TAKEN???

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader.

[00:00:01]I'm your cult leader Spencer Henry and this week we've got not one, not two, but three stories all in one.

[00:00:09]One, one. That's right, baby. A triple dipper. And boy am I stoked to talk about them. My dear, dear cult babes. I don't think it's going to take you guys a long time to figure out. I know you're a bunch of little sleuths to figure out where this episode is headed. The theme of today's list episode, I should say.

[00:00:26]But you know I love a little twist. So, what I think we're going to do is we're just going to get into it, okay? I'm going to tell you guys the first story.

[00:00:33]And by then I think you'll have it figured out. And it's actually a story that you are probably already familiar with, long-time listeners. We have talked about this story back in the day when it was all unfolding, but it involves a woman named Carlee Russell.

[00:00:51]Carlee was a 25-year-old nursing student in Hoover, Alabama, which Hoover is just outside of Birmingham. And she also worked part-time at a spa. And by all accounts, she was, you know, hustling.

[00:01:04]She's doing the thing. She's working, she's going to school, she's doing it all. This story, I forgot how actually wild it is until I went back through my notes and I was like, "Oh, yeah." And we've got some updates, too, some different information than we talked about in a little leader a very long time ago.

[00:01:22]So, July 13th, 2023, it seems like a very normal day for Carlee. She gets off of work around 8:20 p.m., goes runs some errands. She grabs some food at this place called Taziki's and then pops on over to a nearby Target and gets some snacks, some Cheez-Its, some granola bars, as if she's going on a little road trip, right? She posted up in the parking lot at Target for a minute. I don't know, you you sit there sometimes, you scroll on your phone before you start driving, whatever. Whatever she's doing, but then there's a bizarre sequence of events, you guys.

[00:01:56]About an hour gone by since Carly left work and at 9:34 p.m., Carly is driving down the interstate, Interstate 459, when she grabs her phone and calls 911.

[00:02:09]Carly was disturbed. She had seen a toddler on the side of the interstate.

[00:02:13]She tells the dispatcher that the toddler, he he was wearing a t-shirt and a diaper, but I don't think he's wearing pants and it was obviously unsettling, but what's even weirder is that of the surplus of calls that were coming into that dispatcher that night, no one had mentioned a missing toddler. So, it makes you stop. It makes you think, what the hell is going on here? Did somebody not know that their toddler was out wandering near the interstate? Were the parents just aloof? Were they on drugs?

[00:02:44]Were they ignoring this child or was this child abandoned? What happened? Was there an accident somewhere? It's so strange, right? Well, it gets even stranger because after Carly hangs up with 911, uh she had told the dispatcher that she's going to pull over, she's going to stop to check on this toddler, right? Well, after she hangs up, Carly calls a relative and I'm assuming just to tell them what she had seen, what's going on, right? So, she's on the phone, she's going, "Oh my god, there's this toddler. I just called the police. I'm going to I'm pulling over to look for them." But then, this relative that is on the other end of the line with Carly hears Carly scream and that was it. No more words were exchanged afterward.

[00:03:27]Something terrible had clearly happened.

[00:03:30]Happened to Carly. Had the toddler been hit by a car and she saw it? Had Carly been hit by a car? They've no idea what's going on, this poor relative.

[00:03:38]It's distressing. And obviously, this is a matter that the authorities take seriously. Somebody calls 911 and is like, "There's a toddler walking near the interstate." That's a big [ __ ] deal.

[00:03:48]It's very dangerous and so the authorities, they rush over there.

[00:03:53]They're there within literally minutes.

[00:03:55]But when they get there, there is no sign of the toddler. And there's zero sign of the woman who had called in, Carlee. What the officers were met with instead was pretty grim-looking.

[00:04:07]Her car was still on the side of the road, and in her car was all of her personal belongings, things that clearly somebody would not just leave behind. I mean, her phone, her Apple Watch, even her wig. The engine to the car is still running, but Carlee is nowhere. And it was so weird. I mean, had the toddler been a decoy? That's what some were probably thinking, like, maybe this was more than just a missing toddler seen on the side of the road. Maybe the toddler was being used instead to trap a young woman like Carlee. We've heard some horrific stories of trafficking. I mean, you just never know. People are sinister. And soon, the situation escalates into this full-on emergency.

[00:04:51]Her family reports her missing, especially after that phone call, and because of that sketchy call, law enforcement began treating this case as a possible abduction. Search efforts ramped up. The local police get involved. I mean, word is spreading fast. State agencies, federal resources, and large numbers of volunteers from the community came together in the following hours. Because as we know, the first few hours after something like this, you've got to focus everything. It's so important. And not only do we have a missing woman, but we also have a missing toddler that she had called about. And you can imagine all of Nextdoor, Facebook, all of the social media channels are being blasted with these desperate pleas to find Carlee Russell, to come forward with any information you might have. Obviously, the idea that a woman had stopped to help a child and then disappeared triggered something in people. There was this widespread fear, this sense of urgency that overcame everyone, especially given ongoing concerns about trafficking and random abductions. I mean, you know, those Target parking lots are notorious hotspots. You go on Nextdoor and it's like "Strange man drove by me and my daughter in the parking lot." Right? There's always something going on. But anyway, it was a full-blown story. Her family was actively speaking out. They were pleading for help. They were speaking to news networks and social media just spread Carlee's story like wildfire. I mean, we have a missing 25-year-old nurse who disappeared under the strangest circumstances. With the authorities, I mean, they're putting together search teams that are working around the clock combing through areas near the interstate and beyond. Tips are being called in and at one point there was even a reported sighting of Carlee at a Red Roof Inn motel, which police investigated, but nothing came from it.

[00:06:46]Meanwhile, a reward fund started to grow, and it grew fast. Tens of thousands of dollars being poured into it to find Carlee Russell. That's how serious people were about finding her.

[00:06:57]For nearly two full days, well, actually more than two days, about 49 hours, there was no confirmed trace of Carlee.

[00:07:05]If you've ever seen 48 Hours, you already know, those 48 hours pertinent in an investigation.

[00:07:12]But then, late on the evening of Saturday, July 15th, everything changed.

[00:07:17]Around 10:45 p.m., Carlee suddenly reappears. She walks back into her family's home on foot and reportedly passed out. A 911 call was made to let police know that she had returned and she was unresponsive but breathing.

[00:07:32]Emergency responders quickly arrive and Carlee is taken to the hospital for evaluation. Physically, she showed some signs of distress, some minor signs of distress, like a a torn shirt, a small scratch or two, but nothing that clearly matched the kind of violent abduction that everybody had been picturing for the last 2 days. Even so, at that moment, Carlee was a kidnapping victim, and she had just survived a traumatic ordeal. At least that's what everyone thought. Once she was awake in the hospital, Carlee gave investigators an initial account of what she said had happened during those 49 hours that she was missing.

[00:08:13]According to Carlee's story, after she stopped to check on the toddler, a man suddenly came out from the woods. She described him as having orange hair and a bald spot. She said he forced her over a fence and into a car.

[00:08:29]Mhm.

[00:08:31]From there, her story just got really elaborate, we'll say. She told police she regained consciousness inside the trailer of an 18-wheeler truck, where she believed there was also another woman, possibly a baby. She claimed she was able to escape at one point, but she was quickly recaptured. According to Carlee's story, she was then taken to a house, where she was forced to undress, pose nude for photographs. I mean, this is an account of a kidnapping, an abduction, and it seems like trafficking. It's horrifying. Someone with big clown hair comes and throws you into the back of an 18-wheeler, comes home and says, you know, drop them out, I'm taking some I'm snapping some pics. She also described being fed cheese crackers by a woman who played with her hair. Eventually, she claimed she was put back into a vehicle again, but at some point she managed to escape for good. She said she ran through the woods and eventually made her way back home. And at first, that is the story she tells authorities, so that is the story that everybody believes.

[00:09:39]Her family supports her. They they supported her account on television interviews. They described her as traumatized saying she had fought for her life during those 48 hours. The public largely accepted Carlee's explanation of of the series of events as the truth. And for a while the case had gone from a disappearance mystery to an inspiring and harrowing survival story. But investigators still had more questions about what actually happened during those 49 hours. I don't think people always realize like there still needs to be an extensive investigation after somebody returns. There could be a orange-haired maniac on the loose. At first detectives gave her space. They allowed her to reacclimate to her home life. I mean they didn't press too hard during the initial hospital interview.

[00:10:31]But as they began reviewing the evidence, the gaps in Carlee's story became harder to ignore. One of the first major issues was the lack of any evidence supporting the toddler claim which had triggered this entire incident lest we forget. Traffic cameras from the interstate showed Carlee's vehicle stopping, but they didn't show any child or anyone of any age on the road whatsoever. Nobody else had seen anything involving a toddler. It was strange. There was also no missing child reports that matched anything Carlee described.

[00:11:04]So where was this toddler? Right? That would be the next big question next to who did this?

[00:11:09]Where's the toddler? We know where Carlee is now. Where is this child? And then there was the detail about her 911 call. Data confirmed that while she was on the phone reporting this missing toddler, she continued driving for about 600 yards. Police found it extremely unlikely that a barefoot toddler could be on a busy interstate alone for even that long without being noticed by anyone else or worse stepping onto the road, stepping into traffic. And that alone raised a lot of serious doubts to authorities about whether or not this toddler that Carlee had seen existed at all. But then investigators began analyzing her phone.

[00:11:50]They looked into her digital activity, her history a little more closely. And that's when the searches showed up. And it's right out of a dumbass criminal playbook, you guys. Carlee had been searching all kinds of [ __ ] Let's see.

[00:12:02]Oh, she had been searching for how much an Amber Alert cost, how to take money from a register without being caught.

[00:12:09]She'd searched for bus tickets.

[00:12:12]And my personal favorite, she looked up the movie Taken. You know the Liam Neeson movie where his daughter's taken and he's like, "Wherever you are, I'm going to find you, whatever." "I will find you.

[00:12:23]>> [music] >> And I will kill you."

[00:12:26]Girl, she thought she was getting the Lifetime movie presents the Carlee Russell story. And the authorities, they see all these searches, they see her search history, they're like, "Okay, this is [ __ ] fishy, right? Like I I would Oh my god, I'd be living for that tea." If I was at the the police station, I'd be like, "Girl, get over here. Look at what she was Googling, you know?" Other parts of her story were just off as well. There was no physical evidence of an abduction, there were no signs of a struggle at the scene, no witnesses, no surveillance footage showing anyone else involved. Her story about being transported in an 18-wheeler, escaping, being recaptured, taken to a house, it didn't match any of her visible physical injuries, and it lacked any supporting evidence whatsoever. Investigators couldn't locate any vehicles, locations, or individuals matching her description.

[00:13:17]And mind you, they've got cameras, right? There's traffic cameras. They can they can see what's going on here. As days continued to pass by, law enforcement became more open about their skepticism with Carlee's story. They publicly stated that they had not been able to verify most of her claims.

[00:13:35]However, she was still sticking to her story at that point. But then, this is all happening like in the first like week, week and a half after Carlee had gone missing and then reappeared. Well, on July 24th, about 9 days after Carlee returned home, the entire case took a turn.

[00:13:52]Through her attorney, Carlee released a statement admitting none of it was real.

[00:13:58]She admitted there was no toddler on the side of the road. She had never seen a toddler, and she had not been kidnapped at all. She also admitted that she acted completely alone and had not even left the Hoover area during the time she was considered missing. She was in plain sight the entire time. That is like another level of just insane. Truly insane. So, what had been treated as a terrifying abduction case involving a vulnerable child and a missing woman was now confirmed to be a total 100% lie. Yeah, the massive search effort, the emotional investment from the public, I mean, everybody, her family, the involvement of multiple law enforcement agencies all wasting their resources because of one woman's lies. That bombshell instantly set things off against Carlee, right? People are like, "Oh, actually [ __ ] you for that." Right?

[00:14:58]So, just a few days later on July 28th, authorities formally charged Carlee with two misdemeanor offenses. One for falsely reporting to law enforcement and the second for falsely reporting an incident. Carlee turned herself in. She was processed at the Hoover City Jail, and then she was released on bond. Even with Carlee's confession, one major question remained unresolved. Like, where was she during those 49 hours? And to this day, investigators have never publicly confirmed a full, verified, coherent account of what Carlee was doing during those 49 hours or where she was during that time. In the months that followed, the case went to court and by October of 2023, a judge found Carlee guilty of the charges related to the false report. The court then moved on to sentencing and during sentencing Carlee did take accountability. She formally acknowledged what she had done wrong.

[00:15:55]She described her actions as making a {quote} "grave mistake" and said that she had been dealing with a lot of emotional stress at the time. She apologized profusely for the panic and the disruption caused across the country. And it seems like she learned her lesson, but there's still a price to pay, right? You [ __ ] up. The judge did choose not to impose jail time stating that incarceration would not be the best use of resources since she wasn't technically considered like a threat at all to public safety, which is fair, right? Ultimately, the sentence focused more on restitution and supervision. The judge sentenced Carlee to 12 months of supervised probation, community service, mandatory mental health counseling, thank god, and restitution payments totaling nearly $18,000.

[00:16:47]It's a lot of [ __ ] money.

[00:16:49]But it's also a crazy thing to do. It's crazy to call 911. Like it would have been one thing for her to just go missing, but she she was trying to make it a big deal, right? She's like, "There's a toddler. There's a toddler on the side of the road." Like she she I think want I would assume wanted this to be a big spectacle. Carlee was placed on a structured payment plan. She was required to pay back the restitution in monthly installments, which I guess reportedly those can sometimes to low as $50 per month. The restitution amount represented only a portion of the total cost of the search effort. Authorities made it clear that the real expense was significantly higher, but the court set amount was what she was legally required to repay. Officials have expressed their frustration at how long repayment is taking, but her attorneys have said that the intense publicity surrounding the case has made it difficult for her to find stable employment, which has affected her ability to pay more quickly. I said, you know what? Give her the [ __ ] movie. Give her a book deal.

[00:17:48]Let her talk about cuz I actually do want I want to hear in her own words. I want her to write this out like what was going on in her head at the time. I want to know exactly who she was talking to.

[00:17:58]I want her to give us the play-by-play.

[00:18:00]So, as far as we know now, she's still paying off that debt. It's better than being in jail, I guess. And as you can probably assume by now, this week's list episode has a theme of kidnapping hoaxes. And there's nothing I love more than a good old kidnapping hoax. I mean, we've heard of the Queen B, right?

[00:18:21]Sherri Papini, capital B. We've heard all kinds of bullshitters on this show, but it'll never cease to amaze me and I can never get enough of learning about these stories of people who do [ __ ] like this. I'm also like, damn, if y'all would have just listened to Obituary, my other podcast, not only have we covered people who faked their deaths, but I once covered something known as Johatsu.

[00:18:42]Johatsu, the word, uh it's Japanese, it translates to evaporates. And it's fitting because when somebody purposefully vanishes from their daily life, it's called Johatsu. And there are actually companies out there, many in Japan, that will essentially help you erase your old life and start over new.

[00:19:02]There's a million reasons for this. And some of the reasons are valid. Perhaps somebody is escaping an abusive situation, or maybe they got themselves into a debt with the wrong people, and they don't want to face the collectors.

[00:19:14]Or maybe they just wanted to reinvent themselves. Whatever the reason is, uh we all, I guess, have that right as human beings to disappear and start over somewhere new. But when you're wasting precious resources that could be used to find real people who are actually being abducted, makes you an [ __ ] All right, next up we have the case of Karol Sanchez. Back in 2019, Karol was a 16-year-old girl living in New York, originally from Honduras. She had been staying with family in the Bronx at the time, and from the outside, everything seemed to be going great. I mean, she was going to school, she had her family there, a very normal routine. But behind the scenes, there was already some tension building in recent months. Mostly centered around Karol's mom wanting to move the family back to Honduras, and Karol really not wanting to go. So, it's late, it's late at night on December 16th, around 11:20 to 11:30 p.m., and Karol and her mom are walking together along Eagle Avenue near East 156th Street in the Melrose section of the Bronx. They were heading towards a relative's apartment. Wasn't busy out, not a lot of people, normal late-night walk, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that would lead you to think something sinister was about to happen.

[00:20:36]But suddenly, this beige four-door sedan pulls up right next to Karol and her mom. And everything happened fast.

[00:20:44]Within seconds, two men jumped out of the car and moved directly towards Karol. No hesitation, no talking. They grabbed her immediately. Her mom reacted instantly, trying to pull her back, fighting them off as best she could, but she was outmatched and outnumbered. They shoved her mom to the ground while continuing to drag 16-year-old Karol towards the car. Inside of the vehicle, there were already two more men. So, we have four men in total. They forced Carol into the backseat, slammed the door, and the car took off almost immediately, heading east on Eagle Avenue. Just like that, a mom has gone through the traumatic witnessing of her daughter's abduction. Carol was gone.

[00:21:28]I mean, can you imagine? You're walking with your [ __ ] kid, and next thing you know, a car pulls up and just takes them, rips them from your grasp? Carol's mom was left in the street screaming for help, completely frantic. Witnesses nearby were trying to figure out what had just happened, and 911 calls started coming in real quick. Police responded with haste, and at this point, everything was being treated as a legitimate violent abduction, because that's exactly what it looked like, and Carol's mom had been part of it. She had seen this unfold.

[00:22:00]Witnessed it firsthand, her daughter being taken from her. There was actually surveillance footage showing the entire thing. It was grainy, but clear enough to see the sequence of events, just as Carol's mother had told authorities. You can see in the video, clearly, a car pulls up, men jump out, they grab Carol, force her in, and they drive away. The New York police, they start investigating this kidnapping, right?

[00:22:24]They're logging calls, they're gathering descriptions of the suspects, they're pleading with the public for help. I mean, they know, they they're telling everyone what they know. We have four adult males, they're they're wear they were wearing dark clothing, they have a description of the vehicle that's gone out, and they are also out there canvassing the area, talking to witnesses, reviewing the footage from all of the different camera angles.

[00:22:48]Meanwhile, Carol's mom was giving statements, but she was still visibly shaken from what had just happened, but it didn't take long for things to start to feel a little off.

[00:23:00]Okay? Even though the situation clearly met the criteria for an Amber Alert, they didn't put one out right away. In fact, they waited hours and hours and hours. It wasn't until like 11 or 12 hours after Carol had been taken that an Amber Alert was finally issued. Once it was issued though, everything escalated very quickly.

[00:23:23]Okay, the video of Carol's abduction started spreading online. News stations picked it up and the case turned into a major story almost instantaneously.

[00:23:34]People were sharing the footage everywhere and it created a lot of fear because it looked like a random attack.

[00:23:39]Like someone could just be out walking with their parent and get snatched like that. Doesn't make you feel safe.

[00:23:45]Everyone's on edge.

[00:23:47]Meanwhile, police were still actively searching for Carol. They're trying to track the vehicle, identify the men, follow any lead, any of the tips that are pouring into the station, but for a while, there's nothing solid to go on.

[00:24:02]There's no confirmed sightings of Carol.

[00:24:04]There's no location. Just that one grainy video. Until about 12 hours goes by. It's the afternoon of December 17th and everything flipped. The Amber Alert has gone out. The video is being shared thousands of times when Carol suddenly reappears.

[00:24:23]Just walked up near a relative's apartment building. Basically the same place that she and her mom had been heading to the night before. Police are called and when they arrived, she was there. She was alive. Physically okay.

[00:24:35]Just shaken up. Not even beat up. But shaken up for sure. They took her in for questioning expecting to hear details from Carol about where she was, what happened, about the men who had taken her. But instead, Carol drops a bomb to authorities.

[00:24:53]She tells them the whole thing was staged. The entire thing. The car, the men jumping out, the struggle in the street.

[00:25:04]All of it was planned ahead of time. The only thing real was Carol's mom's fear that the unthinkable had just happened to her daughter. Investigators later confirmed that Carol knew at least one of the people involved prior. And the reason for faking her kidnapping, it all comes right back to the tension at home that we were talking about earlier.

[00:25:25]She didn't want to move back to Honduras. And she wanted a way out. So, this was Carol's brilliant plan to run away, which is wild, you guys, because the execution of it was so convincing, it triggered an actual Amber Alert and a citywide search. I mean, give Carol the Academy Award for Best Actress. Let her mom be pushed down onto the street.

[00:25:47]After that, the investigation shifted completely to identifying and locating the four men involved, because it didn't matter that they were not suspects in the abduction anymore. It mattered that they had partaken in this crime.

[00:25:59]They wanted to figure out how much planning went into this. They wanted to figure out whether anyone was going to be charged. And the reaction to all of it was pretty intense, because a lot of people were frustrated. Obviously, this pulls major resources away from real emergencies. How many other people were facing something during that time and would have survived or been found if Carol hadn't done it. And it also creates hesitation in future cases, because now there's that question in the back of people's minds. The more stories like this that happen, the more hesitation there could be in finding people that are actually abducted. And at the same time, it also raised questions about the Amber Alert delay.

[00:26:40]Why did it take so long in the first place? Especially given how serious the situation looked. A girl abducted from the streets. One of the articles I read about Carol's case kind of got into the nitty-gritty of it. In an article with a Rolling Stone, it was mentioned that the public advocate for New York City, Jumaane Williams, called out the police department, like, why did you take so long to put out that Amber Alert? And they reportedly hinted at the fact that it was because Carol is a woman of color.

[00:27:09]But I guess the New York Police Department was asked about it, but never gave an official statement as to why they waited so long to put out the Amber Alert. Still haven't ever said anything about it, at least at the time of researching, but some have said that the police might have had early intel that this abduction was a hoax, but we don't know. As for what happened to Carol, I'm not sure, but hopefully she learned her lesson. Last but not least, we have the case of Caden Spate in 2025, and this one feels like it's sort of a mix of everything we just talked about. We've got planning, we've got staging, we've got a digital footprint, just all of it taken to another level. So, Caden was this 17-year-old kid. He's living in Florida in a pretty quiet part of Marion County, and from the outside, just like the other cases we talked about today, nothing stood out about Caden. There was no major warning signs something was wrong, nothing publicly suggesting that he was in trouble of sorts or that anybody would want to take him. But like we've seen before, once investigators started digging later, there were things happening behind the scenes that nobody really picked up on prior to his disappearance. This story kicks off in the afternoon of September 25th, 2025, around 4:10 p.m.

[00:28:31]When out of nowhere, Caden sends out a text message to his family group chat.

[00:28:37]It's not a normal message. It was urgent and frankly terrifying. I'd freak out if one of my family members texted me this.

[00:28:44]Caden said he was being shot at by multiple people, and that he had already been hit by a bullet. So, immediately, this goes from family group chat mayhem to, "Oh my god, we got to call 911.

[00:28:55]We've got to report this." They're trying to call him over and over again.

[00:28:59]He's not answering. What the [ __ ] is going on? Authorities were able to track his last known location using his phone data, and when the deputies arrived, they found Cayden's truck abandoned.

[00:29:11]But, Cayden, he's gone. The scene itself looked really bad. There was a bullet hole through the windshield of the truck. There was blood inside and around it. His phone was destroyed. There were drag marks in the dirt, and even bicycle tracks leading away from the area from the the crime scene. If you're law enforcement walking up to that, you're not thinking, "Oh, this is fake." You're thinking, "Somebody was attacked, possibly kidnapped, abducted, clearly injured." I mean, there's blood, there's bullet holes, and that's exactly how they treated it. They took this very seriously. Multiple agencies got involved, as with the other cases. Local deputies, state officials, even federal resources. Helicopters were out, and a full search is started. Because Cayden was a minor, and there was clear evidence of violence, an Amber Alert was issued. And now, now we've got the public involved, right? People are seeing alerts. Everyone's checking their phones.

[00:30:08]17 year old, possibly abducted by armed men in a van. Cayden's family is freaking the [ __ ] out. They're panicking. They've received those unsettling text messages. Now, they weren't hearing anything. The police had found his his truck. There was bullet holes. There was blood. The entire community is on edge, because everybody thinks this is real, and based on the scene, it made sense. But, as quickly as things came together, they fell apart. Less than 24 hours later, on September 26th, Cayden was found. Not in the woods, not being rescued, not locked somewhere. He hadn't made some brazen escape. He was in a parking lot near a Winn-Dixie and an auto parts store.

[00:30:55]Alive, but not exactly how you'd expect.

[00:30:58]Caden was injured. He had a gunshot wound to his leg that shattered his femur.

[00:31:04]He needed medical treatment. With him, he had a bicycle, a firearm, and a ton of different supplies with him. Right away, [clears throat] his statements to authorities didn't land. At first, Caden spun them this whole tale. He claimed he'd been kidnapped, dumped, shot, left behind. He kept saying that multiple men were involved and that they had used him and then abandoned him.

[00:31:28]Left him for dead. However, investigators had already been working on this, right? They They had spent these past 24 hours trying to piece everything together. They had the original crime scene, and now they had Caden, so they started, you know, filling in the puzzle pieces, filling in the gaps. But, really quickly, really early on, things stopped adding up.

[00:31:49]First, there were eyewitnesses. At least one person said they saw Caden leaving the original crime scene on a bicycle by himself. And then there was, of course, the physical evidence. That bullet hole in the truck's windshield that originally made it look like an attack.

[00:32:05]Investigators were able to determine, based on the the way the glass shattered, that the gunshot was fired from inside the vehicle.

[00:32:13]Meaning that Caden had shot his windshield himself. But, the blood? The blood at the scene also didn't match a struggle. It looked placed. In fact, investigators later found evidence that he had collected his own blood and spread it around to make it look like something violent had happened.

[00:32:30]At that point, it stopped looking like a real crime scene, and it started looking like a staged abduction, a faked kidnapping. They're investigating, investigating, investigating. They're talking to his family, they're talking to Cayden, and then they discover his digital footprint. You got to be wary of your digital footprint, coal babes. When investigators did a thorough check of Cayden's his phone, his computers, they found searches that lined up almost perfectly with what they were seeing.

[00:33:01]Things like how to collect blood from yourself without pain. And also references to Mexican cartels. So now, it's not just looking suspicious, it's starting to look planned, it's premeditated.

[00:33:14]In fact, the authorities then looked at what he did the day before. And well, it turns out Cayden had gone to Walmart. He bought a bicycle, camping gear, a tent, and other supplies. So yeah, this wasn't a random attack or a fake abduction. This was planned, this was set up. According to investigators, the sequence likely went like this.

[00:33:36]Cayden staged the scene at his truck, fired the shot through the windshield, planted the blood, destroyed his phone, and then left the area on the bicycle with the supplies he had just bought.

[00:33:48]And then, in a real power move to make this story believable, Cayden shot himself in the leg.

[00:33:57]It's giving Sherri Papini slamming herself into a into a wall, right? It's giving I'm branding myself. It's it's just crazy. Reminds me of I always think about I think it was Scream 5, maybe, or Scream whatever the one with Emma Roberts where she's like attacking herself. She like goes against the wall and drives the knife in and like slams herself on the glass table. Just crazy.

[00:34:22]So yeah, he wasn't shot during an attack, not by someone else. It was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Severe enough to match the story that he was trying to tell the authorities. And that's the point where this case really shifted because it's not just lying anymore. It's like I shot myself in the [ __ ] leg to prove the point. As soon as the investigators had like pieced all of this together, the whole [ __ ] thing unraveled. So, investigators concluded there's no kidnapping, there was no kidnapper or kidnappers, no attackers, no van, there was no group of men, none of it.

[00:34:55]Certainly no cartel involvement. This was just some [ __ ] kid who had created chaos.

[00:35:02]It was a fully staged incident and it had triggered this massive law enforcement response and public panic.

[00:35:09]And again, we have a situation where people are utilizing resources for real emergencies because they're [ __ ] idiots. Caden was arrested and he was actually charged with making a false report, presenting false evidence, shooting into a vehicle, and possession of a firearm as a minor.

[00:35:26]Because he was 17, the case went through the juvenile system. But one thing that's still kind of unclear is the motive behind Caden's case. Authorities said he had mentioned wanting to run away before, but they haven't confirmed a clear reason for why he went this far.

[00:35:42]God only knows what would drive you to shoot yourself in the own leg. Like why not keep running? Why not keep going if that was your plan to run away? Why come back less than 24 hours later and shoot yourself in the leg in the process?

[00:35:55]Doesn't feel worth it to me. Who knows?

[00:35:58]What I do know is that it's time to wrap things up for the week. So, I will see you cult babes next time. And until next time, if you're going to fake your kidnapping, maybe clear your history or you might have to pay up when they unsolve the mystery.

[00:36:13]Goodbye.