The Frayed Ends | Chapter 7

Several weeks after our search at Lake Lanier, I still haven't decided how I feel about not finding anything other than an empty plastic barrel. On one hand, it's unfortunate that this case will continue to drag on in search of answers. On the other hand, I'm not sure I really wanted to bear witness to a grieving mother finding out that her son's remains were pulled from the bottom of a lake. So, for now, the search for Justin Gaines, and for answers, continues. Erica Wilson and her family have been through more heartbreak than I can imagine over the years since Justin disappeared.

They've had to bear the constant sorrow of losing a child while having no answers to explain why it happened or where he is. But this would unfortunately not be the only soul-crushing blow the family would be dealt.

Erica has a much harder time discussing Jeremy's death, so out of respect, I leave it alone.

Erica pains over Jeremy's suicide, because she'll never have a hope of knowing why. Or, if anything could have been done to prevent it.

From Waveland, I'm Sean Kite, and this is Drowning Creek.

I spoke on the phone with Bob Pulnoe recently to try and get my bearings, after all, I've learned. He's been on this case a long time, and knows the frustration of dead ends, as well as anyone who's ever been involved. My question, are we looking in the right direction?

I'm reminded of how, in my investigations so far, though, there have been many names thrown around, like Martin Wilkie, Leon, Shane, New York, and others, I'm always brought back to Dylan Glass. in some way. Glass has been adamant that he's innocent, and nothing more than a victim of circumstance, and some prejudice that local law enforcement has against him due to his past. But what if Dylan Glass is right? And investigators have been looking at the wrong man all these years.

What if he is actually innocent? What then? In one conversation with him, he proposed a few alternate theories for me to explore. I had to keep Dylan engaged, and talking, no matter how ridiculous or obscure these theories of his might seem to me at first. And no matter how much I felt like, at times, he might just be grasping at straws, or trying to divert the attention away from himself.

Dylan brought up Justin's close circle of friends, and the fact that some of them weren't as helpful as one would expect after Justin vanished. Something I questioned as well.

Where are his friends at? Why don't they want to speak? If it's up to me,

on my theory, I believe that somebody that grew up with him, his friends, his brother, somebody that was from his circle,

something happened. Whether it be an accident, or whether it be some hatred behind something else, something happened and they don't want the truth.

But again, why, if you had nothing to hide? None have responded to my attempts to reach them.

Dylan then presents another theory, possibly the most bizarre yet.

An army veteran, Keyes traveled frequently, though he was largely concentrated in the Pacific Northwest. He's been traced to Vermont, New York, Washington State, Oregon, Texas, California, and Alaska, among others. He's thought to have committed murders in many, if not all, states. Including four murders in Washington alone. There are some who question if he committed murders abroad.

Keyes eventually confessed to the FBI that he buried what he called kill kits all over the country. The kits, housed in watertight buckets or trash bags, contained everything he would need to commit his crimes. Zip ties, a .22 caliber gun with a homemade silencer, a mask, and materials that would speed the decomposition of a body. Some caches the FBI found had been in the ground for more than two years. And when Keyes felt the urge to kill again, he would plan a trip to a location where one of these kits were located and then find a victim at random.

He used only cache and would remove his cell phone's battery, so he was untraceable. Though his victims were chosen at random, everything else Keyes did was meticulously planned out. But he would eventually make the critical mistake of deviating from this normal routine. This is actual police dash cam audio of Keyes shortly before his arrest.

Israel Keyes was arrested in early 2012 after authorities traced his steps from Alaska to Texas as he used 18-year-old Samantha Koenig's ATM card numerous times. Keyes had raped and killed the young woman in Alaska, dismembered her body, and placed it piece by piece in a frozen-over lake while he ice fished. When an FBI agent casually asked what he did with the fish he caught that day, Keyes, slightly dumbfounded at the question, replied, I ate them. But where does Dylan Glass make the connection between a monstrous serial killer like Israel Keyes and Justin Gaines?

Keyes, who obsessively researched serial killers, was found to have routinely scanned the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System website. Exactly why he did this is unclear, but when his laptop was confiscated after his arrest, it was discovered that he had downloaded and saved pictures of missing people from the website, a website where Justin is still listed as missing. With his connection to the FBI, I asked Mike Rising if it could be confirmed that Justin Gaines' picture was on Keyes' laptop or not.

I'll let you know what Mike comes back with, if anything. In early December of 2012,, Keyes slid his wrist and hung himself in his cell at Anchorage Correctional Complex while awaiting trial. Before he did so, he drew 11 skulls on paper in his own blood, and one pentagram with a crude depiction of the goat-headed idol Baphomet, the widely used symbol for the devil. Scrawled on the bottom of that image were the words,

Before his death, Keyes confessed to several bank robberies, arson, and six murders, eluding to the FBI that there were others, but wouldn't give up more information. He said that several bodies were discarded in various lakes across the country, which does eerily line up with Justin's alleged demise. But all but one of Keyes' known victims were women.

After researching the Keyes case, I feel it's technically possible, but not at all likely. The FBI painstakingly detailed every move Keyes made during his 11-year killing spree, using rental car, hotel, and flight transactions. They even accounted for the number of miles each rental car was driven. According to the FBI, in 2006,, Keyes was arrested In 2007,. Keyes flew from Anchorage, Alaska, to Los Angeles on October 29th and returned on November 2nd.

While in Los Angeles, he rented a car and drove only 95 miles. I find it nearly impossible for Keyes to have gone from L.A. to Georgia and back undetected during this short window of time, and there are no records of him flying or driving to Georgia. There's no information to conclude that Israel Keyes was ever in Georgia at all during this time. I've heard many theories on what happened to Justin Gaines over the past several months.

Scouring the internet, one can find claims of him running to Mexico, hiding out in Peru, or even that he may have been killed by the Smiley Face Killers, a group of people committing murders across the country targeting white, male college students. The Smiley Face Killers have been largely disputed by law enforcement, though, as nothing more than an urban legend. But again, these are just theories, and to make any of them work, you have to overlook mounds of evidence collected by law enforcement in Georgia over the years. When it comes to Dylan Glass' theories on Justin's death, there's one thing we can wholeheartedly agree on.

There is no absolute proof of it. No DNA. No other physical evidence. No body. At least not yet.

But I do feel that he knows more than he's told me. While I continue to investigate Dylan and look for information on where Justin might be, I can't allow myself to fall into the trap of having tunnel vision. I have to chase down every lead as if it's the one that could break this case. With that in mind, I recently spoke with a woman named Jessica, who claims to have information. She had commented on a post on the Facebook page Erica Wilson runs dedicated to finding Justin.

It was regarding a recent segment, Dateline aired on the case.

I talked to him and finally someone listened to me. The people who were handling the case at first, they didn't give a shit. I'm just going to be blunt. They didn't even write down anything. I told them.

They didn't. I mean, literally nothing. And I had been calling for years, like 15 years.

So I went.

He tried to attack me and he said, how are you still alive? You're supposed to be at the bottom of my lake. We put you at the bottom of my lake.

And like, they were like telling me to go to the end of the driveway, whatever, and my friend had left because she was going to a liquor store, and the liquor store was like, I guess, a good drive away. So I was just kind of there. There were some big-name people that were there. Someone with the last name of Glass. Again,

Jeffrey. Jessica continues telling me what happened that night. They got.

I'm assuming that his conscience was eating at him, but the guys that he was hanging out with were bragging about certain things, and all I remember. when he called me Justin, the guy whose last name was Glass, he told him to shut the fuck up. He's like, you're not supposed to be talking about that shit. Get your shit together. You're just fucked up.

You need to shut up. Quit talking. Which scared me, because then I could tell that something really happened. And then, after this happening, me realizing that there was a kid who actually went missing, it terrified me.

That's what happened to me, personally. After that, that was it. I was done after that, because it just absolutely scared the shit out of me. So I kind of changed my whole circle of people I was associating with.

that he tried to harm, calling her Justin as well.

It's been on my mind. And his mom needs.

They just didn't care.

It was.

There was no carpet. I remember that there was no carpet. There was no sheetrock. You could tell, like, where there used to be. It creeped me out.

You know, like, after all this stuff happened. So I was just kind of like, oh my god. One is that there used to be a pool table or something there that used to be in the middle of the room or something. And it wasn't there anymore. is what they were saying.

They were like, well, we used to be able to play pool, but we had to, we can't use that pool table or something. We had to take it out. Like, the second that my friend got back, like, we left.

and it wasn't actually a house on the lake, but perhaps near one? Obviously, Andy Pickens wasn't the only person to have a pool table in his basement, and if the homeowner was renovating and replacing the flooring, they would have obviously had to remove the pool table. So maybe these are just two different houses. But the similarities in the stories I've heard are intriguing. What Jessica volunteers next regarding Justin takes us right back to where we started, with Dylan Glass'.

He was worried, sick, that something was going to happen to him, and she kept asking him, well, what did you do? Tell me, what did you do? Did you have something to do with this? And he would never tell her. I know he did fail his lie detector test, asking about if he had anything to do with Justin's death.

And that's not public.

Not a word, didn't say a word. I've never seen it that thick. I've seen the worst of the worst, right after buddies. if they think it's going to save them. But not here, nobody's saying a word.

That's why I think that he failed that lie detector test. And all he kept saying, you know, was like, well, that can't be the only thing that they arrested for. Because the jury can't use that. They can't do nothing without a body. What Jessica?

Leon was also positively identified on camera at the club that night. I want to talk to him. But that thought has come with a stern warning from several people.

He's not someone that you can just approach like that.

It's a reminder that I have to take this seriously and I can't let my guard down.

This house is as far as the owners of the property and that as having been connected with the players in the Justin Gaines case. There's not really a connection criminally between the people that own the property and Justin Gaines. It's their children. They're out doing their own thing. Their own little criminal acts which involve drug trafficking.

Special thanks to Erica Wilson and her family. If you have any leads on this case, please contact me at info.waveland.com. info.shawnkipe.com And if you love the series, please leave a review and tell your friends. Follow Waveland on Instagram at wavelandmedia for more on this series and upcoming new shows. And you can also find me on social media at shawnkipeofficial or at shawnkipe.com.

As always, thanks for listening.