[Melissa] I have no idea where she could be right now.
I'm really worried.
[sniffles] Never thought this would ever happen to us.
[Jason] It's uncommon for a 16-year-old girl to just vanish.
We didn't know if we had a runaway or an abduction or possible homicide.
Everybody help me out here.
The last time that I saw her, she wouldn't make eye contact and kept looking down.
Something was scaring the hell out of her.
What got her into that state of mind?
I began recording the conversation.
People said that her parents looked suspicious because of that recording.
Why did she leave? Where did she go? What's wrong?
A lot of people thought they were hiding something.
So, this is the first time the audio recording is getting publicly released.
No more secrets.
[Greg] This story explores a series
of extremely bizarre circumstances that take place
in a rural pocket of Central California.
When a 16-year-old girl goes missing,
falsehoods lead to accusations and rumors viciously spreading,
all while one family is just trying to find their daughter.
[Zac] I'm Zac Guse, and I'm Karlie Guse's father.
[Melissa] My name is Melissa Guse,
and I am Karlie Guse's stepmother.
Bishop is like small town, USA.
Everybody knows everybody.
It's a tourist town,
so a lot of people from out of town travel through
to get to Death Valley and Mammoth Lakes, which is a huge ski resort.
And we're out here, 10 miles north of town in White Mountain Estates.
It's very isolated.
There's not anything in walking distance
[Zac] The terrain around here is rough.
If you look out our back window, you got mountains.
We're just in the middle of nowhere, kind of.
Zac and I met in 2006, and got married in 2009.
We had kids first. Kole and Cody.
[Zac] Before that, I had Cain and Karlie,
I was married to their mother, Lindsay,
and we separated when Karlie was three, Cain was seven.
[Greg] At the time Zac and Melissa met,
Zac's two children were living with Lindsay in Nevada.
[Zac] Right around the time that Melissa and I got married,
Cain and Karlie came to live with us full-time.
So we have Cain, Karlie, Kole, and Cody. [laughs]
[Zac] I remember them laughing and playing together.
Karlie was just happy.
She liked being at home, hanging out with us.
[Greg] It's a packed house, but it's bursting at the seams with love.
[Zac] It was good to have a family.
We'd found our purpose in life.
We were super busy between sports and school, and holidays, birthdays.
[Tristan] Even though Melissa was their stepmother,
she really loved Karlie and Cain like they were her own.
[Melissa] We were pretty close.
In middle school, she started drill team.
I took her out of town for all of her cheer competitions.
But she also loved her friends,
she always had one best friend at a time
hanging out and coming over, spending the night and her going to their houses.
Typical teenage girl stuff.
My name is Taylor McCormick,
and I was one of Karlie's best friends.
The first time I met Karlie, I was in a new school,
Karlie approached me and was super friendly,
and she was just like, "Hi, I'm Karlie."
And ever since, we've been really close.
My name is Kimberley McCormick,
I am Taylor's mom,
and one of Melissa and Zac's good friends.
Karlie was a bright light, and she was just always pleasant to have around.
It's really hard to describe someone but like, she was a funny person.
She was crazy, but a good crazy.
[Kimberley] They were just really, really close.
And when Karlie got a boyfriend,
that's when the separation began.
Karlie started dating Donald.
[Greg] The two teens met while attending Bishop High School,
when Karlie was a 16-year-old sophomore, and Donald was a junior.
[Taylor] I only hung out with Donald a couple times,
but I know that him and Karlie were hanging out more as friends.
And then it escalated to a boyfriend.
[Melissa] Like any other girl,
the boyfriend is the main focus.
It was mostly just Karlie and Donald hanging out.
You could tell it was definitely teenage love for those two.
Friday the 12th was your typical day for our family.
It was close to Halloween so we were all gearing up
for our annual trick-or-treat that night at the Bishop City Park.
[Tristan] At sundown, Karlie called Melissa
asking if she could go to the football game with Donald.
A football game on a Friday night
is very typical for people to do there in Bishop.
[Melissa] She said she had a ride from Donald,
and I said, "Okay, great, no problem."
So, I left and headed home.
[indistinct conversation on police radio]
When I was pulling into the house,
I got a call from Karlie.
She was frantic,
and wanting to be picked up right away.
I drove really fast to get back,
and she wouldn't let me hang up the phone.
She said she was going to the football game,
but I didn't hear drums in the background from the band
or people cheering,
so I knew she wasn't where she said she was.
I get to town and I said, "Where are you, Karlie?"
She said, "I'm running down Dixon."
So, I turn on Dixon Lane, and Karlie's right there.
She had her flashlight on, and she was running down the road,
frantic, white as a ghost,
I then climbed in the backseat with her,
and just hugged her and held her and said, you know, like, "What's going on?"
And she's like, "I just wanna go home, I'm really scared,
I didn't go to the football game."
And then she told me that she had smoked weed
at a friend's house with Donald.
Melissa is upset that Karlie lied to her,
and is not sure what to make of her erratic behavior on the ride home.
[Melissa] She was very paranoid the whole drive home.
She was screaming at me at one point to slow down
because I was driving too fast and that the car was gonna kill her.
We finally got home, came into the house.
[Zac] When I first saw Karlie,
she was in the corner of the kitchen, paranoid.
I actually heard her say "Who is that?"
And Melissa saying, "That's your dad, silly."
I asked her what she had taken, she said, "Smoked pot."
But there was no emergency signs with Karlie, just the paranoia.
I wasn't worried about her nodding out or any of that.
[Tristan] After a few hours, Melissa took Karlie into her room
and laid down with her.
[Melissa] I was just hoping that she would just go to bed,
sleep it off, and that the next day,
if there was still something wrong,
we could take her to the doctor or whatever needed to be done.
I went to check on them, to make sure they're okay. They were in the bedroom.
Melissa was comforting her, hanging out with her.
And at that point, I went to bed.
[Melissa] Around 5:45, Karlie was still sitting next to me,
just doodling, writing on a piece of paper.
She had more calmed down at that point.
And 6:00 a.m., I just dozed off.
And then, around 7:15 a.m., I woke up...
and she was not next to me.
I got up out of bed in a panic, looked in all the rooms,
out in the backyard.
I went over to our bedroom and Zac was still in bed,
and I said, "Karlie's gone." And he's like, "What?"
I immediately said "Check the boys' room."
'Cause she would sleep with them here and there,
and the boys would sleep with her.
And she wasn't.
[Melissa] I immediately grabbed my keys and I got in my car,
started searching around.
[Zac] And that's when I called her cell phone.
[cell phone vibrating]
Saw that her phone was in the same spot
I saw her put it down on, the night before.
At that point, I started panicking.
I drove up to the highest point
and I started looking in the whole valley
to see if I could see her walking out in the desert.
Something. Anything. Anywhere.
[Melissa] After searching for two hours,
I see our neighbor from down the street,
and I said, "Hey, did you happen to see a teenage girl walking around this morning?"
He said, "Yeah!
She was walking down the street,
and she was headed south."
At that point, we called the police.
[Jason] My name is Jason Pelichowski,
and I'm lead investigator for the Karlie Guse disappearance.
Upon receiving the 911 call,
we sent a deputy to the Guse residence.
It's pretty common to have a teenager
either be upset with mom and dad
or leave the house to go hang out with friends.
So, initially, it seemed like a voluntary runaway situation.
But Melissa explains to the deputy
that she's already contacted all of Karlie's friends,
and no one has seen or heard from her.
[Melissa] And I even called Donald, her boyfriend,
and asked if Karlie was with him,
and he said, "No, she's supposed to be with you."
And I said, "Well, I can't find her."
And he instantly started to panic as well.
[Jason] Melissa told us that Karlie had smoked marijuana the night before
and she went into quite a bit of detail regarding Karlie's behavior
leading up to her disappearance.
And she expressed over and over and over again that Karlie did not run away,
and the deputy noted that Melissa was extremely worried.
[Melissa] At that point,
I told the officer that I had made a audio recording of Karlie
from the night before to show her as an example of why we shouldn't do drugs.
[Tristan] The Guses only offered up the secret audio recording
because they wanted to show the deputy
this isn't just your typical teenage runaway case.
There's something terribly wrong.
[Zac] Never seen behavior like this from her before.
Something was scaring the hell out of her.
The responding deputy received information from Melissa
that the next door neighbor may have seen Karlie around 6:30 that morning.
The deputy went and got information from the next door neighbor.
[Richard] Probably about 6:30, 7:00,
I looked out towards the street, and I thought,
"That's unusual, there's a young girl walking by."
She had long, kind of long, brown hair.
And she was waving a piece of paper.
And she had a white top and grey bottoms or something, but she had clothes on.
[Jason] The description of what the female had been wearing was different
from what Melissa reported.
The inconsistency was noted by law enforcement.
[Ingrid] My name is Ingrid Braun,
and I'm the sheriff of Mono County.
[cell phone vibrating]
[Ingrid] We looked at her cell phone, her computer,
everything that could potentially have information
as to where she might have gone.
But there was nothing.
Maybe whatever she ingested that night is having some effects.
And maybe she's out in the sagebrush
where a lot of people get lost.
[Jason] Early in the afternoon,
we started a large search effort in the desert area around the neighborhood.
[Melissa] Around here, we get probably like two weeks of fall
and then freezing temperatures.
[Zac] And it could be pretty dangerous, I mean, the rugged terrain.
There's lots of coyotes, mountain lions.
You could be in some big trouble out here.
[Jason] A large amount of people were contacted.
Pretty much everybody that could be was looking for Karlie.
Karlie's boyfriend, Donald, and a friend of his, James, were out searching for Karlie.
And we conducted an interview with them,
and we started to find out more information
about the party that Karlie went to
the night before she disappeared.
[Greg] While speaking to both teens,
they learned that James hosted the party at his parents' house.
[Ingrid] She was partying with her boyfriend and some other friends,
and they said they'd smoked some marijuana.
Donald described Karlie starting to act paranoid.
[Greg] Investigators asked Donald and James
if the marijuana smoked at the party
was laced with another drug.
[Jason] They told us it was just marijuana
and that everybody smoked the same marijuana
and didn't experience the same negative effects.
But without having contact with Karlie, or any sort of drug test,
we did not know specifically what she had taken
or if she was under the influence of alcohol or drugs like methamphetamine.
After the party,
James gave Donald and Karlie a ride back to Donald's residence.
Once they arrived, Karlie continued to get increasingly paranoid.
And she ran away from Donald,
and that's when we believe she called Melissa to get a ride home.
Deputies then asked the two teens where they were and what they were doing
from the time Karlie was picked up to the time she was reported missing.
[Jason] James said he went back to his residence where the party was located,
and stayed at home all night long.
Donald said that after Karlie disappeared from him,
he went to sleep and then he woke up from a text from Melissa
asking if he knew where Karlie was.
[Greg] When deputies pushed them about where they got the marijuana,
both Donald and James are tight-lipped.
[Tristan] I think law enforcement were wondering
if they were really telling the truth.
If the marijuana wasn't laced,
why couldn't Donald and James provide where they got it from?
[Jason] Donald and James accompanied us
to the residence where the party occurred.
I went inside, retrieved the smoking device and marijuana for testing.
While they're there, law enforcement also obtained video from the doorbell cam.
We were able to obtain home surveillance footage from the residence
where the party took place on October 12.
The first video we have is a video of Donald, Karlie, and James
arriving to the house at approximately 6:04
according to the time stamp on the video.
So they arrive in a dark-colored sedan,
and walk into the residence using the front door.
She's calm. Seems happy to be there,
seems to be interacting with Donald normally.
The second video we have
is the same camera with the timestamp of 8:00 p.m.,
it shows the same three individuals, Karlie, Donald, and James
exiting the front door and getting in the sedan to leave the party.
Karlie is walking first, not necessarily following Donald.
But other than that, she was able to walk on her own,
it wasn't like she was carried out of the residence or anything.
The video doorbell footage corroborates Donald and James' story.
Specifically the timeline of the events that happened at that party.
[Jason] Donald informed us
that he left the party with Karlie right around 8:00 that evening.
After Melissa picked up Karlie,
he attempted to call Karlie several times,
sent her text messages asking if she was okay, and then he went to sleep.
Donald's father confirmed that he was home all night
and did get up in the morning to go search for Karlie.
As the sun's going down, the mood starts to change.
We didn't find her wandering in the desert,
we didn't find her at a friend's house.
She never made contact with anybody.
All the circumstances put together, we said, "Okay, this is weird."
We decided that we needed to come back in the morning at daylight
and start all over again.
After a long day, not knowing where she is, no word,
that's when I decided to hit social media and do a Facebook Live video.
[exhales] Karlie Lain Guse
is missing still,
[sniffles] she's been missing since-- [exhales] Breathe.
She's been missing since 6:30 a.m.
I just wanted to get the word out and make it spread like wildfire.
You know, social media, everybody's on it.
This was last year's picture. She's a little bit different, but not much.
So [sighs] I'm putting it out there,
and just go for it, everybody, help me out here.
Thank you.
That night, we didn't sleep at all.
We just stayed up hoping that she'd be home the next day.
[Melissa] It's Sunday, October 14.
It's officially 24 hours.
At first light, Mono County Sheriff's Department
ratchets up the intensity of the search.
Multiple agencies including the FBI
show up to assist in the search
that has expanded to a 10-mile radius
from the White Mountain Estates.
We spread out from all directions from where she could have gone
and looked all over for her.
We had horses, had dogs, flew helicopters.
It was expansive search.
[Zac] I called Lindsay and told her that Karlie was gone.
And she came to help search.
Our relationships with Lindsay was great all the way up until the day Karlie went missing.
She had told me that the FBI and the Sheriffs had come and talked to her.
She was extremely worried and very distraught while searching for Karlie.
Lots of people came out to help and search.
You had random volunteers, you had my friends,
you had Karlie's mom and friends.
[Jason] I came into contact with some of Karlie's friends that were searching.
Some friends said that they had seen a recent change in Karlie.
When she got with Donald, I definitely saw a increase in her marijuana smoking.
After that, Karlie showed a little bit of signs of depression.
I told one of the detectives that Karlie had behavioral changes.
And getting worse grades in school.
[Taylor] She was actually in CDS,
which is basically a building on school campus
that's for kids that have been in trouble for fights,
or for drugs.
And she was in CDS for being high in class.
[Greg] Karlie's friends also put a new spin on the party
that the 16-year-old attended
hours before she disappeared.
I've heard that at that house, you could smoke a lot of pot
and you could potentially do other things.
So I think that it's very possible that she smoked something else
that made her how she was.
While law enforcement notes the concern,
the test results show no evidence the marijuana and associated paraphernalia
was laced with another drug.
And Karlie doesn't have a history of mental health issues.
And at this point, investigators don't believe
Donald or James had anything to do with Karlie's disappearance.
The intensified search does produce something concrete.
A second eyewitness.
[Melissa] This is an update.
I just had a neighbor call me and inform me that he saw her yesterday morning
walking down the road towards Highway 6.
[Brad] I'm Special Agent Brad Bilderback with the FBI.
A second eyewitness reported that the day Karlie went missing,
he was in front of his house loading his truck
and he saw a young girl matching Karlie's description.
They made eye contact and she continued walking down towards the mailboxes
until she was out of his view.
And just like the first eyewitness,
he said she was wearing a white t-shirt,
grey sweatpants,
and that she was holding a white piece of paper in her hand.
[Greg] Then a third person comes forward claiming to have seen Karlie.
But beyond the borders of White Mountain Estates.
[Jason] This person said he saw a female
standing on the east side of the highway
around the intersection of White Mountain Estates Road.
Somewhere between 7:15 and 7:20, if true,
it appeared that Karlie walked south away from her home
and all the way up to Highway 6.
At that point, tracking dogs were dispatched out to that area.
So Karlie came walking down White Mountain Estates Road.
As you see, we're close to Highway 6,
and the tracking dogs lost scent of Karlie in this area.
What we believe, instead of going right to the highway,
she turned here into the sagebrush.
[Jason] A theory that we're operating on
based on all three witnesses and statements
is that Karlie walked away from the house voluntarily and walked to that location.
Now, what occurred after getting to that location?
We don't know.
Or was this an abduction?
When you have the disappearance of a child,
sex trafficking is always a concern.
Sex trafficking is using somebody for the purpose of making money off them
working or having sex with somebody,
and maybe she was picked up for that purpose.
[Zac] "It's possible that Karlie had got into a car with somebody she didn't know,"
is the worst case scenario.
Thinking about that was absolute horror for me, and terror.
[sniffling]
[cries]
[sighs wearily]
Abduction is a possibility.
Highway 6 is kind of a trucking route.
[Brad] If you go south, it links up with 395
and and continues to Southern California.
If you go north on Highway 6, it leads you up into the state of Nevada.
And so, it can lead anywhere.
[Melissa] I have no idea where she could be right now.
Appreciate all your support,
but I'm really worried because of how long it really has been.
[sniffles] Never thought this would ever happen to us.
[Greg] After heavily combing the 10 square miles surrounding the Guse's home,
and with the thought of an abduction weighing on everyone's mind,
The search for Karlie Guse is suspended.
[Jason] Karlie had vanished without so much as a trace.
At that point, we transitioned into more of a strictly investigative role.
[Tristan] Shortly after law enforcement
shifted the focus of their investigation,
Melissa and Zac were contacted by Dateline
to do an online story.
[Melissa] Dateline wanted to do an interview with us,
and the Sheriffs told us to not actually do any interviews
and to give out any information.
But instead of saying no,
[clears throat] I said, "Yeah, sure, whatever to bring more awareness."
[Tristan] But during the interview,
Melissa's description of the timeline
is inconsistent with what she was telling investigators.
At first she said that she fell asleep beside Karlie in Karlie's room,
but when talking to the reporter with Dateline,
Melissa said that she fell asleep in her own room
and then went to go check on Karlie in her room.
And that's when she noticed Karlie was gone.
Not only do Melissa's followers on social media notice the inconsistency,
but so do law enforcement.
They begin to think that Melissa may have had something to do
with Karlie's disappearance.
[Melissa] I wish I would have never even done the interview with them
because it was still an open investigation.
I started the lie because they didn't want to give out any information
that might deter the investigation.
And I even called the reporter who had done our interview and asked her to redact it,
and told her blatantly that I had lied.
And that was when I started to receive a lot of backlash
from random people, strangers, accusing me of doing harmful things to her,
and that I killed her and I buried her,
and that she's missing because of me.
Law enforcement was contacted
about Melissa's Facebook Live videos
that really raised red flags for some of the viewers.
I wanna put this on blast because I don't think she's out in the desert.
Why would she say that unless she knew where Karlie was really was?
She left in her jeans and a t-shirt.
An inconsistency that was pointed out online
is that what Karlie was seen wearing
by the witnesses is different than what Melissa reported Karlie was wearing.
But is it an inconsistency?
We were given a hard time about not knowing what she had on
when I didn't even see her leave.
So how would I even know?
The online attacks weren't just limited to strangers.
Karlie's biological mother, Lindsay Fairley,
also grew suspicious of Melissa.
Lindsay called me and said, "Do you think it's possible that Melissa just fell asleep
and rolled over and smothered Karlie in her sleep?"
I said, "Absolutely not."
[Tristan] Everyone reacts differently.
This is every parent's worst nightmare.
And so Lindsay began telling people on social media about her suspicions.
It was pretty much her screaming at me through social media saying,
"What about the eight-minute audio that you did of my daughter?"
So that's when everybody started to say, "Melissa recorded Karlie?
Why didn't she release the audio on Facebook Live on the first day?"
[Tristan] The audio has never been publicly released,
but now the Guse family has given People Magazine
exclusive access to the audio recording.
[Melissa] My name is Melissa Guse,
my daughter, Karlie, is still missing.
[sniffles] I know everybody has so many questions.
"Why did she leave? Where did she go? What's wrong?"
I'm just concerned that she's just gone.
[Greg] With the flood of accusations coming in about Zac and Melissa,
it doesn't take long for the couple to find themselves
at the center of the investigation.
[Ingrid] Zac and Melissa Guse's house was searched,
and we did a forensic search of everything.
[Zac] The investigators asked for our phones,
and then they asked for all of Karlie's things.
And I had to turn over the audio recording.
Zac and Melissa are questioned and polygraphed by the FBI numerous times.
We analyzed phones of Melissa, of Zac, of Karlie,
and we also analyzed a laptop.
It was kind of shared in the Guse home.
Law enforcement also analyzed the cell phone data from Zac and Melissa
to see if they truly were in the area they claimed to be searching for Karlie.
After checking those areas, we were able to corroborate everyone's stories
on what happened the night before
and the morning of her disappearance.
Then, in March of 2019, five months after Karlie's disappearance,
Dr. Phil invited Zac and Melissa to appear on his show.
[narrator] Today, on an all new Dr. Phil...
[Melissa] We were really happy because millions of people watch the show.
We wanted to do something
and you thought it was the right avenue to get the word out there.
Karlie's mother, Lindsay, was gonna be there
and we said yes to it
as long as we're not on the same stage with her.
'Cause I wasn't gonna listen to her lie to everybody about us.
-I received a phone call at 9:35 a.m. from Zac... -[Dr. Phil] Mmm-hmm.
...and his response was "Lindsay, Karlie's gone."
What did you think "gone" meant?
Dead. I mean, that's a big word.
[Tristan] Lindsay thinks that Karlie had an adverse reaction to the marijuana
and that she might have died and Zac and Melissa may have had to dispose of her body.
Then Lindsay brings up the recording.
[Dr. Phil] Did you hear the audio?
I heard part of it.
She had asked them to call 911.
No, she was not asking me to call 911.
She was asking if something were to happen,
would I call 911?
And I told her, "Absolutely. Yes."
[Tristan] Since Zac and Melissa refused to release
the eight-minute audio recording to the public,
many people thought that they were hiding something.
Once people watched the Dr. Phil show, it got really ugly.
Everybody started attacking us.
[Melissa] I had people calling me saying I'm horrible,
and that I did something to Karlie, and at one point, somebody was stalking us
and taking pictures of our house
and posting them online.
[sniffles] It was horrible. [chuckles softly]
[Zac] Yeah.
[Ingrid] People said terrible things,
but they don't know anything about this investigation or these people.
And it just pours salt in an open wound.
The Guses are worried, upset, concerned, devastated parents.
There's nothing about them that makes me say, "Okay, they did something."
Nothing.
[Tristan] The Guses are looking to dispel the rumors
that they had anything to do with Karlie's disappearance
once and for all.
The Guse family has given People Magazine
exclusive access to the audio recording.
This is the first time Zac and Melissa are allowing the public to hear
what Karlie was saying that night.
This is the audio of Karlie,
and it's in my pocket, so it's kind of loud and scuffly.
[sniffles]
I didn't want to release the audio of Karlie 'cause that's not her.
That's not what she sounds like.
It's what she sounded like that night.
I hope that people will hear the audio,
and maybe actually know that we're good people.
And we have a great family. [sniffles]
We just want Karlie back.
[Greg] On the one-year anniversary of Karlie's disappearance,
the Mono County Sheriff's Office and FBI hold a press conference
to let the family speak and to assure the public that the case is still active.
Karlie, if this gets to you,
I want you to know that we love you so very much...
[crying] I miss you.
Miss you more than words can even ever say.
At that point, I was hopeful somebody's gonna see her.
[exhales] Please come home.
Although the press conference is emotionally gripping,
it does little for the investigation.
And time begins to pass swiftly,
providing no further clues as to what happened to Karlie.
I spoke to some of Karlie's closest friends,
and they say they are not giving up hope even after a year.
People around town still talk about Karlie's disappearance,
and there are still posters around the community.
But the efforts to actually find Karlie died down.
[Taylor] Eventually the posters out in Bishop sun-rotted,
and Karlie basically was just like on the backburner for a lot of people.
[Brad] I've worked on missing persons cases before,
but this is by far
the most frustrating case I've worked on in 18 years.
Um, just lack of evidence,
lack of someone coming forward other than our three eyewitnesses
to give us clues on what might have happened to Karlie.
[Greg] Then in the spring of 2021,
law enforcement receives their first major lead in years.
[Jason] The Mono County Sheriff's Office received a phone call from somebody
who wanted to provide information
and stated they know what happened to Karlie.
[Jason] The Mono County Sheriff's Office dispatch center a phone call.
This person provided us information that suggested
Karlie was picked up on Highway 6.
Transported to the area of Tonopah, Nevada.
[Ingrid] The tip we got is that Karlie had been seen
partying with a group of people
and something had happened to her.
[Greg] Investigators and family wonder why Karlie would go to Tonopah.
Tonopah's not a big city, it's a mining town in Nevada.
There's not a lot out there.
Somebody driving through would pass by pretty quickly.
But if she got in car or a truck,
if someone known to her or not known to her, willingly or unwillingly,
Tonopah's one of the first places you're gonna get to
if you're headed in that direction from this area.
If something did happen to her there,
she would be in another state across state lines,
it makes it a lot harder.
Then that's where the FBI comes in.
[Brad] This tip did seem legitimate enough
to get a full accounting
of what this person saw or heard.
And during their interview, this person said that they'd had knowledge of this incident
and they were feeling guilty about it,
and that they finally wanted to share it with law enforcement.
[Zac] This person said that they called in the tip
two and a half years after Karlie went missing
because they were involved in drugs.
And recently got sober.
[Greg] The tipster doesn't know why
Karlie was partying in Tonopah after she was reported missing,
but he does provide investigators with a make and model of the vehicle
that transported her there.
And a rough idea of where it could be found.
Based on the information that had to provide, we located a vehicle.
[Brad] We took the vehicle from its location in Tonopah,
and transported it to Reno, Nevada,
to process that vehicle for possible evidence.
They collected numerous items,
and that evidence was sent to a lab to be processed.
We're currently waiting on a forensic laboratory to test those items
and give us the results.
[Brad] There is a person of interest that's linked to this vehicle,
but the details of that, I can't speak about as of now because it's still active.
But the tip that came from Tonopah
is the most promising lead we have right now on Karlie.
I think law enforcement is closer than ever
to finding out what really happened to Karlie Guse that morning.
To solve this case, we need help from the public.
There's still Karlie flyers in Tonopah,
so she's certainly known to people there.
And if there are people who know what happened,
and we need those people to come forward
because there's a family that's missing their daughter.
We'll continue to work until we get answers of where Karlie has gone
or until we can find Karlie.
[Greg] Nearly three years after Karlie's disappearance,
her classmates are ready to graduate.
But the memory of her
still weighs heavily on everyone's hearts.
[Kimberley] I remember Melissa texting me the day of Graduation,
and said that they had requested Karlie's name
to be read after Taylor's.
[voice shaking] I didn't know that.
[chuckles softly]
And then, Melissa and Zac showed up.
So after Taylor's name was read, we waited.
-[people cheering] -[woman] Love you, Karlie!
They read Karlie's name, and she got her diploma.
It was very special.
Very special.
[Taylor] I don't wanna go my whole life, not knowing where my friend is.
She has missed everything.
It's been extremely difficult navigating the different ways you have to deal with this.
There's no handbook for it.
It becomes a new normal.
[Melissa] We continue every day to be hopeful
that we are gonna get some information as to where she is.
The not knowing is the hardest part of this.
Karlie's an amazing person who loved to laugh
and take care of people and be there for them.
When she smiles, everybody notices.
[sniffles]
[voice shaking] I'll always remember her that way.
I hope she comes home.