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1:07

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1:11

Al-Amin, a Muslim leader and former

1:13

black power activist, was convicted. But

1:16

the evidence was shaky, and the whole truth didn't

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come out during the trial. My

1:21

name is Mosi Secret, and when I

1:23

started investigating this case in my hometown, I

1:26

uncovered a dark truth about America. He

1:29

said to me, you want

1:32

me to take care of them, you know, for

1:34

not doing something to pay you or something like

1:36

that? I said, no, what you talking about? But

1:38

I had no idea who

1:41

he, you know, who he had become. That's how

1:43

he approached you? You know what he meant when he

1:45

said that? Yeah, I'm thinking

1:49

murder. In a minute, you know. I think

1:51

that's what he was thinking too. From

1:55

Tenderfoot TV, Campside Media, and

1:57

iHeart Podcast, Radical is available

1:59

now. Listen for free

2:01

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

2:03

or wherever you get your podcasts.

2:31

The

2:36

views and opinions expressed in this podcast

2:39

are solely those of the podcast author

2:41

or individuals participating in the podcast and

2:44

do not represent those of TenderfootTV

2:46

or their employees. This podcast

2:48

also contains subject matter which may not

2:50

be suitable for everyone. Listener

2:53

discretion is advised. I've

3:01

learned a lot over the last seven years

3:03

of looking into missing persons cases, and

3:06

one of the biggest takeaways I have is

3:08

to follow every lead because

3:10

you truly never know what you're going to find. In

3:13

episode one, our team spoke

3:15

to the family of Emily Riesling, who

3:17

disappeared. Now it's time for them to

3:20

talk to other people who might have some

3:22

insight into her disappearance. In

3:45

the weeks leading up to her disappearance, Emily

3:47

was staying with her close friend, Tech

3:49

Wes McCovey. Tech, who

3:51

is also a member of the Hoopa Valley

3:53

tribe, was the first person to

3:55

realize that Emily was missing.

6:30

Linda Risling's Tech West Maccoby 42 has

6:32

also been played by local whispers regarding

6:34

Risling's whereabouts. Risling

6:36

lived with Maccoby on and off in Hoopa

6:39

for around eight months before she disappeared. Everybody

6:43

just kind of turned their back on

6:45

her and she

6:47

just wanted to be loved, you know. She

6:50

just wanted to have somebody that's not going to judge her for

6:52

the stuff that she was going to. Like

6:55

we talked about in episode one, after

6:57

the birth of her daughter Emily's life

7:00

became a spiral out of control, she

7:03

was grappling with the effects of postpartum

7:05

psychosis, a severe mental illness

7:07

that affects one in 500 mothers. Unable

7:12

to access the resources she

7:14

needed, Emily began self-medicating. And

7:16

as her friend Tech West

7:18

remembers, Emily had begun

7:20

surrounding herself with folks who hindered

7:22

her chances of recovery. When

7:25

I first met her, some people that she was hanging out

7:27

with I guess had taken her car and

7:29

all her belongings that she had, you know, were in

7:31

there and stuff and went and ditched it way out

7:33

in the mountains somewhere and so she never did get

7:35

it back. So that was kind

7:37

of a hard thing for her. Her

7:39

daughter recently just gotten taken from

7:41

her. She had just broken up

7:44

with her baby's daddy. She

7:46

was kind of not very nice to her either. There

7:48

was a lot of domestic violence I think there. We

7:52

also heard this from Emily's mom, Judy.

7:55

She felt that in many ways

7:57

the domestic violence her daughter experienced

10:00

Their account from accidents. Money

10:02

as who say they saw Emily around

10:04

the time of her disappearance. One.

10:06

Resident same and in particular. Sit

10:09

out. On. Have a neighbor

10:11

guys that live as on era rank he

10:13

comes over talks with. End

10:15

of the road is. A small community.

10:18

And Frank is one of it's see

10:20

residents. Tax who

10:22

spoke with Frank periodically about

10:24

families disappearance, says he initially

10:26

denied even knowing Emily. It

10:29

was an emissions she sounds strange because

10:31

and we had dated Frank Sun for

10:33

quite some time. That. Ban

10:35

a story changed. His.

10:38

Told me that Emily has marked

10:41

down to the river Burns. Gonna

10:43

go float down to our poor

10:45

village. Api is

10:47

a small village located next to the

10:50

climate prefer a place the locals have

10:52

deemed a spear took around. It's

10:54

isolation means the only way to get

10:56

there is by boat or river flow.

11:00

Or they will last night. Good because issue

11:02

would do that. She. Was always

11:04

at the river leg when should be upset you just

11:06

go to other whole around that's where she will go

11:08

when she easy to get a reset or like and

11:11

friend. clarity. To discuss done by the

11:13

river and talk to the water at the river

11:15

at that time was not very safe out. And

11:18

sword. Get. Back to sell service

11:20

and eye contact. Her mom as like

11:23

as in Grenada report them missing because

11:25

these guys are saying they seen her

11:27

down there two days ago by she

11:29

had fairly walked off down the river,

11:31

was no clothes on, no shoes on

11:33

and was headed towards our pilots. Frank.

11:37

Told me to last. I'm. A senior was down the

11:39

river were throwing rocks into the water and

11:42

he said well we Astor knows I so

11:44

we who's this like you and who else

11:46

you know like who's the other person that

11:48

era Speaking of when you say we asked

11:51

this a hurry and own. but

11:53

they're pretty tight knit community they'll connected funny

11:55

and when from how i know them to

11:58

be you know for a relic to me

12:00

like they were hiding something. Not

12:05

like recently. I mean, I've seen him, you

12:07

know, periodically here and there and stuff. And

12:10

it's kind of weird. Cause as soon as I said that, you know, you

12:12

might want to talk to him about Emily, he

12:14

just starts crying and said,

12:17

starts talking to him. These, I

12:19

don't know. He said that her spirit had visited

12:21

him in jail while he was in there and

12:24

just a bunch of other things. Like didn't make no

12:26

sense to me, but he just

12:29

really gets really emotional about it. According

12:35

to tech, getting a straight answer

12:37

was hard, but

12:39

she kept following every lead. Next

12:42

thing I heard, you know, somebody cited her down in

12:44

Klamath. I was like, that was kind of crazy for

12:46

her to be able to make it from point

12:49

A to point B and within just less

12:51

than a day, you know, walking, especially

12:53

barefoot, no paralon. And so

12:57

anyway, I ripped over to Klamath and investigated

12:59

all around there that, you know, talked to people that I could

13:01

and asked if they'd seen her. And it

13:04

turned out it wasn't her. I

13:07

have several theories, but then after talking

13:10

to everybody and like their different sightings

13:12

and their different stories, I

13:16

kind of think some bad might've

13:18

happened with her and they're just all trying to cover

13:20

it up. We

13:25

had like a deal. I was like, if you'd just taken

13:28

off with her, at least you've gone more than two days,

13:30

contact me. And you know, if you need me to come

13:32

pick you up or anything, bring

13:34

you clothes or something, just call me and I'll

13:36

come do it. If she

13:38

would have made it somewhere, she would have contacted me. Do

13:42

you think there's foul play involved

13:45

in Emily's disappearance? I

13:48

don't know. There's like several different things. Like

13:53

I found her purse belongings and stuff like

13:55

scattered about the road down there in one

13:57

area. It

13:59

was just, When

15:05

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apply. See site for details. I'm

16:08

from the villages of Morak, Noshko and Kepo, along

16:10

the Klamath River. I am the chief of

16:22

police for the Yurok Tribal Police Department and

16:24

I am also a member

16:26

of the Yurok Tribe. As

16:30

a Yurok citizen with 23 years

16:32

of law enforcement experience, Chief

16:34

O'Rourke has deep ties to his

16:36

community. And while tribal

16:39

police functions vary nationwide, Chief

16:41

O'Rourke's force is cross-deputized with

16:43

Humboldt County. This means

16:45

that in addition to enforcing tribal

16:48

law, Yurok police may also enforce

16:50

state law. So

16:52

it sounds like you being

16:54

Native helps build trust with the

16:56

family. I'm

16:59

not just a Native police officer, but a

17:02

person who's grown up being part of our

17:04

culture and then moving into law

17:06

enforcement. One of those

17:09

unofficial roles that I kind of took

17:11

upon myself was to be that liaison

17:13

between our Native communities and law enforcement.

17:16

And so based off of my

17:18

own experiences, there's times that I

17:20

will get cooperation from somebody by

17:22

the nature of who I am.

17:25

And that community is

17:27

not going to give that same level of cooperation

17:30

or trust to a deputy, you

17:32

know, who's non-Native. I

17:34

can't tell you how many times in my career when I

17:37

would respond to a scene or call for service

17:39

and the person would go, oh Greg, I'm glad

17:41

it's you. So

17:47

I knew Emily personally.

17:50

She babysat my daughter's. And

17:53

that Emily was the one that everyone

17:56

fondly remembers. I didn't

17:58

deal with Emily professionally after she

18:00

started her slide into her mental health and her

18:02

substance abuse. But because of

18:05

her erratic behavior, the

18:08

community here was becoming resentful

18:11

and I

18:15

can't say that, that speculation. I don't

18:17

know. But what I believe is

18:19

that Emily was basically burning bridges and hoop

18:21

on, so she was going to a new

18:24

area down river. She

18:28

needed help. I

18:30

know one of the things that the

18:32

family is resentful towards is when Emily

18:34

was arrested, they were relieved because she

18:36

was finally in a safe place. As

18:40

we mentioned in episode one, shortly

18:42

before her disappearance, Emily was

18:45

arrested for starting a small fire in

18:47

a local cemetery. They

18:49

knew where she was. They were

18:51

hopeful that she would get clean,

18:53

get fed, and then have potential

18:55

resources to help her. But

18:58

from a criminal justice standpoint, Emily didn't

19:00

need jail. She

19:03

didn't. That was the last thing

19:05

that she needed was to be incarcerated, but

19:08

there's nothing in place up here.

19:10

There's no infrastructure to be able

19:13

to help address when someone's in

19:15

crisis. And that's

19:17

what Emily was going through. When she got

19:19

arrested, she was going through crisis. Chief

19:23

O'Rourke expressed concern about the limited

19:25

number of mental health resources available

19:27

to the community. In

19:30

fact, the only mental health hospital

19:32

in the region is an hour away.

19:35

But even if you can get there, getting

19:38

in is its own challenge. The

19:41

facility has only 16 beds

19:44

available. But as Chief

19:46

O'Rourke told us, these challenges

19:48

are often the tip

19:50

of the iceberg. I

19:53

didn't have the

19:55

resources or the capacity to be able

19:58

to conduct both the investigative process. portion

20:00

of it and the search and rescue portion of

20:02

it. I elected to go

20:04

with investigation and put my resources there

20:06

to be able to try to track

20:08

down leads. And

20:11

unfortunately that left

20:14

the search and rescue portion on the reservation or the area

20:16

that she was last seen unfulfilled.

20:20

I can confirm that the last place that

20:22

she was seen that we can cooperate was

20:24

on Peckwon Bridge. And

20:26

it was a Monday and I believe it was October

20:28

13th. And

20:31

she was seen naked on the bridge. People

20:39

were told us that clothes had been recovered

20:41

in the area, but with the rainy

20:43

weather they had had at the time of Emily's disappearance,

20:46

forensic teams couldn't obtain the biological

20:48

evidence needed to definitively prove the

20:50

clothing was hers. With

20:53

few leads remaining, the case

20:55

went cold. Family

20:57

in the community are

20:59

result oriented when it

21:01

comes to a missing person. For

21:04

law enforcement, we have

21:07

to be evidence oriented. And

21:09

so we have to be able to conduct the

21:11

search and the investigation with

21:14

the potential of

21:16

prosecution afterwards. And

21:18

that's oftentimes in direct conflict with what

21:20

the family's looking for. They want their

21:22

loved one back. I don't blame them. You

21:25

know, and unfortunately that's one of the things that

21:27

the family just couldn't hear.

21:31

And it put law

21:33

enforcement kind of in the crosshairs

21:35

of that misunderstanding. The

21:38

sheriff's office has taken a lot of heat from

21:40

the family and I don't think

21:42

it's necessarily been founded. This

21:47

was a very in-depth investigation

21:50

and it spanned multi-agencies,

21:52

us, the sheriff's office

21:54

and Hupa tribal police. So

21:57

any lead that came in or

21:59

any tip that came in, we

22:01

followed. So it really was an

22:04

issue of three law enforcement agencies

22:07

working together towards the same goal,

22:09

sharing information. According

22:12

to O'Rourke, the investigation

22:14

is still ongoing. We

22:16

still try to follow any lead

22:18

that could potentially open this up.

22:22

What I can say is there is

22:24

no indication of foul play, but

22:26

we also have to consider the strong

22:29

possibility that she drowned in the river.

22:32

And without any indicator of

22:34

foul play, then

22:37

the likelihood of that possibility

22:39

becomes stronger. So

22:43

it sounds like you think most

22:46

likely she drowned on the river

22:48

and will never be able

22:50

to confirm that. I

22:52

don't want to say never. There is

22:54

a possibility that remains, go

22:58

onto the ocean and then hit that

23:00

current, that North current and potentially up

23:02

around Oregon. It's definitely possible.

23:05

But I pull a lot of bodies out of the Trinity River. The

23:08

Trinity will tend to give her bodies back.

23:11

The Trinity is not greedy, but the Klamath is greedy.

23:14

She tends to keep her bodies. The

23:44

rumors about the last place

23:46

Emily Risling was seen seem never

23:48

ending. The last

23:50

confirmed setting of Risling was on Highway 169 on

23:53

Paquin Bridge. She disappeared in a place with a

23:56

lot of known convicts. Frank, he was in the,

23:58

right when you get to the end. that's

26:00

been going around of people

26:02

down river hiding in the lane. How

26:06

will the road of Emily get seen up there? Probably

26:10

hitchhiked or walked. Would

26:13

that be common to walk this? Yeah,

26:16

actually it is. You

26:18

wouldn't think it, but quite a few people will still

26:20

walk the roads. So

26:23

is there any idea what Emily would have

26:25

been walking or stretching down here for?

26:29

I don't know and we haven't been able

26:32

to kind of uncover that. What

26:34

we do know though, based off of her prior

26:36

behavior, is that she

26:38

would often camp out on the

26:41

river bar. Being the

26:43

most part of her transient lifestyle.

26:48

Just then, she will work close to a

26:50

stop. Pick

26:55

one bridge. Pick one bridge. Pick

26:58

one bridge. Peck

27:00

one bridge is a stretch of steel connecting one

27:02

side of the valley to the other. Against

27:05

one of the railings, a weather beaten flyer

27:08

clings to the metal. It's

27:10

a missing persons poster. Emily,

27:13

her hair choppy brown, smiles up from

27:15

the paper and bold

27:17

print. It lists a $20,000 reward

27:19

for information on her disappearance. This

27:23

is the bridge that we can confirm where she's at.

27:25

Standing in the middle of the bridge. And

27:28

who needs a person that can place her on the bridge? The

27:30

school bus, the whole bus. The

27:33

whole bus saw her standing here. Standing

27:35

on the bridge. The middle of the bridge?

27:39

On the side of the bridge. It looks even

27:41

cold. Yeah. The

27:45

Trinity River meets the Klamath River under

27:47

Peck one bridge, a

27:49

dividing point between what feels like

27:51

two worlds. On the

27:54

Trinity side, the water looks shallow and

27:56

rocky. The Klamath on

27:58

the other hand is dark. and

28:00

murky. You cannot see the bottom

28:03

and it flows much

28:05

faster. The unsettling truth is that

28:07

on this side of the bridge, there's no

28:09

way to tell if anything might be stuck

28:11

under the Russian current. So

28:14

this is a pretty high flow right here.

28:16

So, you know, there's a lot of water

28:18

coming down, it's coming down fast. And

28:21

you can see just, you know, like those willows

28:24

and the trees just kind of hanging down. If

28:26

you get caught up in that and the

28:28

weight of the water is pushing on you,

28:30

especially with this type of, you know, strength.

28:32

I mean, if you can't bench 300 pounds,

28:34

you're not going to be able to piece

28:36

yourself off the heaps of strength. Yeah,

28:39

this looks pretty powerful. It is powerful. Does

28:42

someone get plucked away in this? Oh, easily.

28:45

Very easily. So

28:47

what if the, you know, maybe she floated downriver.

28:49

What does that mean? So, I mean,

28:52

if I'm up and, you know, around

28:54

there, you know, float downriver to get

28:57

here. What would people float on? Inner

29:00

to fricking board. In

29:02

October? Oh, yeah. You

29:04

know, cold wouldn't be smart, but it's possible. You know, hypothermia

29:06

will set

29:09

in pretty quickly. I mean, the odds are,

29:11

you know, she didn't do that. But.

29:15

Did people say that she looks like she was wet or anything

29:17

when they saw her? No,

29:20

not on the bridge. You know, a couple of statements

29:22

from the community people is that she

29:25

was going to go down to a

29:28

village further downriver, you know, byriver. And she was very

29:31

adamant about that. Do

29:33

you know how long after she was spotted

29:35

on the bridge, your officer was able to

29:37

respond? The next day. So it was on a

29:39

Monday. And so the next two days he was down

29:41

in the scenario looking for her. Again,

29:45

the last one was that the character girl

29:47

was here, but yet a couple of miles

29:49

down the road is

29:51

where she was last born. And that's when the family wanted

29:53

to do the search. Like. She

29:57

was in the bar with me. that

30:00

search with our limited capacity in the house. As

30:04

humans, of course, at the end of the road. But

30:07

before they leave, something on the

30:09

bridge catches their attention. All

30:11

right, guys, ready? All right, did you

30:13

see this in the media, Miss? Written

30:16

on the bridge are messages, some

30:18

of which feel like echoes of teenage

30:20

rebellion. But then there

30:23

are other messages, ones

30:25

that carry a much more haunting tone.

30:27

Can you imagine where we were? Oh,

30:31

I think this one says Emily. What's it say?

30:35

That bitch, you'll always miss. Just

30:43

30 minutes down road, the blacktop

30:46

abruptly ends. So

30:48

now we're at the end of the road. So you talked about

30:50

the paved road. So you just close right into a driveway. And

30:53

so this is one of the houses that Emily

30:56

was reported to stay at.

30:59

The people that live here came

31:01

across her naked and brought

31:04

her in and gave her clothes and

31:06

food. And what facility

31:08

is this right here? This is the

31:10

firehouse, the Europe Tribes Firehouse. And

31:13

this is where we had our operational center

31:15

for the search. A

31:28

little bit there. So

31:31

this is the river. And

31:34

then right down here is that

31:36

Poxel Road. And this can

31:38

go all the way down into Klamath. So

31:40

this is also a potential route that she

31:42

may have went. But

31:44

it didn't fit within what her prior pass

31:47

was by the river. So we operated out

31:49

of this building for three days and

31:52

then rotated out 10 different dog teams to

31:55

be able to conduct the search. Obviously

31:58

we can't go into private property. but we

32:01

can bring the dogs around curdleage to

32:03

see if they pick up any type of remains. Tebow

32:07

Rourke is referring to the search

32:09

that was funded by the John

32:11

Francis Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to

32:13

wilderness safety education and search

32:15

and rescue operations. After

32:17

months without answers, the John Francis

32:19

Foundation stepped in and offered their

32:21

services to the Rizzling family. During

32:24

that search, cadaver dogs hid on

32:26

decomposition in an area where someone had died

32:28

from an accident years back, but

32:31

there were no other hits for Emily. At

32:42

the end of the road, there's a broken down

32:44

trailer on the riverbed. Across

32:46

from it is another trailer, this

32:49

one with smoke spewing from

32:51

the chimney. Someone is home, a

32:54

gate surrounds the property, and an old blue

32:56

payphone sits at the entrance, and

32:59

maybe it's never had service. We'd

33:01

heard that this area had only gotten access

33:04

to electricity recently. There's

33:07

also a rusted broken down truck and

33:09

a few dogs running around. Are

33:12

you knocking on Frank's door? No,

33:15

I don't, I don't want to. Now

33:17

that we're here, the team is a little

33:20

hesitant to just go knocking on doors, particularly

33:22

after some of the rumors they've heard. Oh,

33:28

I think one or two people could go over

33:30

there and it wouldn't be too intimidating. Yeah, I

33:32

think that I just don't think it's appropriate for

33:34

all of us to be. Well, we would not walk up there with

33:36

all of us. I wouldn't go either. If

33:38

you want to walk on there, we're here. He's not going to do

33:40

anything. All right, we're going.

33:44

Laura from the Hoopa Paper and Jamie

33:46

from our team volunteer to go. They

33:49

walk up the driveway through a maze of

33:51

old machinery and abandoned items. A

33:53

few res dogs greet them on the creaky

33:55

porch. There

34:23

were a lot of rumors swirling around about

34:25

Emily's disappearance and with

34:27

his inconsistent statements, Frank was at

34:29

the center of many of them. What

34:31

did he really know about Emily's disappearance, if

34:34

anything at all? That

34:36

answer needed to come from him. Next

34:39

time on The Vanishing Point. There's

34:44

a lot of stories connection with

34:46

the illegal marijuana industry that was

34:48

for years, people would go missing

34:51

and that was almost an accepted

34:53

fact. I've

34:58

heard a lot of things

35:00

about my mom's disappearance and

35:02

everything has ended with

35:05

murder and those stories

35:07

are hard to hear. And

35:10

what's even more crazy is that

35:12

person whoever did it is probably someone we

35:14

know, we all know here. And

35:17

they're just walking around. The

35:44

Vanishing Point is a production of Tenderfoot

35:46

TV in association with Odyssey.

35:49

Celicia Stanton is our host. The

35:52

show is written by Meredith Sedmon, Alex

35:54

Vespaszczyk and Jamie Albright. With

35:57

additional writing assistance, I'm Celicia Stanton.

36:00

Executive producers are Donald Albright and

36:02

myself, Payne Lindsey. Lead

36:04

producer is Jamie Albright, along with

36:06

Meredith Steadman. Editing by

36:08

Alex Festeset. Additional editing

36:11

by Sydney Evans. Supervising

36:13

producer is Tracy Kaplan. Additional

36:16

production by Laura Frater and Ally

36:18

Hossler. Research by Laura

36:20

Frater and Taylor Floyd. Artwork

36:23

by Byron McCoy. Original

36:25

music by Makeup and Vanity Set.

36:28

Mixed by Dayton Cole. Thank you

36:30

to Orin Rosenbaum and the team at

36:32

UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and

36:34

the Nord Group. And a special thanks

36:36

to Greg O'Rourke, the KIDE

36:38

91.3 radio station in Hoopa,

36:41

the Two Rivers Tribune, and all

36:43

of the families and community members that spoke to

36:45

us. For more podcasts

36:47

like The Vanishing Point, search Tenderfoot TV

36:49

on your favorite podcast app, or

36:52

visit us on our website at

36:54

tenderfoot.tv. Thanks for listening.