For Jeff to get into a position where he was fearful,
there would have to be something very serious.
[man] How did a simple hunting expedition
turn into something so tragic and violent?
The person that killed him knew him.
Isn't that right?
[woman] I don't understand why he waited that late to call.
That's concerning to me.
Like Jeff stumbled upon
something somebody had going on in the woods.
This case has been a riddle from the onset.
It was horrible.
I was so scared for Marshal.
Every kind of scenario that we think about,
it all comes back to the truck
and the chaos that was there.
[Mike] You can't plug this area into a GPS.
It would have to be somebody with local knowledge.
It's crazy to our family because all the signs,
especially the truck in itself,
are pointing to something serious.
[narrator] September 23, 2012, in the remote wilderness of Wilkes County, Georgia,
a young man turns up dead on a hunting trip
and his devastated family is left with many questions,
but no answers.
The officer was just beating around the bush about it.
And I said, "Tell us what has happened."
[Marcia] And then he told us that Jeff was gone.
It's a day that I will never forget.
[Jason] I remember screaming out on the phone
and I just started bawling, crying, screaming.
[narrator] 35-year-old Jeff Gebhardt is known for his kind spirit
and love of the outdoors.
We had a great childhood together.
We were best friends.
We played all kinds of sports together.
Baseball, football.
Jeff was a very friendly person.
He liked to talk with people.
He was just an outgoing person.
Pooh Bear was his nickname,
and he was my Pooh. [chuckles]
I always told him he was my baby.
[narrator] In 2012, Jeff is living with his parents
in the small town of Blairsville, Georgia,
working as a butcher at a local meatpacking plant
and studying computer science.
Jeffrey and I were very close and we used to always have,
you know, talks in the evening,
and he told me that he was the happiest he had been
since he had moved back home.
I think he had found his place.
[narrator] In late September 2012,
Jeff is invited to go on a hunting trip
with his friend David Smith,
a former coworker at the meatpacking plant.
They had planned to go catching alligators to begin with,
but that didn't work out
so they went on this trip of hunting deer.
Jeff was an avid hunter. He enjoyed it.
I think he enjoyed it more for the brotherhood
or the communal part of it.
[narrator] September 21st,
a day after arriving at the Clarks Hill Wildlife Area,
the two men head into the woods in search of deer.
They split up to hunt in different places,
but plan to reconnect at dark.
As the sun sets, Jeff gets lost
and he calls David for help.
Jeffrey called and said that he couldn't find the campsite,
and David asked him to shoot his weapon.
So he did one shot...
[gun firing]
David did hear the shot,
but some other hunters were driving by.
They picked him up and then dropped him back off
close to the campsite.
[narrator] The next day, September 22nd, around 4:00 p.m.,
Jeff and David make their way back into the forest.
And once again the end up kind of splitting up,
going their separate ways.
And I texted with Jeff and he said they still hadn't seen any deer,
and they were just gonna hunt on the other side of the road that evening.
[narrator] It's the last text Jason will ever receive from his brother.
As darkness begins to fall,
Jeff gets turn around again
trying to make his way out of the woods.
From look at maps and the phone calls,
it looks like he walked the wrong way.
180 degrees towards the lake.
[narrator] David's in his truck
giving some hunters a lift to their car
when he sees he has a voicemail from Jeff.
He plays it on speakerphone.
[Charla] And according to this other hunter,
Jeffrey was speaking very loudly
like he was trying to shout to be heard.
[narrator] Between 7:59 and 8:24 p.m.,
Jeff makes five calls to David.
He tells him he's lost and asks him to honk his horn.
Then Jeff fires his rifle into the air
like he did the night before
to try to help pinpoint his location.
[gun firing]
[narrator] Two shots ring out.
[gun firing]
David heard the two shots
and those shots were witnessed by other hunters
who said that, yes, they also heard those shots.
[narrator] David guesses Jeff is no more than 500 yards away.
For an experienced hunter like Jeff,
his loved ones say that's an easy walk in the woods.
For Jeff to get into a position
where he was fearful of something
or something was panicking him,
there would have to be something seriously happening.
I don't know what it would be
because I've never heard him get that way.
[narrator] By 8:30 p.m., Jeff's phone calls stop.
David alerts other hunters that his friend is missing,
and drives his truck near where he knows Jeff enters the forest,
honking his horn.
But he stays inside his vehicle the whole time,
which later will puzzle Jeff's loved ones.
[Marcia] I don't know why David didn't pursue
and go into the woods to help find Jeff
if he was that close.
That's concerning to me.
[narrator] At 10:24 p.m.,
two hours after he last hears from Jeff,
- David calls 911. -[phone ringing]
[narrator] By 11:00 p.m.,
two deputies from the Wilkes County sheriff's department
are on the scene.
At midnight a helicopter is called in,
armed with an infrared heat locating camera.
After two hours of searching,
they spot a human form in the area where Jeff is believed to be.
A search-and-rescue party races on foot to the location.
At 3:00 a.m., they make a grisly discovery.
Jeff Gebhardt is lying bloodied in the tall grass.
He's dead.
[Charla] After Jeffrey's body has been located,
they see his body is laid on its back.
He has his hands up on his chest.
His ghillie suit is unzipped and his T-shirt is bloody.
The injuries that he had sustained
kind of defy all explanations,
and people are wondering at that point,
"How did a simple hunting expedition
turn into something so tragic and violent?"
[narrator] Shockingly, Jeff has been viciously stabbed to death.
He had approximately 17 stab wounds to the chest
of varying depths.
He had an injury cut that was a jagged cut
to the webbing on the inside of his hand.
He had a small bruise depression on his head
and other various bruises on his legs
and some scrapes on either side of his neck.
When I found out that Jeff's cause of death was
multiple stab wounds to the chest,
I was expecting to hear
that they had somebody in custody immediately.
[narrator] Police scramble to piece together what little they know
and immediately focus their attention
on Jeff's hunting partner David Smith.
He's first interviewed by deputies on the scene at 6:00 a.m.
[narrator] David tells police
about his last hectic phone calls with Jeff.
[David Smith speaking]
[narrator] Police photograph David's hands for any sign of a struggle,
and collect his belongings,
including a knife.
They get a warrant to search the camper
where David and Jeff are staying,
looking for any sign of foul play.
Later that day, deputies bring David into the station for further questioning,
and they leave little doubt
about what they think happened to Jeff Gebhardt.
[narrator] What really happened in those remote woods?
The investigation is about to take a stunning turn.
I've been in the business 47 years
and this is the first time
I've ever seen anything like that.
[narrator] A day after Jeff Gebhardt is found brutally stabbed to death,
an autopsy reveals three of the deepest knife wounds he sustained
penetrated his heart, killing him quickly.
With three knife wounds in the heart,
we're probably only talking minutes
to lose the amount of blood that he would have lost
and, of course, passing out from the wounds.
[narrator] It's a brutal violent death.
Jeff's friend and hunting partner David Smith
is the last known person to see Jeff alive,
and investigators push him for answers.
[narrator] Is it possible Jeff is the victim of a robbery gone wrong?
Investigators quickly rule out that theory
when they find all his belongings scattered near where he died,
including his rifle, backpack and wallet with money in it.
[narrator] Jeff's loved ones are convinced
David Smith knows more than he's saying.
I said to him at the funeral,
I said, "David, I would like to sit down and talk to you
and just about how Jeff was, you know,
before all this happened."
And he really didn't respond to me then
and we heard nothing.
[narrator] In the days after Jeff's death,
investigators send the clothing and knife
they collected from David Smith to the lab for testing.
It's a dead-end.
All of these items were tested for the presence of blood,
and there was the presence of blood on the knife,
but it was non-human
and there was no blood found on any of his clothing.
[narrator] Investigators intensify their search.
At the crime scene,
they hone in on a set of footprints in the mud
winding along the banks of the dried out lake
where Jeff's body is found.
Every footprint they find is a match for Jeff Gebhardt.
[Charla] And given the terrain and how muddy the area was
and how tall the grasses were,
it would be almost impossible for another person to be
in the area with Jeffrey and to go undetected.
[narrator] Within weeks investigators are stumped
and the case goes quiet.
Then in November 2012,
there's a stunning development.
The Wilkes County coroner concludes the manner of death isn't actually homicide.
It's suicide.
[Pete] Suicide?
That was ridiculous.
Ridiculous to find out that they ruled suicide
with 17 stab wounds to the chest.
I couldn't believe that him or anybody
could stab themselves that many times in the heart.
Especially when he had a gun there.
If he was gonna do a suicide,
there was a much quicker way of doing it.
It was just unbelievable then and now.
I think it would be ultimately impossible
to stick a knife in your chest to your heart
not three, even one time.
I think it would be impossible.
[narrator] But one cold case investigation concludes
the physical evidence shows
Jeff Gebhardt's brutal stabbing is self-inflicted.
The trajectory of the stab wounds
and the angles of impact
were all in one particular direction,
which was a direction
that Jeffrey would have been able to easily create
with his own right hand
[narrator] None of it adds up for Jeff's loved ones.
They believe the crime scene is riddled with question marks
starting with the knife that investigators say
Jeff used to kill himself.
It's found underneath his body.
[Jason] It's a locking blade knife and it was half-closed.
And I don't see that when he was dying
he stabbed himself in the heart
and then he's gonna take the knife
and then use one hand to move the little button
and then halfway close the blade
and then set that on the ground
and then lie down on top of it.
I just don't believe that.
[Pete] You're gonna stab yourself 17 times in the chest,
then kind of close the blade
then lay on the blade
and have a peaceful journey into the next life?
[narrator] For Jeff's family,
the unusual positioning of his body
also raises questions.
He was laying like he had laid down
and then folded his arms across his chest.
And that just doesn't seem natural for how they said he died.
I doubt that's how he fell down.
You'd think if someone was stabbed in the chest 17 times,
they would have first fell to their knees.
Maybe fallen straight forward.
Their legs would be cocked in some position.
None of that happened.
[narrator] The autopsy also raises the chilling possibility
that more than one knife may be involved.
The autopsy report showed that the majority of the wounds
was with a smooth edge knife.
The hand wound was a serrated knife in the right hand.
Jeffrey was right-handed.
He wouldn't change hands and cut himself.
Why would anyone do that?
[narrator] But when the results of lab tests on Jeff's knife
turn up no signs of anyone else's DNA,
investigators say it eliminates the possibility of murder,
though Jeff's mother is skeptical.
Just because there was no DNA found from somebody else,
no, it does not convince me
because I know that you can wipe things off
to make it where that's not going to be found.
[narrator] Eleven months after Jeff's death,
a Wilkes County grand jury convenes to examine the findings of the coroner
and to decide whether to close the investigation for good.
It takes only two days for the grand jury
to vote to affirm that Jeff died by suicide.
It's a devastating setback for Jeff's loved ones.
Once the case was ruled a suicide,
it was in essence closed.
The local sheriff, you know, has moved on.
There was just no real investigation done
into the possibilities of what happened here.
We did talk to the coroner that did the autopsy
and that's when he stated to us over the phone
that if they found out more evidence
then he would change it from a suicide to a homicide.
[narrator] In 2013, a year after Jeff's death,
forensic experts and student volunteers with
the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute
get in touch with Jeff's frustrated family.
[Lewis] They approached us.
They'd heard about the case.
They had questions about themselves.
[narrator] The cold case team zeroes in
on the critical question of Jeff's mental health.
I'm a nurse and I've dealt with mental ill patients in the past.
I did not see any evidence
of any mental illness or depression
and I cannot believe because he was lost
that he just decided to take his own life.
[Charla] From what we have been able to locate,
there were no signs or reasons that we would know of
that Jeffrey would want to commit suicide.
[narrator] Did Jeff Gebhardt walk into that forest
and suddenly decide to take his own life?
Or is there another explanation for his brutal death?
A new theory emerges.
Like Jeff stumbled upon something somebody had going on in the woods.
[narrator] The remote wilderness of Wilkes County
where Jeff Gebhardt died
is a known corridor for methadone drug trafficking.
Is it possible as Jeff is desperately trying
to make his way out of the forest,
he suddenly finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Maybe there was a chance he's just stumbled upon something
that he shouldn't have.
When talking to a number of my associates,
it was concluded that he could have stumbled up on a drug deal
and that's how he got killed.
[narrator] In September 2016,
the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute
sends a letter to the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
asking that Jeff Gebhardt's case be reopened.
[Jason] I got a letter from the GBI
telling me that they had done
all they were pretty much gonna do.
We have not heard anything from them.
Since they closed the case that was it.
[narrator] Nearly a decade later,
the Gebhardt family seem convinced
that the mystery of Jeff's final moments alive could be solved
if his friend and hunting partner David Smith
reveals all that he knows.
I think answers to this can come from David Smith.
You know, with what went on.
You know, what was his conversation with Jeff,
you know, on the phone that night.
I don't think we're getting the whole truth out of David.
[phone ringing]
[narrator] We spoke on the phone with David Smith.
He wouldn't discuss the contents of those last phone calls
between himself and Jeff Gebhardt.
When asked if he thought a third person
might have been involved in Jeff's death,
he refused to speak any further.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation tells us
David Smith is no longer a person of interest
and this case is closed.
For Jeff's family and friends,
their long search for answers goes on,
but their lives will never be the same without him.
Losing Jeff has really hurt us.
We've... We were a very close family. Very close.
My other son, they were like twins.
I miss not having his... Jeff not having a family.
I miss his laughter and his kidding.
His kindness.
He was my Pooh bear.
I just miss, you know, spending time with him
and, you know, doing things with him
and having him around my kids.
I'd like to think that, you know,
he probably would have graduated school
and I would have had some nieces and nephews. But...
It's just how the cards were dealt.
[narrator] Pemberton, British Columbia.
A quaint village surrounded by majestic mountains.
But on November 23rd, 2019,
a group of friends trekking through the woods,
stumble upon a haunting scene.
It felt very eerie up there.
It almost felt like someone was watching us.
[reporter] Possessions strewn around
and only a shell of a truck left.
It seemed like it had been severely, severely burnt
to the extent where the wheels had been blown off,
the glass had melted.
I mean, it was almost non-identifiable.
This case has been a riddle from the onset.
[Jeannette] Any missing person's case is frustrating
but this one just has that extra element of mystery
because of that burnt-out vehicle.
[Tammy] It was horrible.
I was so scared for Marshal.
[narrator] Nearly 700 miles from Pemberton,
Marshal Iwaasa grows up in Lethbridge, Alberta.
Lethbridge is about one hour north of the Montana border.
It kind of has a small town feel.
[narrator] Marshal's parents divorce before his first birthday.
Growing up, he's very close to his older sister Paige,
even though they have different personality types.
Paige said that she felt like
in the womb she took all the aggression
and so there was none left for Marshal.
He just has a soft spirit and a quiet spirit.
[Cat] He's funny.
He's got a great laugh.
[Marshal laughing]
All of the kids in our family just absolutely adored him.
He'd always be the fun uncle.
[Kassi] When I think about him now,
I think of, like, a kid on his back,
you know, the kids brushing his hair
'cause he had long hair.
Marshal has always been very adventurous.
His sister would get him to do things
maybe out of his comfort zone
whether it was food or activities,
hiking, watersports.
[narrator] After finishing high school in 2011,
Marshal works a variety of construction and manual labor jobs.
In 2018, 25-year-old Marshal moves to Calgary
to study computer programming
at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.
Manual labor is just harder on your body
and he always did have an interest in computers,
so just thought he would kind of make a career change.
[narrator] On the evening of Sunday, November 17, 2019,
Marshal makes the two-hour drive from Calgary to Lethbridge
to grab some computer parts from his storage unit.
He swings by his mom Tammy's house on the way.
Marshal got to my house around 10:30.
I said, "You know, Mash, I've been having problems with my computer again.
Could you help me?"
And he said, "Sure."
It was around 11:00
and he said that he needed to go.
And I said to him, "Well, why don't you just stay here?"
And he said, "No, I have some things I need to do."
And I walked him down to the door
And I said, "I love you, Mash."
And I hugged him and I kissed him.
And I said goodbye.
[narrator] Nine days later, on November 26th,
Tammy is in Hawaii visiting her daughter Paige
when Paige receives a shocking call from police
that changes their lives forever.
They notified us that Marshal's truck had been found
in Pemberton and...
that it had been burnt.
Tammy and Paige learn that on November 23rd,
a group of hikers came across Marshal's burned out vehicle
in a trail near the Brian Waddington Hut outside of Pemberton
The remote area is around 14 hours from Lethbridge
where Marshal was last seen by Tammy.
I mean, it made no sense that the truck was there.
It made no sense that Marshal would go up there.
[Mike] It's six kilometers up
a very treacherous, steep,
ungroomed cow trail of an RV road.
You can't plug this area into a GPS
and say, you know, take me to the Brian Waddington trailhead.
None of us have reason to believe
that Marshal is familiar with this area at all.
[narrator] Marshal's sister Paige reports him missing.
The family then sees photos that the hikers took of Marshal's truck.
[Kassi] It felt eerie just seeing the pictures.
I couldn't have imagined just coming onto that scene.
The truck had been so badly burnt
that it was hard to identify through the serial number on it.
So, I guess lucky for our family,
Marshal had had some passports
that were thrown out of the vehicle.
[narrator] Various other items are scattered around Marshal's truck,
but Marshal's body is not found at the chaotic scene.
A lot of clothes, toiletry items.
There were multiple cell phones, a laptop,
a cooler, a shell of an Xbox and a PlayStation
that we still don't believe were his.
[narrator] Tammy flies home back to Lethbridge
and is shocked by what she hears
during her first meeting with law enforcement.
They thought Marshal had killed himself.
[narrator] Investigators discover that Marshal is
no longer enrolled in college
and that he didn't tell his family about it.
They tell Tammy that this is a sign
that he may have been depressed,
making suicide a likely explanation
for his disappearance.
Marshal just wasn't ready to tell us.
And it's his right to choose
what he tells people and what he doesn't.
There's many reasons why someone might not go back to school and...
it could just be simply that he just didn't like the program anymore.
How I feel is that
saying that Marshal took his own life
as law enforcement...
you don't have to investigate
because in their mind
Marshal's responsible,
and I don't believe that.
Somebody that wants to commit suicide
usually doesn't drive hundreds and hundreds of miles to do it.
[Cat] After that long of a drive,
you would question if you should go through with something like that.
[narrator] Determined to find answers,
Marshal's family tries to retrace his steps
after leaving Tammy's house on November 17th,
starting with the storage facility where he said he was heading.
[Kassi] You couldn't enter the yard between 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.,
so when he arrived there after 11:00,
he entered his code and was unable to get in.
We were able to see that he had entered his code
multiple times throughout the night,
and then he was able to get access to the yard just after 6:00.
We can also see that he used his code
at 8:24 in the morning to exit the yard.
[Jeannette] And that's the only footprint that Marshal left
since seeing his mother Tammy that evening.
[narrator] Why would Marshal have spent the entire night
trying to get into this storage unit?
When Marshal's family gets access to the storage unit,
they don't notice anything out of the ordinary.
[Kassi] Our family did go to the storage unit
and tried to get security footage.
We were two days late
and the security footage was already erased.
[Tammy] His cousins went to the businesses around the storage area
to see if they may have recordings
and we missed those as well.
So, things were really, really working against us.
[Jeannette] This has been one of the most frustrating pieces of the case
because had that surveillance footage been available,
that there could actually be a lot of answered questions.
Was somebody else there? Did somebody approach him?
Did somebody do something to him
and then take off in his truck with him?
Did he leave on his own?
[narrator] Marshal's family then contacts gas stations
between Lethbridge and Pemberton
to see if they have surveillance footage of Marshal or his truck.
They come up empty-handed again.
On December 4th, 2019,
as snow blankets the region,
police announce they've suspended
their initial search for Marshal.
When we first started this investigation
into looking for Marshal Iwaasa,
the initial search efforts were hampered
by the weather and the terrain up in the mountains.
That was really hard because...
if Marshal was up there,
and you call off the search,
there's no one looking for my son.
[narrator] As the official search for Marshal grows
as cold as a Canadian winter,
his family pursues every potential lead that comes their way.
[Kassi] We have messaged Marshal on Snapchat
and over time, a few of the messages have been opened.
When you have someone that's missing
and six months later you do see that a message has opened,
it does give you hope but then other people say, "Well, it could be a glitch."
[Tammy] That gave me such hope because...
I want to believe
that...
he's out there.
I'm so hopeful
that I'll see Marshal again.
I actually did email Snapchat and they said to us
that they would be able to work with law enforcement,
but, obviously, it would have to come from law enforcement
to request more information.
[narrator] In 2020, Marshal's family starts working
with private investigators and search-and-rescue experts,
including fire investigator Mike Hoffman
and former Lethbridge police officer David Hastie.
That July, with the help of an off-roading club,
Marshal's family and their team make the treacherous drive
to the area where Marshal's truck was torched.
[Kassi] We knew where we were going
and we still got lost on the way.
And these roads were so narrow and so bumpy
and you had to go through creeks.
[David] When we organized the search out there,
I contacted the nearest aboriginal group
and the local people said
that it would have to be somebody with local knowledge
that could get into that area.
It was very unsettling when we got to Marshal's truck.
It was completely unrecognizable.
There was no rubber on the tires.
There was no glass, no paint left on the truck.
There was debris everywhere.
Almost like something was trying to be covered up.
[narrator] David Hastie, the former Lethbridge police officer,
oversees a search mission that covers
a three-mile radius of Marshal's truck.
[David] We took the cadaver dogs up there
because on the off chance that he did drive that vehicle up there himself,
and he did commit suicide in that area,
we wanted to eliminate that.
So, we got Canadian Search and Disaster Dogs Association.
We spent numerous days there eliminating areas
that could easily be walked to from that truck.
[narrator] They find no trace of Marshal in the woods.
In addition to the searches,
the P.I. team and law enforcement conduct fire investigations.
The family was told that a fire investigation had been done
when the truck was initially discovered.
We found out that that simply was not true.
[narrator] Pemberton police perform their fire investigation first
before Mike Hoffman and his team access the scene.
[Mike] When our team arrived at the scene,
we were taken aback by the fact
that the floor pans in the truck
still were intact with the original fire debris.
The reason why that was very troubling to us
was the fact that that investigator left
without the complete picture of what transpired at that fire scene.
He had no idea whether or not there was bullet holes in the floor boards.
He had no idea whether or not there was
human remains potentially in the bottom of that truck
'cause he had not sifted through that debris.
[narrator] Mike's team spends a day and a half
going through the debris,
and they're shocked at what they find.
Right next to the driver's seat
nestled in beside the transmission hub,
we found an open Zippo lighter.
[narrator] Private fire investigator Mike Hoffman concludes
that they cause of Marshal's truck fire was arson.
There were several reasons why
we started to point towards an arson event
and not an actual fire.
One being that the fire did not occur in the engine compartment.
It occurred in the passenger compartment.
Also, the doors were left open on the vehicle,
which is very indicative of an arson event
'cause arsonists want oxygen to get in the vehicle and make it burn rapidly.
We feel we have the smoking gun with the Zippo lighter,
and we feel we have the point of origin low on the vehicle.
[narrator] Mike's report also notes that in addition to Marshal's truck fire,
there were two other fires in bushes at the scene.
Given the fact that we have three distinct fire events,
you can only draw two conclusions.
One is that we had a lightning strike three times at the same location
and we had three fires that resulted.
Or you have set fires.
When the police investigation came back,
it was deemed inconclusive.
So, another very puzzling factor
for this very mysterious case.
I don't understand.
It just seems like there's
a lot of our family getting the runaround.
[narrator] Lethbridge police say they consider
Marshal's disappearance to be suspicious,
but not a criminal matter.
This has always been a suspicious occurrence.
Unfortunately, though, with the evidence and the information
that we're aware of, that's been learned as a part of this investigation,
we don't yet meet the threshold for criminality.
[Jeannette] They're basically saying there's nothing telling them
that any foul play actually occurred.
And so, I think what they're trying to suggest is that
Marshal drove his truck up there of his own volition
and succumbed to the elements
or he went up there to take his own life
and that he did this to his own vehicle.
[Cat] The police have told us
that unless they find a weapon, a body
or a substantial amount of Marshal's DNA or blood somewhere
that it's not going to be moved into criminal.
It's crazy to our family because all the signs,
especially the truck in itself,
are pointing to something serious.
I don't see why it's being prohibited
from motioning forward into that criminal realm.
The main reason that I think that you would burn a vehicle
would be to eliminate evidence in it.
If this whole case were reclassified as criminal,
it would open up more resources to police
to get some of this forensic testing done.
[narrator] The private investigation team
points to another piece of evidence from Marshal's truck
that could suggest foul play.
The steering column was missing.
Why would Marshal strew his belongings around the vehicle,
take the steering column out
and then traipse off into the woods to commit suicide?
Arsonists are trying to cover up evidence,
so that makes a lot of sense to me
that they'd remove the steering wheel
just to remove any sort of possibility
that they could be identified from that.
[Jeannette] This could play out in many different scenarios.
Was Marshal taken in Lethbridge?
Did somebody do something to him in Alberta
and dispose of his body and then drive his car to British Columbia?
Did somebody kidnap him to B.C.
and then do something to him up there?
Could it have been that he was involved in something nefarious?
Marshal would help anyone.
And to think that maybe
he stopped by the side of the road to help someone
and something happened to him...
He could have picked up hitchhikers.
He could have been forced to deliver drugs.
Every kind of scenario that we think about,
it all comes back to the truck
and the chaos that was there.
So, that's where I think it was foul play.
And that is why we have pushed so hard
for the police to take this as a criminal investigation.
[narrator] Both Lethbridge Police Service
and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police declined our interview requests.
Years after Marshal's disappearance,
his family is left with endless unanswered questions,
and an unbearable ache in their hearts.
From the place that Marshal was last seen
to the place where his truck was found,
this might not be a simple from point A to point B situation.
There could be very many twists and turns along the way.
We have the storage unit and we have the truck
and we don't have anything other than that.
If you have any information about Marshal,
I would just beg you to just please come forward
and share it with the family or police
because Marshal deserves it
and our family really needs to know what happened.
[Cat] Every now and then my kids will ask me,
"Are we ever going to find Uncle Marshal?"
And it's hard 'cause we just don't have the answers for that.
When I'm driving and I see someone walking,
I look to see is that Marshal.
I'm holding on to the hope
that we'll find Marshal
because the alternative...
is...
is too painful.