00:00:00
when it comes to Quality sleep Ashley has you covered with top mattress brands at winning prices and with special
00:00:06
financing options available you can snooze now and pay later plus your mattress purchase helps give the gift of
00:00:13
better sleep to children in need and US Special Operations forces visit your local Ashley store or shop online today
00:00:22
and make every snooze count financing is subject to credit approval C store or ashley.com for d details at Consumer
00:00:31
Cellular you get the same exact coverage as the largest carriers but for up to half the cost same thing up to half the
00:00:38
cost up to half the cost for the same thing 50% the money for 100% the same thing I hope I'm making myself clear
00:00:46
Consumer Cellular when Freedom calls we're here to answer call us at 1888 Freedom half the cost savings based on
00:00:53
cost of consumer cellular single line 5 GB data plan with unlimited talk and text compared to lowest cost single line
00:00:57
postpaid unlimited talk text and data plan offered by T-Mobile Verizon May [Music]
00:01:23
[Music] 2023 [Music] [Music] Dior Coons was not quite 3 years old when he vanished there was a short version
00:02:21
telling of this true crime case that someone titled little man lost that was and Still Remains a
00:02:30
perfect title for the start of this True Crime Story Dior Coons was a little boy that
00:02:37
at times carried himself like a man in a tiny little body picture a little boy walking around in cowboy boots much too
00:02:48
big for his little feet even his facial expressions would at times remind you of that of an older
00:02:55
child something in his eyes telling you he was WI eyes for his years People magazine called this story Without a
00:03:05
Trace that would sum up the evidence at the scene nicely but there is more more that has been uncovered in the
00:03:14
investigation and more that will be revealed in our follow-up episodes this week here in the
00:03:22
garage two-year-old Dior Coons disappeared on a camping trip in the remote Idaho mountains
00:03:30
well that was the story we were told that was the story delivered to 911 emergency service Personnel back in
00:03:41
2015 from Little dior's Mom and Dad they both told the same story they were out there camping with a small
00:03:50
group and sometime after breakfast Dior went missing but there were holes in their story and questions that they
00:03:59
could not seem to provide clear answers to the suspicion was heavy but things weren't so clear there were in fact two
00:04:09
other people on that trip two others up there that day we first covered this case back in
00:04:18
2019 in episodes 305 and 306 at that time the facts of the case were as follows Dior was missing from limh high
00:04:31
County Idaho it was reported to law enforcement that Dior was last seen on Friday July
00:04:37
10th 2015 on that day Dior J Coons Jr just 2 years old was with his parents Jessica
00:04:47
Mitchell and vernal Dior Coons senior at the time the two were engaged to be married with little Dior and his
00:04:56
mom and dad we have the great-grandfather Bob Walton and Bob's longtime friend Isaac Ren
00:05:04
Walton the group was camping at Timber Creek Campground this is in a remote area filled with Mountains close to leor
00:05:15
Idaho at approximately 2:30 p.m. that day dior's mother Jessica called 911 because her son had
00:05:24
disappeared she said she left the little boy with his great-grandfather and then
00:05:29
then went to walk around the campground with her fiance and when they got back to Camp just a short time later Dior was
00:05:38
gone everyone in the group looked for Dior for several minutes before it was decided that they needed to call
00:05:45
911 the parents told search and rescue and the sheriff's department that Dior never went anywhere without his blanket
00:05:53
or his toy monkey and yet these items were found at the group's camping spot the search that day turned up little to
00:06:02
no clues as to the toddler's whereabouts crew searched until about 4:00 a.m. on July 11th Searchers looked on
00:06:12
Horseback and ATVs they focused on a 2 and 1/2 mile radius around the campground one area of
00:06:21
concern was a creek just about 15 yard away from the campsite Sunday July 12th they had
00:06:30
nearly 200 volunteers show up to assist in the search efforts Monday July 13th there was an official interview
00:06:39
with the media this is when dior's parents Vernal and Jessica explained what happened the
00:06:47
previous Friday afternoon during that interview they said that they no longer believed that
00:06:53
Dior was lost but think that someone may have abducted their son that evening there was a candlelight
00:07:02
vigil over the course of the next 6 days search efforts continued near the campground dive Crews focused on the
00:07:11
stone Reservoir dior's parents remained camped out near the site the Bonville County Sheriff's dive team was called in
00:07:19
to help divers used a sonar robot to search the reservoir on July 19th it had been 10 days since Dior was last seen
00:07:29
and through all of the efforts no evidence has been found to suggest where the 2-year-old boy may
00:07:37
be at the time that Dior was reported missing he was said to be wearing a camouflage jacket blue pajama pants
00:07:45
green and black checkered socks and brown cowboy boots with brown camouflage print in the summer of 2015 Dior was 3T
00:07:56
tall and about 30 lb Caucasian with blonde hair brown eyes and a birth mark on the back of his neck dior's
00:08:06
nickname is little man are little dior's parents hiding something and if so what why did this little boy simply
00:08:19
disappear without a trace this is true crime [Music] garage [Music] all right joining us in the garage today
00:08:45
we have Philip Klein from Klein investigations who has been keeping an eye and actively working the continued
00:08:53
investigation of missing little boy Dior Coons Jr and Philip is here to set the record straight on a couple of items we
00:09:03
covered this case way back in 2019 so there's been some things to come out and there's been some things that
00:09:11
have been uncovered by client investigations and Philip is here to bring us up to speed as to where the
00:09:18
case stands today in 2023 Phillip go ahead and introduce yourself to the listeners and tell us a little
00:09:26
bit about your background or at least the investigations background sure sure I uh have been an investigator since
00:09:36
1982 uh worked with a company called credential Equifax I'm sure you guys have heard of those two companies uh and
00:09:43
I work my way all the way up to senior investigator uh for credential Equifax uh I went away uh for about a year on a
00:09:52
political campaign and I came back um to Southeast Texas and I decided to hang my
00:09:58
own shingle back in 1994 uh we specialized in missing persons cases around the world um we
00:10:07
started off with our first big case which was back in I guess was 1995 when a uh High School teacher ran
00:10:15
off with a student and ended up in centor Island Greece on a cruise ship uh not as a passenger but as an emplo two
00:10:23
employees and we were able to work with uh the United States government um on that and bring them back and extradite
00:10:31
them back to the United States so that was our first big case and then everything just kind of fell from there
00:10:37
we've uh We've brought back both dead and alive uh We've brought back probably over
00:10:43
1,800 uh cases uh in my career um I am the team leader so I'm the guy at the top that takes all the hits and we
00:10:54
really have uh worked hard to uh along with um the missing persons division up at the Department of State uh in the
00:11:03
United States federal government and as well uh we have worked very very hard uh
00:11:09
to work with h state federal and u local law enforcement around the United States
00:11:16
because you know Believe It or Not guys there are police departments that don't have the resources uh some police
00:11:22
departments we've worked with have never seen a homicide some people some some of
00:11:28
the officers that we worked with have never worked a missing person's case or a homicide it's been kind of a a love
00:11:35
relationship that we've had with the private security world and or we're commonly called government contractors
00:11:43
the government itself uh to work together as a team to bring Solace and peace to some of these families out
00:11:50
there that have missing persons little Dior Coons Jr was 2 years old going on three back in 2015 and his parents
00:11:59
Vernal Coons and Jessica Mitchell were due to be married or or were engaged from my understanding at that time in
00:12:07
2015 they go out on a camping trip the three of them along with Jessica Mitchell's grandfather Bob Walton and
00:12:16
his one-time neighbor turned friend Isaac on this camping trip and unfortunately at some point Dior Coons
00:12:26
goes missing or at least that's the narrative that we've been fed for a long period of time and when does client
00:12:34
investigations come into play in this missing person's case so we came into the case uh what we call cold when the
00:12:44
family first contacted us we had just brought back uh a uh a toddler that we found alive as a matter of fact in
00:12:53
Michigan so it played real hard in the media up uh on the Northern side of the unit United States and so they called us
00:13:02
they wanted to talk to us some of the alterior family members not Jessica not Vernal but some of the outerior family
00:13:11
members called us and said look we've read about you guys can can we consult so we got them on a conference call and
00:13:18
we listened to what they had to say it was presented to us that the four people being Bob uh Isaac renwall Jessica and
00:13:29
vernal went up on a camping trip now depending upon who you talk to in this case of those four their stories just
00:13:39
never matched there were some people that said yeah uh we we uh at this time we stopped by Walmart so of course you
00:13:48
know all the police FBI us everybody gets over to the Walmart and they say no we don't have that on camera and that
00:13:56
was the first kind of red flag we went okay maybe maybe the the the camera time is wrong maybe the employees are wrong
00:14:05
maybe Walmart security is wrong you know it happens right some people make mistakes there's there's breakdowns of
00:14:12
equipment that sort of thing so what we did next was we said well okay let's do this let's take a look uh on the actual
00:14:23
fact witnesses that were there that day so we interviewed them just before we even took the case we interviewed them
00:14:30
and they were saying no we don't remember them coming in we don't remember any of this so we kind of
00:14:37
raised our eyebrows a little bit thinking okay there's more to this story so we talked to the family and the
00:14:43
family said we don't have we don't have the money and we said well we're pretty big company and we have a little
00:14:50
internal Foundation inside our group what we will do is we will pay for the employees to come up if you guys pay for
00:14:59
the expense to fly the dogs in if necessary expense to fly in the interviewers if necessary and the
00:15:08
expense to fly the base team in to uh Idaho Falls Idaho and we'll base out of there because that's where you all live
00:15:16
and we'll we'll we'll start this case and so that's how it all got started we flew up there they raised money they did
00:15:24
uh I guess uh what pancake lunches they did did highs they did dinners they people a couple of benefactors up there
00:15:33
put the money uh into the trust account and so what we did at that point was we had enough money to get started they
00:15:40
eventually finished it up within about a month of paying the full retainer we've
00:15:45
already talked about the retainer in to the general public it was $20,000 some people go wow that's a lot
00:15:51
of money well yes it is but coming from Texas bringing dogs and people and putting them up and feeding them you
00:15:58
know that gets to be a little bit expensive people say well you never gave a good accounting well we did we gave a
00:16:06
great accounting the judge looked at it after we were sued we'll get to that and
00:16:11
he said no that's reasonable and there's the receipts and everything's good and we were like we don't just run around
00:16:19
and take people's money because that's going to kill our company if we got CAU doing that so long story short we got up
00:16:26
there and we got started well the first thing we did was we interviewed the family and each one of the people up on
00:16:35
the mountain out of all the interviews that we did and we did not just one interview we did multiple interviews
00:16:42
with them the only one that had the same story every time and I'm talking down to
00:16:50
the minute I'm talking down to the hour I'm talking down to to the date to how it all all got started why they were
00:17:00
going up there everything has been Isaac renwall his his story's never changed once I think the FBI and the local
00:17:09
police we met with them a after five days of interviews of people we sat down with them in a room and then we ended up
00:17:18
at a Mexican restaurant because none of us have eaten for four days we sat down in a room with them and said okay here's
00:17:25
what they've told us and they just stood there with their mouths open and we said what did did we
00:17:33
say something wrong did you know what's going on they said hold on a minute then
00:17:37
they wanted to focus on uh they wanted to focus on the parents at first uh Vernal didn't tell
00:17:46
them 50% of what he told us that's natural sometimes because there's shock and Trauma when you when
00:17:55
you lose somebody is there's little things you forget okay so we we gave room for that okay we were like hey
00:18:03
might have been a little upset but here's the story he told the story Vernal Coons told us was this they got
00:18:12
up to and there was a bunch of you know hey we we left Idaho Falls it's a two and a half hour trip we were had a axle
00:18:21
problem we had they here's where he told us the story that he never told anybody
00:18:26
else he said well we got to a restaurant uh in the city on the night they arrived
00:18:35
uh which was I believe a Thursday night they arrived and um there was a place where we all wanted to eat so we stopped
00:18:42
at this bar restaurant and up there I'm sure as you all know um the the sun doesn't go down till what 11 12 at night
00:18:52
sometimes uh during the midle during the summertime during that period correct and so they come up to the door
00:18:58
and the restaurant owner says we're closed go away well we're closed go away we're not feeding anybody so they all
00:19:07
load back up in their cars and they go up the mountain okay to the um the little camping area that is of subject
00:19:15
of this case they say they Park all the cars in a semicircle we're like okay they parked
00:19:24
in a semicircle once they Park in a semicircle they start unloading everything get the chairs out get the
00:19:31
food get the uh coolers out get all this stuff out of of these cars and little Dior is running around uh in the in the
00:19:40
campfire area they light a campfire it's a pretty big campfire so after they get everything unloaded
00:19:49
and kind of get settled and they start you know having snacks because they haven't eaten any dinner and this is now
00:19:55
at this point it's about 10 or 11 at night um it's getting dark and somebody turns
00:20:02
around and goes where's Dior Vernal says I don't know let me go look around he says daddy daddy over here so Vernal
00:20:09
tells us this story that and I'm paraphrasing he says I went over and I found little Dior with his hands in the
00:20:21
tailpipe he's black head to toe because he's wiped the soot off of the tailpipe all over his face uh on his arms he's
00:20:33
just being a kid right this is how it's it's portray does we're like well kids do that and then he says um well he
00:20:42
there was a lug nut missing from the back tire and he says look daddy no lug nut
00:20:50
and I don't know what kids say that but maybe they do we got to take it at face value then he says well
00:20:59
Daddy um uh look look over here and he goes over to the trailer that was uh The Grandfather's and he points to a Lugnut
00:21:12
and so we're like okay what does this all have to do with your son going missing well I'm just telling you the
00:21:19
story for the timeline oh okay so we sit there and immediately one of the police off
00:21:28
officers had given us the initial written statements from from veral he doesn't mention any of that and then they give
00:21:38
us a forensics sheet that shows us hey the tire he's pointing to there was blood
00:21:46
found uh blood pathogen found on the uh interior rim and also blood pathogen found traces a blood pathogen found on
00:21:59
the bumper in the same place that they're talking about well that kind of raised all of our eyebrows like okay did
00:22:07
we get a match well we don't have anything to match it to no DNA okay is it human yeah we believe it's human but
00:22:17
we're not 100% sure we're about 50% that's what they tell us we're like okay uh so it's just another you know
00:22:25
remember investigators like us what we do is we put things together like a puzzle okay and we put the puzzle
00:22:33
together one piece at a time so that's just a piece of the puzzle when we played that
00:22:39
original interview for the police they were just shocked because not only was that mentioned but the police had
00:22:48
interviewed the people at the at the I guess you call it a bar restaurant right we ate there it was good food uh but
00:22:55
they at the bar restaurant they uh they said no that's that's not true that never happened so the story is what I'm
00:23:04
trying to get to a long way around it is the stories didn't match from the witnesses to Coons and the rest of the
00:23:11
family and you know Jessica goes into a big thing how she got Dior out of the back seat and brought Dior around to the
00:23:18
front of the restaurant and the restaurant people said no she never did that she stayed in the truck the whole
00:23:23
time right so we were all like okay somebody just tell us the truth here but again remember guys when you get
00:23:32
involved in these investigations as long as I've been doing them for 40 years I can tell you that things the the wor
00:23:40
what's the what's the old saying the worst the worst witness is the eyewitness right because you know oh
00:23:46
yeah I remember this now oh yeah I remember that now video works Wonder wonders right and but but eyewitnesses
00:23:54
sometimes forget things so we just chocked it up as that you know maybe they're just maybe everybody's just not
00:23:59
on the same page on this so we interviewed Jessica Jessica was at best evasive the person that handled that um
00:24:10
that part of the interview was MJ Holmes and she is an investigator out of Georgia and she maybe is one of the best
00:24:18
interviewers that I have ever watched and according to a lot of the cops that watch the interview that she did with
00:24:26
him uh they say that she's one of the best interviewers they've worked with in a long time so she was very evasive with
00:24:33
us we all kind of got a shot at her Caroline gear in our office got a shot at her uh and she just kind of she
00:24:40
wouldn't look at us she'd look away she you know did the the funny haha thing knocked her Coke over I mean there was
00:24:48
she was nervous as nervous can be and I get that you got cameras on you you got four seasons investigators shooting
00:24:55
questions at you we get it but we finally got got her at ease and she started to flow she didn't know the
00:25:01
story about the getting head-to toe soot on the child she didn't know anything about a lug nut she didn't so now we
00:25:09
have someone that's there that's the parent going I don't know any of this well who's told you this and we said
00:25:16
well it you know that's the story Vernal gag well he never told me that and we're
00:25:20
like oh that's interesting so we have a breakdown in the story and it's a pretty
00:25:25
good story I mean I don't know if I'm a mommy and I'm out there camping how am I
00:25:29
going to clean my kid up before we go to bed at night right you're not are you going to let a kid have a bunch of soot
00:25:34
and grime and dirt all over them right you know not happening right so the story goes to and I'm just giving you
00:25:42
highlights The Story Goes to the next morning uh Jessica in veral sleep in the back of the Suburban right or the back
00:25:52
of the there's a Suburban up there which is Bob suburban and they sleep in the back of the Suburban and we aswell where
00:25:59
does where does Dior sleep and they said oh he sleeps in the front seat we bundled him up in the front seat and
00:26:05
he's laying down in the front seat and he he he goes to sleep well they say at about 8:30 in their story match there's
00:26:16
a wrap on their window and vernal gets up and goes what and it's Isaac and Isaac goes wakey wakey eggs and bakey so
00:26:26
they kind of look out there and there's Bob and Isaac and they're making breakfast so Vernal says he gets up
00:26:33
Jessica says she gets the baby up and they go wandering around for breakfast well during our interview with Isaac
00:26:42
Isaac says I never saw the kid that day right and we're like what he goes no I never saw
00:26:50
him I mean I I might have saw him one time but I never really placed my eyes on him and we asked uh the dad um and he
00:27:01
the grandpa and the grandpa tell us he says well I I don't know I might have seen him might not have seen him I mean
00:27:08
it's a very telling interview and then he goes he kind of looks over at Holmes and he goes but you know what I gotta
00:27:17
tell y'all this what's done is done and we're like what what's what's done is done and we're like whoa whoa whoa
00:27:31
whoa whoa slow down dude what are you trying to tell us and he says I'm telling you what's done is done they can
00:27:39
they can they can go have sex and have another baby and and I was so infuriated if you
00:27:48
if we ever release the interview to which we will uh I was so infuriated I got a laptop and I threw it against a
00:27:55
wall and I got in his face and I said let me tell you something are you telling us that that baby's dead because
00:28:01
you better start speaking up right now I'm just telling you what's done is done that's what he told us it's right on
00:28:07
camera we got the audio we got the video and uh and so he says I've got I I got to I've got to take a break I said you
00:28:16
take a break get your head together and then get back in here and then let's let's discuss
00:28:26
this this show is sponsored by better help do you look forward to the holidays maybe
00:28:36
you struggle with seasonal Blues this time of year can be a lot and it's natural to feel some sadness or even
00:28:42
anxiety about it but adding something new and positive to your life can counteract some of those feelings
00:28:48
therapy can be a bright spot something to look forward to to make you feel grounded and to give you the tools to
00:28:56
manage everything going on on if you're thinking of starting therapy give better
00:29:00
help a try it's entirely online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to
00:29:05
your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist
00:29:11
at any time for no additional charge find your bright spot this season with betterhelp visit betterhelp.com garag
00:29:19
toay to get 10% off your first month that's better help hp.com garage major phone carriers make you sign
00:29:31
contracts with rigid data plans to trap you into a kind of forced phogy sounds pretty insecure if you ask me at
00:29:37
Consumer Cellular we believe in a more consensual and healthy form of phogy free of contracts and more flexible to
00:29:43
your data needs this way you stick around not because we force you to with contracts and fees but because you love
00:29:49
our phone plans like ardently love our phone plans monogamously Consumer Cellular when Freedom calls we're here
00:29:56
to answer call us at 1888 Freedom you can start your day off right when you find a professional on Angie to
00:30:05
get your plumbing right first connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well
00:30:12
visit angie.com you can do this when you Angie [Music] that all right welcome back cheers
00:30:31
mates some fascinating stuff coming out of this investigation from Klein investigations and we're talking to
00:30:39
Phillip Phillip is ramping up the investigation again into missing child Dior J Coons Jr dior's been missing
00:30:50
since July 10th of 2015 so we happen to speak with Philip Klein this week week and oddly enough
00:30:59
Captain we are coming up on 8 years now that the little 2-year-old has been missing he was about 2 and a half years
00:31:06
old at the time that he goes missing on this supposed camping trip now Philip is
00:31:13
able to fill in a lot of the blanks and and add to add some evidence to the speculation that has been and has
00:31:22
remained in this case during that 8-year time period all right Colonel let's get
00:31:27
back to our interview with Phillip well Phillip one of the big questions that most people have in the True Crime
00:31:34
Community is was there evidence that Dior was actually at the campsite uh that well we'll get to that yeah well
00:31:44
yeah you know yeah is the answer we believe he was there and I'll tell you why uh here
00:31:51
in just a second it sounds like from those stories that that Dior may have been there
00:31:58
the night before well that's the theory we've always run with we have never looked at this as a as a homicide right
00:32:06
we have never looked at this as a homicide we've and I think I've said this in public before we've always
00:32:11
looked at this as an accidental death and a cover up and that's what the FBI and I don't speak for them and I'm not
00:32:21
speaking for the sheriff I'm telling you that's the way all of us have looked at
00:32:27
this because on that first meeting when we presented everything that we had they
00:32:31
went yeah you're we have run with Vernal may have been trying to move the the the the
00:32:39
truck or the Suburban that's where the blood came from and he ran over his son and they hid the body and they uh they
00:32:46
went and buried the body or took care of the body and I'll tell you how we think
00:32:51
the whole thing went down bottom line is this when when the grandfather said that
00:32:57
he came back in the room and and and one of the interviewers looked at I think it
00:33:02
was Holmes looked at where he was sitting he had peed all over the chair the floor uh and uh wait wait who who peed
00:33:12
all over the chair on the floor the the grandfather okay and he he was in poor health he was elderly at the time but if
00:33:20
he were to protect somebody he would have a vested interest obviously in protecting his granddaughter Jessica out
00:33:25
of out of you know love for his granddaughter but also she is kind of his caretaker at the time yep you're
00:33:32
right on it so um so we just kind of you know I I moved the chair I said I have a
00:33:38
dry chair for you we went and got some towels and sat down I said listen if I owe you an apology for yelling at you
00:33:45
before we start the cameras back up I I I apologize but I kind of getting the feeling you know more and that's where
00:33:53
we're going with it and he just shook his head like yes I said okay let's turn the
00:34:00
cameras back on and so was kind of what Frank Vil went through that was the first
00:34:06
Pi uh Frank Vil was the first one to um how do I want to say um that we contacted that was former law
00:34:15
enforcement US Marshall we have a great relationship with the marshals so you know and he kind of done some digging on
00:34:21
us and so he knew who we were and and and vilt had offered to put up a re W of his own money
00:34:28
$25,000 and the parents wouldn't let him the parents wouldn't let him and he said
00:34:35
at that point he just bowed out and said no I don't want any part of this he had
00:34:39
the sense he's smart enough to know he had the sense to get get away from it as fast as he could so long story short we
00:34:48
we finished the interviews up we interviewed everybody there was everybody had everybody was every just
00:34:54
every different direction it was horrible absolutely horrible and so again we met with law enforcement we met
00:35:01
with the FBI we all sat in a room we went over our notes the smarter people than me because there are smart a lot
00:35:09
smarter people than me uh Holmes and gear and all these other guys they were talking on a level
00:35:17
psychologically uh and and it it came to the conclusion okay we're in this thing
00:35:22
we're not getting out oh boy the parents are an issue so the the sheriff the first sheriff said um okay what uh we
00:35:31
need to do is Klein keep doing your thing we'll keep doing our thing and we'll all get back together in about six
00:35:36
weeks and we'll we'll discuss where we all are so that's kind of the opening to the
00:35:43
case that's how it got started that's our first trip up there that's our first interview up there that we had with
00:35:51
anybody uh as you guys know it's always smart for an investigator to come in cold uh and and we did we went in cold
00:35:59
and uh you know the the only the thing that kind of broke it broke it open for us uh was uh uh was Bob uh and his
00:36:09
statements and and and what he said in the family generational tree we were able to build of of who the players were
00:36:16
who would protect who if they necessarily needed to uh you know and we were able to put that information
00:36:23
together into a a a great opportunity for all of the the psychological people U to get started on this case both in
00:36:33
quanico Virginia uh in our office and of course up there um so that's how it started where did the investigation lead
00:36:43
you so now you're sitting there you have some information from Bob and what's what's really interesting too is now
00:36:49
you're your meeting with law enforcement and the Jessica and vernal the parents have told one story to law
00:37:01
enforcement and it doesn't sound like they're telling you a different story they're telling you an expanded version
00:37:07
of what they what they conveniently may have left out when talking to law enforcement so you're right and then
00:37:13
what they did was law enforcement was very very smart what they did was um they gave them a written statement now
00:37:22
you guys know about handwriting analysis I've heard y'all talk about it before right um they got vernals and Jess
00:37:30
excuse me Vernal and Jessica's handwriting uh on their initial statement and then the 911 call
00:37:39
they compared it to that and we were talking about that and Jane said uh that's MJ Holmes said well look I've got
00:37:45
a contact with Georgia Bureau of Investigation give me their handwriting analysis give me their handwriting and
00:37:50
we'll send it over for handwriting analysis and everybody that's in the business knows the state of Georgia has
00:37:56
the the best handwriting analysis team in the United States even better than the FBI I'd say and these five guys that
00:38:04
deal with that got these handwriting analysis and they were like those are two Liars they're just lying they're
00:38:12
just flat out Ling so we send sent up the 911 calls to them and they listened to the 911 calls compared to Vernal
00:38:19
statement and compared to Jessica's statement and they said oh no no no no no these these guys are lying bad tell
00:38:26
us about the case and that's kind of that's kind of when we kind of jumped off the ship uh of Jessica and vernal
00:38:34
and and and and what they said there are a couple different times that we have listed for when this call comes in the
00:38:41
911 call is placed by mother Jessica Mitchell and in the reports we have here Captain the time vary from 2:25 p.m. all
00:38:53
the way to 2:36 p.m. now that seems like a minor discrepancy in only a matter of
00:38:59
about 11 minutes but there is some importance to that because we have statements from both
00:39:07
parents that Vernal the father was attempting to get a signal so he drops Jessica Mitchell off because she has one
00:39:18
bar for service on her phone she wants to call 911 as quickly as possible Vernal says that he decides he's going
00:39:27
to continue on down the road to a spot where he knows his phone will have service he was worried that his phone
00:39:34
would cut off halfway and so you can see why the the times of these are important
00:39:42
because what we have here is two things one you can hear something in the background we cannot determine who that
00:39:51
is speaking in the background of Jessica Mitchell's cell phone call to 911 but what we do have on the 911 call at
00:40:00
some point the operator the Emergency Services Personnel ask Jessica is that your husband calling in on another line
00:40:11
and to which she agrees and the reason why this will be important you will see later from Philip Klein statements about
00:40:19
what they uncovered in their investigation is that this is where there are obvious signs of Lies coming
00:40:26
from Vernal and Jessica Mitchell what's the address of your emergency um I'm actually camping in
00:40:36
leor just outside of leor uhhuh um my 2-year-old son um we can't find him how long has he been missing about an hour
00:40:47
an hour yeah are you by water yes do you know which Campground you're in uh it's
00:40:54
Stone Reservoir Timber Creek Creek Stone Reservoir yeah or Timber Creek hold on we need search and rescue
00:41:06
Jessica Jessica yeah what's your son's name okay what is he wearing he was wearing cowboy boots a
00:41:17
blue um hair like pajama pants and a camel jacket and he's got Shaggy blonde hair is your husband calling
00:41:27
too like all down where we were camping at and we can't find him at all okay we need you to stay within cell service we
00:41:36
got people going on on the way thank you so between the discrepancies and the 9111 call in their stories and this
00:41:45
handwriting analysis that shows that they're being not truthful you guys feel like your
00:41:53
investigation is on to something we we knew at that point we had something we were getting somewhere and we were
00:42:02
moving the case forward and that's when we flew up the team the second time for the second uh we we came up I think it
00:42:11
was like five weeks later and we came up for the second time and this time we spent oh my
00:42:17
goodness we spent I think 10 days up there um and we started interviewing everyone the whole team was up there we
00:42:27
spread everyone out from point A to point B and I think they started getting nervous because they knew we went to the
00:42:36
crown bar and that's the name of the place we interviewed the folks over at the bar and they out there in lead lead
00:42:44
it's pronounced lead door every time I every time I uh every time I say it everybody always corrects me no it's not
00:42:51
lead door it's lead door and so um we had the dogs out there Trace Sergeant who is probably one of the best Dog
00:42:59
Handlers out of out of the United States Homeland Security SL there's a county up
00:43:04
there she does she bases her licenses with and she brought her dog and we were able to Garner hits and I'll talk about
00:43:13
that in just a minute um but anyway we got to the bar where they said you know where they first said well we went in
00:43:21
and they told us to leave and we were inside and we had to go to the bathroom we had to do all that the people that
00:43:26
owned the the bar went no that never happened and we said okay then they told us the story during the second set of
00:43:35
interviews they told us the story of how they had to go get diesel fuel for their
00:43:41
pickup truck and that so and she needed to go down to the stage stop and get some feminine products we were like well
00:43:49
well okay so what do good investigators do we go check out their story well we knew the bar was BS right we knew we got
00:43:58
over to the stage Stop and met with them and they said do y'all want their receipts and we were like
00:44:06
huh like receipts like plural we were told they went into the stage Stop and they they bought feminine products and
00:44:15
they bought um what do you call it uh it was like a little Gummy Worms or I forget what it is but anyway uh for the
00:44:25
baby they they they bought a bunch of stuff and they spent about 50 bucks well there were two visits to the stage Stop
00:44:34
the first visit was just gum and candy and that's it and then about an hour later there was a second visit a second
00:44:43
visit to the stage Stop and that's where the tampons came in and and that sort of
00:44:49
thing so we said well we asked Vernal again hey Vernal how many times you go to the stage Stop well once
00:44:57
you didn't go twice no didn't go twice who went in oh that was me I went in we all went in and we said okay well
00:45:07
according to what the witnesses we visited with it was Jessica both times Vernal never came in and there was no
00:45:16
sign of Dior you know Dior goes into this big thing about the the little baby and how the little baby was running
00:45:23
around inside the store and every body was like oh how cute and it was very busy because there's campers everywhere
00:45:31
and he tells this long drawn out story about being a trucker and how the beer truck got there and he wanted to take
00:45:39
the baby over to go see the the beer truck and of course we hunt down the beer truck and the beer truck guy goes
00:45:45
what are you talking about and no guy ever came up to me with the and I never let anybody sit up in my truck and I
00:45:52
never I never saw that and then an 18wheeler and he gave us the name of the 18wheeler company and when he gave us
00:46:00
the name of the 18wheeler company we found out that that company had been defunct for three years number one but
00:46:06
number two um there was there was we found a driver of an 18 wheeler that was there in the same 4H hour period right
00:46:16
because we got that from license plate recognition and he says nobody's ever done that so that part of the story
00:46:24
falls apart so now the whole Stage Stop story that the parents have put out is nothing but misinformation a lie and
00:46:33
we're like okay well wait what's going on here and so I'll move it forward without taking up a bunch of your time
00:46:42
because I know you guys will have a bunch of questions um we uh we called a family meeting and we told the family
00:46:50
hey we got problems and they're like what are you talking about we have problems your story does not match what
00:46:59
the Witnesses are telling us oh you're just trying to say we did it no that's not what I'm saying well I'm going to
00:47:07
hire a lawyer you need to hire a lawyer that's the reason we're here there was like eight family members and my team
00:47:14
sitting at a table and we've got it recorded where we said you need to go hire a lawyer you need to get your story
00:47:22
straight because I'm telling you we know and we're Shar with law enforcement because that's our agreement with them
00:47:29
and you know we're moving the case forward we've got to get this timeline laid out we've got to figure this thing
00:47:35
out because the timeline you give us and the timeline we've developed through witnesses that you gave us doesn't even
00:47:44
come close to matching and that's when one of my uh investigators kept kind of kept you know
00:47:53
trying to hint to me something was going on and I kind of looked around this restaurant and I was like what and she
00:47:58
goes that guy right there and there's a guy sitting above the tables and and it was the he was the now famous
00:48:06
lawyer uh and uh he uh he's walking around and he's trying to hear the conversation it was really kind of
00:48:15
embarrassing uh uh his name was Alan Browning and it was just kind of embarrassing what he was doing and I
00:48:21
said good you got a lawyer I was very POS positive about it and he the lawyer comes down starts screaming and yelling
00:48:30
at me and you know and I'm like dude calm down we're trying to help this family we've been up here three times
00:48:38
now we're trying to help this family if there's a case where an accident happened because that's what it looks
00:48:45
like oh you don't know what you're talking about so Jill uh uh Coons who is the a to uh to to uh Vernal uh hires
00:48:58
pays $1,500 and hires this lawyer and that's when you know he fires us and he gets the father all spun up and we're
00:49:08
like well there you go and then to end this part of it because I I think you guys won't have questions at this point
00:49:15
uh after the attorney was hired we started getting threatening letters uh and the threatening letters were really
00:49:23
really ugly um you know they fired us but once they fired us another family member called us immediately and says
00:49:30
I'm sending you x amount of dollars uh to help for the cause you're hired again I'm going to be the client keep going
00:49:39
and so we said okay and so we did so that gives you the 411 something we should reiterate here captain for the
00:49:46
listeners for those who may not be so familiar with this case Vernal the father also goes by the name Dior so
00:49:56
that can make the story a little confusing at times you hear investigator Philip Klein there he does
00:50:04
reference Vernal as Dior in that last portion of the story now back to the interview philli let's hone in on one
00:50:13
thing real quick here because I find this to be very intriguing and probably the centerpiece of your
00:50:21
investigation the story that Vernal gives you regarding the blood on his truck the blood on the inside of the
00:50:29
tire let's hone in on that now we do not know to be perfectly clear we do not know if in fact that is
00:50:38
human blood or even Dior Jr's blood because that is evidence that is in the custody of law enforcement but
00:50:46
regardless this is a story that Vernal is telling you that they did not tell to the Sheriff's office and very likely
00:50:57
because they know that the sheriff's office has that blood evidence it's it's a little tricky here but let's hone in
00:51:05
on that for a minute please right the the the part of the tire according to Vernal this is a story he gave us the
00:51:13
the tire that was facing the fire you know remember they set up a campfire Etc that he says that there was a lug nut
00:51:21
missing from that tire that interested the baby the baby got back there started putting his hands in tail pipes and one
00:51:27
of my questions was and you can see it when we release it well wait a minute now if you guys had just gotten there
00:51:33
the tail pipes got to be what 200 degrees or coming down from you know running all that time between Idaho
00:51:42
Falls and up the mountain it's got to be hotter than a pistol was there any burns
00:51:47
on his hands just to ask him was her Burns and oh no no no no it was it was cooled off he just had soot he had soot
00:51:57
soot from the tail pipes there's double tail pipes he put his arms in the tail pipes once they got the samples and this
00:52:05
is the other thing that kind of bothered us once they got samples of the blood in
00:52:11
the wheel well and on the bumper uh they got home they left and they went home uh and Burnal sold that
00:52:20
truck and to a scrap yard and it was scrapped and we because we that's the first question we asked where's the
00:52:26
truck well how old how old was the truck do you know no I you know to hear him talk about it it was 50 years old to
00:52:35
hear Witnesses talk about it and look at the title it was at that point this is back in what 16 it was an 11 or a
00:52:43
10 that was a was it a douly a black yeah yeah it was a black black douly and so he he Vernal doesn't tell you about
00:52:52
the blood right this is no Hees tell me anything yeah he tells you the soot Story the lug nut story and then you go
00:53:00
and you're talking with law enforcement law enforcement is like well he never told us the S Story the lug nut story
00:53:06
this is interesting to us because oh by the way private investigators we found what we believe is blood on portions of
00:53:13
that truck yep we threw it out on the table on the napkin and of course everybody that's going to listen to this
00:53:20
they're scratching their heads going well Philip and and uh law enforcement FBI everybody involved
00:53:25
what what's the what's up with that blood and and I think we need to point out here that's that is if it is
00:53:32
evidence of anything that is evidence that is in someone else's custody that's law enforcement's custody something that
00:53:38
you don't have access to and it seems like a a step a big step in the right direction would be to determine if it
00:53:46
was human blood and look I I get it that he's young two two and a half years old
00:53:52
roughly Dior Coons and we may not have his DNA or something like that on file but there should be some kind of record
00:54:00
from his birth of the blood type they did and they and they and and let me tell you the other part of the story so
00:54:07
when the FBI sees the truck and went down to the warehouse and got all the samples uh they did get some bleach
00:54:15
samples uh whereas uh there was an attempt to clean up the wheel well and clean up the bumper now according to
00:54:25
Vernal oh I wash my truck all the time I keep it in clean Immaculate condition um okay well hold on if you
00:54:34
clean your truck all the time and it's an Immaculate condition why are you scrapping your truck there you go now
00:54:42
you're thinking like us everything that comes out of this guy's mouth is is just opposite of of of
00:54:52
what the reality was maybe in his mind he kept it super clean I don't know but I don't think so I mean it just doesn't
00:55:00
make sense why wouldn't he tell why wouldn't he tell the cops on the initial interview why wouldn't he put in his on
00:55:09
on his third interview why didn't he put that in his written statement why didn't
00:55:15
he say well the night before I mean that's important that's very important uh because I don't know about you you
00:55:23
know they said okay tell us the story from the time you got up there to the time you guys left and went back home
00:55:30
without the baby and he mentions nothing to it nothing nothing zero I mean it's crazy now what he did
00:55:39
we did talk to him and I think this is important because this has always been something that some of these internet
00:55:44
sleuths always point to they say well a big bird or a big animal be a bear or a mountain line or something could have
00:55:55
gotten the kid while he was walking around the campsite right and we're like yeah that could have happened so the
00:56:03
first thing in law enforcement especially those guys up there that deal with that all the time right they're not
00:56:08
like inner city cops in Chicago that deal with homicide all the time but they do deal with animals and rabbit animals
00:56:15
and they deal with that crap all the time they um so according to every zoologist that we spoke with I even over
00:56:25
to the city of Houston Zoo this is not a joke I went over City of Houston Zoo and
00:56:31
went over and talked to the the the the the I forget the name of their God I should go back to college uh the the
00:56:39
lions and tigers and bears and all these guys over there and I talked to them said look I got a case I need to know
00:56:45
and each one of them said oh no no no here's what would have happened number one the child would have screamed
00:56:52
because that animal is going to bite down on them and shake them and blood's going to go everywhere guts are going to
00:57:00
go everywhere everything's going to go everywhere and they're going to put their paws on top of that animal because
00:57:06
that's what they do watch and see what some of these Wild Kingdom shows put up he said and that's what they told me go
00:57:14
watch this stuff and I was like I'm not interested but I will go watch it a bear
00:57:20
does the same thing but the bear uses its claws right to kill the animal first and then to start eating on it there
00:57:29
would have been blood guts shoes uh because remember Vernal goes through this big long story about oh he
00:57:37
put boots on that didn't fit him that's what he wore around the campground yeah well we would have had boots we would
00:57:44
had thousands of things and and and none of that happened now to go back to your
00:57:50
question about why we think he was there for a period of time there's a thing called the diaper
00:57:58
tree um I don't know how familiar you guys are with it but there was a thing called a diaper tree so what they do is
00:58:05
when a child pees or poops in the diaper what they do is they put it in a trash bag and they raise it up on a rope up
00:58:14
onto a tree so that it does not attract animals it will attract animals but the animals won't come in and tear it up and
00:58:21
you know being raccoons the animals would dig through the trash if you just put it in the
00:58:26
trash exactly so all the trees up in the chance which is the dog that we brought
00:58:32
up there which is a dog that's F still to this day is finding wor uh turn of the century skeletons in fields up in
00:58:43
Virginia and West Virginia know where all the where the wars happened up there uh he's still finding bodies up there so
00:58:50
that's how good this dog is and so he hit right there now why is that important well not only do are is that
00:58:59
particular dog trained on blood but it's also trained on urine feces you know those sort of things because remember
00:59:06
when you die you lose your bowels you lose your your urine that's what happens you just you lose it all and so there
00:59:15
was no sign of that but equally interesting the dog did not hit anywhere in the campground just the diaper tree
00:59:24
so what does that tell us as investigators okay it didn't happen here that we know of okay so we took the dog
00:59:35
down the hill um from the campsite you know where Vernal says oh I I went a mile and a
00:59:43
half away and used the phone well we went a mile and a half away and there's no Sal service there none zero donut
00:59:49
hole okay it's blocked by the mountains but we did go down to where he SLE flipped at one point and mentioned the
00:59:57
cattle guard and we sent the dog uh down the hill from the cattle guard thinking
01:00:03
okay if somebody's going to dispose of a body what they do is they go down the hill from the cattle guard maybe dig a
01:00:09
hole bury it cover it up none of the search The Searchers just missed it while they were up there Etc the dog
01:00:16
starts hitting all over down the bottom of this hill then the dog stops and we look and the 's like a
01:00:25
little Ravine kind of like a little stream area that goes down that way uh from the top of the hill the dogs ears
01:00:33
perk up and that dog takes off and goes to the top of the hill and goes and sits
01:00:38
down on this big area up there uh of of uh it's it's kind of loose dirt Etc and he's
01:00:48
going nuts he's like oh so we call in the sheriff and the sheriff gets up there uh um limh High County gets up
01:00:56
there everybody gets up there and we do a dig and nobody knows about this dig this is the first time I'm telling
01:01:02
people about it right we do a dig and we dig down and we don't find anything other than loose dirt it's all loose
01:01:10
very very very loose but the dog's still going nuts the dog is like no no no keep
01:01:15
going there's something there and we keep digging and digging and we we couldn't find anything so then we all
01:01:22
start sitting on the back of pickup trucks and we drinking our little Kool-Aid that or whatever we're drinking
01:01:28
to keep our water up and we start talking and somebody says you know what's the inventory on the truck was
01:01:36
there anything missing on in by the campers and we go back to what Bob Walton told us which was well yeah we
01:01:47
got all of our coolers back but one he was trying to deflect from was there anything missing
01:01:55
right was there any was there any shovels missing was there any anything missing and yes there
01:02:01
was a shovel missing so we're like huh wait a minute how big was that cooler and he starts telling us how big that
01:02:09
cooler was we go over and measure it out and guess what the measurements match where we were
01:02:14
digging so we're now we're like okay if you're going to dispose of a body how are you going to do it you're going to
01:02:22
you know you could put it in a cooler and then you could bury it and then when everybody gets up there uh you know the
01:02:29
dogs aren't going to hit on it because the dogs are sent dogs they're not de dogs they're scent dogs there's two
01:02:35
different types of scent dogs there's de and and alive right and they can find a
01:02:41
trail none of the dogs they never brought the dogs over to that area and cars were parked all over the place fire
01:02:46
trucks everything was parked all over the place and I guess they didn't just search that area I asked if they
01:02:52
searched that area and couple the rescue guys were like you know I can't say we did and so now we're like okay now we're
01:03:00
putting a theory together okay now the evidence is giving us a theory and so that that explains the the uh the cooler
01:03:09
missing that explains the lack of a scent in there was no blood there was no nothing so now we know okay big bad bird
01:03:17
or big bad animals didn't get him okay then we go to the kidnapping part you know guys I just got to tell
01:03:26
you I according to the the the wardens down there you know you have to sign up and
01:03:33
get the pass to go up there nobody signed up and get a pass but that doesn't mean anything because people go
01:03:39
up there all the damn time right and so we start going back through about okay guys did you hear any cars did you hear
01:03:47
any to see any headlights did you see any what did you see oh no no no no because because we brought the baby down
01:03:56
to go to the stage Stop and to go get diesel fuel and we went huh let's go find the
01:04:05
diesel fuel guy so we found the diesel fuel guy and he said yeah I remember them I remember them coming in I
01:04:11
remember pumping their gas because I gave them I guess what's it called Green diesel or red diesel he had to give them
01:04:16
red diesel I think it was because that's all he had and it's not a convenience store it's a it's a feed store and these
01:04:23
guys been around forever up there they know everybody and they you know there's a lot of ranching that goes on up there
01:04:29
and so he says uh yeah I remember him I said do you remember seeing a car seat he goes yeah I remember seeing a car
01:04:35
seat I said okay was the baby in the car seat he goes there's no baby in the car
01:04:39
seat the car seat was empty behind the mother's seat the passenger seat so you didn't see a baby no didn't see a baby
01:04:47
you saw no baby now how many gallons of gas you give him he said only about 20 bucks which is about eight gallons gas
01:04:54
well listening to Vernal talk about it his his meter was broken and he didn't know how much gas he had in there he he
01:05:03
he had no idea how much gas he had in there so he liked to keep it topped off and that kind of got us all going oh boy
01:05:10
you know that makes no sense either so and of course he said it took him two hours to find the place for the de for
01:05:18
the diesel and that was his explanation away of the two receipts at the sage stop but again nobody saw
01:05:28
him in the sage stop they saw her right but they didn't see a baby they didn't see sweetest fish that's what the kid
01:05:36
lik sweetest fish and that's those little gummy bear things and um again all we got is more stories more
01:05:45
lies more you know more everything so that leads us back to that meeting again we were fired rehired and then we
01:05:54
went into stage three and four and five of case so there you [Music] go so much more to get to join us back
01:06:13
here in the garage tomorrow same bat time and same bat Channel until then be good be kind and don't
01:06:23
litter [Music] [Applause] [Music] Angie's List is now Angie and we've heard a lot of theories about why I
01:07:02
thought it was an Eco move few worse less paper no it was so you could say it faster no it's to be more iconic must be
01:07:10
a tech thing but those aren't quite right it's because now you can compare upfront prices book a service instantly
01:07:17
and even get your project handled from start to finish sounds easy it is and it makes us so much more than just a list
01:07:23
get started at angie.com that's ngi or download the app today