing his guitar in the same area detectives were currently standing—and photos of Theresa.
But police noticed something. The topography visible in the photos of Theresa was different from the area around Brown's Creek. The campsite Skip had led them to was almost certainly staged.
The real campsite where the two had been, they believed, was somewhere else—somewhere closer to Shuteye Peak, possibly in the vicinity of Ghost Canyon. That was more than twenty miles away.
But even though police believed they were in the wrong place, that was the area that was searched. They organized air and ground searches—with helicopters and bloodhounds. For a moment, it seemed one of the bloodhounds had picked up Theresa's scent. But then the dog lost it.
And then, a search helicopter scanning the area from above spotted something blue on a hillside near the camp. Investigators made their way to it. It turned out to be a blue shirt. Skip admitted the shirt was his. Police reached into the pocket—and pulled out a small baggie of meth.
After that, Nothing else turned up. No trace of Theresa was ever found.
Authorities now believed Theresa was dead and Skip Welch was responsible. But without a body, they couldn't charge Skip with murder. So instead, they charged him with felony child stealing and child endangerment.
At his arraignment, Skip pleaded not guilty and the judge released him on his own recognizance—without realizing that another judge had increased his bail to $30,000. Once the oversight was discovered, a new arrest warrant was issued. Skip was taken back into custody two days later.
Over the next few months, prosecutors built their case and set a trial date for October 5th. All the while, they hoped Theresa would be found so they could charge Skip with murder.
But it wasn't to be. And prosecutors realized they had a problem. If they proceeded to try Skip on the lesser charges and he was convicted, and then Theresa's body turned up later on, they might not be able to pursue a murder case due to double jeopardy protections.
So, three days before trial, the deputy D.A. approached Skip and offered him a deal. Skip would receive a sentence of just one year on the child-stealing charge if he would agree to sign a waiver allowing them to charge him with murder should Theresa's body ever be found. Skip's public defender said no. Skip refused to sign the waiver.
Later that day, prosecutors dropped the case. And Skip walked free.
It’s a devastating outcome, but I looked more into Theresa’s backstory to learn more about her. And unfortunately, it didn’t seem like there was anyone to protect her. She was in an ideal situation for a predator like Skip to walk into her life.
By the time Theresa was ten, she had already endured more hardship than many see in a whole lifetime.
When she was barely three years old Child Protective Services removed her and her sisters from their mother's custody after she’d had multiple broken bones. Her father filed for divorce, and Theresa and her sisters were then separated when her sisters went to live with a family friend, and Theresa was sent into foster care.
A few years later, Theresa's father remarried. The woman he married was named Margie Richmond. Margie was actually the ex-wife of Theresa's uncle, John Richmond—if that isn't too tangled to follow—and Theresa moved from Fresno, where she grew up, down to Los Angeles County to live with them.
But her new stepmother was no less abusive than her biological one, and would even go so far as locking up her refrigerator so her children couldn't eat. By Theresa's preteen years, every adult responsible for her care had failed her.
Before long, Theresa returned home to Fresno to live with her uncle, John Richmond—who was her stepmother's ex-husband as well as her biological mother's half-brother. A direct familial link to both of Theresa's abusive mother figures.
Now, around the neighborhood, John Richmond went by a different name. People called him Blind Johnny—on account of his poor eyesight, which he claimed he'd lost in an unlucky round of Russian Roulette. But a lot of people thought Blind Johnny could see better than he was letting on.
Blind Johnny was in his forties and unmarried, but he didn't live alone. Living with him were his two sons, whom he'd reportedly fathered with a sex worker—and whom Theresa was often forced to babysit. And also living with Blind Johnny was his girlfriend. His seventeen-year-old girlfriend. He called her a girlfriend, I personally would call her a victim. but …. Tomato tomahto I guess.
Blind Johnny became Theresa's legal guardian. Yet another in a string of unsuitable parental figures in Theresa's life.
Blind Johnny was also known to traffic drugs. And it has been alleged, according to multiple sources, that Blind Johnny and several of his friends abused Theresa.
One of Blind Johnny's many questionable friends was Skip Welch. And that's how Skip got near Theresa.
Skip Welch was a man with a reputation. He was a known meth addict whose wife had died from an overdose, and he was also known to have a liking for teenage girls. The previous summer, Skip had invited a seventeen-year-old girl named Michelle Ryan on a camping trip into the mountains. Skip's own daughter warned Michelle not to go, explaining that her father had a habit of luring young women into the mountains, plying them with drugs, and taking advantage of them.
Michelle would tell police that, despite the warning, she went anyway. But she made sure it wasn't just her and Skip. She brought along two guy friends, and while she made it back to civilization safely, she believed she had been drugged during her time in the mountains.
Skip took drugs and gave them to young girls. Blind Johnny sold drugs. So it wasn't hard for police to see the connection between the two men. Skip came by Blind Johnny's house often—and in Theresa's childlike vulnerability, there was no one around to protect her.
When Skip told Theresa his fantastical tales of Bigfoot encounters, she believed him. When he proposed a secret trip to the mountains, she jumped at the opportunity. And when Skip offered to give Theresa a ride to school that morning, Blind Johnny said yes without thinking twice.
Theresa Bier's body never turned up. Skip Welch died in 1998 from coronary artery disease at the age of fifty-four, taking whatever he knew about Theresa's disappearance to his grave.
In 2025, a three-part documentary about Theresa's case called Bigfoot Took Her premiered on HBO Max. During the documentary's production, Skip's great-niece talked to the filmmakers and shared her belief that her great-uncle may have buried Theresa on his mother's property.
The filmmakers made contact with the current owner, who agreed to allow a search of the property with cadaver dogs. One of the hosts entered the crawlspace beneath the house—and found bones. The production team sent the bones to the county coroner. The coroner examined them and concluded they belonged to an animal.
Theresa Ann Bier remains a missing person. If she were alive today, she would be fifty-five years old.
Sometimes, the worst thing in the woods is not an apex creature. It’s a neighbor, a friend, a person you thought you could trust. And though Skip tried to insist he didn’t know what happened to Theresa, in my opinion, this case was never a mystery.
Our next case is the opposite. It's a real puzzle — the kind that still keeps a whole town up at night. We're leaving 1987 behind, leaving California, and heading a couple thousand miles north, to a small logging town in British Columbia. To a summer night lake party. And a mystery that might soon have an answer.
✧ ✧ ✧ Story Two: Madison Scott ✧ ✧ ✧
It was the edge of summer in British Columbia, Canada—Saturday, May 28th, 2011.
At 8:30 that morning, in the small rural community of Vanderhoof, a young woman named Jordi Bolduc was on her way to work when she made a detour out to Hogsback Lake.
The night before, Jordi and her friend Maddy Scott had gone to a campfire birthday party at the Hogsback Lake Recreation Site. This annual party thrown by one of their friends that usually drew dozens of people from around town.
Jordi hadn’t wanted to stay the night, so she went home but she left a couple of things behind. She figured she’d swing by the lake early in the morning to grab her stuff and catch up with Maddy about how the night had gone.
But, As she pulled into the site, the first thing Jordi noticed was how empty it was. Every single tent from the night before was packed up and gone, even though it was still pretty early. All of ther tents except for one.
Jordi recognized it immediately, it was Maddy’s tent. Sitting there, in an empty campsite, unzipped.
She walked over and peered inside. Maddy’s whole area was a mess. Her sleeping bag and blankets had been pushed to the side. Her earrings and rings were scattered in the grass outside the tent. This was jewelry she wore all the time, jewelry that was sentimental to her. And Maddy herself was nowhere to be seen.
But Jordi noticed that Maddy’s truck was still there. Parked in the same spot it was when Jordi was leaving the night before. Doors locked.
This did not feel right to Jordi But she wasn't necessarily panicking. She told herself there had to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe Maddy had gotten a ride with some of the other partiers. Jordi collected her own stuff, and (then she drove to work) her boyfriend drove her to work.
That evening, another party materialized at Hogsback Lake—a much bigger one. About a hundred and fifty people showed up. And, according to the group, there was an empty tent already set up at the camp site. A tent that didn’t move the entire time they were there, and the owner never showed back up. Maddy’s tent.
at some point during the night, someone at the party flattened it.
Just after midnight, Maddy's parents arrived at Hogsback Lake. Maddy hadn't come home. She wasn't answering texts or phone calls. Her parents found her pickup still parked where she'd left it, doors locked. They found the campsite full of strangers. And they found their daughter's tent—collapsed in the grass, with no sign that Maddy had ever come back for it.
Maddy's parents left the area and called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. What followed was one of the most exhaustive searches in the history of Canada's third-largest province. How had Maddy disappeared from a campsite full of people?
On the afternoon of May 27th, 2011—the day before she disappeared—twenty-year-old Madison Scott called her cousin to ask if she could reschedule the plans they'd made for that evening. Maddy, as she was known to her family and friends, explained that she'd just learned about a campfire birthday party being thrown that night e, and the boy she had a crush on was expected to be there. She couldn't pass up the opportunity to see him. Her cousin understood, she was a young girl too, that’s what we do, and they postponed their plans.
Maddy looked at the Facebook event page for the party and noticed that pretty much everyone attending was someone she knew. That was Vanderhoof for you.
Vanderhoof, British Columbia, is one of those places where everybody knows everybody—because there's only about four thousand people to know. It sits 430 kilometers inland from the coast and about ten hours from Vancouver by car, a small district municipality hemmed in on all sides by hundreds of kilometers of wilderness and cultivated land. Logging is one of its primary industries. The community is small, it's tight-knit, and it's remote— the nearest city of any real size is Prince George, which is over a hundred kilometers away.
So Maddy grew up in the woods and as a result was pretty outdoorsy. She loved being active—camping, dirtbiking, horseback riding, team sports—but she also had creative interests like photography, amateur video production, and figure skating, what couldnt this girl do?. After graduating from Nechako Valley Secondary School in 2009, Maddy followed her father into the logging industry and became an apprentice heavy-duty logger for the same company that employed her dad. Her friends described her as outgoing, generous, and spontaneous. Her family said she was someone who always shared when something was wrong—if she was upset, she'd tell you.
One of Maddy's closest friends was Jordi Bolduc. They'd gone to school together and known each other for years. And it was Jordi that Maddy called to go with her to the Hogsback Lake party that evening.
The events of May 27th and 28th would later be reconstructed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from interviews with dozens of partygoers, cell phone records, and the one piece of surveillance footage that captured Maddy that evening.
Early that evening, Maddy swung by a liquor store and picked up a six-pack of beer, a bottle of wine, and snacks for the party. The store's surveillance camera caught her on video—grabbing supplies, heading out to her truck. It would become one of the last images of Maddy that anyone would ever see.
Maddy and Jordi headed out to Hogsback Lake in Maddy's pickup. It was about a twenty-three-kilometer drive from town, mostly on good roads—gravel for the last stretch—and by the time they pulled in, it was starting to get dark. Hogsback Lake was a popular local spot for swimming, fishing, and camping. The lake itself is small—about 128 acres, maybe twenty-two feet at its deepest—but scenic and quiet, and if you’re young you can drink there and people wouldn’t really bother you.
When Maddy and Jordi pulled in around 8 p.m. on Friday, about fifty people were already gathered around the campfire.
As Maddy started unpacking, she realized she'd brought the wrong tent poles. So she told Jordi to wait for her and drove the half hour back to her parents' house to grab the right ones. Her mom was home—they talked briefly—and Maddy was out the door again by about 9 p.m.
She was back at Hogsback Lake by 9:30, pitching her tent and sharing her drinks and snacks. Jordi watched as Maddy gathered the courage to go up and talk to that boy.
But she also watched as Maddy came back, pretty dejected. That boy had told her he just wanted to be friends. After that, Maddy’s mood really changed,and By 10 p.m., she retreated to her tent.
Starting around 11 that night, Maddy was texting with her dad. They exchanged messages for about an hour and a half. Her father would later tell investigators that she seemed somewhat upset about the rejection, but nothing about their exchange alarmed him. It was ordinary disappointment—the kind of thing you'd feel at twenty years old, at a party, when the person you came for wasn't interested in you.
But while Maddy was in her tent texting with her dad, the party outside started taking a turn.
Just after midnight, A small group of strangers showed up and crashed the party. No one seemed to know who these people were, and remember, everyone pretty much knew everyone in this town. Jordi thought they might be from out of town…I mean, The party had been posted on Facebook. It was public. So Anyone could have found it.
And these strangers were not there to share some beers and hang out. Within half an hour, a fight broke out. And Jordi got caught in the middle of it. She was jostled into the campfire at one point and hurt her knee. The strangers took off a short time later, but the damage was done—Jordi was injured, the vibe had been killed, and her boyfriend, who had come to the party separately, decided it was time for them to leave. He lifted Jordi off the ground and started carrying her toward his truck.
But on the way out, they stopped at Maddy's tent. Maddy had been inside throughout the whole fight—already burrowed in her sleeping bag, half asleep. Jordi told her they were leaving. Maddy pleaded with Jordi to stay. Jordi tried to convince Maddy to come with them instead. But Maddy was too tired to tear down her tent, and she didn't want to leave it behind unattended. It was her dad's tent.
So Jordi left. A decision she said she would regret for the rest of her life.
Maddy didn’t know it because she was in her tent, but Jordi wasn’t the only one who wanted to leave after the fight. At around 1:40 a.m., people began leaving the campsite in groups. One group stopped at Maddy's tent on their way out and asked if she wanted a ride home. But again, She declined.
By 2:30 a.m., the campsite was nearly empty. The only people left were Maddy, the birthday host, and his girlfriend. And then the host and his girlfriend got into some kind of disagreement and decided they were going to leave too. They would later tell police they offered Maddy a ride before they packed up and drove away. She turned it down.
And after that, Maddy was alone. I’m not sure if she KNEW that every person had left and if that would have changed her decision.
But what we do know is that At 8 a.m. the next morning, Maddy's phone stopped pinging the local cell tower. Whether the phone died or was turned off, no one knows. That was the last electronic trace of Madison Scott.
The RCMP feared Maddy might be lost or injured somewhere in the wilderness surrounding Hogsback Lake. And the area was vast—think gravel pits, creeks, swamps, dense forest, and open fields that stretched for kilometers in every direction. If Maddy had wandered into that landscape disoriented, or drunk, in the dark, the odds of finding her quickly were slim.
The Mounted Police launched what very quickly became one of the largest search-and-rescue operations in the history of British Columbia. Cadaver dogs were brought in to sweep the surrounding forest. Boats equipped with side-scanning sonar scoured the lake—all 128 acres of it, down to its deepest point. Divers searched the lake bed and the nearby swamps. Helicopters with infrared cameras flew low over the creeks, the gravel pits, and the fields, scanning for any sign of Maddy Scott. Search teams on horseback covered the trails and the backcountry.
They found nothing. Not a footprint. Not a piece of clothing. Not a single trace of Maddy beyond the campsite she'd been sleeping in.
With the help of Maddy's family, investigators took a careful inventory of everything she'd left behind—at the campsite and inside her locked truck. They examined each item: her sleeping bag, her purse, her pillow, her camera, her jewelry. Her family confirmed that nothing appeared to be missing—nothing, that is, except for Maddy's iPhone 4, in its blue protective case, and a set of keys she carried on a lanyard.
The phone and the keys were the detail that stuck with investigators. If Maddy had wandered off disoriented, if she'd had some kind of accident or medical event, if she'd gone for a walk and gotten lost—why would she have taken her phone and keys but left everything else behind? Her purse, which her mother said she carried everywhere, was still at the campsite. Her truck, which was in working condition and had gas in it, was still parked where she'd left it, doors locked.
The phone and keys suggested intent. They suggested she expected to come back.
Cell phone records showed that Maddy's phone had last pinged the local tower at around 8 a.m. on May 28th. Before that, there had been no activity on the phone since a brief call with a friend around 12:30 a.m. That was a seven-and-a-half-hour window—from roughly 12:30 a.m. to 8 a.m.—in which anything could have happened. And investigators had almost nothing to fill it with. no calls, no texts, no movement data.
And worse yet, no witnesses came forward saying they saw her in that window.
In 2016, the RCMP would publicly state that they believed foul play was involved. But at this stage of the investigation, in the weeks and months after the disappearance, they had no one to point to. But they didn’t think she had an accident.
Police had asked Maddy's parents if it was possible she had simply left on her own. Her parents rejected the idea entirely. Maddy was close to her family. She had an active social life, a wide range of hobbies, a job she liked. She left on foot, without her purse, from a campsite twenty-three kilometers from town. It didn't fit the Maddy they knew. And they were frustrated that investigators would even float the idea.
Maddy's family quickly realized that the RCMP could only do so much, and if they wanted to maximize their chances of finding her, they needed to take matters into their own hands. They launched a website and a campaign called Find Maddy, which spread across billboards, bumper stickers, and flyers all over British Columbia. They offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to Maddy's whereabouts.
The campaign worked—at least in keeping Maddy's name in the public eye. Her disappearance received intense media coverage across Canada and would stay in the news for over a decade. Even 48 Hours covered her case in a segment about disappearances in central British Columbia,
And although it was the same area, Maddy's case didn't fit the pattern or profile of the Highway of Tears disappearances and The RCMP had stated publicly that Maddy's case did not meet the criteria.
And unfortunately, when there is an empty space in an investigation, someone will try to fill it with whatever theory they think is most accurate. And for Maddy’s parents, that involved Jordi.
They made public statements blaming Jordi for their daughter's disappearance—and then, as the case attracted more attention, strangers began piling on. Jordi was harassed on Facebook by people following the case, some of whom accused her outright of being involved. They said she knew more than she was letting on. They said she had something to hide.
Because Jordi was one of the last people to see Maddy alive, the RCMP held their focus on her during the early weeks of the investigation. They brought her in for interview after interview. They administered multiple polygraph tests. Jordi cooperated fully. She passed every single one. She was devastated by the loss of her friend and she wanted to do whatever she could to help find her.
By 2016, when 48 Hours sat down with RCMP investigators for a follow-up segment on Maddy's disappearance, a constable made it clear on camera: Jordi Bolduc was no longer a suspect.
But there were a few more leads that they were following…
In the first year of the investigation, the RCMP received several tips about a man who had been going around Vanderhoof telling people he knew what happened to Maddy.
His name was Fribjon Bjornson [pronounced FRIB-bee-yen BYORN-sen]—known to friends as simply "Frib." Frib was a twenty-eight-year-old single father with a cocaine habit who was known to socialize with Maddy. After her disappearance, Bjornson started telling people around town that he knew what had happened to her. And there were rumors circulating in Vanderhoof that Frib owed money to drug dealers, and that Maddy had been abducted to teach him a lesson.
Police caught up with Bjornson and brought him in for questioning. He denied knowing anything about Maddy's disappearance and insisted he had nothing to do with it. Investigators gave him a polygraph test. He passed.
Two days later, Bjornson himself disappeared.
But unlike Maddy, he wouldn't be missing for long. Two weeks after his loved ones reported him missing, Bjornson's severed head was found in an abandoned house on the Nak'azdli Reserve near Fort St. James—about sixty kilometers from Vanderhoof. [VERIFY — confirm distance]
Investigators spent months piecing together what happened. They would ultimately learn that Bjornson had traveled to the abandoned house to buy drugs—and had been ambushed when he got there. Bjornson was beaten, strangled with a wire, and beheaded. His body was left in the house. His head was found separately.
In November 2013, four men were charged in connection with his death. The trials stretched out over years. By October 2017, all four had been convicted—two for murder and related charges, two as accessories. But throughout the investigation and the trials, the RCMP looked for any possible connection between those men, Bjornson, and Maddy Scott. They couldn't find one. Their conclusion: Bjornson's murder and Maddy's disappearance were unrelated. Whatever Frib Bjornson had been telling people around town—that he knew what happened to Maddy—either he was lying, or he took the truth with him.
After that, leads began to dry up. The tips slowed to a trickle. And the case grew cold.
Maddy's parents, frustrated with the pace of the RCMP investigation, launched their own. In the basement of their home, they erected evidence boards and whiteboards—mapping the names of every party attendee they could identify, potential witnesses, and possible suspects. They went over the night again and again, trying to reconstruct who was where and when, who left and in what order, who might have come back after everyone else was gone. The family had already spent years keeping the Find Maddy campaign alive—the billboards, the bumper stickers, the reward—and now they were doing the investigative work too.
This research they did is showcased in the 48 hours episode. You can see the big white boards covered in information that her parents have put together, you can really tell how dedicated they are to finding their daughter.
Now, in the episode, the white boards are blurred out, probably because there was sensitive information. But I noticed that in a couple of the shots the boards weren’t blurred and you could read what was on them. And two names kept reappearing,
I’ll call them the Greens, two brothers, who, according to the white board showed up to the party on four wheelers and were riding around the lake. And it seems like, whoever Maddy’s parents had spoken to, seemed to think these brothers among the last known people to have been around Maddy before she vanished.
But this was the parents investigation, not the police, and MAddy’s case had been stalled, so I’m not sure if they were looking into these leads…
After Frib Bjornson's death, more than a decade passed without a new development in Maddy's case. The not-knowing haunted everyone who knew and loved her.
And then, on May 29th, 2023—twelve years to the day after Maddy's mother first reported her daughter missing—the RCMP made a stunning announcement.
They had recovered Maddy's remains from a property south of Vanderhoof, about sixteen kilometers from where Maddy was last seen.
The RCMP provided no additional details.
But in the town of Vanderhoof, far more information was circulating than what had been publicly released, and much of it found its way onto Reddit and Websleuths.
Now, Reddit is… Reddit—which is about as close to an official news source as The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter. This is something I need to clearly establish, for obvious reasons, before we move forward here. But since Maddy's remains were found, a lot has been posted about this case—and some of it has come from people who claim to be local to Vanderhoof and to have first- and second-hand knowledge.
And the consensus seems to be that the property on which Maddy's remains were found was owned by the father of the Greens—the two brothers who were among the last known people to see Maddy alive.
The RCMP has not confirmed this, addressed this, or publicly named anyone connected to this property, but posters on Reddit and Websleuths have reported that Maddy's remains were discovered when a contractor was at the Green family's farm buying topsoil when he accidentally unearthed a human skull. Either the contractor, or the property owner—Mr. Green—contacted authorities, and the remains were removed and soon identified as Maddy's.
A few Redditors who claim to have the inside scoop have said that the father now has dementia, and that this has complicated the investigation.
Word of all this had already spread by August of 2023, when some angry followers of the case began posting and sending messages to the father on Facebook, saying that his boys were murderers. He replied to the messages, calling the senders "sick people" and "accusers," and he dismissed the talk as "slander." But he also seemed to imply that how Maddy ended up on his property was, to quote him, "a mystery for everyone."
That same summer, a candlelight vigil for Maddy was held on the athletics field at Nechako [pronounced neh-CHAAH-koh] Valley Secondary School—Maddy's alma mater. The vigil drew over two thousand attendees. That's equal to nearly half of Vanderhoof's entire population.
In the three years since Maddy was found, the RCMP has offered no public theories on her death, except to say that foul play hasn't been ruled out.
To date, there have been no arrests in Maddy's case, and police have named no suspects. The case is technically open
But Maddy’s remains have been found, she was able to be laid to rest. And I hope that whatever happens next, we’re able to see justice in her case.