Speaker 1: Welcome back to The Pathwent Chili for this month's bonus
Speaker 1: Patreon minisode I'm Robin, I'm Jules.
Speaker 2: And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this month's case.
Speaker 3: April twentieth, nineteen eighty nine, McCone County, Montana. While driving
Speaker 3: on the wrong side of a rural highway, thirty seven
Speaker 3: year old Patricia Mihan gets into a collision with another car.
Speaker 3: After staring blankly at the other vehicle's driver, Patricia walks
Speaker 3: out onto the prairie and disappears. During the next few months,
Speaker 3: there would be numerous sightings of a disoriented woman resembling Patricia,
Speaker 3: leading to speculation that the trauma of the car crash
Speaker 3: caused her to develop amnesia and forget who she was,
Speaker 3: But in spite of an extensive search, Patricia is never found.
Speaker 1: After that The Path Went Chili. So today we are
Speaker 1: going to be covering a case which was featured on
Speaker 1: Unsolved Mysteries, the nineteen eighty nine disappearance of Patricia Mihan.
Speaker 1: This is considered to be one of the most haunting
Speaker 1: missing person's cases ever featured on the show because the
Speaker 1: victim vanished under such unusual circumstances. After getting into an
Speaker 1: accident with another car on a rural highway, Patricia Mihan
Speaker 1: approached the other driver and gave her a blank stare
Speaker 1: without saying anything, before she walked out onto an open prairie.
Speaker 1: That in itself would be creepy enough, but what makes
Speaker 1: the situation even more unusual is that the accident took
Speaker 1: place nearly four hundred miles away from where Patricia lived,
Speaker 1: and no one knows what she was doing there. To
Speaker 1: begin with, it seemed apparent that Patricia was suffering from
Speaker 1: some serious mental health issues at that time, and there
Speaker 1: was fear that the accident may have caused her to
Speaker 1: lose her memory and forget who she was. However, that
Speaker 1: also meant there was a possibility she was still alive
Speaker 1: and aimlessly wandering around somewhere. While most missing persons cases
Speaker 1: have eyewitnessed sightings of the victim, the authorities in this
Speaker 1: particular case believed that the sightings of Patricia were very credible,
Speaker 1: so when the Unsaw Mystery segment originally aired, there was
Speaker 1: hope that Patricia might be watching the show and decide
Speaker 1: to come forward, but this never happened, and unfortunately, she
Speaker 1: has still never been found.
Speaker 2: This one's really eerie because she's so far away from home.
Speaker 2: Four hundred miles is an incredibly long distance. And then
Speaker 2: we know that she was also suffering with mental health
Speaker 2: issues prior to the car crash, So then once she's
Speaker 2: in this car crash, it does make sense that that
Speaker 2: could exacerbate or worsen those effects. And like you said, Robin,
Speaker 2: that it makes it probable that she was struggling and
Speaker 2: couldn't remember maybe who she was. Maybe she's still alive
Speaker 2: wandering around. But it also makes her an incredibly vulnerable
Speaker 2: victim for someone who might encounter her realized that she's
Speaker 2: not kind of in her own faculty, she's disoriented. It
Speaker 2: makes her very vulnerable to other people hurting her as well.
Speaker 4: Robin, what was the case we just covered.
Speaker 3: The name is eluding me right now, and it was
Speaker 3: the one where it was a truck driver and we
Speaker 3: theorized maybe there was a mental health condition, but he
Speaker 3: walked off into the woods and he was never found.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Yes, that was Devin Williams. And he was a guy
Speaker 1: who was going on a cross country truck trip because
Speaker 1: he was a truck driver, but then came into this
Speaker 1: forest in Arizona that was way off his route, and
Speaker 1: he left the truck and was started acting very strangely
Speaker 1: in front of all these witnesses before he disappeared. And
Speaker 1: in that case, they did find a partial skull fragment,
Speaker 1: but they were unable to figure out how he died.
Speaker 1: But it's been suspected that he had some sort of
Speaker 1: unexplained mental health issue that caused him to drive there
Speaker 1: before he disappeared and then died of exposure.
Speaker 3: Our story begins in Montana in nineteen eighty nine. Our
Speaker 3: central figure is thirty seven year old Patricia Mihan, who
Speaker 3: originally hails from Pittsburgh but now lives in Bozeman and
Speaker 3: is employed as a ranch hand who works with horses. However,
Speaker 3: everyone who knows Patricia believes that she has become noticeably
Speaker 3: depressed and withdrawn. Even though she loves children and initially
Speaker 3: planned to have a career in daycare, Patricia seems saddened
Speaker 3: by the fact that she's reached the age where it
Speaker 3: may soon wind up being too late for her to
Speaker 3: have children of her own. On April nineteenth, Patricia called
Speaker 3: her parents to tell them that she was under a
Speaker 3: great deal of stress and inquired about the possibility of
Speaker 3: moving back home to Pittsburgh to live with them for
Speaker 3: a while. Her parents agreed to this, and Patricia scheduled
Speaker 3: an appointment with her psychologist for the morning of April
Speaker 3: twenty first, in order to discuss the whole change. Patricia
Speaker 3: did not like to fly, but her parents did not
Speaker 3: like the idea of her driving over eighteen hundred miles
Speaker 3: to Pittsburgh, and she agreed to talk about.
Speaker 4: It with them.
Speaker 3: After her appointment on April twentieth, Patricia called her landlord
Speaker 3: to say that she would be gone for a while
Speaker 3: before leaving her apartment in Bozeman, and he would later
Speaker 3: describe her as sounding very hyper and not making much sense.
Speaker 1: At around eight fifteen pm that evening, Patricia was driving
Speaker 1: east down Highway two hundred through McCone County, in a
Speaker 1: desolate rural area seven miles southwest of the small town
Speaker 1: of Circle. This location was nearly four hundred miles away
Speaker 1: from Bozeman, and Patricia was inexplicably driving on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of the road When another car approached her, Patricia
Speaker 1: nearly wound up having a head on collision with this vehicle,
Speaker 1: which swerved out of the way. However, there was another
Speaker 1: car behind that one, and even though the driver tried
Speaker 1: to pull off the road, Patricia still wound up crashing
Speaker 1: into her. The driver was left dazed but not seriously injured,
Speaker 1: though she would end up witnessing a strange sight. After
Speaker 1: she exited her vehicle, Patricia emerged from her own car
Speaker 1: and walked towards the wreckage, where she proceeded to stare
Speaker 1: down at the driver. She was described as having a
Speaker 1: blank look in her eyes and gave off no reaction
Speaker 1: to the situation at all. Without saying a word, Patricia
Speaker 1: walked away from the road, climbed over a fence, and
Speaker 1: stared aimlessly at the accident seen again. She then walked
Speaker 1: out into the open prairie and subsequently disappeared into the night.
Speaker 4: This is a.
Speaker 2: Tragic rea reality when you start thinking about that, she's
Speaker 2: basically begging her parents to let her come home at
Speaker 2: age thirty seven, So you know her struggle is real,
Speaker 2: it's heavy, it's deep. She has a plan and something
Speaker 2: she wanted to do with her life, which was work
Speaker 2: in childcare. It sounds like she also wanted to be
Speaker 2: a mom, but felt a lot of pressure of kind
Speaker 2: of her biological clock ticking. And so when she is
Speaker 2: talking to her parents and you're saying, I can't fly,
Speaker 2: but I want to drive to you. I'm feeling significant distress.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go see my therapist. Could she have
Speaker 2: been getting into the car with this idea that she's
Speaker 2: driving to her parents' house and just kind of this
Speaker 2: desperate pursuit of that, and then you look at her
Speaker 2: physical behavior and that blank stare. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you know listeners have ever dealt with someone with a
Speaker 2: severe mental health crisis, but I've seen in people that
Speaker 2: I love and care about and in people that I
Speaker 2: work with, where you'll see that stare where it's like you're.
Speaker 4: Not present, you're catatonic.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, they're looking through you. They're looking off past the
Speaker 2: reality of what's in their current view, and you can't
Speaker 2: connect to them. You can't get through to them into
Speaker 2: reality because they're so they're struggling so deeply in that moment.
Speaker 2: And so that sounds like what's happening here that she
Speaker 2: was a little chaotic when she's talking to her landlord,
Speaker 2: she's driving chaotically. Then you add a potential of some
Speaker 2: kind of head injury here. It seems like she is
Speaker 2: truly disconnected from who Patricia really is, and she's almost
Speaker 2: caught up in this psychosis or episode that she's having.
Speaker 3: I'm a little worried by the fact that she was
Speaker 3: described as being deeply depressed prior, and I'm obviously not
Speaker 3: trying to diagnose her here, but biblearr disorder is like
Speaker 3: a pendulum, and if you swing really far to one side,
Speaker 3: which is depression, you're often going to swing far to
Speaker 3: the other side, which would be a manic episode or
Speaker 3: a hypomanic episode of your bipolar two. We have the
Speaker 3: landlord describing her as being hyper, and it's really tough
Speaker 3: to tell if it is like a manic episode or
Speaker 3: if it's just anxiety about having to travel home and
Speaker 3: that's manifesting as being hyper. But the catatonic stare is
Speaker 3: also troubling. That can be a byproduct of a manic episode.
Speaker 3: It's just not looking very good here. It seems like
Speaker 3: thirty seven would be an age where you would have
Speaker 3: already been diagnosed with this, But we also have to
Speaker 3: consider the time period. A lot of people didn't seek
Speaker 3: mental health treatment like they do today. There was a
Speaker 3: lot more of a stigma attached to it. So there
Speaker 3: is a very real possibility that there could have been
Speaker 3: other mental health episodes or manic episodes if she was
Speaker 3: indeed bipolar and she just wasn't treated for it and
Speaker 3: somehow managed to come out the other side and maybe
Speaker 3: had long periods of you mea where she actually felt,
Speaker 3: like i'll say in quotations, normal or typical, not depressed
Speaker 3: or manic, And so people maybe weren't aware that she
Speaker 3: was struggling so mightily with this.
Speaker 1: Would you happen to know how much awareness there was
Speaker 1: about bipolar disorder back in nineteen eighty nine. Was this
Speaker 1: a time period when people would be diagnosed with it
Speaker 1: or was there just not much awareness about it at all?
Speaker 3: Yes, you would be diagnosed with it, but it would
Speaker 3: take a lot more. I think it would have to
Speaker 3: be extremely severe. Like I'll just use my mother as
Speaker 3: an example, because she was diagnosed i think in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four. So you know, when I was like basically
Speaker 3: a baby, she had me and within six weeks she
Speaker 3: was in a full manic episode like psychosis.
Speaker 4: It was really bad.
Speaker 3: And luckily my uncle had gone to UBC med school
Speaker 3: and where we lived was hours away, but he pulled
Speaker 3: some strings, got her in with the best psychiatrists, and
Speaker 3: she was in there observation for six months until she
Speaker 3: was diagnosed and properly medicated. So that tells you kind
Speaker 3: of what it was the landscape was like in the eighties.
Speaker 3: I think it depends if you were in a major
Speaker 3: metropolitan area, like say, if you're in a major city
Speaker 3: like you know, Los Angeles or New York, and you
Speaker 3: had the financial means or the connections to be able
Speaker 3: to secure the right type of treatment with professionals, then
Speaker 3: you're going to do a lot better. But I think
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty nine you're a lot less likely to
Speaker 3: seek help, and even if you did seek help, you
Speaker 3: might not find the right professional who has either adequate
Speaker 3: experience or is really great at spotting the signs. I
Speaker 3: think that there's so many variables that have to line
Speaker 3: up in order to get that appropriate diagnosis and to
Speaker 3: be put on the right medication, because it is trial
Speaker 3: and error with bipolar. What works for one person, what's
Speaker 3: the first line treatment like lithium may not work for another.
Speaker 2: Also really hard too, is if you think back to
Speaker 2: like when we were teenagers, if you were talking about
Speaker 2: certain careers or having different dreams and aspirations. You were
Speaker 2: encouraged not to seek mental health help because it would
Speaker 2: be part of your medical record and you wouldn't be
Speaker 2: allowed to pursue any of those goals. So someone who
Speaker 2: might want to go into the military, or might want
Speaker 2: to go into law enforcement or federal government, if you
Speaker 2: had a health record with mental health anxiety, depression by polarism,
Speaker 2: you were kicked out of those jobs, right or you
Speaker 2: were told hey, that's a red flag. It creates a
Speaker 2: harder barrier for you to get those careers. And so
Speaker 2: I remember, you know, struggling with anxiety and depression as
Speaker 2: a teenager. My dream was to be in the FBI,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh I got to this is
Speaker 2: I knew what I had to do, how many push ups,
Speaker 2: what my health had to look like. And so I
Speaker 2: remember thinking I can't ask for help, like I just
Speaker 2: need to talk to my parents and I just need
Speaker 2: to have my girlfriend help me. But I mean, I
Speaker 2: still struggle with anxiety and depression. So back then it
Speaker 2: was a shield of like don't don't get help unless
Speaker 2: you really have to, and it was almost a source
Speaker 2: of shame, like you couldn't handle your emotions by yourself.
Speaker 2: So even if it wasn't by polar as a mental
Speaker 2: health in general, I think was just viewed so differently
Speaker 2: with such a negative lens. At the time.
Speaker 3: When the mcconne County Sheriff's Office were notified about what
Speaker 3: happened and arrived to the scene, they searched Patricia's car
Speaker 3: and noticed some clothes and other items inside. This suggested
Speaker 3: she was in the midst of taking a trip somewhere,
Speaker 3: and the only item Patricia would have had on her
Speaker 3: when she left was her purse. The police searched the
Speaker 3: prairie and about three quarters of a mile from the
Speaker 3: crash scene, they were able to find a trail of
Speaker 3: size six tennis shoe tracks, which probably belonged to Patricia,
Speaker 3: but these tracks soon came to an end. For the
Speaker 3: next five days, an extensive ground and air search was
Speaker 3: conducted of the area, but other than her shoe tracks,
Speaker 3: no trace of Patricia could be found. It was established
Speaker 3: that a hay truck had been parked about a half
Speaker 3: mile away from the accident scene before it was driven
Speaker 3: away a short time later, so it was theorized that
Speaker 3: Patricia might have stowed away on the truck without the
Speaker 3: driver's knowledge, or that she was picked up after hitching
Speaker 3: a ride somewhere.
Speaker 2: I almost feel like it would be more the hitch
Speaker 2: hiking route for me. The landscape kind of hard to
Speaker 2: wrap my head around. It said she walked off into
Speaker 2: this almost prairie like open field kind of area, so
Speaker 2: there's not a whole lot of places for her to quote,
Speaker 2: disappear into if she's just wandering around aimlessly, which leads
Speaker 2: you to think something like the truck or getting someone
Speaker 2: to pick her up would be possible. But remember the
Speaker 2: state that she's in. If you were picking someone up
Speaker 2: and you drove around and this person really is not
Speaker 2: connected to reality, is as someone that you would feel
Speaker 2: safe getting into your car or feel like there might
Speaker 2: be a problem down the road if you give this
Speaker 2: person a ride.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And another possibility which you brought up in the
Speaker 1: opening is if it could have been someone with nefarious
Speaker 1: intentions who saw that she was a vulnerable person to
Speaker 1: be taken adage of, so as possible that if she
Speaker 1: hitched a ride with the wrong person, she could have
Speaker 1: become the victim at foul play. At some point, when
Speaker 1: Patricia's family was contacted by the authorities about her disappearance,
Speaker 1: They had no idea why she was driving nearly four
Speaker 1: hundred miles away from Bozeman. While it was possible she
Speaker 1: was heading towards Pittsburgh, her parents ru under the oppression
Speaker 1: that she would not be traveling to see them until
Speaker 1: after her appointment with her psychologists the following day. Regardless,
Speaker 1: Patricia's parents and brother would spend the next few months
Speaker 1: traveling around the Pacific Northwest in order to distribute over
Speaker 1: two thousand Missing Persons flyers, and it wasn't long before
Speaker 1: reported sightings of Patricia started popping up all over the place.
Speaker 1: Many of the alleged sidings of Patricia took place at
Speaker 1: truck stops in Montana or Washington State, but it seemed
Speaker 1: like whenever the authorities or her family were notified about them,
Speaker 1: she would hitchhike out of the area before they could
Speaker 1: arrive at the scene. But the most consistent detail from
Speaker 1: these sidings was that Patricia looked confused and disoriented. Initially,
Speaker 1: it was suspected that she might have fled the scene
Speaker 1: of the accident to avoid potential legal trouble, but the
Speaker 1: accounts of these sightings told a different story. For example,
Speaker 1: on May fourth, two weeks after the accident, a police
Speaker 1: officer believed he saw a woman resembling Patricia at a
Speaker 1: Harty's restaurant in Laverne, Minnesota, where she reportedly sat in
Speaker 1: a booth drinking water for five straight hours until the
Speaker 1: restaurant closed. Afterward, the woman then walked to a nearby
Speaker 1: twenty four hour diner, and when the officer approached her
Speaker 1: and tried to question her, she would not give her name,
Speaker 1: though she did claim she was from Colorado before then
Speaker 1: saying she was from Israel.
Speaker 2: And the problem there is that law enforcement also did
Speaker 2: not have tools and still doesn't have the tools needed
Speaker 2: to help someone who they believe is struggling with a
Speaker 2: mental health crisis. There's such limited resources of what you
Speaker 2: do when you suspect someone is struggling, right when you
Speaker 2: don't have proof and you don't have documentation, and then
Speaker 2: you don't have community resources to refer them to because
Speaker 2: it's kind of out of his person you especially back
Speaker 2: in the eighties and nineties, that law enforcement didn't really
Speaker 2: handle mental health right. They handled criminal behavior that came
Speaker 2: as a result of mental health, but weren't in the
Speaker 2: position to assist in that scenario and so oh man,
Speaker 2: it's like Patricia's almost just one step ahead of everybody,
Speaker 2: and yet she's not even quite sure where she's stepping to,
Speaker 2: Like she's not aware of who she is or where
Speaker 2: she's at in this whole process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing. Like, this woman had not broken
Speaker 1: any laws, and she did not appear to be a
Speaker 1: danger to herself, So there was really nothing else that
Speaker 1: the officer could do besides ask her a few questions.
Speaker 1: And of course, this is one of those sightings that
Speaker 1: took where the officer did not realize it could have
Speaker 1: been Patricia Actil after the fact, because at the time
Speaker 1: he questioned this woman, he had not heard about her case,
Speaker 1: and it was only after he saw a photo of
Speaker 1: or a short time later that he realized this might
Speaker 1: be the same woman I saw.
Speaker 3: The day after the sighting in Laverne, a woman matching
Speaker 3: Patricia's description was seen at a trust and Sioux Falls,
Speaker 3: South Dakota, drinking coffee and laughing at herself. A female
Speaker 3: truck driver crossed paths with her in the restroom well,
Speaker 3: she was staring at herself in the mirror, and when
Speaker 3: the driver asked the woman her name, she replied, quote,
Speaker 3: I don't know. Later that night, Patricia was spotted at
Speaker 3: another truck stop over two hundred miles away in the
Speaker 3: town of Murdo, South Dakota, but this time she was
Speaker 3: arguing with a male companion. The most interesting sighting occurred
Speaker 3: on May nineteenth, when Patricia was seen by two waitresses
Speaker 3: at a Perkins restaurant in Bozeman, only a few miles
Speaker 3: from where she lived. She came in at around eight
Speaker 3: thirty am to order coffee in a cinnamon roll and
Speaker 3: told the waitress she was in a hurry because she
Speaker 3: needed to go shopping. But then she remained in the
Speaker 3: restaurant for around two hours and spent most of her
Speaker 3: time either talking to herself or just staring blankly. When
Speaker 3: she left, she paid the two dollars tab entirely in change.
Speaker 3: In addition to circulating her photograph, Patricia's family also brought
Speaker 3: a video time of her with them to show people
Speaker 3: who had seen her. When the waitress and Bozman watched
Speaker 3: the tape, they were very certain the woman they saw
Speaker 3: was Patricia.
Speaker 2: This case is very much different than other missing person
Speaker 2: cases because where you do have eyewitnesses and everyone knows
Speaker 2: our concerns with eyewitnesses. You usually have one or two
Speaker 2: that say they sell someone similar to her, and we
Speaker 2: talk about confirmation bias and these kinds of things. But
Speaker 2: here you have people from all over the country who
Speaker 2: are almost following a trail of her behavior and her whereabouts,
Speaker 2: and they're all very consistent. They're all describing a catatonic stare.
Speaker 2: They're describing someone whose words don't match her behaviors, like
Speaker 2: I'm in a hurry, I have to go, But then
Speaker 2: she sits there for two hours, she's talking to herself.
Speaker 2: She isn't rational or making any sense when people confront her.
Speaker 2: And so when you look at this, to me, it's
Speaker 2: kind of crazy how many people, even new to come
Speaker 2: forward and share these stories. They're pretty convincing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that not all of them were Patricia,
Speaker 1: because I'm kind of skeptical that she traveled two hundred
Speaker 1: miles in the same night from Sioux Falls to Murdo,
Speaker 1: South Dakota. So possibly one or both of them are mistaken.
Speaker 1: But it is quite interesting that they're also consistent, because
Speaker 1: it's one thing if you just see someone from a
Speaker 1: distance and think they look like a missing person, but
Speaker 1: when they're exhibiting strange behavior, they're going to leave more
Speaker 1: of an impression. And then you hear about a missing
Speaker 1: woman who had also been beheating strangely before she disappeared,
Speaker 1: and then you can understand why it seems like such
Speaker 1: a compelling match.
Speaker 3: I don't know if either of you or the listeners
Speaker 3: have ever known somebody when they're in a state like this,
Speaker 3: they are so incredibly vulnerable. So it really worries me
Speaker 3: knowing you know, from like a lot of the truck
Speaker 3: stop murders that have happened, and a lot of sex
Speaker 3: work and drugs that goes on at these different truck stops,
Speaker 3: how vulnerable Patricia would be if she was in a
Speaker 3: state where she it was basically, had had a psychotic break,
Speaker 3: if she had amnesia, if she was having a manic episode.
Speaker 3: Any of these things would leave her open to those
Speaker 3: with nefarious intentions. And if any of these sightings are her,
Speaker 3: I'm just so worried for whomever came across her and
Speaker 3: if they had good intentions or not, especially when.
Speaker 1: All these reports talk about her were like staying in
Speaker 1: places like coffee shops and truck stops for hours at
Speaker 1: a time, just sitting there. So if someone was in
Speaker 1: there with the nefarious intentions just saw this woman just
Speaker 1: talking to herself, staring blankly in a booth, they would
Speaker 1: probably say, well, maybe I'll offer this woman a ride,
Speaker 1: and then they would take advantage of the situation. The
Speaker 1: sightings would continue for over a year, and an interesting
Speaker 1: development occurred in August of nineteen ninety when a transient
Speaker 1: woman with a strong resemblance to Patricia was arrested for
Speaker 1: littering in Idaho. The officer who arrested her was initially
Speaker 1: certain that she was Patricia, so much so that one
Speaker 1: newspaper prematurely purported that it was her her. However, a
Speaker 1: fingerprint check soon confirmed that the woman was someone else.
Speaker 1: But if some of the other sightings were accurate and
Speaker 1: Patricia was out there somewhere in a disoriented state, how
Speaker 1: could this have happened. Well, given that Patricia had been
Speaker 1: going through a very stressful time in her life, this
Speaker 1: letter psychologist to theorize that the accident had caused her
Speaker 1: to develop amnesia and forget who she was. Either she
Speaker 1: suffered a head injury or the trauma of the incident
Speaker 1: and the fear that she might have killed someone in
Speaker 1: the crash triggered something in her brain and caused her
Speaker 1: to deliberately block things out. This meant she was now
Speaker 1: wandering the country as a transient with no memory of
Speaker 1: her past life.
Speaker 2: So this one woman gets ruled out as not being Patricia, right,
Speaker 2: even though this officer is pretty certain. But we do
Speaker 2: know established mental health of Patricia, and again, she was
Speaker 2: struggling mightily. Before she got in that car. She was
Speaker 2: asking her mom and dad, can I drive back to you?
Speaker 2: And they're like, I don't know if she needs to
Speaker 2: be driving. She needs to fly, but she's scared to fly,
Speaker 2: And so there could have been that just kind of
Speaker 2: panic where she got in her car and she said,
Speaker 2: I have to get to my parents. They don't understand.
Speaker 2: They don't want me to get in the car, but
Speaker 2: I have to. And so even when people are warning
Speaker 2: her like these behaviors aren't safe for you, I'm worried
Speaker 2: for you, I feel like in that moment, she was
Speaker 2: making plans erratically to get out of her current situation
Speaker 2: and make her way back to her parents, which is
Speaker 2: why this is so heartbreaking. She knew where she needed
Speaker 2: to be to be safe, and it's like she was
Speaker 2: just trying to get there, and that crash, like you said,
Speaker 2: stimulated something, It activated something. Did it make what she
Speaker 2: was already experiencing worse? Did it give her timbering amnesia?
Speaker 2: Did it give her a concussion? What was it that
Speaker 2: might have exacerbated her already desperate mental health situation?
Speaker 1: And it makes me wonder what she was going to
Speaker 1: do if she had not gotten into a crash at
Speaker 1: that particular spot, Because if she was traveling to Pittsburgh,
Speaker 1: was she really planning to drive the full eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: miles without stopping? Because I could actually see someone in
Speaker 1: a manick state doing that where they just feel they
Speaker 1: have to get there as quickly as possible, that they
Speaker 1: will drive all night if they have to in order
Speaker 1: to arrive at their destination.
Speaker 3: Well, no one could ever track Patricia down. The number
Speaker 3: of reported sightings of her in the years following her
Speaker 3: disappearance would reach five thousand. Another interesting development occurred in
Speaker 3: twenty eleven when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police released a
Speaker 3: composite sketch of an unidentified female victim whose partial skullf
Speaker 3: fragment had been found near a creek in Mission, British Columbia.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety five, DNA testing would link the skullf
Speaker 3: fragment to human remains discovered on the farm of notorious
Speaker 3: Canadian serial killer Robert Picton. When the sketch of this
Speaker 3: victim was shared on the Webslooth's forum, some posters thought
Speaker 3: that she bore a striking resemblance to Patricia Mihan, and
Speaker 3: given that she went missing in the Pacific Northwest, they
Speaker 3: wondered if perhaps she crossed the border into Canada and
Speaker 3: cross paths with Picton. A tip was submitted to the RCMP,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't look like the lead ever went anywhere. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: in spite of all the sightings of Patricia, she has
Speaker 3: still never been tracked down or confirmed to be alive,
Speaker 3: and her current whereabouts continue to remain unknown.
Speaker 1: So I guess you could say the path went Chile.
Speaker 2: So, Robin, you deal a lot with these missing person
Speaker 2: cases and unsolved cases. Is five thousand a lot of
Speaker 2: reported sightings to see for someone. I just feel like,
Speaker 2: when you look at the span of space and time
Speaker 2: for someone who is has gone missing, five thousand reported sightings,
Speaker 2: that seems like a really high number of people knowing
Speaker 2: of her case, understanding that there's an issue, and then
Speaker 2: making a report that they feel like they interacted with her.
Speaker 1: That does seem like a large amount. Yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that missing persons cases are going to get
Speaker 1: a lot of like useless tips that wind up being
Speaker 1: ruled out, where someone will say I saw such and
Speaker 1: such walking down a street in the distance, and I
Speaker 1: think it might have been this missing person, but there's
Speaker 1: nothing to work with. But I would be curious to know,
Speaker 1: like what percentage of these five thousand sightings involved someone
Speaker 1: who recalled seeing a woman who appeared to be in
Speaker 1: a vulnerable condition, who was staring blankly or talking to herself,
Speaker 1: because that just seems oddly specific if you have that
Speaker 1: many sightings of some of a woman matching Patricia's description
Speaker 1: acting strangely a short time after she got into that
Speaker 1: car accident and may have triggered something in her head.
Speaker 1: So that's why I, even though in a lot of
Speaker 1: these missing persons cases I rule out eyewitness sightings, this
Speaker 1: one I just cannot be sure, just because of like
Speaker 1: the specific details these witnesses have provided.
Speaker 3: I kind of discount the idea that she would be
Speaker 3: in Canada unless somebody smuggled her across the border. Anybody
Speaker 3: has ever gone by car across the border from the
Speaker 3: US to Canada. It's not exactly an easy thing to do,
Speaker 3: and you're certainly not going to be able to do
Speaker 3: it without a passport.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that security was a lot more
Speaker 1: laxed back in nineteen eighty nine, and you could cross
Speaker 1: the border without one sometimes. But if Patricia's acting strangely,
Speaker 1: then I guess she would capture the border guard's attention
Speaker 1: and they might ask for identification. But I haven't heard
Speaker 1: much of any eyewitness sightings of Patricia in Canada or
Speaker 1: British Columbia. They've mostly been relegated to the US, so
Speaker 1: I do tend to agree that this skull fragment that
Speaker 1: was found in British Columbia does not belong to her anyway.
Speaker 1: If you ask any Unsolved Mysteries fan about the Patricia
Speaker 1: Mean segment, the first thing that will probably pop into
Speaker 1: their head is her self portrait, which is one of
Speaker 1: the most iconic images ever featured on the show. After
Speaker 1: she went missing, Patricia's family found a role of undeveloped
Speaker 1: film in or camera and after developing the photos, discovered
Speaker 1: a self port Patricia had taken of herself in a mirror,
Speaker 1: which I guess would be the nineteen eighty nine equivalent
Speaker 1: of a selfie. It's a pretty haunting photograph, and when
Speaker 1: you look into Patricia's eyes, you can only imagine what
Speaker 1: was going on in her head at that point. Apparently
Speaker 1: she had a similar look in her eyes, which she
Speaker 1: stared at the other motorist before disappearing. But as memorable
Speaker 1: as this segment is, the reason we couldn't devote a
Speaker 1: longer two part episode of the case is that there
Speaker 1: really isn't too much to analyze. We know that Patricia
Speaker 1: got into an accident, wandered off, and disappeared, but the
Speaker 1: only unanswered question is what happened to her. It's pretty
Speaker 1: clear that Patricia was suffering from depression and dealing with
Speaker 1: serious mental health issues at this time. I'm also pretty
Speaker 1: certain she was single, as some of the articles about
Speaker 1: her case reference an ex boyfriend who lived in Spokane,
Speaker 1: Washington and became actively involved in the search for though
Speaker 1: I don't know any details about the relationship or how
Speaker 1: long they had been broken up by this point. But
Speaker 1: even though Patricia's psychologists seemed to think the accident triggered
Speaker 1: her amnesia. Something was definitely off long before the accident recurred.
Speaker 1: There has never been any explanation to account for why
Speaker 1: Patricia was driving on a rural highway nearly four hundred
Speaker 1: miles away from her home, though since she had clothing
Speaker 1: and other items in her car, she might have been
Speaker 1: attempting the eighteen hundred mile cross country trip to see
Speaker 1: her family in Pittsburgh. Or it's even possible that she
Speaker 1: lost her memory before she crashed her car and had
Speaker 1: no idea where she was going. Let's also not forget
Speaker 1: that Patricia was driving on the wrong side of the road,
Speaker 1: and you could assume that perhaps Patricia was attempting suicide
Speaker 1: by deliberately causing a head on collision. Whatever the case,
Speaker 1: even though it was never officially confirmed if Patricia suffered
Speaker 1: her head injury in the accident, something was clearly wrong
Speaker 1: with her when she wandered out onto the prairie.
Speaker 2: I tend to lean against suicide because I feel like
Speaker 2: Patricia simply wasn't present in her mind, Like I think
Speaker 2: she was so oh so depressed, so caught up in
Speaker 2: whatever distress she was feeling, that she simply wasn't conscious
Speaker 2: of what was going on around her like, you know
Speaker 2: when you get into a car and you drive and
Speaker 2: you don't remember how you got from point A to
Speaker 2: point B, but somehow you're safely in your driveway. I
Speaker 2: feel like that's what she was doing. She was on autopilot,
Speaker 2: in distress, and she, in my mind, said, I have
Speaker 2: to get to my parents. They said, that's a good plan.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm going to do. They don't want me
Speaker 2: to drive. I'm going to do it anyway. And she
Speaker 2: makes those plans with her landlord to get out of town.
Speaker 2: And so for me, I feel like driving on the
Speaker 2: wrong side of the road.
Speaker 4: The accident.
Speaker 2: All of that is because she's not actually focused or
Speaker 2: visually present when she's behind the wheel of her car.
Speaker 3: So there are really only two possibilities here. This took
Speaker 3: place on a very cold night, so either Patricia died
Speaker 3: of exposure on the prairie and her remains have never
Speaker 3: been found, or she did manage to get a ride
Speaker 3: out of the area and spent the next little while
Speaker 3: wandering around the country as a transient. We've mentioned numerous
Speaker 3: times on this podcast that is very common for people
Speaker 3: to go missing in remote areas with their remains never
Speaker 3: being found. Even after an extensive search effort. You could
Speaker 3: easily compare this story to another case we covered on
Speaker 3: a previous minisode, and that's the death of Don Kemp,
Speaker 3: who vanished under similar circumstances on a remote prairie in Wyoming.
Speaker 3: Much like with Patricia's disappearance, an extensive ground and air
Speaker 3: search was conducted of the area, but Don's remains were
Speaker 3: never found until a completely random person just happened to
Speaker 3: stumble upon them three years later.
Speaker 2: And how many cases have we talked about, or do
Speaker 2: you guys know about where you have people that go
Speaker 2: out on these ground searches and there are extensive hunts
Speaker 2: to recover their body or to locate them alive, and
Speaker 2: it's months years later where someone says, we searched this area,
Speaker 2: and yet months day, years later they're actually found in
Speaker 2: that same search location. So it's not unheard of that
Speaker 2: people do go and they look for their remains and
Speaker 2: they're actually discovered later in a place that was quote searched.
Speaker 2: Things like an animal pulling, you know, a piece of
Speaker 2: clothing somewhere that makes it more visible, whether changing making
Speaker 2: something more present or more visible. So many different explanations
Speaker 2: for why that happens, but it's not uncommon to say
Speaker 2: we searched the area, didn't find anything, and yet doesn't
Speaker 2: mean she wasn't there.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing with the Don Kemp case, like,
Speaker 1: this wasn't a wooded area with a lot of foilage
Speaker 1: or anything. This was an open prairie where you would
Speaker 1: think that if you search hard enough, you're eventually going
Speaker 1: to find his body or some skeleton remains. Yet they
Speaker 1: still managed to miss him. So even though they did
Speaker 1: the same thing with Patricia, That's why I don't discount
Speaker 1: the idea that she did die of exposure on the
Speaker 1: prairie and they just have never found her remains.
Speaker 4: What's that case in the desert?
Speaker 3: The guy's name is Daniel and he goes missing after
Speaker 3: having what appears to be a mental health issue for crisis.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about one that we've covered or a
Speaker 1: different case?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, it's rather it's rather recently.
Speaker 1: Oh, that Daniel Robinson case.
Speaker 3: That's yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, that one was similar, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is where he just kind of disappears and
Speaker 1: abandons his car and they still haven't found him. And
Speaker 1: the one I was thinking of was the David Stone case.
Speaker 1: Which we did on a minisod recently, where he also
Speaker 1: wandered around the desert and they searched for him, but
Speaker 1: they didn't find his remains. For a couple of years now,
Speaker 1: there were around five thousand eyewitness sightings of Patricia after
Speaker 1: she vanished, and that's an awful lot. But once again,
Speaker 1: we frequently mentioned on this podcast how common it is
Speaker 1: for eyewitnesses and missing persons cases to be mistaken and
Speaker 1: proven wrong. However, in this particular case, I think there's
Speaker 1: a decent chance that at least some of these sightings
Speaker 1: might be accurate. When you watch the Unsolved Mystery segment
Speaker 1: and read the original news articles about this case, it's
Speaker 1: interesting how the word confirmed it specifically used to describe
Speaker 1: some of these sightings. I mean, I am pretty certain
Speaker 1: that these witnesses saw a woman who looked a lot
Speaker 1: like Patricia, but I don't know how the authorities could
Speaker 1: one hundred percent confirm it was her unless the witnesses
Speaker 1: shared some specific details which were not released to the public.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting how there are multiple sightings of
Speaker 1: a disoriented looking woman resembling Patricia in different places like Montana,
Speaker 1: South Dakota, and Minnesota, and the descriptions of these sightings
Speaker 1: sound fairly similar. The siding at the restaurant in Bozeman
Speaker 1: is definitely the most credible since it was Patricia's hometown
Speaker 1: and the two witnesses who identified her also watched a
Speaker 1: videotape of Patricia. This is quite different than simply looking
Speaker 1: at a photograph, since they can study Patricia's mannerisms in
Speaker 1: the video and how she talked and compare it to
Speaker 1: the woman they saw. If this woman was Patricia, I
Speaker 1: have to wonder if there was something in the back
Speaker 1: of her mind which made her think that she might
Speaker 1: be from Bozeman, but the symptoms of amnesia prevented her
Speaker 1: from figuring out who she really was.
Speaker 2: That is really interesting that they would say confirmed. It's
Speaker 2: not as if Patricia had a really prominent facial figure
Speaker 2: or characteristic or let's say, a tattoo or something like
Speaker 2: that that made it, Oh my gosh, that's definitely her, right.
Speaker 2: We saw the large birthmark, we saw the eye deformity
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. Patricia's very normal looking. When you
Speaker 2: google a picture of her, there's nothing that stands out.
Speaker 2: She's very average for She's just a girl, and so
Speaker 2: there's nothing profoundly unique about her face, her hair, her body.
Speaker 2: That would make it where I could tell you I
Speaker 2: saw this person and you would say, one hundred percent
Speaker 2: confirmed that it was her. I do love this idea
Speaker 2: that you have two waitresses who were able to watch
Speaker 2: a video that the family provides and they can say, oh,
Speaker 2: my goodness, that's her, because you do see different things
Speaker 2: when you see facial expressions, when you see hand motions
Speaker 2: and all of these different kind of physical behaviors in
Speaker 2: a video. To confirm that, yes, we saw some of
Speaker 2: those similar mannerisms, it is a very promising lead. And
Speaker 2: then again you go, well, then what right they everywhere
Speaker 2: they went and heard that Patricia had been there? Then
Speaker 2: what where do you go from there? That's what her
Speaker 2: poor family and law enforcement were dealing with.
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm intrigued by the idea that maybe
Speaker 1: she had something in the back of her memory which
Speaker 1: made her think that Bozeman was a part of her life.
Speaker 1: And as you recall, when she first went into this diner,
Speaker 1: she said that she was in a hurry and she'd
Speaker 1: only be there a short time. But then she stayed
Speaker 1: there for the next two hours. And you wonder, is
Speaker 1: there something triggering her memory here, making your think this
Speaker 1: place looks familiar, this city looks familiar. Maybe I once
Speaker 1: lived here, but she just didn't have enough in her
Speaker 1: memory to figure out who she really was.
Speaker 3: All that being said, remember the false lead with the
Speaker 3: woman who was arrested in Idaho in nineteen ninety even
Speaker 3: though Patricia, she apparently had such a strong resemblance to
Speaker 3: her that it convinced the arresting officer and many other
Speaker 3: people until a fingerprint check was performed. So it's easy
Speaker 3: to see how all these witnesses, even those who were
Speaker 3: one hundred percent certain, could have seen another woman who
Speaker 3: looked a lot like Patricia and been mistaken. But overall, well,
Speaker 3: I do think there's a good chance that Patrician never
Speaker 3: made it off the Montana Prairie and died out there.
Speaker 3: I also believe that this might be one of those
Speaker 3: rare missing person's cases where the victim was still alive
Speaker 3: for a period of time after they vanished. That's why
Speaker 3: when Unsolved Mysteries originally aired, Robert Stack sent out a
Speaker 3: public plea for Patricia to come forward if she was watching,
Speaker 3: and even assured her that no one was harmed in
Speaker 3: the car accident and she wasn't going to face serious
Speaker 3: legal trouble.
Speaker 4: We do have.
Speaker 2: Cases where we hear, you know, years and decades later,
Speaker 2: this person realizes, oh, that that person I'm looking for
Speaker 2: is me. But like you said, Jules, it's incredibly rare.
Speaker 2: It's more likely that Patricia met to me with foul play,
Speaker 2: and that after she was struggling and making her way
Speaker 2: from different points to different points, someone said, Wow, that
Speaker 2: girl's really vulnerable and they took advantage of her. To me,
Speaker 2: at this point, someone would say, Hey, that girl that
Speaker 2: we know as Sarah really resembles this girl Patricia, and
Speaker 2: Sarah doesn't really know much about her background. Like I
Speaker 2: feel like at this point, if Patricia was still alive,
Speaker 2: someone or herself would eventually come to terms with that
Speaker 2: is very strongly related to me or this friend that
Speaker 2: I have. Just doesn't seem like she could survive without
Speaker 2: eventually having to get a job, have to find someone
Speaker 2: to bring her into their home, or to love her
Speaker 2: in some way where she wouldn't have to work. It
Speaker 2: just you couldn't just stumble around forever in the way
Speaker 2: that Patricia was doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sadly, even though I do think it's possible that
Speaker 1: Patricia might have lived for a little while after the accident.
Speaker 1: She probably never regained her memories, and it seems unlikely
Speaker 1: that she is still alive today. It's possible that she
Speaker 1: could still be living as a transient out there somewhere,
Speaker 1: but it's difficult to be able to maintain that lifestyle
Speaker 1: for nearly thirty five years, and given the amount of
Speaker 1: hitch hiking Patricia would have had to do. It's also possible,
Speaker 1: like you said, that she could have met with foul
Speaker 1: play by an unknown party. I still remember browsing the
Speaker 1: web slues forum when that lead came up in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: involving the skull fragment for the Jane Doe in British Columbia.
Speaker 1: I was intrigued by the possibility that Patricia could have
Speaker 1: crossed the border and become a murder victim of Robert Pickton,
Speaker 1: but the odds of this are not high. However, if
Speaker 1: Patricia is still alive out there somewhere, she would currently
Speaker 1: be seventy two years old today, so I guess it's
Speaker 1: not completely impossible. So if you happen to have any
Speaker 1: information about her whereabouts, please contact the McCombe County Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Office at four oh six four eight five three four
Speaker 1: zero five. That's four oh six four eight five three
Speaker 1: four zero five, Jules Ashley, any final thoughts on this case?
Speaker 2: These are the worst kinds of cases when you talk
Speaker 2: about the risk of criminality and you talk about the
Speaker 2: family's grief. They don't know what happened to their loved one,
Speaker 2: right And like you said, Patricia be seventy two years
Speaker 2: old today, it's likely that parents and siblings are also
Speaker 2: up in age or deceased at this point. But throughout
Speaker 2: their lifetime they were wondering what happened?
Speaker 4: Where is she?
Speaker 2: And is she still alive? Is she being her?
Speaker 1: Is she safe?
Speaker 2: And so I think when you talk to survivors of
Speaker 2: missing persons and homicides and cold case murders, they'll tell
Speaker 2: you worst case scenario is that our loved one would
Speaker 2: be missing and we wouldn't have a chance to bury them,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't have a chance to bring them home and
Speaker 2: heal them, and we wouldn't have a place to go
Speaker 2: to honor them because we don't know if they're alive
Speaker 2: or deceased. And so my heart breaks that throughout their lifetime,
Speaker 2: Patricia's family never had answers. It's also so disheartening to
Speaker 2: know that Patricia wanted so badly to be better. She
Speaker 2: was aware that she was struggling with her mental health.
Speaker 2: She was seeking help at a time where that wasn't
Speaker 2: actually as common as it is now, and she was
Speaker 2: seeing a therapist. She was trying to make plans to
Speaker 2: get home to her family because her parents had created
Speaker 2: that healthy, safe environment for her, and so it's just devastating.
Speaker 2: I think she got in that car that day and said,
Speaker 2: I will be at my parents' house whether they want
Speaker 2: me to drive or not, and she never made it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this case really breaks my heart because I know
Speaker 3: what it feels personally to be going through mental health crisis,
Speaker 3: being that I am bipolar to you, and having that
Speaker 3: feeling that you're losing control and needing that help. And
Speaker 3: Patricia reached out to her parents and was going to
Speaker 3: put herself in a safer situation where she would be
Speaker 3: under the watchful eye of her parents, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: that they could intervene and get her the right care
Speaker 3: that she needed, because being accountable to yourself at that
Speaker 3: time is something that feels impossible and we don't know
Speaker 3: exactly what she was struggling with, but we can speculate
Speaker 3: based on the behavior here.
Speaker 4: And it's just.
Speaker 3: Heartbreaking that her family doesn't have her remains. They don't
Speaker 3: know what happened. There's five thousand sightings to parse through,
Speaker 3: and I agree with both Robin and Ashley. I think
Speaker 3: that she likely was. I think there's a strong probability
Speaker 3: that she was alive for a period after her disappearance,
Speaker 3: because some of these sightings are so specific and just
Speaker 3: the details are quite granular, and they seem to be
Speaker 3: able to fit a woman who would have amnesia, who
Speaker 3: had had a car crash, who felt that connection to Bozeman,
Speaker 3: and I just don't think there would be that many
Speaker 3: other people out there who also match her description. So
Speaker 3: it is a really intriguing sighting. And I think after
Speaker 3: a certain amount of time, the more people that she
Speaker 3: would expose yourself to in a situation like hitchhiking in
Speaker 3: places like truck stops, the greater the probability that you
Speaker 3: were going to come across somebody who has nefarious intentions.
Speaker 3: So I think there is a strong likelihood that Patricia's
Speaker 3: was foul play, and unfortunately, without somebody coming forward, or
Speaker 3: without somebody giving more information or her remains being found,
Speaker 3: we just don't have those answers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually remember watching this case back on Unsolved
Speaker 1: Mysteries when originally aired. I think it was a couple
Speaker 1: months less than a year after Patricia went missing, And
Speaker 1: I was always haunted by the re enactment of the
Speaker 1: accident where they showed an actress playing Patricia walking over
Speaker 1: to the other driver and then just staring at her
Speaker 1: before walking out into the prairie in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night. And I was also haunted by the aforementioned
Speaker 1: self portrait of Patricia taking a photograph of herself in
Speaker 1: the mirror with that blank look on her face. And
Speaker 1: at the time, there was a sense of urgency to
Speaker 1: this story because they felt this is one of the
Speaker 1: few missing persons cases we profiled where there is a
Speaker 1: legitimate chance that she's still alive out there somewhere. So
Speaker 1: they're hoping that an eyewitness or perhaps even Patricia herself
Speaker 1: would be watching and be able to direct the authorities
Speaker 1: to find her. But unfortunately that just didn't appear to
Speaker 1: be the case, and no one knows what happened to her.
Speaker 1: Like we said, the chances of her still being alive
Speaker 1: today are pretty much very minuscule. But even though in
Speaker 1: the vast majority of these cases where someone wanders off
Speaker 1: into a remote area, I do believe that they likely
Speaker 1: died of exposure and the remains were not found, but
Speaker 1: this is the exception. I do think that she probably
Speaker 1: hitched a ride at some point, and that a lot
Speaker 1: of the witnesses who did see her did genuinely did
Speaker 1: see her. They were credible, and Patricia was just wandering
Speaker 1: out somewhere with no memory of who she was. It
Speaker 1: is also possible that even if she wasn't murdered, she
Speaker 1: could have died of natural causes and could be a
Speaker 1: Jane Doe somewhere lying in a morgue just completely unidentified,
Speaker 1: or maybe buried in a potter's grave somewhere. So I
Speaker 1: do hope that they have her DNA on file and
Speaker 1: that if she did die while she was out there
Speaker 1: living as a transient, they're able to get a match
Speaker 1: for her someday, because her family definitely deserves answers.
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