He’s a popular fraternity brother with a big heart highly talented a natural leader he’s very dedicated when he wanted to do something he did it a lapse in judgment trips him up but he soon gets himself back on track he seemed like he was doing really well in school
He was keeping up with school work one day he heads to campus and never returns it’s as if when that bus pulled away he vanished a cryptic note is his only explanation said my family’s given me a lot of opportunities that I just didn’t take advantage of his puzzling Secrets
Leave detectives and his loved ones baffled we think there’s somebody out there that can help us figure out what’s going on I don’t care why he left where he’s been I just want him to come home Tuesday night April 19 2016 19-year-old College sophomore James Martin Roberts who goes by Martin meets
With friends at a favorite appalachin State University hangout the Klondike Cafe it was a pretty busy night um pretty usual for kondik I mean fact that you can still walk around but it’s pretty hard you’re probably going to get your feet sted on or something Martin and his fraternity
Brother have come for the kondik big draw my group of friends we wanted to go to play trivia and so I texted Martin I was wondering if he was going to be there according to Martin’s friend Holly he’s true to form that night he would always just say funny things and just he
Would always be the guy that everybody wanted to hang out with I was just so mesmerized by Martin always like had such a huge crush on him that I didn’t even realize anything else was going on the son of parents who are divorced and estranged from each other Martin first enrolled at
Appalachin State University in Boon North Carolina almost a year and a half earlier he was really set on going to appalachin State and when that that acceptance came in he was really excited about it nestled in the foothills of the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains the school’s Vibe is unique the laidback atmosphere
Think it s some really well just it’s nice and calm there during Martin’s very first semester he been invited to pledge of fraternity on campus to camp at Epsilon known as te for short he knew people there already and they were invited to the Frat parties and immediately he was
Selected I know that he’s someone who thrives when he’s around his friends he wanted an opportunity to make friends quickly and that was the best way to do it I think he liked the Brotherhood he’ always played Sports and had his team and the fraternity was kind of the same
Thing even as a child in Kernersville North Carolina Martin was a natural athlete playing soccer playing baseball playing football he just he always loved Sports as the brown haired blue-eyed Dynamo got older he excelled on the soccer field he liked to compete he liked to play he liked to play to
Win Martin was pure hustle pure work and he did it calmly and quietly all the time he could walk off the field and be relaxed comfortable fun loving respectful kind caring he’s got a big heart people would look up to him and it made him feel really good about himself
In high school he was voted captain of his soccer team yet by the time he graduated he was ready for a change Martin was very very focused on something that interested him business finance things of that nature were something that he had said all along he thought he had an interest in
Academically Martin set his sights on app States business school he was smart he was very dedicated when he wanted to do something he did it Wednesday night April 20th the day after Martin was at the kondik cafe his father John Roberts who lives two hours away has been expecting a call from
Martin we were making plans for the you know coming weeks and for the summer and for next semester we were talking about the classes he was in and the grades that he had at that time two days earlier Martin told his dad he’d soon have his first paycheck from his new
Dishwashing job at the Daniel Boon Inn talk to he was going to call me back Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest and talk about how much money he made but according to Martin’s friends and family his phone was his Achilles heel he was just a not a great like texting Communicator phone Communicator
I feel like multiple times he always had a broken phone he refused to put it in a case ever would not put it in a case so he had multiple shattered screens on his phone by the next day Martin’s father still hasn’t heard from his son he tries
Reaching him yet again with no luck he seemed a little bit strange since he was so definite that he was going to call me back that same morning Martin is actually at his apartment getting ready to start his day he chats with his roommates over breakfast they all said that they saw
Him in passing on Thursday Martin tells them he’s heading to the library he took a water bottle and he put it in his backback and he he left probably about 10:30 that morning around lunchtime Martin’s cousin who also attends AB State runs into him on campus it was a complete chance meeting
She had uh forgotten something for her class the two have barely seen each other this semester they walked together to the nearby Apple CART bus stop the free bus service students and Boon residents used to get around town they had a conversation for 10 or 15 minutes and upbeat Martin tells her
About his plans for next semester and that he’s on his way to his fraternity house now when the bus comes she gets on and the cousins go their separate ways he started walking down the street and she didn’t think anything of it this brief casual meeting will soon take on far
Greater significance than his cousin ever imagined it really was some kind of coincidence if you believe in that kind of thing that they happened to meet up at that time at that place and it would be the last time that we’ve seen or heard from him at 4:00 that afternoon two of
Martin’s close friends and frat brothers stopped by his apartment to see him Martin hey Martin man you okay the day before he’d abruptly dropped out of their fraternity chat group he was the Freshman pledge class leader of that group those people reached out to Martin
Want to know why but Martin is not in his room and he’s no longer responding to the texts from his friends by Friday morning Martin’s father is increasingly worried about his son it’s been 4 days of radio silence they uh called the landlord for the apartment complex I said are you
Going to go by there anytime today this morning I need to check on bar the apartment manager started calling the roommates and saying hey can you go in his room see if he’s there here see if you can figure out what’s going on Martin’s roommate knocks on his closed
Door Martin and they didn’t know if he was in the room or gone Martin’s not inside but on his desk there’s a note reading it his roommate immediately realizes something is very wrong Friday morning April 22nd 2016 a roommate of college sophomore Martin Roberts has made an alarming Discovery in his
Room the roommate called me read me the note over the telephone I knew I had to get up there ASAP just dropped everything at work got home as quick as I could got my wife Abby and we headed to Boon as fast as we could get there the roommate’s second call is to
The Boon police department they contacted the police and said we need to report this young man missing when detective Kevin Wilson arrives at the apartment he reads Martin’s letter the note is so personal Martin’s parents have made only parts of it public it was the note that Martin left stating that
He was leaving I think it’s to the folks in I se and he said my family’s given me a lot of opportunities that I just didn’t take advantage of he was disappointed in himself I think he felt like a failure it’s really sad but it didn’t really say where he
Was going or what he was doing it doesn’t say this is a suicide note and I’m going to hurt myself nor does it say this is not a suicide note and I’m going to go away so when I saw it I thought this is not going to be
Good this going to be a difficult case Martin has also left important possessions behind his laptop his iPad his phone and his wallet I think you could be seen as the ultimate withdrawal Boon police reach Martin’s half sister Nikki and explain that they’re having difficulty locating
Martin I immediately got in phun with my mom and we let her know what was going on I left work went and got her and we went to Moon all the way up there I kept thinking he’s went off with a couple of his friends and forgot to tell somebody he’s to turn
Up according to Martin’s father and stepmother the 19-year-old had expressed disappointment in himself before 8 months earlier after a great freshman year Martin had just returned to Appalachian State as a sophomore his very first night back he ran into trouble he went up for the sole purpose of attending this fraternity party
He was a social drinker so I don’t think he was addicted to alcohol in any sort of way he drank with his friends who unfortunately drank a lot he made the decision to drive after he had had you know apparently too much to drink then 18 Martin pulled right out
In front of App State campus police they stopped him and then that evolved into a driving while and pared citation Martin was taken into custody that night I get a call from him I think it’s like 2: a.m. 3:00 a.m. maybe and he tells me I need to come
Pick him up because he’s in jail and he got a DWI Martin’s girlfriend Kayan lived almost a 100 miles away from Ab State I don’t know why he didn’t pick sobody closer I think that calling his parents was definitely out of the question at that point he was nervous and scared and
Didn’t want to disappoint then Kayla says she drove two hours to Boon that night to help Martin when I arrived he was already out as soon as I got there he threw money at me as in like gas money he’s like I’m sorry you came all the way up
Here for nothing exhausted and emotional Kayla says they wound up fighting I was like I can’t do this I deserve a little bit better um someone who doesn’t disc considerer himself in decisions that he makes Caleb that night Martin lost his driver’s license and his girlfriend 24 hours passed before Martin
Got up the courage to call his father and stepmother that’s when he told us he had got a DUI and said he needed to come home that the situation he was in was not good for him and he needed some time away from that same day they brought him back
Home to Kernersville North Carolina we first thought maybe he was just going to come home for the weekend uh or maybe even a week but it wasn’t until he was home a day or two that he began to say I think I want to take a
Semester off I’d like to get away from the fraternity life Martin withdrew from Abate while home a friend of his family heard he was looking for work and I said well I’m be open up my uh store that semester so he’s going to be one of my first
Hunters according to Rich Miller Martin thrived at his new job in the restaurant much like he had playing soccer he’s a rare kid you see a kid that young that mature uh be able to handle business the consistency that he showed on the field is exactly what he showed when he sawed
Work for me Martin even put his business education to work to boost the restaurant’s bottom line the job helped repair his bruised self-esteem Martin did you know exaggerate some but he said that rich wanted to Grim him for management after Martin took a full semester off he returned to college in
January of 2016 he was ready to get not to be living with us again but according to his father Martin wanted to handle his education differently this time he was not living on campus in a dorm like he did his first year he was living in an apartment with three other fraternity
Brothers he seemed like he was doing well in school he was keeping up with school work I think he was glad to be back with his friends but we didn’t talk as much after he went back now just four months later Martin’s family and friends have been blindsided by his sudden
Disappearance during the 2-hour drive to Boon his father calls Martin’s cousin who’s on the appstate campus she was the one that said we ran into each other yesterday as a matter of fact at Martin’s father’s request she rushes to Martin’s apartment while talking with his roommates inconsistencies
Emerge they thought Martin was headed to the library Thursday morning which isn’t where his cousin ran into him Martin told her he was headed to the house where his teak fraternity Brothers hang out if he were to go to the te house he would have made a right Andross the
Street and the te house would be right up here but police find find no evidence Martin arrived there were people that were at the house that day around that time and they said he didn’t come by today we didn’t see him at all trying to determine where Martin went detective Wilson contacts the
City’s apple cart bus service there is video on the apple cart transit buses maybe the footage holds a crucial clue to where Martin really went we poured over video that night we were actually able after several to find him on video walking away from the bus stop April 23rd
2016 college student Martin Roberts was reported missing 15 hours earlier by his roommates his cousin was the last person to see him as they parted at a campus bus stop now police have just spotted him on video taken by bus security cameras it’s kind of grainy but it’s clear enough to
Tell that it’s Mark the front camera clearly shows him starting to walk away the side camera you can see him through the glass and then the back camera catches him as he’s walking away Martin’s on foot and heading toward a busy intersection he’s right on the edge of
Campus so the detective is hoping the video will reveal which direction he takes he’s on that video that last rank for approximately 17 seconds and he’s right at a street corner he looks One Direction and looks the other direction and then they don’t see him anymore it’s
As if when that bus pulled away he vanished hoping for leads on which way Martin had it boom police tried to access his phone but without his passcode it’s sealed tight as a drum but the unique thing to Apple products is if you haven’t opened your emails or phone calls or text
Messages they’ll actually are visible on that phone there a lot of M text and Miss phone calls investigators follow up on every missed call and text as a result the news quickly spreads that Martin can’t be found it was just like the worst feeling you could ever have your heart just
Drops police begin scrutinizing Martin’s interactions before he went missing Thursday trying to understand his frame of mind a fraternity brother tells police that 48 hours before Martin disappeared he driven him to get a hair cut they actually took him to the bank because he had to go to the bank to withdraw cash
Money when Martin returned according to his roommates he’d also bought groceries he had a small refrigerator in his bedroom and when we were there the refrigerator was basically empty investigators wonder if Martin could have taken the food with him when he left Martin’s high school girlfriend Kayla
Tells police that in her case she’d grown concerned about Martin three days earlier when he withdrew from a high school chat group she sent him a text saying what are you doing do you not want to talk to me anymore in particular she didn’t know that that very night
Martin also withdrew from his fraternity chat group and then he he started saying things that made me question if he was okay it was things like no one can help me at this point there’s nobody I can talk to the next day Martin went missing it’s unbelievably alarming but uh you know we
Don’t know we don’t know what’s going to happen until until it happens then bone police are told about a possible sighting of Martin just an hour and a half after he left his cousin a bus stop we had a young lady come forward who stated that she had seen him walking
In an area not too far from town she knew who Martin was I think she described the like an unusual or a particular gate that she hey I know that’s Martin Roberts the exact location flry Fork Road between winklers Creek and paint Branch roads from there it’s possible Martin
May have been headed to a nearby Recreation Area called Trout Lake it is a well visited area by college students it’s easy to get to and there’s water there there’s walking trails you can hike in the mountains there police learn that Martin has been to Trout Lake
Before perhaps he packed some food for a hike and something happened to him here in the densely forested foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains the day after Martin was reported missing North Carolina State Highway Patrol provides a specially equipped helicopter to conduct a nighttime search for Martin in the area of the sighting
They have what’s called a Ford looking infrared radar if you’re walking in an area or if there’s an animal in the area they give off a lot more heat than the surrounding ground if Martin’s somewhere in the woods the sensors would see him PL as day but the infrared surge yields
Nothing as investigators pie together details about Martin from his friends and family a pattern begins to emerge they discover he’d been selectively revealing or hiding details about himself for months before he went missing after coming back to college his friends started to notice that there were times where Martin would come in
And and uh hey where have you been sometimes would say I was with my cousin well but we talked to his cousin he only has one cousin in Boon and she says I haven’t seen him we don’t hang out together Martin also hid something much bigger from his roommates and his mother
And sister that he wasn’t even attending appalachin State this semester we thought he was back enrolled in appach he was now enrolled in our local Community College we wanted to take classes online I think it was four or five classes at the community college when investigators get Martin’s academic records from the community
College there’s another Revelation he was doing fine he wasn’t failing anything but he just decided to stop going it had been nearly a month since Martin had logged on to any online courses he was you know telling me about his grades and his classes and extra
Credit and things like that and he had quit going that’s not all Martin had been hiding we called the places that he was telling his family members he worked at and they said we we have applications um I was actually able to find applications to all the places he’s talking about but
He never got hired at the time I thought and he is he’s working himself to death you know now I know different but you wish I have known n but we didn’t know he was being mysterious or untruthful or hiding something from from just about everybody Martin’s mother and sister
Said he even liked to them about his DWI he told them he’d been ticketed while walking home he said that he was stopped by the police and for drunken disorderly I said well you know um you learn your lesson Le you weren’t driving but Martin was behind the wheel that
Night I was shocked I always thought we had the relationship that he could just talk to me about anything it just seems like he was trying his best to give out this picture to people that everything’s okay okay I’m doing fine uh when in actuality I wasn’t doing fine at All 19-year-old Martin Roberts has been missing from Boon North Carolina for 5 days in that time police have uncovered a trail of puzzling behavior that Martin left behind him disengaging from his networks and his friends and being so deceptive about things was very unusual it was not how he was everything that
Happened was pointing to his he was actually miserable and it wasn’t work tired it wasn’t School tired burnt out whatever he was just miserable or depressed or something Martin’s cryptic note now makes more sense to investigators they think he’d been telling people what he imagined they
Wanted to hear about him it seems to me that Martin was very much trying to keep up the facade that everything was going great for him in his note he alluded to being tired of that tired of his life not living up to expectations but police have no idea what Martin’s
Intentions were they look for clues in his possessions starting with his wallet as a result of his DWI Martin no longer had a valid driver’s license they take your driver’s license away from you physically his father says Martin did get a state issued ID card it’s now gone
His original ID was not in that room we assume it somewhere else or or on his person Martin didn’t take his bank card with him his parents had said you know he’s going to have a certain debit card and this is this is what banking through when police checked Martin’s banking
History there were no large withdrawals or suspicious purchases before he went missing there’s been no more activity it still hasn’t been any at all this time Boon police also find something unexpected Martin Left Behind Some anti-depressant pills that Martin was not prescribed there there were quite a few of them I
Don’t know of any time that he has been treated for depression it’s not something that we see being bought and sold between students here police are never able to determine how Martin got the anti-depressants or why he had them in the first place 5 days after he went missing two
More possible sightings of Martin are reported to police one near Trout Lake the other Wingers Creek Road bolstering the likelihood of the original sighting an hour and a half after he’ left the bus stop in that same general area uh around the same time frame and so
Uh for us that seemed to add credibility that they had seen Martin Roberts in that area still investigators check other modes of transportation Martin could have used to go in different directions the best we could tell he didn’t take a bus he didn’t take a cab he didn’t take
Uh you know one he’s a have based companies unless Martin hitched a ride this leads police back to square one the theory he was traveling on foot he definitely had the ability to hike and he was very active um had a lot of endurance and could do anything that he
Put his mind to but those who know Martin best question if he’d ever attempt anything more ambitious than a day hike he’s uh go outside and sweat for five minutes come inside and take a shower type person he just didn’t have a lot of experience proba hadn’t been camping five times in his
Life in the bus security video Martin certainly wasn’t dressed for a long journey I only had on with some cheap tennis shoes and a not even what I describe as a backpack even so investigators consider the possibility Martin might have wandered into the hundreds of miles of wilderness surrounding Boone perhaps attempting to
Connect to the nearby appalachin Trail we received a couple things said hey there was a kid out here definitely didn’t belong out here but it didn’t it wasn’t him somebody completely different Martin’s Family suggests another possible destination we’ve always been a beach family we’ve always gone at least once
If not two or three times a season to the beach a family favorite is o Isle Beach North Carolina 280 M from boom it’s just outside Myrtle Beach definitely a beach kind of person if so Martin’s two distinctive tattoos might stand out there on his left forearm he’s got an homage to
Appalachin State it’s kind of a a blended view of mountains which is definitely reflective of Boom on his right rib cage Martin has a tattoo of a lyric from Bob Marley’s song Zion train don’t gain the world and lose your soul wisdom is better than silver or
Gold over the next two months sightings of young men matching Martin’s description pop up along Coastal North and South Carolina but after investigation none turn out to be him a month into their investigation Boon police have followed numerous leads trying to locate Martin but there’s a fundamental mystery at the very heart of
His case we have these time periods where we don’t know where Martin was police find no answers in Martin’s digital footprint extracted from his laptop I would say I’ve went through 12,000 emails and actually read them and and tried to figure out what what’s he doing as an investigative Hail Mary
Boon’s chief of police appeals to the community for anything they may know about Martin when he was off the radar it’s almost an open letter to the public hey if you’ve got information about this good or bad or whatever here’s the chief’s office line you call me the appeal elicits no
Responses I’ve been doing this job 20 plus years and I’ve never had any case where you put a fraction of this amount of work into it and you get nothing back then after 4 months worth of dead ends detective Wilson receives an unexpected call from a coroner 350 M
Away in Indiana who’s investigating some unidentified human remains they had found from what I understood the lower portion of a leg with a foot but it was in a shoe not just any shoe a gray New Balance sneaker the same kind of sneaker Martin was wearing when he went
Missing so that coroner said that you guys are the first thing that popped up so I just called you with via reason he came here 19-year-old Martin Roberts has been missing for 4 months but a coroner in Indiana has just recovered human remains that potentially could be his Boon’s detective Wilson quickly
Discovers the sneaker found in Indiana is a size and a half larger than what Martin wears yet there’s only one definitive way to know if it’s Martin’s we had actually done parental DNA testing I had gone and met with his father and birth mother to do DNA
Samples the coiner said we’re going to send our stuff off and obviously if there’s a match you guys are going to get that neither one of them ended up being a match in June of 2016 Boon police investigate another potentially heartbreaking theory of what could have happened to Martin if
Martin’s decided to hurt himself we’re looking you know we’re looking for that with three reported sightings of Martin near Trout Lake immediately after he went missing police focus on that area and specifically in the water those bodies of water you know saw and com for folks to use those as a mean mechanism
To to commit suicide or to harm themselves extensive water searches are conducted of both trout lake and the nearby Boon Reservoir the North Carolina State Bure investigation they have a few dog teams of um hrd dogs human remains detection most folks know them as caber
Dogs the dogs are trained on the odor of human decomposition the gases are actually lighter than the water so they’re going to rise to the surface and so what we’re looking for when we’re doing the searches of the water is for the dogs to do exactly the same thing as they do on
The ground is to alert us when they smell those gases their searches also use sonar technology and divers to scan the bottoms of the lake and Reservoir afterward the dogs scour the land surrounding both bodies of water the searches yield nothing there nothing uh no change of
Behavior on the days that we searched for Martin in the water areas no animation nothing gave us any indication that there was anything There Moon police Circle back to try to understand Martin’s behavior and what he’d been silently struggling with before he went missing I did was search War to the college because they have a Counseling Center that that offers free counseling to the students laws protecting patient confidentiality make mental health records difficult to
Access even for law enforcement did he have some type of um mental illness happening did he have an addiction was he having problems with his sexuality or you know some type of identity issue or or or or whatever we never saw any signs or or never been any disc discussion or
Communication that he was having any issues with uh sexuality or gender identity and we’ve always told him if you have any problem you can tell us about it in our interviews with his friends which are our greatest source of information nobody can give us any information about any of that being a
Problem but Martin’s friends tell police they had noticed a marked change in him when he returned to school in January of 2016 he was less about always having fun and going and doing things with them there’d be times where he wanted to be alone I would have never known that he
Was struggling with anything he h at home police find no evidence Martin ever sought mental health counseling at Abate months pass and boom police explore a host of theories for other places Martin could have gone they also enlist outside help to scrutinize his case we brought in experts in the field
Hand them the case File and see in two days and just let them just go through it with fresh eyes and try to point out anything that we didn’t do well enough or didn’t do it all or anything that they can come up with Martin’s Family holds tight to the
Hope that investigators can find him they’re offering a reward for up to $10,000 for information on Martin we think there’s somebody out there that knows something that can help us figure out what’s going on Martin’s father and stepmother have set up a Facebook page called help find Martin Roberts to heighten the
Visibility of their cherished missing son there also to try to communicate directly with Martin how much we love him and we miss him and we want him back we just want to know you’re okay nearly two years have passed since the day Martin disappeared leaving behind troubling
Questions I had to have no clue what was impacting him I just feel so bad that I didn’t see it the one thing that we know for sure is we don’t know anything for sure but somebody does in August of 2017 Martin would have turned 21 for his family the pain of his
Absence is excruciating the plan had always been that Martin was going to walk me down the aisle after I got engaged to asked him he said yeah the day that I went and picked out my wedding dress he said I can’t wait for the wedding sis but after
Martin disappeared she had to decide if would proceed and he wasn’t there we want to get him back home and be a part of the family again I don’t care why he left where he’s been I just want him to come home if you have any information about James Martin Roberts or his
Disappearance you can confidentially contact the Boon police department at 828 268 6900 or High Country Crim Stoppers at 828 268 6959 Houston buman disappeared on January 2nd 2021 I woke up at midnight look at my phone I text kir are you okay her phone was turned off and she didn’t show up to
Work need to report my daughter miss her family is desate answers so we decided to go out and find our daughter ourselves Nothing Else Matters until we get this solv we began walking along here remember that sickening feeling that what am I going to do if I look down and I see my
Daughter this episode of disappeared retraces kon’s last known steps the video it showed Kirsten having a verbal argument out in the parking lot and right there just gone she’s not seen again watching that video was very difficult where is she where did she go I’m afraid I’m very
Afraid the more people who know Kirsten’s Story the greater the chance of bringing her home share on social media get the word out help find her have you seen Kiren rman I’m Lisa bamman Kirsten bamman is my daughter Kiron is our only daughter it’s January 1st 2021 Kirsten is working a shift that
Appear eats a restaurant I told her I’ll pick you up tonight I said just let me know about when because she was closing she came back with a text that said I’m going to meet some friends so I texted back and said be careful you know be good and she said I
Will I woke up around midnight look at my phone see there’s nothing there from Kirsten I text her are you okay I get no response I call her her phone goes directly to voicemail I’m laying in bed but I’m certainly not sleeping I continue probably about every 10 minutes
To call Kirsten with no response at this point I’m worried I just know something is wrong call it Mother’s intuition I know something bad is happening Kiron will be 28 in just a couple of weeks she had always been very intelligent but she just kind of lost her way I think in high
School ISS with grades but she still graduated with honors kir lived with us for the last year she didn’t have a car I had to be taking her back and forth to work she is a force stubborn and I think I can say that from the very beginning because when I went
Into labor with her she was actually sitting she didn’t want to come out and so I had to have a C-section she’s not an angel but she’s our angel I’m Rex bman I’m kirston braman’s father she was just an ordinary American girl she loved to have fun Kirsten is a
Very loving person that enjoyed life I did work for the Maran County Probation Department Rex was working for the justice department through Maran County he then later joined probation we were married while we were both at the probation department we live in Indiana in a suburb called Lawrence it’s a little Incorporated
Town it does have some issues but the schools have a good reputation and it’s a good place Saturday morning Kirsten is still not home her phone is still off I decide to contact Eddie kirston is very secretive about her friends and who she’s with so we did not know many
Of her actual friends other than Eddie I’m Eddie krisan burman’s ex-boyfriend and I was with Kirsten buam in the night she disappeared Kirsten and I dated for about 10 years off and on we weren’t together anymore we were just friends but we kind of like still like once a
Week we like go do something that night Kirsten calls me she says hey it’s New Year’s let’s go out and do something I get off of work around I want to say 10:00 10:30 and my plan is to actually meet kirston and some friends at a
Bar I message Eddie to ask if he knows where Kiron is and I responded no um I expected her to be home so her mother says well she’s not here he messages back that he was with her the night before with some friends at a bar that previous
Evening and she took off and he didn’t know where she had gone I tell him that her phone is off and I can’t reach her and that I’m really getting scared I didn’t quite understand what had happened but I kind of figured that maybe they had an argument and Kiren
Went her way and they went their way but what I couldn’t understand is why Kiren didn’t contact us to come get her or why even Eddie didn’t call I immediately went out and started like retracing anywhere everywhere I thought she would be everything from dumpster areas that weird
Alleys and then asking anyone and everyone if they’d seen her seen anything heard anything it’s about an hour later around 11:40 a.m. he messages back and says that he looked around and he could not find her I was almost sick to my stomach something bad has has really
Happened my wife said kiran’s still not home I’m having a bad feeling about this and I tell her maybe she shut her phone off maybe she misplaced her phone maybe the battery went dead you know just give it a little more time at about 3:30 I called the pizza
Restaurant where she worked because because I knew that she was scheduled to work that afternoon I talked with the owner manager who said Kiren had not shown up nor had there been any contact from her Kirsten very rarely missed work unless she had a very good reason okay Kiren has a dog
TAA she is the sweetest dog Kiren just loves her Kirsten always loved animals that’s one of the things that makes me believe that she did not disappear or go missing voluntarily she never would have left her dog BL yes I need to report my daughter missing it was about 500 a.m. on Sunday
Morning January 3rd when I called the Indianapolis Metro Police Department to make a missing person’s report was her person last night first name was kirston mhm and last name brother I think calling the police and making that report made it extremely real it just seemed surrealistic to me
That my wife is actually on the phone calling police to report our daughter missing the feeling a pit of your stomach when you know something’s happened to one of your children you don’t know what and there’s nothing that you can do that helpless feeling it made me sick you
Know what was the last time you heard from her Friday night at 10:00 nobody has heard from her seen her she didn’t show up to work no cont the police took all that information and indicated it would be assigned to a detective the following day on Monday
And that just it seemed like the longest wait ever so we decided to go out find our daughter ourselves Nothing Else Matters until we get this solved on Monday January 4th Rex and I decide to drive over to the bar where she was last seen and look around the surrounding
Area you know we began walking along here just trying to see if there was anything at all that would be a clue to what happened to her to see if we could find something that belonged to her or her clothing this is the mattress I found uh
When we were walking that day and I had this fear that I was going to find something under there I didn’t want to see but uh I picked it up fortunately there was nothing under there that’s when one thing in particular caught my eye and that was a like a drainage
Dis this is a rather lengthy stretch of drainage ditch so we had a little bit of area to cover and at one point we split I was over there on the North side Lisa was over here on the south side and we’re walking along looking down into the water and immediately I remember
Thinking oh God you know if somebody did something terrible to her that would probably to me anyway would be a logical place to ditch your body this is basically when I did that I just picked up stuff and moved it turning things over I had a stick and I
Was poking around looking in the water it was a really eerie feeling I was scared I was afraid that I was going to find something I didn’t want to see I was hoping I could find something and yet I didn’t want to find something I remember that sicking feeling that
What am I going to do if I look down and I see my so on Monday January 4th my wife and I we spent quite a bit of time searching that drainage did we were hoping for any kind of Clues as to what happened to our daughter kirston I’m worried that she actually
Could have either fallen into it that or some she could have met with someone that did her harm and you know left her there just thinking about that made me sick that we did not find anything it was frustrating and disappointing after we had looked around the drainage ditch Rex and I were
Heading to the car and I see somebody on a bicycle coming our way as the bicycle gets closer I realize it’s Eddie he says he’s there to look for Kiren I was upset I wondered if Eddie had anything to do with Kirsten’s disappearance so so I’m talking to Eddie
And I want to know more details as to what actually happened uh that evening so he kind of laid it out for me they were all in the bar and drinking I believe they were fighting and he was getting a little perturbed they offered to take her home but she did not want
Any part of that I am upset that he left her there Kirsten and Eddie have been together off and on for about 10 years their relationship I think has always been a little tumultuous they seem to get along well and do things together but then something will happen and one of them
Blows up at the other and then it’s off to the races again I tried to tell them that I thought that their relationship had been worn out but kirst didn’t believ she really loved Eddie and she just wasn’t going to let go Kirsten’s mom was more emotional than
Rex was Rex was just more less Stern at this point I’m not really concerned about how they’re looking at me I just kind of went into just frantic mode I’m like where’s Kirsten let’s just find Kiron I love her dearly the only hope we could hold on to
Was that the police could get this solved I’m detective Nicole baching with the IMD missing person’s unit and I was assigned to investigate the kirston bgan case when I first read Kirsten’s report I immediately felt that there was something wrong her phone was turned off that was a big red
Flag but even more so it was the fact that she didn’t show up to work learning that Kira would never leave her dog behind leads me to believe that she did not leave on purpose I learned that Kirsten was with four other people that night and I was
Able to track down who they were Kiren and Eddie and her friends they were all drinking and she had a little too much to drink Kiron did have an issue with alcohol both her dad and I we were concerned about her drinking we talked with her numerous
Times but she would just say I don’t want to talk about it and she’d walk out and that was always frustrating for her dad and I she got angry quickly she would almost explode it was particularly hard for me because U I am a recovered alcoholic and to see my
Daughter go through the same struggles that I had I told her you see what alcohol did to your father you know why would you want to take that chance and you know suffer through all that but her usual response was Dad just because everybody drinks it doesn’t make him an
Alcoholic she just would not admit that she had any kind of a problem well finally we seek professional advice and gather in see a psychiatrist that did help but uh ultimately she did not want to go anymore but um just before she disappeared she seemed to be putting her
Life back together again we were really hopeful that things were going to get a little bit better I don’t know why Kirsten was drinking that night but she got got drunk so we were like hey we got to get you home and everything hey can I get
You Uber let me call your mom or whatever the bar was closing anyhow so they left around 12:15 so out in the parking lot for some reason kirston became angry and at one point a verbal argument ensu all four friends drove off leaving in the parking
Lot I assumed hey maybe she got a uber maybe she finally called her mom but she never made it home the first thing I wonder is are there any cameras in the area and just went down the line and started calling them asking for a possible video and I got three
Videos the first video I was extremely excited to view the video because I wanted to know what happened to C the video it showed kirston having a verbal argument out in the parking lot and then the car driving away the video confirmed everything that
Was told to me by the four people and it was determined that none of them were a person of interest viewing the video I found that there weren’t any cars in the parking lot that she got into she didn’t meet with anybody she didn’t walk off with anybody it just shows her walking
Off after Kirsten leaves the bar the second video shows Kirsten walking on short ridge around 12:40 a.m. the last video is of Kirsten walking in the YMCA parking lot and here’s Kirsten right now she’s walking along the sidewalk and she’ll go into this niche follow this fence line right through
Here if you notice right here it says 159 so we know at 159 Kirsten’s still alive once Kiren rounds this corner this particular camera does not pick her up another camera however picks her up right here in this corner she’s walking along the fence line she picks up
Something off the ground and she continues to walk right here it says 2 a.m. as we watch the video she continues to walk and she continues to stay along with the fence line what’s problematic about the video is that there’s a glitch there’s going to be a jump in time here shortly where
It shows that the camera is not working right here you see it’s 2: a.m. and now it’s 2:30 a.m. and right there she’s gone she’s not seen again it’s a very big disappointment this this time jump from 2: to 2:30 a.m. concerns me because we don’t know what happened we don’t
Know where she went no one could figure out why but for some reason the camera just cut out for that half hour it was just an unfortunate glitch did she leave the parking lot on foot this direction did a car come in pick her up take her back out I just don’t
Know detective baching asked us to review the video to see if that was Kirsten there’s no doubt it was Kiren just by the way she was walking plus the white backpack that she was carrying that stood out like a sore thumb watching that video was very difficult yeah I’m wondering that’s the
Last we’re going to see her all I can do is wonder where is she where did she go I’m afraid I’m very afraid the area that kst went missing in which is in the 800 block of short ridge is a high violent crime area within a week or two after her
Missing there was a rape a homicide and the homicide involved a bank robber if she was trying to get home she should have been going the other direction but maybe she’s totally mixed up and thinks she’s going to the apartment complex where Eddie was living with his mom
Which is a couple blocks north of there but we may never there’s three different buildings in between my apartments and the why if kirston was coming to see me she would be going the wrong way but anything is possible she could have just been lost I decided to go to the location
Where kirst was last seen on the cameras this yellow pole is to where she got and then she makes her left hand turn here and she goes out a view of the camera for a short time period enough time period for her to get down to where this big black pole
Is because over here we now have another camera this camera shows the East End of the Abby apartment Complex so she comes back into view he’s still walking along the same line and she continues this way she just continues around over There now she’s going to be walking southbound towards the apartment complex she makes this turn right here and that’s it with the camera shorting out we can’t see see if she ever walks out of the parking lot and we can’t see if a car drives into the parking lot and she gets
Into a car and we can’t see if she ever climbs over the fence I mean she vanished I noticed that there’s a lot of activity at the Abby Apartments so we wanted to knock on doors over there so we got a group of us together the missing person unit and we
Start knocking on doors and talking to people we have kon’s poster with us we show the poster to the people hopefully maybe somebody there might have seen something but due to the high crime area somebody in the ab apartment complex may know something but they’re just too
Scared to come forward and tell the police about what they know a couple weeks into the investigation I sit down with kon’s parents to update them on the investigation as I’m sitting in detective Bing’s office I’m thinking now that something bad has happened you know she has met with B
Play but we had no proof I’m even more scared as time goes on this is not going to have a good ending but I have a lot of uh good friends and family who keep saying try to keep the Hope up and so I am my good friend who also works within
The law enforcement Community had arranged for there to be a surge on Saturday January 16th around the area where Kirsten went missing there was a a grid search conducted Rex and I are there it was difficult watching people go out it was difficult watching them come back especially because there there was
Nothing that was actually found I do want to find an answer I am also afraid of that answer we want closure for the family we all care deeply because we put ourselves in their position and it’s just heartbreaking when your head is pounding up against a wall and you’re not getting
Anywhere at this point our leads they’re running out we’ve done everything that we could do we used our mounted unit and drone to search for Kirsten we went and canvased the area we put her face on social media we put her in the news we put her face on billboards on the
Interstate there’s not much left for for us to do other than to wait for somebody to call and say hey I saw her here I saw her there every day seems like the last one because nothing is happening as far as finding her daughter if there is someone out there
That knows something please put yourself in her dad’s and my shoes this has been Agony for us we just want to know what happened Houston rman was last seen January 2nd 2021 if you have any information please contact IMD missing persons unit at 317 327 6160 it’s been about six weeks since Kiron was missing and I saw a posting on a Facebook site that a unidentified female had been found the general description fit kirston the same weight approximately 114 115 lbs the height was within an inch or two of Kirsten hair
Color was the same and my wife and I had kind of convinced ourselves in this body was found which had not been identified was our daughter we were almost the point of grieving but the one thing that was stood out was that this body had a
Tattoo of a spider on her arm Kirsten did not have a tattoo that I was aware of but because the description so closely fit her I contacted detective Bing and the Cor cor’s office to ask more about this and then the weeks we were waiting to hear from the coroner’s office that
Was a pretty trying time in one respect we wanted it to be her so we could have some closure but on the others hand we didn’t want it to be her so that we still had hope that she was still alive when DNA returned it’s confirmed that it was not Kirsten so
There is still hope that she is still alive I’m happy at the time but then I I’m also feeling like we’re back to square one in March of 2021 I bring up the the possibility of a private investigator to Rex by hiring a private investigator we’ll have somebody who can
Can devote the whole time to her case M Lisa and Rex told me I was extremely happy because for me I don’t care who solves the case I just want her to come home my name is Crystal I am a private investigator the bman family contacted
Me early March of 2001 to help find Kiren I’ve been in law enforcement for approximately 11 years my specialty is missing persons and criminal investigations I have about a 90% success rate and finding individuals so when I first met with Lisa and Rex burgerman they were definitely desperate
For answers and they just wanted to know what happened to Kiren my first few days were actually spent just canvasing the area talking to people that would have offered insight as to what happened I had to actually backtrack and look at surveillance video from the knife she went
Missing what I did notice is there’s a a fence line that it closes the YMCA lot off and then there’s an apartment community on the south end of the YMCA that’s the Abby metal apartment the next thing is is that you know and understanding that there are four different angles on the
Surveillance videos it’s just running through them numerous times um for weeks on in just to see if there’s any new evidence that we can uncover that we had not seen before and then one thing that I did observe was a an SUV and about 238
You see it come out of the um Abby meal Apartments it proceeds North on short ridge and then approximately 3:15 a.m. you see the same SUV traveling north on short ridge then proceeds back down a short ridge the behavior of that vehicle was definitely suspicious at that point I’m thinking
That this person may have picked her up something could have happened we actually did continue surveillance to see if that vehicle had any association to the ABY apartments and if they live there but we didn’t see the vehicle show up at the AB Metal Apartments again the
Picture of the SUV is out to the public in addition to Flyers of Kiron story and we’re hoping to get answers once Crystal began with her investigation she was able to get to obtain a couple of videos that show Rod this car we believed was an SUV that had left the Abby
Apartments seemed to be just driving around would stop and start you could see the brake lights come on and go off the thought was perhaps that that SUV was somehow involved with Kirsten’s disappearance so this could be a very big break I need to find out who owns
This vehicle who was driving the vehicle this means that we could have a suspect about two weeks later there’s nothing no leads there was nothing useful through build but we are partners with the FBI and they knew that kirston had went missing the FBI agent saw the video that
We retrieved from the business across from the ABY apartment complex and was able to say I know who owns that vehicle I found out that it was actually linked to a homicide that had heard over in that apartment complex working with the FBI I was able
To identify the SUV crime lab was called to do testing on the vehicle and they were able to eliminate totally the Kiron was inside that vehicle September of 2021 the case was in fact getting pretty cold so we talked about hosting a visual for Kiren there had been no leads at
This point in Kirsten’s disappearance it was frustrating and disappointing we held a vigil for kirston on Saturday September 18th we were hoping to draw a lot of people from the neighborhood who possibly come forward with some information the prime investigator contacted us and said possibly we can get some media
Attention get her name out there some more that meant a great deal to Lisa and I it really bullied our emotions we did get uh quite a few leads that came immediately after we hosted the visual but that those were all exhausted and didn’t lead anywhere but
This time no one has come forward and that’s what’s been very discouraging about this is nothing for my wife and I it’s been a roller coaster of emotions one of the biggest fears is that we may never know what happened to her we’re to the point where now we have
To sit and wait for somebody to come to us and tell us hey we saw saw something March of 2022 a Lea came in out of Franklin Indiana at a bar and uh the patron actually called local law enforcement and just advised that they believed that a female in the bar that
Was accompanied by a male was possibly Kiron I’m thinking this this is great finally we’ve got a break in the case a series of efforts and phone calls we got a hold of the video and we watched that video and it does look like her it was a good quality video although you
Couldn’t really get a good dreon look at her and as we were watching I had to keep telling myself does this really look like her or am I wanting it so much that I’m thinking it looks like her but then we noticed something on the video that looked a little odd this
Woman is acting rather strange in this video she’s kind of bent over her eff is very weird she’s not showing any emotion when she walks it’s like she’s almost like a robot so that part of it I was alarmed by my initial thought is if this is her she’s
Been brainwashed because the way this woman was in the video was not Kiren was not her Personality I believe that someone knows something I feel very hopeful that we can find out what happened to Kirsten and find some answers for the family I believe that someone saw something that evening early morning and cares to went missing I just can’t believe that no one saw
Anything there were points in time during all of this where I wondered if Eddie had anything to do with Kirsten’s disappearance they had a volatile relationship however I do not think that Eddie had anything to do with it this thought that Eddie might be responsible just popped into my head I guess because
Of their on again off again relationship all the problems that they had had it was just a thought a passing thought I am 99.9% sure he had nothing to do with K’s Spirit my relationship with Kirsten it was a good relationship and I have good memories I have sad ones with her being
Gone I don’t know how to feel anymore and I’ve went through every range of emotion about this but now I’ve emotionally know about it you can only do so much to take care of people and some things are within your control keeping my help up has been
Difficult both Rex and I have I mean we’ve just been existing for this year plus now we’ve had to keep putting one foot in front of the other when this happened it just felt like the life was sucked out of me things just stopped I’ve lost loved ones everyone
Has lost loved ones family friends but someone’s gone missing and you think something terrible has happened um you don’t know what to do with your grief wor I mean am I grieving or mourning for nothing or is she out there it’s a different kind of pain I know how people that have had
Missing love ones for years and years go on I really don’t hope I can get that strength to D you know I would just say to anyone that may know something about our daughter’s disappearance to please come forward that’s the only plea I can make and for God’s sake please come forward
And give us some information
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