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Time to get retro with Ashley. Shop more Labor Day deals in-store and online. Subject to credit approval. Minimum monthly payments required. No minimum purchase required. See ashley.com for details. There are some cases so infamous that we have all heard about them. But some of the coldest cases, the most mysterious, are the ones that you've never heard of before. I'm Ashley Flowers, and every Wednesday on my show, The Deck, I dive into the coldest
This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Several weeks after our search at Lake Lanier, I still haven't decided how I feel about not finding anything other than an empty plastic barrel. On one hand, it's unfortunate that this case will continue to drag on in search of answers. On the other hand, I'm not sure I really wanted to bear witness to a grieving mother finding out that her son's remains were pulled from the bottom of a lake. So, for now, the search for Justin Gaines and for answers continues.
Erica Wilson and her family have been through more heartbreak than I can imagine over the years since Justin disappeared. They've had to bear the constant sorrow of losing a child while having no answers to explain why it happened or where he is. But this would unfortunately not be the only soul-crushing blow the family would be dealt. In 2011, one of our sons took his own life.
On January 17th, 2011, Justin's stepbrother Jeremy Wilson tragically died of asphyxiation. He, just like Justin, was only 18 years old. Erica has a much harder time discussing Jeremy's death, so out of respect, I leave it alone. Erica pains over Jeremy's suicide because she'll never have a hope of knowing why, or if anything could have been done to prevent it.
I've learned that talking about Justin is good. I have an easier time talking about Justin than our son's suicide, because that's a whole other thing. I talk about both, but I mean, Justin I talk about all the time. I have no problem talking about Justin. I mean, it's easy. It's a sad series of very unfortunate losses the Wilson family has been forced to endure. But somehow, they find the strength to keep moving forward.
At least with Justin, there is still the hope of finding answers. From Waveland, I'm Sean Kipe, and this is Drowning Creek. I spoke on the phone with Bob Poulneau recently to try and get my bearings after all I've learned. He's been on this case a long time and knows the frustration of dead ends as well as anyone. My question, are we looking in the right direction? When you're in the middle of an investigation...
And the pieces to the puzzle start to fit. You run with what you have. Sometimes you have to step aside and say, and take it with yourself, am I making the right assumption? You know, it's hard to do. I'm reminded of how in my investigation so far, though there have been many names thrown around, like Martin Wilkie, Leon, Shane, New York, and others, I'm always brought back to Dylan Glass in some way.
Glass has been adamant that he's innocent and nothing more than a victim of circumstance and some prejudice that local law enforcement has against him due to his past. But what if Dylan Glass is right? That investigators have been looking at the wrong man all these years? What if he is actually innocent? What then?
In one conversation with him, he proposed a few alternate theories for me to explore. I had to keep Dylan engaged and talking no matter how ridiculous or obscure these theories of his might seem to me at first. And no matter how much I felt like, at times, he might just be grasping at straws or trying to divert the attention away from himself. Dylan brought up Justin's close circle of friends and the fact that some of them weren't as helpful as one would expect after Justin vanished. Something I questioned as well.
These are things I've asked myself. If I was the police, if I was interrogating this and investigating this, these are things I would really want to know. Why did all your friends say they didn't have nothing to say because the detective was rude? If this is your friend, why don't y'all want to find out? Why don't y'all want to help? Let's be realistic. If we investigate this case, why wouldn't y'all say nothing? They need to look at his friends first.
They need to look at people that knew him. They need to find out why ain't nobody said nothing that grew up with him. Why did his brother kill himself, man? What really happened? Why did he go to the club supposedly by himself? Where are his friends at? Why don't they want to speak? But it's up to me. It's on my theory. I believe...
that somebody that grew up with him, his friends, his brother, somebody that was from his circle, something happened, whether it be an accident or whether it be some hatred behind something else, something happened and they don't want the truth to come out.
Why were there people so close to Justin Gaines that were considered standoffish to investigators? People like his roommate Chris and Chris's girlfriend Amanda. I'm also told a young woman named Carrie who Justin was texting back and forth with the night he disappeared has been unwilling to speak with investigators. Allegedly, Justin and Carrie had been dating at the time.
Chris's mother was an attorney in 2007, so could he simply have been advised to not say much? To not implicate himself in any way? But again, why if you had nothing to hide? None have responded to my attempts to reach them. Dylan then presents another theory, possibly the most bizarre yet. It's real, Keith.
Suspected cross-country serial killer, 34-year-old Israel Keyes, was being held for the kidnapping and murder of an Alaska coffee shop worker. They so far have eight confirmed murders and rapes, including a couple in Essex, Vermont, four others in Washington state, and one more on the East Coast. Tonight, the FBI now believes confessed serial killer Israel Keyes took 11 lives. That's up from their previous count of eight.
Israel Keyes is an American serial killer who meticulously and methodically worked his way across the country, amassing victims for 11 years between 2001 and early 2012 when he was captured. Dylan wonders, is there a connection between Israel Keyes and Justin Gaines' disappearance?
At first, I'll admit that this seemed completely absurd and far-fetched. How could Justin Gaines possibly be connected to a serial killer? Dylan and I talked briefly about Keyes, and I researched him extensively. The feds busted him for killing multiple people because while they're looking at me, you know how embarrassing it'll be while you point at me as a fucking serial killer that killed this boy and got away with it, and you've got the whole world thinking I did it? That'd be real weird, wouldn't it?
Y'all don't want to tell the world that. They don't want to tell the world how a fucking serial killer from Alaska got caught with multiple victims and had his fucking picture on a computer and tells on his interview that he traveled with cash to be undetected in the United States and was killing innocent people and hiding anybody.
An Army veteran, Keyes traveled frequently, though he was largely concentrated in the Pacific Northwest. He's been traced to Vermont, New York, Washington State, Oregon, Texas, California, and Alaska, among others. He's thought to have committed murders in many, if not all, of those states, including four murders in Washington alone. There are some who question if he committed murders abroad.
Keyes eventually confessed to the FBI that he buried what he called kill kits all over the country. The kits, housed in watertight buckets or trash bags, contained everything he would need to commit his crimes. Zip ties, a .22 caliber gun with a homemade silencer, a mask, and materials that would speed the decomposition of a body.
Some caches the FBI found had been in the ground for more than two years, and when Keyes felt the urge to kill again, he would plan a trip to a location where one of these kits were located and then find a victim at random. He used only cache and would remove his cell phone's battery so he was untraceable. Though his victims were chosen at random, everything else Keyes did was meticulously planned out, but he would eventually make the critical mistake of deviating from this normal routine of his.
This is actual police dashcam audio of Keyes shortly before his arrest. Okay.
Israel Keyes was arrested in early 2012 after authorities traced his steps from Alaska to Texas as he used 18-year-old Samantha Koenig's ATM card numerous times. Keyes had raped and killed the young woman in Alaska, dismembered her body and placed it piece by piece in a frozen-over lake while he ice-fished.
When an FBI agent casually asked what he did with the fish he caught that day, Keyes, slightly dumbfounded at the question, replied, "I ate them." But where does Dylan Glass make the connection between a monstrous serial killer like Israel Keyes and Justin Gaines?
Keys, who obsessively researched serial killers, was found to have routinely scanned the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System website. Exactly why he did this is unclear, but when his laptop was confiscated after his arrest, it was discovered that he had downloaded and saved pictures of missing people from the website.
a website where Justin is still listed as missing. With his connection to the FBI, I asked Mike Rising if it could be confirmed that Justin Gaines' picture was on Key's laptop or not.
We've got FBI agents in Athens. They're each assigned counties. That's how they work. I could get their email address and send them an email. Can you check this out? It's Justin Gaines' picture on Israel Keys. It may be bogus or not. I'll let you know what Mike comes back with, if anything.
In early December of 2012, Keyes slid his wrist and hung himself in his cell at Anchorage Correctional Complex while awaiting trial. Before he did so, he drew 11 skulls on paper in his own blood and one pentagram with a crude depiction of the goat-headed idol Baphomet, the widely used symbol for the devil. Scrawled on the bottom of that image were the words, We are one. And when you do the interview, you read his interviews online, that's what he tells you.
He said, "Yes." He said, "I travel and pick random victims all over the United States." They said, "Why?" He said, "Why not?" He said, "I used to use cash and build kill kits by their vicinity." He said, "So I would be undertaken." Oh, this is facts. They don't talk about that. Oh, that's just a coincidence too, right?
Before his death, Keyes confessed to several bank robberies, arson, and six murders, alluding to the FBI that there were others but wouldn't give up more information. He said that several bodies were discarded in various lakes across the country, which does eerily line up with Justin's alleged demise. But all but one of Keyes' known victims were women.
There are some cases so infamous that we have all heard about them. But some of the coldest cases, the most mysterious, are the ones that you've never heard of before. I'm Ashley Flowers, and every Wednesday on my show, The Deck, I dive into the coldest
whole list of cold cases. Many of these victims didn't get the press coverage they deserved during the initial investigations, but I'm sharing what our reporting team has found on these stories in hopes that someone listening may have the information needed to bring answers to light. And that listener could be you. Listen to The Deck now wherever you get your podcasts.
After researching the Keys case, I feel it's technically possible, but not at all likely. The FBI painstakingly detailed every move Keys made during his 11-year killing spree using rental car, hotel, and flight transactions. They even accounted for the number of miles each rental car was driven. According to the FBI, in 2007, Keys flew from Anchorage, Alaska to Los Angeles on October 29th and returned on November 2nd. While
While in Los Angeles, he rented a car and drove only 95 miles. I find it nearly impossible for Keyes to have gone from LA to Georgia and back undetected during this short window of time. And there are no records of him flying or driving to Georgia. There's no information to conclude that Israel Keyes was ever in Georgia at all during this time. I've heard many theories on what happened to Justin Gaines over the past several months.
Scouring the internet, one can find claims of him running to Mexico, hiding out in Peru, or even that he may have been killed by the Smiley Face Killers, a group of people committing murders across the country targeting white male college students. The Smiley Face Killers have been largely disputed by law enforcement, though, as nothing more than an urban legend. But again, these are just theories, and to make any of them work, you have to overlook mounds of evidence collected by law enforcement in Georgia over the years.
When it comes to Dylan Glass' theories on Justin's death, there's one thing we can wholeheartedly agree on. After almost a year, I feel like I've made some progress. I also feel like there's something missing.
I'm going to say something that some people might find unbelievable or even crazy at this point. That even after hearing everything I have about Dylan Glass, his confessions, his past, his rap sheet, and several eyewitness accounts involving him, I'm still not convinced he killed Justin Gaines. There is no absolute proof of it. No DNA. No other physical evidence. No body. At least not yet. But I do feel that he knows more than he's told me.
While I continue to investigate Dylan and look for information on where Justin might be, I can't allow myself to fall into the trap of having tunnel vision. I have to chase down every lead as if it's the one that could break this case. With that in mind, I recently spoke with a woman named Jessica who claims to have information. She had commented on a post on the Facebook page Erica Wilson runs dedicated to finding Justin. It was regarding a recent segment Dateline aired on the case.
My friend tagged me on it and I was like, there's no point in me even calling because they're not going to listen to anything I say. You know, Erica personally reached out to me and she was like, have you talked to Mike yet? I talked to him and finally someone listened to me. The people who were handling the case at first, they didn't give a shit. And then I'm just going to be blunt. They didn't even write down anything I told them. They didn't, I mean, literally nothing. And I had been calling for years, like 15 years.
Before Mike Rising took over Justin's case, Jessica says she had reported her story to police several times and even called the FBI's tip line, but wasn't taken seriously. Their exact words were, well, this doesn't line up to what we think happened. And I said, well, respectfully, maybe what you think happened isn't what happened. Jessica's story is one that Mike Rising is now taking seriously because this woman seems to know more than she should. And it goes deeper than just Justin Gaines.
Shortly after she arrived, Jessica says she was approached by the man who owned the house.
And I guess he was on something. I don't, I'm not really fully sure what drugs he was on, but he took a look at me and he called me Justin. He tried to attack me and he said, how are you still alive? You're supposed to be at the bottom of my lake. We put you at the bottom of my lake.
This terrifying encounter took place in 2007. And though she remembers that it was cold outside, she doesn't know the exact date. But we can ascertain that it happened in early November because Justin's disappearance wasn't yet public knowledge, according to Jessica. At the time, this case wasn't televised and all that kind of stuff when all this happened. This is almost right after. I mean, this had to be like right after. I was scared because he tried to stab me.
Tried to stab you? He did. With what? Yeah, a knife. It took like four or five people to hold him back from me. And they were telling me to go to the end of the driveway, whatever. And my friend had left because she was going to a liquor store. And the liquor store was like, I guess, a good drive away. So I was just kind of there. There were some big name people that were there. Someone with the last name of Glass.
Again, the name Glass arises when I wasn't expecting it. Is it possible that Dylan was there? Or is she simply mistaken? Dylan's brother, Justin Glass, was in prison at the time Justin Gaines disappeared, so I doubt it was him at the party. She does know the name of the man she says attacked her, though. Jeffrey. Jessica continues telling me what happened that night. They got him in the room, like in his bedroom. They kind of like walked him away.
I had found out shortly after that, that he actually tried to stab a pregnant woman in his basement. And this kind of like the same issue where he called her Justin and said, I killed you right here. How, how are you alive? And,
I'm assuming that his conscience was eating at him, but the guys that he was hanging out with were bragging about certain things. And all I remember when he called me Justin, the guy whose last name was Glass, he told him to shut the fuck up. He's like, you're not supposed to be talking about that shit. You know, get your shit together. You're just fucked up. You need to shut up. Quit talking. Which scared me because then I could tell that something really happened.
And then after this happening, me realizing that there was a kid who actually went missing, it terrified me. That's what happened to me personally.
Jessica mentioned the man having attacked another woman in the same manner, which she tells me she actually learned from an officer when she went to file a report with Gwinnett County Police.
How is that not relevant to them?
this just it doesn't align with what we think happened and i was like look dude i'm not telling you anything else i'm just telling you what happened to me that night and it was literally right after this guy disappeared it's been on my conscience it's been on my mind and his mom needs to know
I have no way of knowing who this woman was, so it's impossible for me to reach out to her for more information. Despite there being two victims sharing the same experience, Jessica never heard back from Gwinnett County Police. No one ever contacted me. No one ever called my phone. No one texted me. No one reached out to her. They just didn't care.
It's Madeline Barron from In the Dark. I've spent the past four years investigating a crime. Believe it or not, sooner or later, we will kill some of these folks who need to be killed. A crime that for almost 20 years has gone unpunished. I have an M16. Zzzz.
They went into the room and they were just taking shots. Me and Noor, we were under the bed. He get his rifle under the bed and start shooting at us. I remember I opened a Humvee and I just see bodies stacked up. How did they not perceive that these were children?
A four-year investigation, hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents, all in an effort to see what the U.S. military has kept from the public for years. You know, I don't know what's to be gained by this investigative journalism. Season three of In the Dark is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Now Jessica has me wondering who this Jeffrey guy is and if he could be related to Justin's disappearance. Or was he just some guy on drugs and freaking out for whatever reason? Still, if Justin's name hadn't yet hit the news, this is highly suspicious and it should have been followed up on by investigators. Jessica then tells me something else she remembers. It was something she noticed in the basement of the lake house while waiting for her friend to return from the liquor store and take her home.
It was like an area that we were all sitting in. Because when we walked down the stairs, one of the girls made the comment, man, it smells like bleach down here. Really? Yeah, they had ripped out all the sheetrock. All of it. There was no carpet. I remember that. There was no carpet. There was no sheetrock. You could tell where there used to be. It creeped me out. You know, like after all this stuff happened. So I was just kind of like really hungover.
Jessica's not sure exactly what lake the house was on, as she had never been there before and hasn't been again in 16 years.
Her description of the basement being gutted and smelling like bleach is concerning, as I've heard the same thing about Andy Pickens' houseboat and his van before they vanished. They as well had been renovated and smelled of bleach right around the time Justin went missing. It's also interesting that she mentioned a pool table in the middle of the room, because Dylan told me that he used to play pool in Andy's basement. Is it possible that Jessica's getting things confused and it wasn't actually a house on the lake, but perhaps near one?
Obviously, Andy Pickens wasn't the only person to have a pool table in his basement. And if the homeowner was renovating and replacing the flooring, they would have obviously had to remove the pool table. So maybe these are just two different houses. But the similarities in the stories I've heard are intriguing. What Jessica volunteers next regarding Justin takes us right back to where we started with Dylan Glass's confession. I have a really good girlfriend of mine.
The father of her child got brought in for questioning over this, and he failed his lie detector test. He was worried sick that something was going to happen to him, and she kept asking him, well, what did you do? Tell me, what did you do? Did you have something to do with this? And he would never tell her. I know he did fail his lie detector test, asking about if he had anything to do with Justin's death. And that's not public knowledge. Who'd you hear that from? His baby mama. Are you able to tell me his name?
Um, Leon. Jessica is right. Leon was brought in for questioning and took a polygraph, which he, quote, failed miserably, according to investigators' notes. I don't know if you can get records, but I can tell you that they had picked Leon up one time, along with Dylan Glass, and took them both at the same time to some well that they thought that he was at. And Dylan kept screaming at him, just tell him where the body's at, man. Just tell him where the body's at.
And Leon was like, I don't know what the F you're talking about. In 2015, after Dylan confessed to police, Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman told me he personally took Dylan and Leon to a remote area called High Shoals, where Justin's remains were thought to be. He told me Dylan pleaded with Leon to tell where Justin was buried, but Leon wouldn't budge. We were out in Jones's Woods in the middle of nowhere on a little bridge over a creek.
And I put those two together, just like you are right now. I put them face to face. And Dylan looked at the guy. He said, man, give it up. They know. I told them everything. And he just sat there and looked. Not a word. Didn't say a word. I've never seen it that thick. I've seen the worst of the worst right after buddies if they think it's going to save them. But not here. Nobody's saying a word. But Jessica tells me what she heard about Leon after he came home from that outing with the sheriff.
talking about something about I didn't really know him. I didn't know him like that. Something about flashy. That's why I thought maybe a watch. But then when you said the earrings, I'm like, well, maybe he did say maybe it was the earrings that he was talking about. That's why I think that he failed that lie detector test. And all he kept saying, he's, you know,
What Jessica tells me she discussed with Leon's baby mama could turn out to be extremely important, not just for what she heard, but for who was saying it.
The baby mama in question turns out to be none other than Heather. The same Heather identified as the woman Justin got into the car with outside of Wild Bill's shortly before he disappeared. She was identified by more than one person by name using the club's surveillance footage. Leon was also positively identified on camera at the club that night.
I want to talk to him. But that thought has come with a stern warning from several people. My only word to you is to do it in broad daylight and be very, very careful. He's not someone that you can just approach like that. Even Sheriff Chapman seemed to give me a friendly reality check when I discussed speaking with people like Leon. They've killed one. You know, like the old folks say, when you ask them, does that dog bite? They say, he's got teeth, ain't he? Same thing here.
I don't want you floating in Lake Lanier either. Chapman was half joking with me, but there's also truth in what he says. There's a real warning there. A young man is dead, and whoever did it has gone to great lengths to cover it up. So what would they be willing to do if someone like me started poking around, kicking the hornet's nest? It's a reminder that I have to take this seriously, and I can't let my guard down. How willing are you to dive into these waters again?
It's a good question. How willing am I? But after something I've recently learned, I might not need to dive in the waters again at all. Because this investigation into the disappearance of Justin Gaines once again has pivoted, this time in a very serious way. There's a house here in Walton County that came up with having Mexicans associated with the cartel living there.
This house is as far as the owners of the property and that as having been connected with the players in the Justin Gaines case. There's not really a connection criminally between the people that own the property and Justin Gaines. It's their children. They're out doing their own thing, their own little criminal acts which involve drug trafficking. This cartel story, you know,
Yes.
Drowning Creek is an original production of Waveland. I wrote and created the series and the original score. Executive producer is Jason Hoke. Associate producer is Leo Culp. Sound engineering by Shane Freeman. Special thanks to Erica Wilson and her family. If you have any leads on this case, please contact me at info at SeanKype.com. And if you love the series, please leave a review and tell your friends.
Follow Waveland on Instagram at Waveland Media for more on this series and upcoming new shows. And you can also find me on social media at SeanKypeOfficial or at SeanKype.com. As always, thanks for listening.
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