[narrator] Christopher Hoye disappeared on May 19th, 2022.
[Andrew Sheeley] It's gonna be nearly impossible
to find somebody in the Ozarks and they disappear.
[Alysha Hoye] I heard a truck start up and so I ran out to the front
and Chris's truck isn't there.
And I looked down,
and his wallet's there and his phone's there.
I need to find him 'cause this isn't right.
Something's not right.
[narrator] His family is desperate for answers.
[Alysha] I started going through his email,
and there were some emails missing,
and it was very odd.
My husband doesn't delete emails.
[Andrew] The Pulaski County Sheriff's Office
does a thorough search of the vehicle.
The only clue that's recovered is a cigarette butt.
Did he have a relationship we don't know about?
[narrator] This episode ofDisappeared
retraces Christopher's last-known steps.
[Andrew] A canine unit is deployed in this case
to try to find a scent trail of Chris,
and it does hit on one towards the highway.
That only, in my mind, makes me think that he got picked up.
Like, he didn't just disappear out of thin air.
[Alysha] I don't see my husband willingly leaving his children.
They need to know where their dad is.
They need their dad home.
[sniffles]
I need my husband home.
[narrator] The more people who know Christopher's story,
the greater the chance of bringing him home.
Share on social media.
Get the word out.
Help find him.
Have you seen Christopher Hoye?
[Teresa Hoye] My name is Teresa Hoye.
My nephew Christopher James Hoye went missing
May the 19th, 2022
in Dixon, Missouri.
And he's still missing.
He was born in Peoria,
and he grew up there.
I think everybody should know Chris.
When he was growing up, he was very energetic.
When he gets excited about something you get excited about it.
Always kinda laughing.
He liked to make people happy.
He was a pitcher in the baseball team.
He was pretty good.
He also, um, had his own paper route.
And once he was on his own,
he was working at Caterpillar.
But any job that controlled him,
he really didn't care for after a while.
So then he turned around and he wanted to better himself further.
He started buying houses,
and then doing what he loved was fixing 'em up, working with his hands.
He had met a lady. He was crazy about her.
And they had two children.
But then all of a sudden, something happened.
And I'm not real privy to it.
She was nowhere to be found.
He went gung ho and got custody of his two kids.
And started a life.
And a fatherhood will change you.
And then he met Alysha.
I'm Alysha Hoye. I am Chris's wife.
I met Chris, um, at a bar...
...on November 3rd of 2017.
I was meeting a friend of mine there.
And we were gonna play pool.
[indistinct chattering]
And Chris is sitting at the bar.
And he kinda scoots over.
Asked... Just asking me how my day was.
You know, what do... what do I do and all that.
And we just sat and talked, and we talked a lot,
uh, just about everything under the sun.
[indistinct chattering]
I might have fallen in love with him that night, you know.[chuckles]
His kids lived with him, so I met them pretty early on.
He seems like this very sweet, caring, father, you know.
But he didn't meet my daughter Zoe until four months later.
All you need colors, powers, sound effects.
Like, the first night we went over to his house,
we sat in the kids playroom hitting each other with light sabers.
-[exclaims] -[Zoe] And there were little sticky hands.
Like, we were throwing 'em at each other,
and then he made fun of me 'cause I got stuck one on the ceiling.
-[laughing] -Oh, my God.
[Zoe] And Mom was, like, recording all of it.
She had this video, and she was just laughing
like I've never heard her laugh before.
-Dear, Lord. -[Alysha laughing]
So I had always, like, prayed for siblings.
Like, I always wanted a little brother, a little sister.
And then I got both.
It was really exciting.
Like, the kids were so cute.
It seemed like they were just immediately my siblings.
I loved them.
And I didn't really know how to feel about having a dad.
But I was also super excited about it.
And he was just super open.
Like, we would try to help me whenever possible.
It means a lot because I never thought I would have a dad.
And he just jumped in.
[Alysha] It was April of 2019 is when we found out...
...that we were pregnant.
And we had already at that point set a date for the wedding.
And we just had a... We had a small backyard ceremony
with just the kids.
And my cousin officiated.
But I couldn't ask for anything more than that.
Chris was very excited.
He was just hoping for another boy.
And he did not get that, um...[laughing]
But he loves... He loves all his kids.
And he was ecstatic to have another one join the family.
But when I met Chris, he had some rental properties, um, in Peoria.
And then he had Airbnbs.
So we decided we would grow the rental properties.
You know, passive income is a great thing.
The Airbnb business was booming then.
So we were making decent money
until COVID hit.
New York, California, Illinois, and Connecticut,
all ordering non-essential employees to stay home.
Those orders cover 75,000,000 people across the United States.
And then it all, you know,
it all kinda fell apart.
We lost 10 grand a month.
So we made that hard decision together.
Um, and we decided,
you know, we were gonna cut our losses.
We took what we had and we moved here to Missouri.
We wanted the homestead, uh, with the garden and the animals.
I always had baby goats in mind, you know. And so did he.
It just seemed like the next chapter in our story.
[Andrew] My name's Andrew Sheeley.
I'm a news reporter withPhelps County Focus in Rolla, Missouri.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic,
we've had this wave of folks moving into the Ozarks
who are trying to live this homestead lifestyle.
And Chris was part of this migration that's going on right now.
They wanted to be able to grow their own food, have their own animals.
I did think it was cool,
and they were doing something together that they both loved doing.
And they just had more big plans for the future.
I did stay up in Illinois because I had gotten accepted into nursing school.
But by the time I had come down for the first time
they had gotten pretty much everything they needed, uh, set up.
Like, they had pens for the animals.
The house was looking a lot better than the pictures.
Um, the kids were super excited to show me their rooms
and what they were doing, their toys.
Like, I had never seen them so proud
of what they had made down here.
But I noticed something was off about Chris.
And I didn't know what it was.
And I asked him if he was okay.
And he's like, "You know, I'm just... I'm going through it."
And he just seemed a little different.
[Blake Potter] My name is Blake Fodder, and,
Chris is my fiancee's stepdad.
Obviously, the family was happy.
The kids were happy.
But moving to Missouri with all that because of COVID,
that puts a... a stress on everybody,
especially with the money loss.
[Alysha] And the first couple of months we were there
all we did was we settled in.
And then I got a job as an ABA therapist part-time.
Chris, he's like, "I wanna home-school the kids."
Like, we were building our dreams.
[music playing]
[child exclaims]
[Alysha] May 19th, 2022, we wake up at 6:00,
and we go have our coffee.
You know, we do our chores.
I take off to work.
Come home, and there's a severe thunderstorm warning.
Our property has a habit of flooding.
And we go to the back and we work on preventing it from flooding.
We're outside, and we're soaking wet 'cause of the... the rain.
And he's like, "All right, I'm gonna go take a shower."
Said, "Okay, babe." And I go in and I check on the kids.
Kinda clean up.
And I'm standing at the counter when he comes out.
And I'm like, "Hey, baby, I'm gonna go.
I'm gonna go milk the goats."
And he goes, "Okay, baby."
And so I go through the basement,
to the garage down to the basement.
And I hear a truck start up and leave.
And so I run up to the front.
And Chris's truck isn't there.
And the gate's open.
And so I run inside, "Where'd your dad go?"
My son, he said, "I don't know." He told me to go to my room.
I'm like, "That's all he said? He's like, "Yeah."
So he goes, "Where'd he go?"
I said, "I don't know, bud," you know.
I go out to the porch and I'm... I'm kinda mad.
You know, 'cause Chris never leaves.
He never leaves the house without giving me a kiss, telling me he loves me.
Or giving the kids a kiss, telling them that he loves them, you know.
It's routine with him.
And I sit on the porch and I called Zoe,
and I'm like, "Chris just left.
And he left the gate open."
She goes, "Okay, what did he take?"
And I looked down at the porch table,[sniffles]
and his wallet's there and his phone's there.
And I'm like, "Well, he didn't take his wallet or his phone."
And I just have this nagging feeling that I need to find him...
...because this isn't right.
Something's not right.
So I call a friend of mine over to watch the kids.
And I tell her, I'm like, "I... I gotta go check the river."
And it was just, like, instinct.
I don't... It was a gut feeling.
You know, so if he just needs to get away,
I feel like he would go and sit at the river.
You know, commune with nature 'cause that's what he likes to do.
You know. [chuckles]
Um, so I think that's why I'm thinking, "Look there.
I gotta find my husband."
And so I go the river.
It's not even a mile from my house.
And I see his truck.
So I pull off.
I smell honeysuckle, and it's his favorite flower.
I walk across the road and I look in the truck.
And it's not locked. The key is in the ignition.
There's nothing in there.
He's not there.
And I look around. There's no footprints.
So the river, um,
where he parked his truck is actually where we go and we take the kids swimming.
I mean, it can get kinda deep.
Given where Chris's truck is found
by the Highway 28 bridge by the Gasconade,
it looks immediately like an emergency.
Because the Gasconade River
is actually one of the deadlier rivers in this area.
And the reason why is it's deeper, strong current.
And many people have drowned in that.
His truck is parked. He's nowhere to be found.
Now, given that the river's right there,
you have to logically conclude he may have gotten swept up in the river.
And the fact that it swelled up because of a rainstorm
makes it all the more dangerous.
[Alysha] So at that moment...
...every worst-case scenario is running through my mind.
And... And I don't know what to think.
I don't know what to feel.
I don't... Like, I don't know what to do.
Just everything starts running through my... my head...
...of what could have possibly happened.
He could be floating down river.
He could be clinging to a log.
He could be moments away from drowning.
Given the circumstances of Chris's disappearance,
time is of the essence.
Ad so the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office responds in full force.
But unfortunately, at that point, it's so dark,
the woods are so dense.
There's just not a lot you're gonna be able to do
if you're searching for a person.
[Alysha] So the next morning by 9:00 o'clock,
the detective comes over and he talks to me.
And he goes, "Okay, I've got a search team."
And I was grateful.
[Andrew] I mean, they put together a team of 50 officers
because they know if he is in that river,
he might be moments from death.
The sooner that they can find him,
the more likely it is that he's gonna be able to survive.
[Alysha] It was approaching 5:00 o'clock,
so I decided I was gonna go ahead and call the detective.
He's like, "We just got back."
Um, so they were there six hours or so.
And he goes, "We searched everywhere we could.
We took drones out."
They searched, uh, three miles downstream.
Three or four miles upstream just in case.
And he said, "We didn't find any signs. We didn't find him."
[Andrew] The river is the initial focus.
There's an intensive search made of the river.
For five miles going down the river,
they drag it, they search it, they look for clothing.
Nothing is found.
And five miles is key in this case
because the Gasconade River's particularly windy.
And I mean, it's unlikely the body's gonna float down river
past all of those curves, all of those twists.
It would get hung up in branches.
It would get stuck in a whirlpool, something.
They don't find any clues.
Now, if there's no clothing found, if there's no footprints,
they're at a dead end.
[Alysha] Doesn't make sense why he would leave.
Like, why?
When Chris gets down he... he usually just bounces right back.
The events of the last few years did weigh on him
quite a bit.
But before this appeared he wasn't quite as vibrant of a person.
You know, the rental businesses were a flop with COVID.
And he would tell me, you know, he was sad
that he didn't have this empire,
you know, that he was trying to create and to leave for his kids.
[Zoe] Chris pretty much had no business anymore.
Like, COVID just shot everything down.
Like, I know income dropped a lot.
And bills were just piling up
because they didn't have a whole lot to help pay anymore.
I just know after COVID really hit,
everything just kinda went to hell.
[Teresa] All the houses were all in foreclosure then.
And I know it had hurt him bad.
He was a proud guy, a proud man.
I'm sure he felt ashamed.
There's a lot to home studying.
A lot of people think they can just jump right into it,
and you can't.
It is a lot of work and a lot of money.
They home-schooled their kids.
So that on top of everything else,
that's a lot of pressure.
[Zoe] Right before he left, like,
he was consistently depressed.
Like, it didn't seem from what mom said that he bounced back up,
or even from the last time I saw him, like,
he had just been depressed.
[Alysha] The week before he disappeared,
he did tell me that he didn't wanna do this anymore.
"I'm like, "Don't wanna do what?"
I'm like, "Babe, if there is anything I can do,
you... you know I'll do it.
You know, whatever you need."
And he couldn't pinpoint anything.
Communication wasn't all that strong.
But I felt like there was stuff on his mind.
There's something big in his head,
um, and he wasn't sharing in that week.
Whether it was, you know, some outside force,
or just something, his own thoughts,
I could never...
And, like, to do this day I can't... I can't pinpoint what was going on.
I didn't know what to do.
Like, I felt like things had changed.
Something had changed.
Chris was probably doubting himself for months
leading up to his disappearance.
He probably had this anxiety building up in himself,
this fear, this dread that he was a failure,
that he was dragging his family down.
And that developed malignantly within himself.
He started to doubt whether or not
they were going to be able to make it in the Ozarks.
And it developed into this overwhelming fear.
And what his family was seeing is this sudden break.
It actually had been building up over time, for months
as Chris started to doubt whether or not the homestead was gonna be successful.
I think that suicide is something
we have to seriously consider in this case.
One of the biggest things I did think at first was suicide
because he left his phone, left his wallet,
took his truck down to the river.
I don't think that so much anymore
because when he had first met me
I self-harmed a lot,
and one of his biggest things that always stuck to me was,
"Do you want me to have to explain to your siblings
why they don't have a big sister anymore?"
And that... that was always such a big deal to me.
I don't think he would ever commit suicide
because he would always fight through whatever was going on.
He wanted to clean out the basement.
He wanted to become a notary.
He had all these wants.
And he... He had plans.
You're not gonna make those plans
if you're not gonna try to follow through.
At least, my husband never made plans without following through.
He was very deliberate in his actions.
[Blake] I don't think he was suicidal.
Depressed, most definitely.
But suicidal, no.
No, I don't... I don't think that one bit.
[Alysha] So the night I found his truck at the river,
my thought was not that he went, you know, suicide.
And to this day it's not... It's not my thought.
I don't know what happened,
but I don't believe it was suicide.
The police did search 10 days after.
Had conservation out there, highway patrol.
People in boats, you know.
A canine unit is deployed in this case
to try and find a scent trail of Chris,
and it does hit on one.
In fact, it leads away from the truck
and towards the highway.
But the scent trail that the dog picks up suddenly stops.
When you have the canine unit come out,
and they get a scent that leads up to the road,
and then it just disappears,
that... that only, in my mind,
makes me think that he got picked up.
Like, he doesn't just disappear out of thin air.
[Zoe] We don't know who would have picked him up.
Like, who, if he was picked up,
like, who would have picked him up?
And why has no one said anything?
[Andrew] The Pulaski County Sheriff's Office
does a thorough search of the vehicle,
and there's no evidence of foul play.
There's no blood,
there's no signs of violence or struggle.
The only clue that's recovered is a cigarette butt.
[Alysha] And it wasn't a brand that Chris smokes.
Uh, wasn't a brand that I smoke.
So I thought it was odd. Something was amiss.
[Andrew] This cigarette butt is one of the only clues in this case.
And it could be significant.
I mean, could this be the key to solving this crime?
[Andrew] The cigarette butt being found in Chris' truck
opens up the possibility
that someone else is involved in this case.
Who could that be?
Was there somebody that wanted to do him harm?
[Alysha] The fact that his scent was tracked to the road,
it tells me that he was picked up.
I think there's a likelihood of Chris
being forced out of the house,
um, of being lured away, if you will,
to protect his family.
[Andrew] What we know is the scent trail that the dog picks up
leads to the highway and then it suddenly stops.
Now, we've got to consider two possibilities there.
Now, it could be that Chris voluntarily got in a vehicle,
or maybe Chris was forcibly put in a vehicle.
Thrown in the bed of a truck, driven off.
The way Chris left his house
the day he disappeared is a big red flag.
He leaves behind his wallet.
He leaves behind his cell phone.
He leaves his kids behind.
He doesn't say where he's going.
And he leaves his gate open.
Given the way Chris left,
homicide is something you've gotta consider.
[Alysha] Apparently, our area, it's, uh,
a place where meth heads frequent.
And six months before he disappeared,
woken up, at 4:00 a.m.,
and the dogs were barking.
[barking]
Chris goes to the front door,
and he sees someone leaving our property,
walking out of our drive,
down the road, and gets into a red car.
I don't know if they saw that we had,
that we were building stuff,
so maybe, you know, we either had the money,
or we had materials they could use,
or, you know, what a heavy, um, I don't know.
So my husband, he follows them.
And, you know. Has a confrontation.
Basically says, you know.
Tells 'em, told 'em to, uh,
stay off our land.
It's ours, like,
you don't need to be on it, there's no reason for it.
We have livestock, we have animals, we have kids.
[Andrew] You know, the Ozarks is very beautiful,
but unfortunately, it has a massive drug problem.
You know, we had a meth boom
starting in the '90s, that has not let up.
And then within the last 10 years,
the opioid crisis has really taken over,
and that's really been a one-two punch for this region.
When Chris and Alysha moved to the Ozarks,
they encounter this kind of pecking order
that exists in the countryside.
You know, we have a lot of drug addicts,
we had a lot of crime that is associated with that.
And whenever somebody moves here,
you know, they start looking for, you know,
vulnerabilities, you know,
is this somebody I can rob?
Is this somebody I can burglarize?
And indeed, they do encounter some of that.
You know, they have to deal with somebody
on their property, who they don't know.
What are they doing there?
You know, very likely, that, you know,
that was somebody trying to get a sense
of how protective they were.
Are they armed?
Is this somebody that I can rob?
Is this somebody I can burglarize?
Do they have valuables?
You don't know what it is.
And you've gotta question,
is that a factor in this case?
[Alysha] For, like, the next six or so months,
any time this car would drive by our house,
honk all hours of the night,
honk and flipping us off.
Like, it was surreal, I guess, you know, 'cause why?
Why even be on our property to begin with?
But one day, Chris had enough.
I go outside,
and my husband is at the fence.
And there's a guy. They were screaming at each other.
And I can't really make out what's being said,
until I approach,
and I hear,
"You're lucky you have kids here.
Otherwise, I'd burn your house down."
And then he had threatened his life.
But then after that, like, all activity stopped.
We know that Chris and Alysha said
that nothing had happened recently involving, you know,
disputes with neighbors,
or any type of, uh, run-ins with tweakers,
or people strung out on opioids.
But, you've gotta consider that.
Given where they were living,
in the rural countryside,
you've gotta consider that perhaps something came up again.
[Zoe] I've lived down there.
I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary, really.
Uh, so I don't really know too much about the situation.
[Alysha] I told the detective,
and they took it pretty serious.
But nothing really came of that.
[Blake] I don't think he was forced out of the house,
or out of his vehicle,
because knowing the Chris, uh, that I know,
he would have done anything and everything
to get away from anybody and everybody,
or anybody trying to come up on his property.
You know, he has weapons.
He has rifles. Handguns.
And anything and everything that he would do
to protect that family.
Given the lack of leads, the lack of clues in this case,
anything could have happened to Chris.
[Alysha] June 2.
I get a call from the detective,
saying that he's got the kids' mom on the phone,
and she wants to come get her kids.
Chris' ex hasn't been in the picture
for over a year and a half now.
And Peoria, Chris' ex, wanted to see the kids.
And at that time, she had told him
that she had moved in with a guy.
And Chris wanted to know his last name.
She refused to tell him.
And so every other weekend, when it was her weekend,
she'd ask for the kids, he'd ask for the guy's last name.
She'd always refuse.
And he goes, until you can tell me a name,
you're not going to see the kids.
Five months later, she finally tells him his last name.
And he's, like, it's been five months.
You have not been in their lives.
You're, going in and out like this
is going to do more harm than good.
And he goes, take me to court.
At this point, take me to court.
They're in a routine. No.
And so, she never took him to court.
She never stepped foot on our property to see the kids.
Neither did her family.
And then we moved to Missouri.
So when Chris disappeared, she calls me.
-[phone ringing] -And, uh, she's like, I want my kids.
I'm gonna come and get them.
I will be there at 8:00 in the morning.
And I'm like, that's no good.
We're not gonna, not gonna disrupt their routine like that.
I said do you realize, you're gonna take them,
their dad just went missing.
So they are dealing with trauma from that.
And you're gonna take them rom the only family they know?
You're gonna take them from their sisters?
Their, the only mom that they know?
She says, "I want my kids."
And so,
that night, I spent as much time with those kids as I can.
And I soak up every minute.
And they get a good night's sleep.
And they eat breakfast the next morning.
And I explain to them what has to happen.
At one point they were screaming at me,
not to make them go.
And so I hand them over.
I've never seen either of my kids cry so hard.
[Zoe] I don't really feel comfortable speaking about her too much.
I don't have anything really good to say.
Especially with what's happened after he left.
[Andrew] Unfortunately, we just don't have a lot of information
about what this custody dispute was like
with his ex-girlfriend.
Could that have been a factor in Chris' disappearance?
You have to question.
How did the ex-girlfriend know
that Chris went missing?
How did she know?
[Alysha] I am not sure how Chris' ex found out,
that he went missing.
When she called me on June 2,
I asked her how she found out, and she wouldn't tell me.
She just said she found out.
I don't know how she found out, but she did.
And we found out on Facebook,
that she was here, in Missouri, an hour away,
the weekend he disappeared,
mud racing, or, you know, four wheeling,
that kind of thing.
That's odd.
You know? She's so close.
And then my husband disappears.
There are a lot of unanswered questions there.
Makes a person wonder.
[narrator] Christopher Hoye was last seen May 19, 2022.
[narrator reading]
[Andrew] In any disappearance,
motive is the central question.
I mean, if you're gonna factor in
possible foul play,
who has a motive to do that?
When you look at potential suspects,
you've gotta consider if they have a ex-girlfriend,
did they have a bad break up?
When we look at Chris,
we know that he did have this past relationship.
We know that they had a bad break-up.
We know that there was a custody dispute.
There's motive there.
Now, does that mean that anyone's guilty?
No. But,
that's a factor that you've gotta consider in this case.
In my opinion, Chris' ex-girlfriend is suspicious.
[Alysha] The detective said,
that beyond that initial contact,
she wouldn't call back.
It bugs me that no one
can get any information out of her.
I'd like to get the detective to start
questioning her, her boyfriend.
I do believe something is there.
And that's where we're at right now.
[Andrew] It is entirely possible
that he has just chosen to voluntarily leave home.
Maybe he wanted to start a new life again.
Since we know that that cigarette
is not the brand that Chris smoked,
what that opens up is the possibility
of there being another person in that truck.
You've gotta wonder, I mean,
who is this person that was smoking this cigarette?
Did he have a relationship we don't know about?
[Alysha] I started going through his Facebook,
his email conversations, phone calls.
And there were...
...some emails missing.
It's, like, up until May 19, there was no emails.
I thought it was very odd that,
my husband doesn't delete emails.
And prior to May 19, there were no emails.
And he used that email regularly.
So I thought it was very odd,
that out of...
...all of this on his phone,
it didn't look like he had deleted anything.
And Facebook was still there.
All his messages seemed to be there.
But there were no emails.
The cops couldn't do anything about it,
'cause they're, like, well, if they're deleted, like,
they're just out there somewhere,
and there's not really a way of getting them back.
But that was really the biggest thing, was...
...just that chunk of emails missing.
First and foremost, Chris would never have an affair,
when he's in love with someone.
And we were in love.
His past relationships,
every single past relationship,
had ended,
with the woman cheating on him.
And I know how devastating that is.
And he would not.
He would not do that himself.
There was not another woman.
At first, I thought, okay.
If something happened with him and Alysh,
or the homestead was too much,
then he might have ran a little bit, to get away.
Chris was a guy who was getting into his mid-30s,
and it's not rare at all for men who get
into their early 30s to have a midlife crisis,
and run away from home.
I mean, that's not rare at all.
That actually happens all the time.
You know, it's something you've gotta consider.
It's gonna be nearly impossible to find somebody
in the Ozarks when they disappear.
I mean, it's really this perfect place for a disappearance.
It's very rural. It's rough ground.
Not a lot of people live here,
which means there's not gonna be a lot of witnesses.
There's no surveillance footage.
Given all that, the chances of him being found
are very remote.
[Blake] Nine months after Chris' disappearance,
we moved down here to Missouri.
And in March of 2023,
I went to go for a job interview in Lebanon.
And when I went in for the interview,
I left, and,
I'm driving in the left lane.
And I see somebody in a plumbing truck to the right of me.
And it looks just like Chris.
He, acting like Chris.
He was in the driver's seat,
like, rocking back and forth, laughing.
He looked so much like Chris.
By the time everything clicked in my head,
I was taking the exit,
and he pulled into the gas station.
But, what if it was?
You know? What if it was Chris,
and I just missed my shot to catch him?
That does add some weight to this idea
that, you know, maybe he is alive.
Maybe he did voluntarily disappear,
want to start a new life,
maybe he ran away with somebody.
[Alysha] I need to call the detective.
I gotta find my husband.
[Teresa] If you knew it looked like Chris,
you knew he was missing,
why didn't you take the time
to walk up and say, hey, Chris?
Or, actually follow that plumber's van,
and just walk up and, you know,
act like you were an old friend,
and see if it was him.
You know? My thoughts are,
you saw him, you didn't care to go chase after him?
I mean, if I saw him,
I'd have been jumping in my truck,
and I don't care if they wanna list me as a stalker or what.
I'd have been on that van's tail,
all the way down.
If I saw him leaving,
I would have been right into my truck and following it.
[Blake] I should have stopped to get gas.
Because, uh, I kinda hold regret.
Like, I should have,
should have put more thought into that.
'Cause, like...
...what if it was him?
And I stop at the same gas station every night now.
After I get off work.
Hoping to see that van.
To this day, I still haven't found this van.
I've looked everywhere.
It's like it just disappeared.
But there have been a couple of sightings, of Chris.
My daughter's boyfriend, Blake.
Then, I was in the feed store a few weeks later.
And that same lady who keeps his poster up,
she's, like, I had a customer come in.
And said, he could have swore,
he saw Chris in Lebanon.
That's two sightings, in that same town.
I couldn't wrap my head around it.
[Zoe] The sightings have all been so close to us.
Only 50 minutes away, and...
...they definitely brought us hope, but, like,
why is he so close,
and he hasn't said anything?
[Andrew] Unfortunately, a lot of these sightings
just didn't have a lot of details.
And that means that there's really
not anything to follow up on.
It's just this noise.
[Alysha] And so I called the detective,
and follow through with the sightings,
and we're coming up on the year mark in May,
and I call him, and I said, okay,
it's been a few months.
What's it gonna take to get you to look into this?
Well, it's really hard to, you know,
look for someone,
if we don't have any identifying information.
I said, have you contacted these people?
And at that point, I think he just, kind of,
gave me a non-committal answer.
'Cause I can't tell you if he did or not.
[Teresa] I do believe,
that Pulaski Police Department
down in Missouri dropped the ball, big time.
But we're not gonna give up.
[Andrew] From an investigation standpoint,
what else is there to do?
I mean, no body's been found.
No clue has been found.
There's only random reports of sightings.
What do you do if you're a detective?
It may be that the law enforcement
is thinking that he voluntarily disappeared.
[Alysha] When I hear about the sightings,
like, it's actually really hard for me to believe,
that he'd be so close,
but he's not at home.
And, like, I don't know what to think of it, um...
...'cause that's not my husband.
My husband would never be so close,
yet so far away from his family.
So, I honestly, I don't know.
I don't know what to believe in.
I don't know how to feel about it.
I really don't.
I don't see my husband willingly leaving his children.
And even, like, if he,
we didn't have such a good marriage, which we did,
he wouldn't have done that to those kids,
he wouldn't have left those kids.
And so I don't think this was his choice.
[Andrew] As this case hits the one year mark,
there haven't been any new developments.
And we really don't know how active
the investigation is.
It's more important now than ever
to get this story out there,
because getting Chris' face out there
could be the key to solving this.
And it's up to the media to help make that happen.
It's been 14 months. I haven't quit looking for my husband.
And I won't.
My kids deserve answers.
I deserve answers.
But it's really hard to take care of kids
if you don't take care of yourself.
And it's hard to find your husband
if you're not taking care of yourself.
So I had to make a decision.
I could let this kill me,
or I can let it make me stronger.
And I chose to let it make me stronger.
[Blake] I believe he was stressed and depressed,
and maybe he just needed time.
Do I think he's hurt? No.
I don't believe he was forced
to do anything.
I don't think anybody can give anybody
a clear answer on what it was.
[Zoe] The only thing I don't believe happened for sure
was suicide.
I absolutely do not think he committed suicide.
I think it's possible it could have been foul play,
but I also think it's possible
that there was a mental breakdown, and he left,
with the intentions of coming back.
He just needed a break.
But, a year and a half later, where is he?
And why has no one found him?
[Andrew] This is a case that hasn't gotten a lot of traction.
It hasn't gone viral.
It hasn't gotten into the major media markets in the state, but,
at this point, there just isn't any evidence
to give a clear picture of what happened to Chris.
I mean, this case is truly a mystery.
[Zoe] We need him back.
If nothing else, the little ones need him back.
'Cause they deserve to be raised with a father.
[Alysha] I've never had a better friend than my husband.
You would tell Chris that he needs to come home.
Life's not any good without him.
Chris is loved by so many people.
And he's a loving father, and he's a loving husband.
And, uh, I believe someone out there knows something.
If you know of anything,
call the sheriff's department.
These kids deserve answers.
They need to know where their dad is.
They need their dad home.
[sniffles] And...
...I need my husband home.