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How did you get to know him?

I originally met him through social media. He found me on Instagram, ended up messaging me. We spent a night together when clubbing the whole typical Vegas thing.

This is Amanda. She lives on a reservation in the Mahavi Desert and spent time with Justin on a handful of camping trips. We connected in a similar fashion to the way she and Justin did, sending a message on Instagram and seeing what would happen.

How would I describe him? A fire cracker? He was like one extreme to another. And And he finally opened up one night. He got in that state where he just drifted off a little bit, I guess. Then he sat there and he's just like, you know, sometimes I feel ashamed for the way I live because I feel like I'm a kid running from all my problems. I get in an argument or something gets rough, I just run. I leave, I travel, I go somewhere, I meet new people. And it was one thing that made me feel weird about whenever he'd talk about his plans for India. And the more I've thought about it, especially over the years, it almost seemed like he was preparing for something because he wanted to be famous. He made that openly clear, like that was his end goal. And it was just weird as I thought about it more and more, just how he was trying to visit everybody before he went on this one last big trip where he was trying to find himself. Like he was saying his goodbye's to everybody and then just disappears. When he left, I just had this weird feeling like, Okay, he's going and I'm never going to see him again.

Sometimes I get the feeling I'm lost. Just hiding it is never enough. Now I find in every mirror a ghost. Only once I saw the killer, once I saw the killer up close.

I'm Liam Luxon, and this is Status Untraced. Episode 2, walked into heaven.

A lot of pieces like that. How often were you guys in contact when he was traveling around on his motorcycle?

Most of you through his Instagram account.

I'm in Sarasota, Florida, with Alex, at the home of Terry Shetler, the father of missing person, Justin Alexander Shetler. I'm here to try to figure out what happened to Justin. It's been just over five years since Terry last heard from his son. And when I asked how often they were in contact, this is not what I expected to hear.

I felt very connected, so I wasn't like, Wow, you haven't called me in three weeks, or anything like that. In fact, the last time I saw him during our FaceTime from the MoMA Cafe, he said, Yeah, you probably won't see me for five years. Oh, really? Yeah.

Okay, so that's right before he went on the trip with the Baba. When he told you you, you probably weren't going to see him for about five years because he was planning on being international for that whole time. Do you know if that was... Did he say why?

No.

Terry didn't ask his son why. As if the phrase, You probably won't see me for five years, was as casual as saying he was going for a run. But it wasn't casual. Justin was calling all the way from a remote village in the Parvati Valley, a place deep in the Indian Himalayas. Before this podcast, I had never heard of the valley before. But when I began digging, I fell upon a series of strange phenomena. The Parvati Valley is associated with India syndrome, a pattern in which foreigners, mostly Westerners, are mystified by Indian spirituality and culture, and decide to start a whole new life on a whim. They leave behind every everything. Belongings, friends, family. I read of one case where an Austrian man resurface after 12 years. He told the Tribune he chose to vanish so that he could live in complete peace. Regis Eral, the French psychiatrist who coined the term India syndrome, wrote that susceptibility to the plight depends on each person's past traumas. Because India speaks to the unconscious, it provokes it, makes it boil, and sometimes sometimes overflow. So now think about Justin, a man who says he never really had a sense of home, and told his dad, You probably won't see me for five years.

Did he mean that? And why would a parent take that at face value? I want to understand this father-son relationship better and possibly determine how Justin's past influenced his future.

So about the time of the divorce was a crucial time because he was 11. He started rebelling, but it was mostly against me. So we sat down. I said, Listen, I want to change this whole struggle. I want to change it so it's you and me against the world. So we'll make a deal. And the deal is whatever you want to do, just tell me and I'll help you do it. Except if I think that it will kill you So that was the relationship that we had. It's like from here on here, you're on your own.

Terry's a real character. With a white-braided ponytail and a home full of holistic contraptions, he's, to the degree, a quintessential hippie. After his divorce from Justin's mom, he stayed in Florida, and she moved West with Justin in tow. When he did get time with Justin, he was determined to make the most out of it.

When he came here, I could just feel that his energy was disconnected, and I thought, what can I do to actually make a difference in his life? And I thought, well, for me, the most obvious destructive thing that happened in my high school was the dare program where they fill you full of shit, the just say no approach to drugs. I mean, it's complete ignorance. You can't get more opposite of education than just say no. And for most people, they go away to college and they do the stupidest shit imaginable because their parents have tried to control until they get away from home the first time. So then it makes it much more dangerous. So then And I felt that, yeah, if I gave him a real drug education, he would know what the hell he's doing. And so then he could make informed decisions. And so then I just rented the cabin in the Katlenberg for two weeks, and I went around and just got all the drugs that I could find. And we drank Jack Daniels one night, and we did wine a couple of nights, and we did pot hen wine. And the whole time, I was talking to him about the mushroom lore and concepts that I had developed.

And I didn't realize how close I would get to Justin smoking Can't part with them. Doing mushrooms with my son was like a treasured experience.

I am not a parent, but I have my reservations about this. I'm all for informed decision making. But I don't know that I would go out of my way to give a 14-year-old drugs or alcohol. I will admit, I myself began experimenting with marijuana and psychedelics in my teens, unmeasured and unsupervised. I don't look back on it as a mistake, but I recognize that the experience could have gone badly. So I get why Terry wanted to guide Justin's introduction to drugs. But to encourage it?

And what made you feel that he was ready to do that at 14? Because I know myself, first time I did LSD, I was 18, and it definitely was mind-altering in a way, right? Were you ever concerned that it was a little early then or you just felt that he was ready?

I would have been concerned about LSD, but the mushrooms have a different... It's very rare for someone to have a bad trip unless you're drinking. But Usually, the mushroom God will come in and look at your chart and say, Okay, it's the first time. Take it easy on them. Just the dancing mice and the little candies. And so that was my thinking from my experience.

I'm not really sure how to respond to this, but it makes me curious how these experiences shaped Justin. Coincidentally, I later found that he spoke about his early trials with drugs on the Tangentially Speaking podcast.

The first time I took mushrooms, my dad took me to a circus.

Oh, that doesn't sound good.

It was actually amazing. Really?

It almost feels genetic to hear the resemblance between Terry's and Justin's perspectives.

Well, actually, I was introduced to ayahuasca as a young teenager, maybe 14, the first time I did it, and I've only done it maybe 10 times. But I feel like that probably played a big role in who I am today because you really end up questioning a lot of things and seeing through a lot of societal bullshit filters. I mean, it feels like therapy in a way. The only reason I consider myself spiritual in any way is from my experiences with that.

Terry says during high school, Justin asked to enroll in the Wilderness Survival School. It was a renowned program run by an elite tracker, Tom Brown. As we know, Justin spent years honing his skills there. But after graduation, he followed in his father's footsteps and decided to become a massage therapist in Florida.

So he stayed with me for about six months, which is the length of massage school.

Yeah.

And so I got him a job working at a restaurant waiting tables. He fucking hated it because it was just so frantic. And he didn't hardly make any money, but he had the car, and he heard about this strip club down in Miami. How old was he, I think? 19. Okay. And so he drove down there for the weekend, stripped Friday and Saturday night, and then rested and came back on Sunday with like, 1,500 bucks. And so once he did that, he was like, Fuck, that's it.

I asked Terry if he knows if Justin attempted stripping while traveling.

Probably a lot. Probably a lot. That was probably a lot. It's a go-to. It's a relief time. You can pick up a thousand bucks on the weekend.

When I first read about Justin's life, I envisioned him as a wealthy tech entrepreneur, a Tim Ferrace type. Despite how he presented himself, I'm now thinking maybe Justin's adult life wasn't that financially stable. In Venice, Jason Schultz told me he was worried about Justin's finances, so I asked Terry if he ever worried as well.

At that point, I was making really good money, and I said, I can send you some money. He said, No, I've really been enjoying getting by. And he liked having hash because then he was popular. He had a lot of friends always.

Hash, also known as hashish, is dried marijuana resin. Outside religious purposes, it's an illegal substance in India.

Justin was smuggling the hash from Nepal into India, and that was a thrill. So he was thinking after the trek that he was going to go into the hills and buy some hash from the Parvadi Valley. That was the plan in the back of his mind.

While Terry says Justin planned to buy more hash after after the trek, he isn't aware of any more details.

Well, then I got contacted by Linda and Suzanne.

Linda is a friend of Justin's. Suzanne or Susie is Justin's mother.

Oh, my God. Justin hasn't checked in. Justin hasn't checked in. And I realized that Suzanne had contacted the government and the CIA and the army and the embassy over there. And I said, Holy shit. If he comes back into the town and he has a pound of hash and everyone is looking for him, he's going to be really thankful to you from fucking jail.

Terry never made it on the ground in India, so he was left to receive updates about the search second-hand. Hence, not all his claims are accurate. To my knowledge, the CIA and the army were not involved in the search for Justin. Yet, these revelations about the smuggling, the stripping, I don't see a reason for Terry to make it up. It causes me to wonder what else they spoke about towards the end.

So I asked him. So he took some photographs that were prohibited by the Holy Man in the culture there and he felt that he picked up a curse, that he couldn't shake the whole rest of the time in India. So the thing with the Holy Man, I cautioned him about getting close to these guys who would curse you, and it could affect your health.

Satya Neryuan-Ruwaat is the holy man who accompanied Justin on the trek. You'll hear us refer to him as the Baba, or Baba Ruwaat. He can be seen forever frozen in black and white on Justin's Instagram. A scrawny figure with tumors the size of tennis balls on his elbows and wrists, You know, for me, someone 5 feet tall, less than 100 pounds, killing Justin, it was laughable.

I mean, five people that size trying to kill Justin was a joke. So with no evidence, then you're left with what you think should have happened. That's not what I think should have happened.

So what do you think happened from the lack of evidence that we have?

I mean, I don't know. Justin had hash and some liquid LSD. And like, yeah, if he had a spiritual experience, on the lake. And, oh, what a good idea. I'll trip a little bit and be able to figure this all out. I'm not suggesting a suicide in any way, just a lack of judgment. So is that my most probable scenario? Yeah, probably. Probably.

And then your explanation for the Baba being hung is...

The authorities trying to get this American woman off their back.

Do you think there's any possibility that Justin...

Isn't dead?

Isn't dead, yeah. That he's alive and still just living off the land right now?

Yes. Well, what I would like to just say is in some ways, that confirms a spiritual process. I mean, I don't think that being murdered by some desperate thief really facilitates spiritual growth. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't think the story usually goes like that. I don't know if a portal opened up and he walked into heaven.

We end our conversation with Terry, and I'm left with a lot to process. But before I can fully collect my thoughts, Terry FaceTimes someone he says I need to speak to.

At the time, her name was Pixi, but now she changed it to Xandra. Hey. How are you? Wow. I am doing amazing. Hey, how are you? I'm sure you are.

I'm introduced to Xandra, who I learned changed her name in memory of Justin Alexander.

I got to tell you, he was a showman, and this disappearing also didn't surprise me. I'm like, Mother fucker. You pulled off one final scene.

I was madly in love with him.

Life was safer with him around, and it was a lot more magical.

Xandra doesn't just share memories of Justin. She declares an undying love for him. As we peel back the layers, it becomes clear she's not the only one. There's articles calling Justin the hottest guy I never knew, affectionate comments addressing him as my love, and posts recalling life-changing moments spent together. We wonder what insights could the women from Justin's past hold. This is how we met Amanda, who you heard at the beginning of the episode. And what led us to this call.

Okay, here we go. St. Thomas there, so at least three different voices.

Maybe she'll be over right now.

This is Ashley.

Hey, Ashley.

This is Alex Vespas dead. I don't know if you recall, but I had messaged you on Instagram about Justin Alexine. Justin.

Yeah. I do remember. Yeah. How are you? We messaged Ashley because of a multitude of comments she posted on Justin's Instagram. Reaching out, we had no clue about the extent of their relationship.

We met and dated for about a year. He was a great person, a great human being. I don't think he had a bad bone in his body, but he struggled a lot with wanting to have that family life and that he needed to feel worthy in the world.

Would you say he was trying to find himself in a way?

That idea of I want to find myself, it's not that he didn't know who he was. It's that His childhood really, really damaged him to the core, where I don't know many people who have that type of internal struggle on a daily basis and comes out in everything that they do. One day we're in the car and he looks at me and goes, I just wonder who I would be if those bad things didn't happen to me. He wanted to prove to everyone that he was a man, that people could look up to him, that they wanted to emulate him, that he was his own comic book character. That was what he needed to do in order to be able to cope with that pain.

I ask Ashley if she can elaborate on Justin's damaging childhood, but she feels it isn't her place.

It was just a very tumultuous relationship He would travel for weeks on end, and I would be here in Miami working. We would break up all the time. There was one time he was in China, and then we broke up, and then I didn't hear from him for, I think, four or five days. And then he popped back up and said that he had tried to commit suicide, and I ended up checking into a hospital, and that's when he contacted me.

This incident unfolded four years before Justin's disappearance, a span that might have permitted time to heal. But hearing this, coupled with his dad's comments, it makes me uneasy. Was Justin suicidal? What was he thinking at the time he vanished? Somebody has to know. In terms of their relationship, Ashley says their diverging paths ultimately brought it to an end.

If you don't want to have kids, that's a deal-breaker for me. And I said, You can find someone else who's going to travel with you, that you're going to love, that you're going to have a connection with. That's okay that it's not me. And I said, You don't want to get married. I'm done. And then I think because I said that, He called me up and said, I wanted to take you away for your birthday. So I was hesitant. I said, We're not going to go back and forth anymore. And because of that, he confessed that he had bought a ring and he was planning to propose to me. Whether or not that's true, I I don't know. And then when I wasn't willing to go along with that in December, I think is when he started selling off the possessions, and then by January, he was gone.

This pattern of events strikes me as turbulent. A difference in desires leads to a hasty proposal culminating in a dramatic life overhaul. Such extreme shifts bring me back to the question, would disappearing on his own will be out of Justin's his character. Despite the breakup, I asked Ashley how she felt when she heard the news that Justin was missing.

The problem with Justin is that he would put his trust in anybody. He did not have the ability to judge people's character. He would find a random stranger, think that it's totally okay to leave his computer and everything else with them, and that they're just going to be nice and return it. He would do shit like that. It's like, you He can't trust everybody. That's not the way the world works. You could read his post about the guru. He knew this guy was bad news. He knew that there was something wrong with him, and he still chose to go with this guy. The minute I heard about what happened to him, I said, Oh, my God, you know what? It's another story of him trusting the wrong fucking guy. I cannot. If there is one way that he would not wanted to have died, it would have been by trusting the wrong person and the person who have killed him. So I hope, and I think about it all the time, I hope that he slid down that mountain because he was just hydrated and delirious, and he took a wrong step.

Do you think there's a possibility?

No, there's not a chance. He's dead. He's not alive. There's no way. There's no way. There's no way one that he would have done that to his mother. And if you are a person whose entire existence relies on how other people view you, then there is no way that you would go missing, because that would take away every point that you are making with doing what you're doing. I'm not trying to humanize him. I think that the way that other people viewed him is a really, really beautiful way to see him. And I think that he was a phenomenal human being. I don't want this to seem like a bitter ex or anything like that. My number one thing is that my heart broke for him. I mean, just the amount of internal pain and struggle, nobody should have to feel that way.

This call really shook me. It opened my eyes to a side of Justin I didn't suspect he was concealing. His post just seemed so real, authentic, and different. What I've learned from Ashley is while that may be true, Justin was also grappling with a deep-seated trauma. He hit his pain well. In a way, I wish he hadn't.

Not a problem. Thanks so much for your time. Bye. Bye.

Wow.

I wasn't expecting that at all.

But this call got me thinking, what else about Justin are we missing?

The very first time that we spend time together. He goes, So I'm going to go to Southeast Asia indefinitely in January. Tell me about India.

This is Linda Burini. Having spent three years in India, her adventures are partially what inspired Justin to visit the country.

And we were supposed to be there together because my top bucket list, the trip, is a motorcycle journey through Ladakh because it is this incredible path that you do under a glacier and yada, yada.

I asked to interview Linda for numerous reasons. She was the first responder on Justin's disappearance, and also one of the last known people to talk to him.

And then when he decided to go on this Baba journey. He called me and he asked me, It's like, Should I do this? Should I go with this Baba? And he goes, Because if I go with a Baba, I'm going to have to skip the Ladakh Motorcycle journey because they're going to close the path by the time we get back. And of course, I said, That's okay. We'll do it next year together.

I watched through our Zoom call as Linda stifles her tears and lights up a joint. The smoke curling up ever so slowly. The pain that Justin's absence has caused is palpable.

I mean, we were in love when it happened. And I know that there were other girls, but we were in love. And he brought a couple of messages, but I actually got to talk to him. I actually got to see his face. Oh, my God, he was so skinny. When I actually saw his face, I was just like, oh, my God. And he was only going to bring a kilogram of rice. And I remember being worried. I didn't say it because he wouldn't say shit like that to Justin. But I remember being like, Holy crap. He's very skinny.

I've now heard from many that if anyone could endure the mountains for months or even years, it'd be Justin. But we know his friends and family hadn't seen him in a while. So if Justin was looking pretty malnourished, it's certainly a cause for concern. Aside from his appearance, I asked what they spoke about.

India is very powerful, and Justin was going through it. There is this guy that was one of Justin's heroes. This guy goes off and does like six months in the middle of nowhere. And he reached out to him This is like literally a week before he left. The conversation they were having was in regards to Justin saying, how do you deal with solitude, with loneliness? Because Justin wanted to do some time isolated. Justin was like, I really like the isolation. I really like being out on my own and the experience. But what caused me back to society, ultimately, his loneliness, and specifically, they were talking about women. Justin felt like he had an addiction, in a sense, for women, and that would prevent him from being able to be completely free. So there was a lot that was going on through his head.

Linda can't recall the name of the man Justin was speaking with, but this is wild. It's the first account we've heard of Justin actually seeking to live in solitude. While she had this knowledge, she says she still worried and raised the alarm when Justin didn't return from the trek in September. Linda wasn't able to travel to India for the search, but from her inside access, this. I ask what findings were most notable.

I mean, they didn't find his backpack, but they found his flute, and they found a couple of things.

It's reported that just off the hiking trail, Two men found Justin's scarf, butane lighter, backpack rain cover, umbrella, and a wooden flute, which he had fashioned into a walking staff.

There was no blood. They We talked about the tracker that did make it there, did say that there was some sign of struggle, and then it looked like there was a fall. I don't know. I'm not a tracker. I don't know how reliable that thing is. But the fact that there was no blood, no, I don't know. It's so weird. It's so weird. Those things might have been tossed there. It doesn't mean that it happened there.

On November first, the last update was made on the GoFundMe. It announced the final search into the mountains, and mysteriously included this. It is important to note there are some details which have been given to the family. But in order to protect the investigation and potential prosecution, we are unable to share those at this moment. It's been years since that post, and I'm hoping with the time that has passed, Linda will feel comfortable to share those undisclosed details. So I ask what was kept off record.

Malona is a village that's the bestashish in the world. And Malana is controlled by the Israeli Mafia the Italian Mafia, and the Russian Mafia. So whatever happens there is pretty freaking serious.

As Linda is talking, I quickly Google this village, and my alarm goes off. Claimed to be one of the oldest democracies in the world, and its residents, wholly descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great, Malana, does not consider itself part of wider India. This village has its own judiciary system, its own government, its own rules. Outsiders, if they make the two-mile trek to town, as there are no roads to it, are not allowed to touch the villages or their things. And like Linda said, it seems to learn the good and the bad, as the whole economy is essentially backed by a strain of marijuana called Milana cream.

I don't know exactly what he was getting I'm not sure what it is that I'm involved in, but during the search, somebody from Milana reached out to me, and this person told me that he exchanged numbers, and they were supposed to meet. So So I don't think that he was going to be a dealer, but he just wanted to buy a pound of a sheesh and have the experience or something like that. It's very dangerous. I wouldn't do it, but it's something that many do in India to survive, right? And I'm talking about tourists or travelers that live there. That's what I knew was in his head. I don't fucking know what happened, but my feelings for what I know about Hasheesh and that area and what travelers do there. If he did get involved with some crooks, I am like 90 % sure that it had to do with Hasheesh. People disappear, especially that time of the year. That's what happens there.

Next time on Status Untraced.

I was looking at all these other friends of Justin's that were making nice social media posts, but no one was doing anything about it.

As far as I know, they don't know anything about the porter. I don't know if you were able to get some more information, but there was this porter, and then there wasn't.

I was always getting the half true set of Linda and had one epic blow up with her. I'm like, Linda, I need all the information this time, not just the parts that you want me to hear. And if it turns out that something ill to ward was going on, they could put me in jail. And then so what did she give you?

If you have tips or information on the individuals in this podcast that you'd like to share, please email us at statusuntrace. Com. @gmail. Com, or leave us a message at 507-407-2833. Status Untrace is a production of Tenderfoot TV in Association with Odyssey. I'm your host, Liam Luxon. Executive producers are Alex Vespestead, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. Producers are Meredith Steadman and myself. Supervising producer is Tracey Kaplan. Consulting producer, Jonathan Skiels. Associate editors are David Basch and Charles Rosner of GetUp Productions, with additional editing by Sydney Evans. Artwork by Trevor Eiler. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Colder Heaven by Blanco White. Mix by Cooper Skinner. Voice acting, provided by Theodora Rummel. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group. For more podcasts like Status Untraced, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app, or visit us at tenderfoot. Tv. We talked about struggles with mental health throughout this episode. Please be mindful of your mental health and take the time to check in with a family, a friend, and yourself. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining me on Status Untraced.

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