Pod Insights Park Predators The Wilderness About this episode A 26-year-old man from Calgary vanishes after visiting his mother. Days later, his truck is found burned up nearly 14 hours away in the wilds of British Columbia. What happened to Marshal Iwaasa and is his case possibly linked to more strange disappearances?
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Traditional home security only alerts you after a break in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.
0:06 Speaker 01 Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.
0:09 Speaker 00 We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.
0:30 Speaker 02 Hi, park enthusiasts. It's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard. On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
1:10 Speaker 02 Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And buckle up, because the case I'm going to share with you today is one of those stories that will make you question everything you think you know about missing persons cases. It takes place in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, which are both known for having sprawling prairies, mountains, grasslands, and forests that stretch for miles and miles. In late fall 2019, something truly confounding was discovered in the backcountry at the end of a logging road in B.C. that, to this day, remains extremely suspicious. The disappearance of 26-year-old Marshall Iwasa is a case some of you listening might know about.
1:55 Speaker 02 It's been covered on TV programs and many true crime publications in North America. It's a missing persons case that I've received a lot of DMs about over the last few years. And I always knew that I would eventually cover the case on this show, but I wanted to make sure that I did as much digging as I could before presenting it here. Marshall's mother and sister, as well as many of his close friends, have poured everything they have into trying to find him and keeping his case in the public eye. Which is why I'm so thankful his loved ones sat down with me for an interview. I want this platform to lift up cases like Marshall's whenever possible. So, are you ready? Because this is the mysterious story of what happened to a young man
2:40 Speaker 02 with seemingly everything to live for, who vanished off the face of the earth with nothing but a string of suspicious clues in his wake. This is Park Predators.
3:33 Speaker 02 On Tuesday, November 26th, 2019, a woman named Paige Fogan looked at her phone and saw that officers with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Pemberton, British Columbia, were calling her. At the time, Paige and her husband were living in Hawaii, thousands of miles away from Canada. Coincidentally, though, her mom Tammy Johnson happened to be in Hawaii that week visiting. And together, the two of them learned some puzzling news from police. Officers began by asking Paige if she'd spoken with her 26-year-old brother Marshall Iwasa recently. But she told authorities that she hadn't. After answering a few more questions, Paige learned from investigators
4:14 Speaker 02 that some hikers had found Marshall's dark-blue 2009 GMC Sierra pickup truck a few days earlier on Saturday, November 23rd. It was discovered burned up in a remote section of mountains just north of Pemberton, and he was nowhere to be found. Though this news was not what Paige expected to hear, she didn't immediately go into panic mode. She called around to her brother's friends and family members to see if anyone had heard from him, but no one had. His truck being found between 11 and 12 hours away from where he lived in Calgary, Alberta, was unusual, but Paige's mind quickly jumped to a theory that made the most sense to her. You see, she knew that her brother worked in construction at the time, and sometimes he would do jobs on rigs that employers would
4:59 Speaker 02 have to fly their workers to, which often required Marshall to have to leave his truck parked somewhere for extended periods of time. So Paige figured more than likely his truck had just been stolen while he was away from it, and found burned up in the forest because the thief didn't want to get caught. She even thought to herself how pissed her brother was gonna be when he returned from work and discovered his vehicle was gone. But just as a precaution in case that wasn't what was going on, Paige and her mom Tammy filed a missing persons report for Marshall with the Calgary Police, since that was where he was from. The description that went out for him stated that he had brown eyes, a mustache, curly brown hair that went down to about his shoulders, and he weighed 170
5:42 Speaker 02 pounds. He also had several distinct tattoos, and he was last seen wearing a gray beanie, black pants, a green hoodie, and red high-top sneakers.
5:53 Speaker 02 The following day, Tammy got on a flight and jetted straight back to Canada so she could link up with authorities and figure out what exactly was being done to find her son. She and Paige told me during our interview that although investigators had informed them that Marshall's truck was discovered burned up on the 23rd, our CMP resources hadn't been able to get to it until two days later, on November 25th, and that was due to the remote location it was found in. It also wasn't until after Tammy touched down that Marshall's family got the full picture of where his truck was, and just how badly it had been burned.
6:30 Speaker 02 Turns out, it wasn't like his vehicle had pulled off onto some well-traveled mountain road. It was found way off the grid at the end of a logging road several hours into the backcountry. The area was a trailhead for the Brian Waddington Hut, which is the shelter for hikers that can house up to a few dozen people at a time. To get to it, you have to hike about two to three hours from the spot where Marshall's truck was found. And according to some of the coverage I saw, the spot isn't somewhere you would just plug into a GPS and easily navigate to. You would've had to have known where it was to even get out there. And as far as Marshall's family was aware, he had no prior experience driving there or familiarity with the region.
7:12 Speaker 02 And the truck itself was completely destroyed, like, burned, burned. The tires and paint had melted, and the damage was so bad that police were only able to identify it from its VIN number. Scattered on the ground outside the truck, as well as amongst the charred remains, were things like clothing, toiletries, a cooler, a laptop, an Xbox, and a Playstation, passports, and several broken cellphones. Paige and Tammy told me that they later learned the passports belonged to Marshall. One was outdated and the other was current. Despite his family previously telling him that he probably shouldn't store such important documents in his truck, Marshall always did. And all of the cellphones were his, too, but none of them were the device he was currently
7:57 Speaker 02 using. Paige told me that the other phones were old ones that Marshall had tossed in his vehicle after breaking them. Apparently, he had really bad luck when it came to electronics, and he'd go through phones fairly regularly. Anyway, the RCMP spent the next few days collecting the items and searching the remote terrain around the truck with helicopters, divers, and cadaver dogs. But no trace of Marshall turned up. Within a week, cold weather threatened investigators' efforts, and so authorities ended up having to suspend the search. They told Marshall's family they were not planning to remove the truck at that time. It was going to be left out in the open, unsecured, until the weather improved. While those things had been happening in the mountains, investigators in Alberta had
8:41 Speaker 02 been busy trying to piece together Marshall's last-known movements.
8:46 Speaker 02 Tammy told me that throughout this time, she was shocked and confused about what was going on. The last time she'd seen her son was six days before his truck was found, which would have been Sunday, November 17. That night, around 8:00 PM, she said Marshall had left his apartment in Calgary and driven the roughly two-and-a-half-hour drive southeast to where she lived in Lethbridge. He'd arrived around 10:30 PM, and the two of them hung out for about half an hour. They sat at her table and he helped her set up her laptop. And then Marshall said he had to go because he wanted to swing by a storage unit he and Paige shared in Lethbridge. He explained to his mom that he wanted to pick something up there before heading back to Calgary. And by the way, him making this trip to see his mom on Sunday night wasn't strange or
9:31 Speaker 02 spur-of-the-moment. You see, Marshall coming to see Tammy that particular weekend had been something they discussed the previous weekend. She told me that originally she'd wanted to come up to his place on the 9th or 10th, but he told her not to bother because he was actually going to be driving down to Lethbridge the weekend of the 17th. According to Tammy, when Marshall departed her house on Sunday, it was around 11 o'clock at night, and the storage facility he said he was going to swing by was only like 15 or 20 minutes away from her place. According to Marshall's sister Paige, on November 28th, which would have been two days after she and Tammy were made aware that he was missing, and five days after his truck was found, investigators, some of Marshall's friends, and maybe a family
10:16 Speaker 02 member who Paige and Tammy had asked to join police, went to the storage unit in Lethbridge to check things out. Despite the facility having cameras, by the time the police got there, the footage from the night Marshall had gone by had already been erased and overwritten. Paige told me police poked around a little bit at that time, but because they didn't see anything overtly suspicious and because there was no video evidence for them to follow-up on, investigators eventually left. From the outset, authorities admitted that the circumstances of Marshall's disappearance and where his truck was found were suspicious, but they didn't have any evidence indicating he was a victim of foul play. It seems investigators really wanted to determine if perhaps Marshall had chosen
10:59 Speaker 02 to walk away from his life for some reason, or had things going on that had caused him to stop talking to his family. According to Tammy, right out of high school, her son had delayed attending college and instead started working in construction and roofing. After a few years of doing that, he decided higher education was something he did want to pursue. And by 2018, he'd enrolled in classes at a school in Calgary called the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, which is also known by the acronym SAID. He was studying computers and software development, but he always managed to find time to go outdoors. He was also passionate about exercising and spending time doing things like hiking. It seemed like when Marshall wasn't working or attending classes, he'd be in the gym
11:44 Speaker 02 or out on the trail. But when police looked into his school attendance records, they discovered Marshall wasn't actively enrolled in classes for the fall semester in 2019, which to them seemed like an indication that he had quit school but just hadn't told anyone in his family. When authorities spoke with Tammy about this, she said she'd been unaware her son was no longer enrolled at SAID, but she didn't think that putting a pause on his education was as suspicious as police thought it was. She told me that detectives seemed convinced Marshall had intentionally lied to his family about not being in school that fall, with the implication being, at least how Tammy perceived it, that police were hinting to, well, if he could lie about that, what else is he lying about?
12:29 Speaker 02 But Tammy told me she totally understood why her son chose to keep the fact that he wasn't going to continue pursuing school to himself. She doesn't think he was being dishonest. She just thinks that Marshall, whose natural disposition was to be a private person, would have broken the news to her and the rest of his family eventually. During her first conversation with authorities, Tammy was shocked to learn that investigators had already established a working theory of what they believed happened to her son. According to her, police said they didn't think Marshall was just missing. They believed he was dead by his own choice.
13:11 Speaker 00 Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.
13:17 Speaker 01 Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.
13:20 Speaker 00 We don't just alert. We help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe: Ahead of Crime in Real Time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.
13:42 Speaker 03 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
14:03 Speaker 04 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory: a baby factory.
14:10 Speaker 03 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
14:18 Speaker 05 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
14:20 Speaker 06 That's the one time that we called the cops, because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
14:25 Speaker 07 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
14:30 Speaker 03 I'm Ava Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
14:47 Speaker 03 Tammy told me that from the get-go, investigators indicated that they thought the most likely scenario was that Marshall had died by suicide. However, that scenario just didn't make sense to her or anyone else in his immediate family. Sure, it was obvious from what police had gathered up to that point that Marshall was not planning to return to school, but everything else surrounding his disappearance didn't amount to him necessarily wanting to take his own life.
15:14 Speaker 02 For example, his family learned that he'd filled a prescription a few days before he disappeared, and that made them wonder, why would he do that if he didn't intend to keep living? Not to mention, his body had not been found with his truck, or anywhere in the vicinity of it. So, how could that be? And speaking of the vehicle's location, Tammy and Paige couldn't understand why Marshall's truck was found so far from where he lived in Calgary, and where he'd last been seen in Lethbridge. In addition to all those puzzling details, Paige and Tammy later saw pictures that the RCMP had taken of the truck scene. But what was in those images looked very different than what had been captured in the images that the hikers who first found the truck took.
15:57 Speaker 02 According to Paige, it appeared that after the hikers discovered Marshall's vehicle on November 23, some of the stuff in the truck and on the ground around it had been moved or repositioned before the RCMP got to the scene on November 25. One source I found stated that the steering column in the truck had been taken after the hikers snapped their photos, because it was there when that group was there, but it was gone by the time police photographed the scene. One of the hikers who found the truck posted about it online and told CTV News that, to him, the whole discovery felt like a crime scene. He explained that when they came across Marshall's truck, the fire still smelled fresh, and the extent of the damage to the vehicle was jarring.
16:42 Speaker 02 On top of that, no one else other than his hiking group had formally registered to be at the Bryan Waddington Hut around that time. Which I guess is why this hiker thought it was odd to see the truck there, because if it did belong to another visitor, it really shouldn't have been there. Paige thought the discrepancy between the hikers' photos and what the RCMP had found at this scene was weird as well. But to this day, no one can account for why the items on the ground at the fire scene were moved. The discrepancy suggests that the items were repositioned before police got to the truck, but by whom and why is unclear. From what police later said, the items being moved could have been the result of another visitor,
17:24 Speaker 02 unaware of Marshall's case, just going through the debris because they were curious. In that scenario, police asked anyone who might have been up in the remote area and come across the truck between November 23 and 25 to contact them. But I don't think anyone did. What I can say is that neither Paige nor Tammy bought police's theory that Marshall had died by suicide. So they set out on their own mission to determine what could have happened to him. The family did the math and realized that in order for his truck to have ended up in the back country of British Columbia, some 14 hours northwest of Lethbridge, whoever was driving it would have had to stop for fuel at least a few times to complete the journey.
18:06 Speaker 02 Marshall's bank history showed no transactions or activity after he vanished on the 17th. So I imagine his family figured if he was the one who'd made the trip, he must have paid for fuel in cash.
18:19 Speaker 02 So Tammy and one of her friends drove to as many gas stations as they could along the routes between Alberta and Pemberton and inquired about surveillance footage. But according to Tammy, the stores told them that the police would have to be the ones to come by and request the tapes. So Tammy wrote down all the places that they went to, as well as the managers' names, and asked them not to delete any footage from their systems for on or after November 18th. After that, she gave all that information she'd written down to the police, but to this day, she has no idea if investigators ever went to those locations and looked for surveillance footage. The family also revisited the storage facility in Lethbridge that Marshall had said he was going to on the night he disappeared.
19:02 Speaker 02 When Tammy and Paige had initially gone there with a Lethbridge police investigator in early December 2019, they hadn't observed anything out of the ordinary or missing from the unit. But a few weeks after that, when a private investigator the family had hired interviewed an employee who worked at that facility, Paige and Tammy learned for the first time that the entry code specifically assigned to Marshall and Paige's unit that allowed them inside the property had been punched in numerous times after 11:00 PM on Sunday night and throughout the early morning hours of Monday, November 18.
19:37 Speaker 02 However, every time the code had been entered, the person punching it in was denied entry. But not because the code was being mis-punched, but because, according to Paige, the facility locked customers out between the hours of 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM. Paige told me that when her and her brother first rented their storage unit in 2014, the facility was owned by someone that allowed customers 24/7 access, so long as they used their specific entry code. However, she said that after 2014, the facility had been bought and sold several times by different owners. So she thinks that at some point, unbeknownst to Marshall, the person that owned it in 2019 had set up a system where, even if you had your user-specific code and punched it in, you couldn't physically get into the building
20:22 Speaker 02 between the hours of 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM. So she suspects that all those failed entry code attempts at the facility that occurred after 11:00 PM on Sunday was Marshall trying to get in and not realizing the facility was locked to all customers. The storage company's records showed that after 6:00 AM, the sibling's entry code finally worked, and it appeared it wasn't used again until Marshall reportedly locked up and left around 8:30 AM, which meant he'd spent at least two hours at the facility. But what no one to this day knows is why he was there. We also don't know what he was doing between 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM while he was unable to get in. He could have been sitting in the parking lot frustrated about his code not working. He could have driven somewhere else,
21:07 Speaker 02 gone to a store. Nobody knows. It's just a big gap in time that no one has been able to fill. And Paige has wondered a lot about that window of Marshall's time, too, which is why, shortly after her family learned the information about Marshall using his access code so many times, she specifically asked Lethbridge Police to visit the shops and stores surrounding the facility to check for surveillance video. But according to her, officials only looked for footage at a nearby Tim Hortons coffee shop and possibly a McDonald's. And that was too granny to make out if Marshall or his vehicle had passed by. Paige further suggested police go by a Walmart that was nearby, as well as other convenience stores. But for unknown reasons, police did not check those places as far as Paige is aware.
21:53 Speaker 02 But in my opinion, I think figuring out where Marshall was and the time he was waiting to get into the storage unit could be critical in this case. My questions are, did he go somewhere to meet up with someone during that time? Did someone come there to meet him? Was it even really him who used the entry code at 6:00 a.m. to get into the unit? There are so many questions that I feel could be answered if we had more context. One huge help would have been if authorities could have tracked his cellphone, but Paige told me that to this day, her brother's Samsung Galaxy mobile device, as well as his school-issued laptop, contact lenses, contact solution, glasses, backpack, and wallet have never been found.
22:36 Speaker 02 None of that stuff was with his burned-out truck or in his apartment, and it's also unclear what happened to the keys to his truck. Paige surmised that those items could have been incinerated in the fire, but she's not 100% sure because no evidence of them has ever been found. By the end of December 2019, all aspects of the investigation, including the vehicle fire, were officially transferred to the Lethbridge Police Service, since that was the jurisdiction Marshall was last seen alive in. In early January 2020, on what would have been Marshall's 27th birthday, his family and friends held a candlelight vigil for him at his former high school in Lethbridge. About two weeks later, on January 17th, Tammy and Paige visited Marshall's apartment
23:20 Speaker 02 in Calgary to clear out his belongings. And while they were there, Paige saw something that gave her pause.
23:32 Speaker 00 Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.
23:39 Speaker 01 Stop, this is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.
23:42 Speaker 00 We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe: Ahead of Crime in Real Time.
23:57 Speaker 01 Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.
24:04 Speaker 03 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
24:24 Speaker 04 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
24:31 Speaker 03 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
24:39 Speaker 05 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
24:42 Speaker 06 That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
24:47 Speaker 07 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
24:52 Speaker 03 I'm Ava Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
25:07 Speaker 02 Paige observed that her brother's Xbox and PlayStation gaming consoles were set up in his apartment and still logged into his user profile. That struck her as odd because she remembered the pictures that the hikers who'd found Marshall's truck had taken. And there were burned remains of PlayStation and Xbox consoles found at the scene. And since she was staring at Marshall's Xbox and PlayStation sitting perfectly fine at his apartment, she and her mom realized that the burned consoles found in the ashes of the truck fire were not the ones that belonged to Marshall. To make things even more suspicious, people who'd been friends with him on Snapchat contacted Tammy and Paige a few weeks later,
25:48 Speaker 02 claiming that some messages they'd sent to his account after he disappeared had been opened. Now, I'm not a Snapchat user, but apparently on the app, there's a feature where it notifies a sender if the person they sent a message to opened it or not. And according to Paige, there were several folks who told her family that someone accessing her brother's profile had opened messages in the weeks after he vanished. Now, when Tammy and Paige took this information to police, they were expecting authorities to get right on it. But investigators told the family that because the case wasn't classified as a criminal matter, Paige believes they didn't have enough probable cause to get a search warrant for Marshall's phone, or his Gmail account, or his social media accounts.
26:33 Speaker 02 So the police just didn't look into it. And then, the world sort of paused for everyone. Because, as we all know, the spring of 2020 is when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. And that had some real-world impacts on Marshall's case. For example, Tammy told Global News that despite stay-at-home orders going into effect, she was hopeful that Marshall's loved ones and their supporters could still try to find ways to keep momentum in the case going and make sure people didn't forget about him being missing. In May 2020, after the snow melted, Lethbridge Police once again searched the area where Marshall's truck had been found, but nothing new surfaced. A month later, in late June, some of the people from the private investigation firm the family had hired
27:18 Speaker 02 visited the remote location in British Columbia alongside authorities. Police did their arson investigation first, then they let the PI folks do their thing. When some of the PIs looked through the debris, they realized that officers with the police service who'd just been at the site had not gone through it very carefully, especially with the debris that was in the truck's floor pans. When the PIs went through those sections of the vehicle, they discovered that entire pieces of fire debris were still intact. And most ominous of all, they found a Zippo lighter next to where the driver's seat should have been, which seemed like a pretty big clue that authorities had missed. Either way, though, both sets of investigators took samples and notes
28:01 Speaker 02 and began preparing their final reports about what could have caused the fire. But the results of those parallel investigations were gonna take some time.
28:11 Speaker 02 So in July, while everyone was waiting, Marshall's family decided they wanted to go to the remote trailhead. A team that had proper four-by-four vehicles volunteered to take Tammy Page and some other relatives up there. Paige told me that the terrain was so remote and rugged, it was even difficult for the trained professionals to navigate through. For example, the group had to drive through creeks, cross over some rocks, and basically go all the way to the end of where you could drive just to find the spot. And the further and further the group journeyed, the more Tammy said she became convinced that her son had not been the person to drive his truck up there. She knew that Marshall had just recently paid off his vehicle, so it didn't make any sense to her why he would have gone so far into the wilderness where he likely would have torn it up.
28:58 Speaker 02 After that trip and by the end of summer 2020, results from both the police's arson investigation and the PI firm's investigation came in. Lethbridge Police's report came back as inconclusive as to whether an arson had occurred. However, the private investigators determined that Marshall's truck had been intentionally set on fire, and the point of origin for the blaze was from the passenger seat area. The PIs also concluded that the Zippo lighter that had been found near where the driver's seat was supposed to be was what had been used to set the fire. When the family's investigators presented their findings to the police, authorities didn't change their minds. They weren't going to call the vehicle fire and arson without more proof,
29:42 Speaker 02 and they weren't going to say Marshall was a victim of foul play either, because up until that point, they hadn't found any clear evidence pointing to him being dead, let alone murdered. So without a criminal element, Marshall's case remained a missing persons investigation. Lethbridge Police had previously said in a media release, "In examining Iwasa's personal affairs in the months leading up to his disappearance, including interviews with close friends as well as his financial, medical, and social media activity, there is evidence to suggest he was experiencing stress in his life and had become withdrawn."
30:20 Speaker 02 Which is a statement to me that seems to be subtly suggesting that whatever happened to Marshall was a result of his own doing. But that was not a theory his family was willing to get on board with. Towards the end of 2020, Tammy and Paige launched an online petition to have Marshall's case reclassified as criminal. They specifically wanted authorities to test items that had been found at the fire scene and storage unit for fingerprints and DNA. They also wanted police to more thoroughly search the storage facility and surrounding locations, as well as work more collaboratively with the family's private investigators. The petition garnered more than 6,000 signatures, but when Tammy and Paige took it to Lethbridge
31:03 Speaker 02 Police, investigators told them it would have no effect on the case and nothing would change because there was still no evidence that suggested the matter was criminal in nature, or that Marshall was dead. But the family pushed forward anyway, and saw the number of people supporting them increase on a Facebook page they'd created to keep the case in the limelight. The page, Find Marshall Iwasa, was created just days after he disappeared, and it quickly grew to more than 16,000 members. And people were on there sharing and posting and reposting about the case on a regular basis. It's still active today and remains a space where relatives post updates about the investigation, and where members offer support or discuss possible theories.
31:47 Speaker 02 And speaking of theories, there have been a lot of those.
31:52 Speaker 02 According to my interview with Tammy, she said that Marshall had never been in trouble with the law or arrested for any kind of crime, just traffic-related stuff. So any suggestion that he might have been tied up with drugs or targeted by people associated with drugs is a theory that just never held water for her. Like I said, she said he'd gotten a few traffic tickets in life, but other than that, his record was clean. She told me that, to her knowledge, he was never into illicit drugs or suffered from an addiction. The only thing he engaged in from time to time was cannabis use. Both her and Paige said that even Lethbridge Police confirmed they didn't suspect Marshall was part of an illicit drug scene or associated with illicit drug use. And the family seemingly ruled out a personal motive, too.
32:38 Speaker 02 As far as Tammy and Paige are aware, Marshall wasn't dating anyone at the time of his disappearance, and he didn't have anyone who was an arch enemy or held a grudge against him. Tammy told me that all of the girls he dated prior to November 2019 were still friendly with him, and based on what Paige saw people saying online about her brother, it didn't appear that anyone had beef with him. The family also looked into whether someone from Marshall's work or social life could have had it out for him, but there was nothing there either. Paige told me that it was unreal how many people over the years, including folks Marshall worked with or met at the gym, praised him for being such a nice person and expressed their sadness about his disappearance. When Tammy and Paige spoke with the family who'd been renting their basement apartment to Marshall in Calgary,
33:24 Speaker 02 those folks told them that nothing seemed amiss with him on the Sunday afternoon before he left for Tammy's. They said he'd mostly puttered around the house, tidied up, and done a load of laundry before heading to Lethbridge. Tammy told me that she knows the landlords physically laid eyes on Marshall that day because the way his living space was laid out in their home, he would have had to bring his laundry up to the main floor to use their machines, which is how they were able to know as much about his activities that afternoon as they did. And from what I gathered after reading so much coverage about this case, it doesn't appear Marshall had any visitors Sunday afternoon or that he left to go anywhere during that time. I specifically asked Tammy and Paige if they ever suspected the homeowners he rented from might have been involved in his disappearance,
34:08 Speaker 02 but Tammy told me no, she personally doesn't think that's the case. She said that Marshall had found his landlords online, and they were a very nice family who really liked him. So with those potential avenues of investigation tentatively ruled out, the family has stayed in this state of limbo about what they think happened or what they think makes the most sense. Paige told me that she's never been able to land on just one theory. She said there's so much about her brother's disappearance that doesn't make sense to her, but she thinks there's definitely credible evidence that points to something sinister. However, there's also a part of her that wonders if maybe he is still alive out there somewhere and just chose to start over.
34:50 Speaker 02 If Marshall did do that, he's kept a pretty low profile because after his disappearance, authorities have gone as far as to check with officials at the United States border and confirmed Marshall had never legally crossed. Him voluntarily choosing to walk away from his life and family is a difficult suggestion for Paige to entertain because that would mean that during all this time, Marshall has never reached out to anyone in his family, including her. Tammy told me Paige is the closest person to Marshall. Ever since they were little, the siblings were extremely tight. Tammy divorced her kid's father when Marshall was young, and after that, Marshall and Paige were inseparable. As the siblings grew into adults, they remained close and made sure to spend holidays, birthdays,
35:35 Speaker 02 and family gatherings together. Tammy told me that there is no one closer to Marshall than Paige, and no one else knows him better than she does. During our interview, Paige told me that she's confident that if her brother is dead, he's not in a landscape near where his truck was found because authorities thoroughly searched that area back in 2019 and didn't find him. But she also doesn't think the location should never be searched again because she told me that if police wanted to go back out there today and look for Marshall, she'd join them in a heartbeat. Tammy has a similar mindset. She's confident her son didn't die by suicide and that he didn't drive his truck to British Columbia, but she has no idea where he could be now or who he might have come across after
36:20 Speaker 02 he left her house. Over the years, some reported sightings of Marshall have come to police, but the tips were reportedly checked out and none of those people ended up being him. Tammy told me she's hopeful that one day her son will be found and that Lethbridge Police will find a way to reclassify his case so it can be pursued as a criminal matter. But in my opinion, the more time passes, the less and less I think authorities have to work with. According to the coverage I found, the charred carcass of Marshall's truck stayed put for several years after 2019. However, in 2023, a man who was a member of an organization called the Varsity Outdoor Club personally cut it up and towed it out of the woods.
37:05 Speaker 02 After removing it, he took it to a landfill, and now it's gone for good. He told Bridge City News the reason he disassembled it and got it out of the area was because he had serious concerns about it impacting the environment. It doesn't appear police did anything to stop this guy or oversee his efforts to make sure the truck was preserved. Disappointingly, in the past few years, things haven't changed much in Marshall's case. Tammy and Paige continue to try and keep his name in the spotlight and hold out hope that updates will come. For them, so many questions remain unanswered, like, for example, why did Marshall go to the storage unit on the night of the 17th? What was in there that seemed to be such a priority for him?
37:50 Speaker 02 Like I said earlier, according to Paige, she and her brother began renting their unit in 2014. At that time, she'd moved with her husband to Hawaii, and Marshall had also been in the process of moving, so they decided they would go in on the rental together and use the space to keep stuff that was important to each of them. Paige told me she had a bunch of totes filled with books in there, and Marshall had some tools and knickknacks. There were also dishes, pictures, games, and a chest of family heirlooms. Basically just stuff neither of them wanted in their homes, but they weren't necessarily ready to get rid of. And in terms of how their unit was organized, Paige said it was packed tightly, like, full to the brim. For example, she said if you wanted to get to something that was maybe in the back of
38:33 Speaker 02 it, you'd have to drag everything out to access it. Which, to her and her mom, could be one explanation as to why Marshall seemingly stayed at the facility from around 6:00 a.m. until 8:30 a.m. They wonder if maybe during that roughly two and a half hours or so, he was trying to get to something he wanted that was in the back of the unit. Of course, they don't know for sure what exactly he was doing there or what he was after, but Tammy told me that it would have been in Marshall's nature to dig and search for as long as he needed to until he found what he'd come for.
39:04 Speaker 02 What's super interesting to me, though, is that during Paige and Tammy's first visit to the storage unit with Lethbridge Police in December 2019, and then again about a year later when the family cleared it out for good, Paige said nothing was missing. She said she inventoried every single item she and Marshall kept in there, and nothing was gone. On top of that, all of her and Marshall's camping gear, like their axe, mattress, coolers, tent, all that stuff, was still sitting there, which, she's convinced, contradicts suggestions she's seen online that claim her brother might have planned to go camping in British Columbia on his own. To her, if that were the case and he was planning to go off on his own, then it doesn't
39:46 Speaker 02 make sense why he would have left all their camping gear behind. Part of me wonders if maybe Marshall went to the storage unit to retrieve something related to his studies in computer sciences or interest in programming. Paige told Peak News Magazine that prior to Marshall vanishing, he'd made comments about how getting a job in his field didn't always come down to having a sparkling resume or education, it was more about who you knew. Paige mentioned in our interview that prior to Marshall's disappearance, he'd logged around 600 hours building something on the online game distribution and storefront called Steam. She doesn't know exactly what he was designing there, but it had consumed a lot of his time and was something he'd been doing on the day he went to see his mom.
40:29 Speaker 02 I'm not sure if that project could be related to his disappearance or movements around the time he vanished, but if it isn't, Paige just believes it further proves that her brother didn't plan to walk away from his life. If he'd worked so hard on something like this self-designed game, he wouldn't have just up and disappeared without finishing it. To add even more frustration to this case, it was unclear for at least a little while which law enforcement agency was in charge of things. For example, in mid-2024, Peak News Magazine learned from a staff sergeant with the RCMP that Lethbridge Police were still in charge of the investigation. But the very same day, a spokesperson for Lethbridge Police told the magazine that
41:12 Speaker 02 their agency no longer had jurisdiction over the case, and that the entire file had been transferred to the RCMP in Pemberton. After several months of back and forth with the newspaper, the RCMP confirmed they were involved in the investigation. However, the case file from Lethbridge Police had yet to arrive in Pemberton. As it stands today, the Lethbridge Police Service remains the lead agency over Marshall's case, with the RCMP assisting. But I'm sorry, it's hard to have a ton of confidence in anyone at this point. Because here's the thing: it's not just the circumstances of Marshall's suspicious disappearance that are strange to me. It's what's been happening in parts of British Columbia since he vanished that's made it
41:57 Speaker 02 impossible for me to look away from this story. His mom, Tammy, told me that posters in B.C. featuring Marshall's picture and information about where to send tips have been taken down by unknown people. And a mysterious clue found amongst the debris of his truck fire that his family has never been able to make sense of has caused many people to wonder if his disappearance is connected to another young man who went missing in the wilds of Pemberton in late November 2019. That investigation is what I'll be diving into next week in an episode of Park Predators titled "The Thread." Stay tuned.
42:43 Speaker 02 Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators.
43:02 Speaker 02 I think Chuck would approve.
43:08 Speaker 02 In the dark, even the most familiar trail can feel like it leads somewhere else. Every rustle becomes a warning, every shadow, a doorway. In Full Body Chills, those doorways open into worlds pulled straight from your nightmares. This spooky season classic returns with chilling new tales, immersive sound, and no promise that you'll find your way back. So step off the familiar path if you dare. Listen to new episodes of Full Body Chills every week, wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous The Path Next The Thread Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated