Into Thin Air

In Idaho County, Idaho, four-wheel drive is a fact of life. More than half the county's nearly 8,500 square miles are either national forest or federally managed wilderness. These steep mountains and deep canyons are a draw for outdoor enthusiasts. They also hold secrets. On October 5, 2018, 12 members of a television production crew drove up one of those mountains for a day-long shoot.

Hell, like cancer, like knowing something is going to kill you, but you got to deal with it and keep going.

That is Terrence Woods, Sr. From the beginning, you thought, this isn't your son going missing, this is something happening to him.

Yes, because the story from the beginning didn't make no sense.

What happened to his son doesn't make sense to a lot of people, including Terrence's friend and mentor, Bethany Swain.

Everything about the stories after Terrence's disappearance I would describe as weird.

The sheriff who oversaw the investigation says he's baffled too.

There's so many possibilities that it just kind of boggles the mind. That's why it's an interesting case.

I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Dateline Missing in America. This episode is Into Thin Air. We first covered Terrence's story in October 2023.. Please listen closely, because you, or someone you know, may have information that could help solve this case and give his family the answers they need.

He was always, you know, an adventurer. He was always outgoing, always wanted to see the world.

Terrence Jr. also had a lot to say about the world. His father still has a copy of the letter Terrence wrote in middle school to President George W. Bush. It begins, quote, I am a 12-year-old citizen of the United States of America.

And when he wrote the letter, and I read it, I told him, oh, I said, when he come to the house, they're not going to look for you. They're going to look for me. They're not going to think you wrote this. His mindset with politics, the world, et cetera. He looked at it, you know, from a serious standpoint.

His dad says he wasn't surprised when Terrence majored in broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland. Hello, and welcome to Viewfinder, presented by the University of Maryland.

I'm Terrence Woods.

And I'm Ananda Mackey. Technology has been good for some and difficult for others. Viewfinder's. Katherine Harrington visited a local flower shop where sales are being undercut by online orders. That's him, co-anchoring a news program he and some college classmates produced.

His goal to be working as a journalist in London was very, very clear, very, very focused from the first day that we met.

He saw himself as a sort of, you know, an international journalist crossing borders to cover big stories?

Absolutely.

Bethany is a veteran photojournalist who was working at CNN when she started teaching. Her class met at night, and she says Terrence quickly stood out.

He was always there before I got there. He'd stay late, him and a couple of the classmates. They would want to ask questions just into the night, as long as I was willing to stay.

Sometimes Bethany took her students to work with her.

Whenever, I would share an outside opportunity, hey, I'm doing this, he was there. So he went and spent a day shadowing me at CNN.

He sounds like the kind of, you know, eager, devoted, really hardworking student that every professor, in every single discipline, wishes they had.

Oh, absolutely. Terrence was one of those students.

In 2013,, Terrence Jr. earned his bachelor's degree, a milestone not just for him, but also his family. He's one of the first members of your family to go to college. Oh, yes. Did he feel pressure because of that?

No, he loved it. He always wanted to be top at whatever he did, you know?

After graduation, Terrence headed straight to London, where he earned a master's degree in international relations and launched his career. Joanna Abey frequently helped young people of color like Terrence get their foot in the door.

At the time, I was recruiting the talent for an independent production company trainee scheme. Ultimately, what it was doing was giving opportunities to people from underrepresented backgrounds to work within television, to get their first break, really, working with an independent production company.

Joanna says Terrence reached out to her and made a big impression.

Rather than, you know, email, a CV or a letter, he actually hand-delivered it. And I said, you don't need to do that. No, I really want it to meet you in person. That kind of summarizes Terrence, because he would always go the extra mile.

Joanna found a position for Terrence at an independent film production company and then later connected him with other jobs. She told me the feedback she got from his employers was glowing. This will all be important as our story progresses.

It didn't matter where I recommended Terrence for, very quickly I'd get a note from someone wherever he was working. that would be very much of the, he's amazing, Terrence is incredible, the team love him, he's got so much initiative, nothing's too big an ask.

He sounds like the kind of employee anybody would want.

He was, he really was.

Working as a freelance production assistant in TV or film usually involves a lot of grunt work for little pay. As he was building his resume, Terrence collected credits on some high-profile British shows, including ITV's The Voice UK. He traveled for work and for pleasure to France, Germany, and Turkey. And he found a way to share those travels with his father. Wherever Terrence traveled around the world, he would bring you a shot glass.

Yeah, because he would say, Dad, what you want? I don't want nothing but a shot glass. I'm simple. And I'll never use it.

You're not taking shots out of these, you just keep them.

Yeah, just to say, this is where my son, I probably would never go all the places he went. So I was just proud of him and that was like a trophy of mine to myself from him.

In July 2018, after five years in London, Terrence moved back to Maryland. He just thought, this has run its course and I'm ready to come back.

Yeah, he set out to do what he wanted to do. And there was a new chapter and he was ready to start that back at home.

Terrence Jr. had been back just a few weeks when Raw TV, a production company he'd worked for in London, contacted him. They were shooting a reality series called Gold Rush, Dave Turin's Lost Mine. The job would involve several weeks of shooting in the western United States. Terrence signed on for the shoot.

He said, see you later. I said, see you sooner. And we laughed about it and I hugged him and yeah.

And he got on the plane.

Yeah.

That day's kind of burned into your memory, isn't it? Yep.

At 7.40 Saturday morning, I got a phone call and they told me that my son went off a cliff.

Hearing your son has gone off a cliff is something no parent ever expects. And what Terrence Sr. heard next was even more incomprehensible. He's not the only one who feels that way. Here's the former sheriff.

You're right. Try to explain it to somebody.

The former sheriff says witnesses told him what they saw was no accident. Terrence did not fall off that cliff.

The story is they were finishing up for the day and then he just took off down the side of the mountain.

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He said, all of a sudden, he looked, he seen my son's radio on the ground. So he leaps out the car, run over there, because he thought my son dropped the radio and might have fell off the cliff. But he seen my son running down a cliff like a hare. I said, what do you mean like a hare? He said, I've never seen anyone run that fast.

The TV crew had been shooting near an abandoned mine in the mountains of central Idaho. Now, Terrence Jr. was missing. Doug Giddings was the sheriff in charge of the investigation. This is very dense forest.

Yeah, it's pretty dense forest. They haven't clear-cut it or anything. It's rough terrain.

Giddings lives in an area just as remote as where the crew was shooting. There's no cell service. When we spoke, he was using his landline. So you may hear static from time to time when he's talking. What story did you get originally?

The story we got originally? How many words you want this?

How many you got?

He walked along the edge of the road and he passed one of the company managers, who was sitting in a suburban doing some paperwork. And then he just took off down the side of the mountain.

Did anybody say what precipitated that?

No one said, because no one knows. He didn't tell anybody he was going to do it.

And suddenly he just runs away.

He just took off down the side of the mountain.

According to Giddings, that alone was not done easily.

It's brushy. There's huge trees. It's steep. It's rocky.

Giddings says a few crew members chased after Terrence but failed to catch up with him. Terrence Woods Jr. had simply disappeared into the gathering darkness.

And you're up in the middle of nowhere. There's no sound. There's no anything. And it's rough. You wouldn't want to be left there by yourself.

The former sheriff says four-legged killers aren't the only danger lurking in that area. Air vents for the abandoned mine nearby can be covered by brush, hard to see, and easy to fall into. Some of them are quite deep. At daylight, search teams began looking for any sign of Terrence.

We had air with the heat seeking. We had dogs. We had people. We had volunteers. We did the grid.

According to Giddings, the search team included a retired military officer who was an expert tracker and who believed he may have found slide marks near the bottom of the embankment. Terrence ran down. It's close to a road.

They possibly found his track where he slid down the bank to get onto the road, but they're not positive. that was him, but it looked like it might have been. So there's that possibility.

Could Terrence have gotten or maybe arranged a ride off the mountain? Giddings says his deputies checked with people who live near the road, and no one noticed any unfamiliar vehicles coming or going that night. Three days after Terrence disappeared, the production company Raw TV flew his parents from Maryland to Grangeville, Idaho, where the crew had been staying. At the sheriff's office, Terrence Sr. and his ex-wife met with Giddings and other investigators.

Everybody was going, except one person.

And you said, where's everybody else?

They said they left.

A Raw TV spokesperson told us all. crew members stayed in Grangeville until the searches ended, then went to Portland, Oregon to continue shooting at their next location.

They didn't hang around for a long time for us to do backgrounds on them, but nobody did anything that we know of to cause him any grief.

The former sheriff told me he didn't see any reason for the crew to stick around.

They did everything they could do to looking for him and making sure we knew. They talked to us, told us what happened. They really didn't have any reason to stay. They couldn't find him.

Simon G., the same producer who'd called Terrence Sr. the morning after his son disappeared, did speak with Terrence's parents when they arrived in Idaho. Terrence Sr. confirms that and adds an odd detail. He says both times they spoke, on the phone and then again at the sheriff's office.

And he said they was out in the field and my son didn't know what battery to get because he was green. This is his first time doing this. No, it was not my son's first time doing it. My son's first time ever being with this guy. And this is, you calling me telling me my son disappeared, but this is how you start a conversation off.

By telling the parent of a missing kid, by the way, he wasn't getting the job done. Your personal feelings about him.

You're telling me about your personal negative feelings about him.

We reached out to Simon G. for comment. He did not respond. Giddings, who retired in 2020 and no longer has access to the case file, told me he does not recall that conversation. Do you remember the guy from Raw TV telling Terrence's parents that Terrence hadn't done a good job, that they were disappointed in him?

I didn't hear that in our meeting.

Or knocking him in any way, criticizing him?

I don't recall that. I just don't remember him. If there were any, they passed me by.

A spokesperson for Raw TV told Dateline, quote, following recommended search and rescue protocol, Simon phoned Mr. Woods Sr. to ascertain Terrence's normal behavior, state of mind, and any other information he could give the search and rescue team. It was mentioned by Simon that Terrence had been distracted at times. This was solely in order to establish whether this would be normal behavior.

It doesn't make sense.

On October 11th, 2018, after six days of looking high and low for Terrence, deputies had come up short. The sheriff called off the search. You didn't find anything that suggested foul play?

No, not at all.

Nobody chased him? Nobody made him run? Nobody did anything that he was running away from?

No, there's nobody doing anything to him.

News of Terrence's disappearance spread quickly among his friends and colleagues and left them stunned.

When this happened, I was like, this doesn't sit right. This doesn't feel right.

Terrence's former college professor, Bethany Swain, had been looking forward to hearing about this raw TV shoot when Terrence came back to Maryland. They had stayed in close touch after he graduated. She says they texted just a few weeks before he disappeared. He seem okay in that exchange?

There was nothing in that exchange with Terrence that raised a red flag. There was nothing that made me think, oh, I should check in on him. It was a pretty standard text exchange.

The story that authorities were told of him just sort of abruptly running off is a very strange story.

Absolutely. None of it made sense to me.

You've never seen him exhibit any kind of rash behavior like that?

No, the exact opposite. Everything that Terrence does was really thought out. It was methodical, but, like in a good way. He definitely was someone who thought a lot about the impact of every decision.

Joanna Abeyi, his mentor in London, also found it hard to square what she was hearing with the Terrence. she knew. That sound like him at all?

No, um, no. If that's accurate and he ran off, then something definitely, definitely worried him or upset him, because that's just not what he would have done.

Joanna says Terrence took special care to always behave professionally on set. Specifically because he knew the stakes.

In the UK, when you're from an underrepresented background, you kind of only get one chance. You don't really get a chance to mess up that many times on a production or with a, or even in the industry, before someone hears about it. So he was always treading so, so carefully. In my opinion, something would have had to happen to him for him to run off like that, rather than try and find a professional, less confrontational way of managing whatever had gone on.

For more than five years, Terrence's father has tried to fill in the blanks he thinks might explain what happened to his son. He's come up with a provocative theory. One that completely reimagines where this mystery began. And it's not in Idaho. Do you think it's possible?

In my heart, I don't think my son made it to Idaho. I think whatever took place, took place before Idaho.

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I'm a parent, so I'm always worried, but I couldn't tell him that.

In Missoula, Terrence, who'd been hired as a production assistant, met up with the rest of the crew from Raw TV. His father didn't hear from him again for the next three days.

There's been other places where he couldn't call me on the regular, so that wasn't something that was majorly concerned, because that was his job.

On Thursday, October 4th, the crew wrapped up shooting in Montana and headed to Grangeville, Idaho. That's when Terrence Sr. heard from his son. again. He texted, quote, Hey, Dad, just got to the hotel in Idaho, unquote.

He said, Hey, Dad. I said, Hey, you know, I gotta go to work in the morning. He said, I was just calling you. I said, You okay? He said, Yes, I'm okay.

Did your son say he was in Idaho?

I'm not going to say for certain he did or didn't. I cannot remember. I can't remember that.

Almost six hours later, Terrence Sr. received another text from his son. This one contained some unexpected news.

I'm coming home Wednesday on the 10th.

That would have been almost five weeks earlier than planned.

And I texted him back and said, Good. See, when you get home, don't forget my shot glass. I didn't get a response to that.

He doesn't say why he's coming home early.

No. You know, I was just happy. he told me he was coming home early. He didn't sound like he was in a panic or anything.

Terrence Sr. later learned from Raw TV that his son had told the production company he needed to leave early because his mom was having surgery.

His mother wasn't having any surgery.

Is it possible? he told them that because he needed an excuse to get out early?

Yeah, because he never cut a shoot short. So if something was going wrong and he wanted to leave early, maybe he thought that would get him out of there early.

The families of the missing are sometimes left grasping for answers when there aren't any or when there isn't any proof. Terrence Sr. is not convinced. his son tried to leave the shoot early. He's never trusted what Raw TV and the sheriff's office told him about his son's disappearance.

In my heart, I don't think my son made it to Idaho. I think whatever took place took place before Idaho.

Mr. Woods says that's because he's seen no photos, no video, and literally no other proof. his son spent any time in Idaho. What he has is a lot of people telling him Terrence was there.

No physical evidence, no physical footprint that anyone has shown me of my son.

Former Sheriff Giddings told us investigators did not find any video showing Terrence in Idaho. However, he says the sheriff's office did have eyewitnesses. Terrence Sr. says he doesn't believe them.

Everything is word of mouth. Everything about my son's whole disappearance is word of mouth, with people out there that he knew for, what, from the 30th up until the day he disappeared?

People he knew for just a couple of days? Yes. Mr. Woods is talking about the Raw TV crew. Giddings says the crew members were not the only people investigators interviewed.

I absolutely trust her. There's not a reason in the world that she would have to say anything other than absolute truth.

Giddings says detectives and the undersheriff also interviewed other residents in Grangeville, including employees at the restaurant where the crew had dinner and the owner of the motel where they stayed, all of whom had seen and talked with Terrence. So we're talking about, what, 25 to 30 interviews, maybe?

Probably 20 at the most, 15, maybe even.

The former sheriff does not doubt for a minute that Terrence Woods Jr. was in central Idaho when he disappeared. You have any reason to believe that you were not getting the full story that day from the people who were there?

No, we don't have any reason at all, other than that the family seemed to develop some reasons.

Terrence Sr. told me he has his own theory about what happened to Terrence Jr. before he got to Idaho.

I think my son saw something or heard something and didn't agree to it or didn't want to be a part of it.

He did not say what he thinks that something might be or what caused his son to vanish. It remains a father's theory and there is no proof of it. Short of your son coming back, what could happen? that would put to rest your suspicions and make you rest a little easier?

Me hearing what 10 other people have to say that was with him.

That would do it or that would not?

No, that would help. I still have a void until the day I die, but that would help, you know, but now I have nothing.

Mr. Woods says the sheriff's office denied his records request and won't give him the names of the crew members the family wasn't able to speak with in Idaho. The sheriff's office also denied our public records request. They told us, quote, per our prosecuting attorney, this is still an open, active investigation. So we are not able to release the records at this time, unquote.

Well, it's one of those issues that is always sensitive, and I understand it from both sides. I wish they would release it to him. I don't know what to tell you. It's not an automatic ever.

If I made you guess, is Terrence still on that mountain or is he somewhere else?

I guess he's still on that mountain. Something happened to him on that mountain. And we missed him.

A Raw TV spokesperson told Dateline, quote, Terrence was a popular figure at Raw. He was a well-liked and valued member of the production team, and his disappearance greatly affected us all. We have the deepest sympathy for Terrence's family and friends. It is truly heartbreaking that he has not been found, and we continue to hope that he will be, unquote. They also confirmed the episode they were shooting in Idaho has never aired, out of respect for Terrence and his family.

You know, I really wish that we had connected before he went out there. If Terrence was struggling, I know that if we had connected, I could have given him one of my pep talks.

Joanna Abey finds it hard to believe. the young man who handed her his resume nearly a decade ago has simply vanished into thin mountain air. You really feel this loss, don't you?

Yes, it's horrendous. I think his family's been robbed of a son, and a brother, and nephew, and we've been robbed of a friend, and I think the industry's been robbed of a great talent.

On his right forearm, Terrence Woods Sr. has a tattoo of Terrence Woods Jr. He had it done a few weeks after his son went missing, to mark Terrence's 27th birthday. The tattoo is a copy of a childhood portrait.

That's a picture he always liked, so that's the one I put on me.

So he's always with you?

Yeah, and I have his name.

This is not a pleasant question to ask, but do you think your son is still alive?

I hope that he is, and if he isn't, I hope he didn't suffer.

Terrence Woods Sr. says he'll never give up looking for his son, and for the answers to those questions that haunt his whole family.

Somebody know the truth, but I don't think my son leaped off no cliff at night and disappeared, or face it hurt.

You'll never believe that? No.

No, that's not true.

Officially, Terrence's case remains an open and active investigation. Here's how you can help. Terrence is 5'9", and at the time of his disappearance, he weighed 130 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes. You can see photos and videos of him on our website.