Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: On June twenty fifth, twenty twenty, a fifty six year
Speaker 2: old man named James Escalante, who had Native American heritage
Speaker 2: and was also known by his nickname Blackhawk, left his
Speaker 2: home in Wonder Valley, California, on his mountain bike. James
Speaker 2: lived with a girlfriend, Sherry. She told law enforcement that
Speaker 2: when he left home that day, he was headed down
Speaker 2: the road about ten minutes from their place, in order
Speaker 2: to help a friend of theirs d whose car had
Speaker 2: gotten stuck in sugar sand, which is almost like dried
Speaker 2: desert Quicksand it is hot out there in the desert.
Speaker 2: The average temperature for that part of the desert in
Speaker 2: July and August is around eighty nine degrees and highs
Speaker 2: regularly go over one hundred degrees or even one hundred
Speaker 2: and five, and out there in the desert it's dry heat,
Speaker 2: so it feels like you're baking in an oven. It
Speaker 2: happens every year hikers go missing. People just wander off
Speaker 2: and get lost and don't come back. But the terrain
Speaker 2: also means that when people do go missing under mysterious circumstances,
Speaker 2: it can be easier for local law enforcement to write
Speaker 2: it off as just an accident. Now. Supposedly, the friend
Speaker 2: D had been out looking for rocks near Highway sixty
Speaker 2: two and Shelton Road, east of the town of twenty
Speaker 2: nine Palms. James had lived in that desert for a
Speaker 2: long time. He knew the area well, so the plan
Speaker 2: was for James to meet D at a specific intersection
Speaker 2: to rescue her. But once he got out there, according
Speaker 2: to Sherry, he couldn't find D. So James called Sherry
Speaker 2: on his cell phone to figure out what was going on.
Speaker 2: At that point, Sherry called D on a three way call,
Speaker 2: so Sherry, D, and James were all on that call together,
Speaker 2: and then James told D to honk her horn so
Speaker 2: he could find her. He seemed to think he could
Speaker 2: hear her, so he hung up the phone. But he
Speaker 2: never got to D's car, and no one ever saw
Speaker 2: James Escalante alive again. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past
Speaker 2: five years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone,
Speaker 2: I've learned that there is no such thing as a
Speaker 2: small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds
Speaker 2: of messages from people all around the country asking for
Speaker 2: help with an unsolved murder that's affected them. Their families
Speaker 2: and their communities. If you have a case, she'd let
Speaker 2: me and my team to look into. You can reach
Speaker 2: out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at
Speaker 2: six seven eight seven four four six one four or five.
Speaker 2: That's six seven eight seven four four six ' one
Speaker 2: four or five, or you can send us a message
Speaker 2: on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line.
Speaker 2: I heard about this case from James's daughter in law,
Speaker 2: Heather Escalante, who listens to this podcast and reached out
Speaker 2: to us for help. In the month's following James's disappearance,
Speaker 2: Heather and her husband started working hard to find out
Speaker 2: what happened to her father in law. She talked to
Speaker 2: us about what was going on in James's life around
Speaker 2: the time he went missing, and her struggle to put
Speaker 2: together the missing pieces.
Speaker 1: So James lived out in Wonder Valley, California, in the
Speaker 1: middle of the desert. Wonder Valley is huge land mass wise,
Speaker 1: but it has under seven hundred residents in that area.
Speaker 1: It seems big, but it's really quite small and very
Speaker 1: farse in the desert. A lot of the buildings and things.
Speaker 1: Even if he went to maps and looked at it.
Speaker 1: A lot of his buildings are abandoned dilapidated, so it
Speaker 1: might sound like you know land mass wise, if there's
Speaker 1: a lot, there's really not. It's very desolate and you
Speaker 1: can see a lot for miles and miles out there.
Speaker 2: Heather explained that James was living in a trailer on
Speaker 2: the back of someone else's property. He lived with his girlfriend, Sherry,
Speaker 2: and a third person, her ex boyfriend and their mutual friend,
Speaker 2: a guy named Tyler who went by Tank.
Speaker 1: At the time that James went in the thing, he
Speaker 1: was living with his girlfriend at the time, and to
Speaker 1: be honest, this is all things that we learned after
Speaker 1: he went in the thing. He was living with someone
Speaker 1: who's claiming that they were together at the time. Her
Speaker 1: name is Very. They also had another person staying out
Speaker 1: there with them, who oddly enough was Ferry's on again
Speaker 1: off again boyfriend Flashed Fyance for about eight nine years
Speaker 1: prior to this as well. They were living at the
Speaker 1: back of someone's property off of Kerrn Road in Wonder
Speaker 1: Valley in travel trailers. And the reason they were there
Speaker 1: is because the person who was living in the home
Speaker 1: at the time had a lot of health issues and
Speaker 1: Scarry was supposally his caretaker. He actually passed away, probably
Speaker 1: about a month or so before James disappeared, and the
Speaker 1: family let them know, Hey, we're going to get ready
Speaker 1: to sell the house, so you guys need to move.
Speaker 1: And so they were actually in the process of packing
Speaker 1: up and trying to move when James went missing, and
Speaker 1: so very and be on again, off again boyfriend that
Speaker 1: also lived there. Very strange dynamics. But who's their own
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: The person who owned the land and property they lived
Speaker 2: on passed away recently and their family was apparently planning
Speaker 2: on selling that land, so Tank, James and Sherry's living
Speaker 2: situation may have been about to change, which would have
Speaker 2: potentially meant that they would have had to move. Heather
Speaker 2: is open about the fact that James battled addictions and
Speaker 2: challenges in his life, including drugs.
Speaker 1: To tell you a little bit about James James was,
Speaker 1: I've never made it a secret. James was not a faint.
Speaker 1: He had a pass He had accurrence that didn't I
Speaker 1: guess meet everybody's standard of what people want in their
Speaker 1: perfect victim. I guess you could say in a story, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, we've never made that a secret. We've
Speaker 1: never tried to hide any of that stuff, but James was,
Speaker 1: you know, despite all of that, James was an incredibly
Speaker 1: sweet person. He had a big heart. That man will
Speaker 1: give you the shirt off of his back if you
Speaker 1: needed it. He was always helping people, even in in
Speaker 1: the throes of his own issues. You know, when we
Speaker 1: did his celebration of life, for instance, this is just
Speaker 1: a really great example of just who James was. A
Speaker 1: girl that I had never met showed up and she
Speaker 1: came up to me and she says, you know, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to tell you where an important person James
Speaker 1: is to me because I was in the first of
Speaker 1: an active addiction, and even though James was battling his
Speaker 1: own demons, he mentored me and coached me into sobriety.
Speaker 1: And now I'm going and taking classes so that I
Speaker 1: can help other people get to him. So that was
Speaker 1: just I mean, that's to me, is just the perfect
Speaker 1: example of how James was. You know, regardless of what
Speaker 1: he was dealing with in his own life, he always
Speaker 1: put other people first, and he always was willing to
Speaker 1: help people.
Speaker 2: Heather said that James was quiet and kept to himself,
Speaker 2: which meant that often family members wouldn't talk to him
Speaker 2: for long periods of time. That was not unusual.
Speaker 1: And you know, he was he was a very quiet man,
Speaker 1: kind of came across as a little bit mysterious, and
Speaker 1: he had a good sense of humor, and he was
Speaker 1: he was pretty he was he was a pretty wise guy.
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you if you needed advice, he
Speaker 1: was a great listener, but he was also great at
Speaker 1: giving advice. And he was a good person for everybody
Speaker 1: to go to when they regardless of what they needed.
Speaker 1: You know, like I said, he would do whatever he
Speaker 1: could for you. So you know, that's kind of I
Speaker 1: guess the best way I can describe him as a person.
Speaker 2: James lived a fairly simple life. He worked in construction
Speaker 2: and doing odd jobs around the desert.
Speaker 1: He did a lot of construction type work and and
Speaker 1: so I know, a long time ago he used the
Speaker 1: lot at Salt Minds out there, but that was probably
Speaker 1: when my husband was teenager time frame, so it had
Speaker 1: been a while since he had done anything like that.
Speaker 1: But he was doing a lot of like odd jobs
Speaker 1: and things around the desert out there, you know, fixing things,
Speaker 1: working on people's houses and some rants out there. I
Speaker 1: know he was doing a lot of that right before
Speaker 1: he went missing.
Speaker 2: Heather said that the first time she learned that James
Speaker 2: was missing was in September of twenty twenty. Remember this
Speaker 2: was during COVID, so going long stretches of time without
Speaker 2: seeing people in person or sometimes even talking to them
Speaker 2: was something that was a little bit more normalized in
Speaker 2: and James was someone who kept to himself anyway.
Speaker 1: It was the beginning, like the first week of September.
Speaker 1: My husband and his dad both are very wiaet people.
Speaker 1: You know, they're not the type people you're going to
Speaker 1: start a conversation up with. Because he hadn't asked them
Speaker 1: a question, They're going to give you a one word answer,
Speaker 1: and then that's kind of you just kind of boasted there.
Speaker 1: So they didn't talk a lot on the phone or
Speaker 1: things like that. And of course, my husband and I
Speaker 1: live out in South Carolina, so literally couldn't get much
Speaker 1: further away distance wise, so we didn't see the last
Speaker 1: time we saw him in person was in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: when we went out there on trip. So we didn't
Speaker 1: see him very often, and they really didn't talk often
Speaker 1: because neither of them are talkers to be on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, we started catching word from people out
Speaker 1: in the desert, like, hey, haven't seen your dad in
Speaker 1: a while, do you know where he's at, Like, we
Speaker 1: haven't heard from him. To be honest, in the beginning,
Speaker 1: we didn't really put a lot of weight into it
Speaker 1: one because of unfortunately the person that we were hearing
Speaker 1: it from is not the most reliable source. And then
Speaker 1: because you know, James was kind of a walker. He's
Speaker 1: like a little bit of a nomad, if you will,
Speaker 1: and so he would take off sometimes for you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of days to a week, Yeah, things like that,
Speaker 1: and you know, just kind of get away from things
Speaker 1: and kind of you by himself. He was a loner,
Speaker 1: and so at first we didn't really just take it
Speaker 1: too seriously. But then after a while it was like, okay,
Speaker 1: this was getting a little too much. So because of
Speaker 1: the distance, we asked a close family friend of ours
Speaker 1: to please go out there and check things out for
Speaker 1: us and like see what they could find out.
Speaker 2: The family friend was not able to make contact with James,
Speaker 2: so Heather said that on September seventh, they had the
Speaker 2: family friend call the police in Wonder Valley to make
Speaker 2: a police report. Around that same time, Heather started posting
Speaker 2: about James on Facebook.
Speaker 1: It was just a whirlwind from that point forward. I
Speaker 1: had immediately started putting, you know, creating missing person's flyers
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out like kind of how to
Speaker 1: get a space out there in the area. And beyond that,
Speaker 1: started joining all kinds of Facebook groups that, you know,
Speaker 1: if they were pertaining to that area the desert, I
Speaker 1: joined them. If it was just a missing person's group
Speaker 1: in general, I joined them. Anything to do with American
Speaker 1: Indian missing type pages, joined those as well, and just
Speaker 1: started trying to get a space out there and let
Speaker 1: people know that he was missing and we're looking for him.
Speaker 2: After that, James's girlfriend, Sherry, saw one of Heather's posts
Speaker 2: and actually made a comment underneath it. Heather said that
Speaker 2: that was her and her husband's first contact with Sherry,
Speaker 2: and she said that from the first time that her
Speaker 2: husband talked to Sherry on the phone, a conversation that Heather,
Speaker 2: by the way, overheard, Heather said she began to feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Something was wrong. Heather and her husband talked to Sherry
Speaker 2: on the phone after Sherry commented on Facebook post, and
Speaker 2: Heather said the whole thing felt off.
Speaker 1: Jerry actually saw one of my posts on one of
Speaker 1: the desert pages out there and commented on it was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm his girlfriend, give me a call and put her
Speaker 1: number on there. So had my husband call her. I
Speaker 1: was standing right next to him in the whole conversation
Speaker 1: between the two of them, that very first conversation immediately
Speaker 1: just I don't even know how to explain it. It just
Speaker 1: got my stomach turning, and I just had like the
Speaker 1: worst feeling the initial conversation between the two of them
Speaker 1: that day on the phone. When she answered the phone,
Speaker 1: she immediately started apologizing profusely, like I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm fair, I'm so sorry, and we're you know. And
Speaker 1: then from there it's like the entire conversation she was
Speaker 1: referring to him in the past tent which immediately set
Speaker 1: me off a little bit, because, I mean, at this point,
Speaker 1: he's a missing person, right, that's it, And for all
Speaker 1: we knew at this point he might have just still
Speaker 1: been wandering. We didn't know. Yeah, I mean, he could
Speaker 1: have been perfectly fine. So why are you referring to
Speaker 1: him in the past tense? So that was the first
Speaker 1: thing that immediately just set me off a little bit.
Speaker 2: On that call, Sherry told them about what happened, the
Speaker 2: series of events that led to James going out to
Speaker 2: the desert to help their friend DP.
Speaker 1: So she tells us at this point in time that
Speaker 1: there was a friend of theirs that she had gone
Speaker 1: out in the middle of the night, in the middle
Speaker 1: of the desert, in the streetlights, there's no nothing to
Speaker 1: hunt rocks, and got herself stuck out in sugar sand
Speaker 1: out in the desert, which is really soft fand that
Speaker 1: once you're in it, you're you're not getting out very easily.
Speaker 2: Sherry said that after getting stuck, d had actually initially
Speaker 2: called the third guy who lived on that same property, Tank,
Speaker 2: but apparently he wasn't available to help, and then, according
Speaker 2: to Sherry, Dee also tried to call someone else, a
Speaker 2: guy named Gary. He said he wouldn't be able to
Speaker 2: go get d for hours since he was at work.
Speaker 2: So that's how James ended up volunteering to go out
Speaker 2: there to help.
Speaker 1: So that's at the point when she started kind of
Speaker 1: blowing up Sherry's phone, and Sherry and James were supporting
Speaker 1: the Sherry sitting at their place. Neither of them had
Speaker 1: a vehicle, and Sherry claims that she sent James out
Speaker 1: there to help her friend on a mountain bike, which
Speaker 1: that for James was incredibly normal. James, even when he
Speaker 1: had a license and a car, he rode his bike everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I mean like ten twenty miles one way, kind
Speaker 1: of rode his mountain height everywhere.
Speaker 2: According to Heather, he knew the area very well. Also,
Speaker 2: where D disappeared was close to where James and Cherry lived.
Speaker 1: It's a dirt road, but it's a pretty start road
Speaker 1: until you get to a certain point, so I mean,
Speaker 1: for the most part, it would have been a pretty
Speaker 1: food ride for him. I looked it up on Google
Speaker 1: Map and even changed it to say I was going
Speaker 1: to be riding my bike, and it said it was
Speaker 1: about a ten to eleven minute bike ride, like it
Speaker 1: shouldn't have taken him that long.
Speaker 2: But James didn't make it out to D and then
Speaker 2: he never came home. Heather says that according to Sherry,
Speaker 2: when James didn't come home, eventually Gary and Tank drove
Speaker 2: out to pick D up from the desert. But Heather
Speaker 2: said she doesn't understand one, No one D or Sherry
Speaker 2: or Tank or anyone else ever reported James missing or
Speaker 2: why they didn't look for him.
Speaker 1: He never made it to d No one ever went
Speaker 1: looking for him, nobody reported him missing, nobody did anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's some man that you're claiming that is
Speaker 1: the love of your life, right, he goes missing and
Speaker 1: you don't do anything.
Speaker 2: The reason Sherry eventually gave to Heather for non immediately
Speaker 2: calling police was that James had been involved in things,
Speaker 2: including drugs, things that they thought he would not appreciate
Speaker 2: them attracting police attention. Heather said that considering James's past,
Speaker 2: she can understand this logic to a certain point.
Speaker 1: Honestly, they've given me a reason, and I can somewhat
Speaker 1: understand given James's history and current things that he you
Speaker 1: know that he did, they didn't really want to draw
Speaker 1: police attention to him. This was right but for me,
Speaker 1: and I get that, not that I don't even necessarily
Speaker 1: disagree with it to a point, right, right, I mean
Speaker 1: that was right, No, And that was the thing that
Speaker 1: was crazy to me. So like for a couple of days,
Speaker 1: maybe cool, he didn't want to, but I mean a
Speaker 1: month or two later, that's a problem. James has never
Speaker 1: gone missing for that long and not been in contact
Speaker 1: with somebody.
Speaker 2: Heather said that over the times they talked to Sherry,
Speaker 2: small details about the story seemed to change, like what
Speaker 2: time everything happened, So.
Speaker 1: That is part of the story from Sherry that has
Speaker 1: changed multiple times. At one point it was, you know,
Speaker 1: eighty thirty in the morning, at one point it was
Speaker 1: ten am. I have talked to Sherry's multiple times. In
Speaker 1: the beginning, I tried to be very nice. After a while,
Speaker 1: it just didn't It didn't end up that way, so
Speaker 1: we don't really speak much anymore.
Speaker 2: Heather said that she reached out to D through Facebook
Speaker 2: messenger and initially D was responsive, but then things between
Speaker 2: them got complicated after something was posted in one of
Speaker 2: the groups that were discussing James being missing, something that
Speaker 2: Heather said led to D cutting off contact with her
Speaker 2: and taking her to court. I want to say there's
Speaker 2: zero suggestion that D was in any way involved in
Speaker 2: anything bad happening to James. And it's unfortunate when families
Speaker 2: who are desperate for answers and trying anything they can
Speaker 2: to put the word out there, when people sometimes make
Speaker 2: comments on these posts, comments that accuse people of things
Speaker 2: on social media sometimes this unfortunately leads to relationships getting
Speaker 2: shut down. But there's a lot we still don't know.
Speaker 2: Heather has not actually talked to de or to Tank
Speaker 2: or to the other guy Gary. Heather began to read
Speaker 2: more and more about the number of people who went
Speaker 2: missing in or near the Mojave Desert. Some were accidents,
Speaker 2: others seem to have elements of foul play. There are
Speaker 2: definitely a lot of elemental dangers out there, not just
Speaker 2: the heat, but also things like hill and valley wash,
Speaker 2: which happens when flash floods occur. Basically, dry river bottoms
Speaker 2: fill up with water really fast. They can drown people
Speaker 2: and sweep them away all the way out in the desert.
Speaker 2: On Reddit threads like missing for one one, people talk
Speaker 2: openly about the number of people who went missing in
Speaker 2: the area where James disappeared. One comment on Reddit red
Speaker 2: quote distance in the desert is meaningless. I'm in a
Speaker 2: further northwest area of the Mahave, but it's got similar dangers.
Speaker 2: Every hill and valley and wash looks the damn same,
Speaker 2: even if you have a particular mountain to orient yourself to.
Speaker 2: If you don't already know the distance and how big
Speaker 2: it is, it's not very helpful. It could be two
Speaker 2: miles away or twenty end quote. In a lot of
Speaker 2: media reports, people talked about the number of bodies found
Speaker 2: in the desert, six bodies in the last three years alone.
Speaker 2: Were all of these disappearances just people who got lost
Speaker 2: or turned around, or could some of them have been
Speaker 2: something more sinister. Some people started wondering if there could
Speaker 2: be a serial killer at work stalking the area, especially
Speaker 2: because someone else vanished on that same strip of road.
Speaker 2: This time it was thirty seven year old Erica Lloyd.
Speaker 2: James and Erica went missing nine days and a quarter
Speaker 2: of a mile apart. On July twenty fifth, twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: a guy named Doug Billings, who was actually a Cave
Speaker 2: and nine expert, was searching for any trace of Erica
Speaker 2: or Erica's black car, and he found something, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't Erica's black car. It was James Escalante's bike. On
Speaker 2: July twenty fifth, a month after James as Galante disappeared,
Speaker 2: a searcher looking for Erica Lloyd, a woman who went
Speaker 2: missing nine days before James, found James's bike, and then
Speaker 2: on August eighth, twenty twenty, according to an article on
Speaker 2: meat Eater, a hunting website, a hunter named Kyle Gibson
Speaker 2: was out in the desert north of Joshua Tree National Park,
Speaker 2: near the town of twenty nine Palms. Twenty nine Palms
Speaker 2: is famous, actually, that whole region of desert is famous.
Speaker 2: It's in the Mojave in San Bernardino count It has
Speaker 2: the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center nearby. There are
Speaker 2: very ritzy areas in towns like Palm Springs. There's the
Speaker 2: Coachella Music festival out in near Indio. There are also
Speaker 2: a lot of hunters, like a lot of places where
Speaker 2: I've spent time for this podcast, like the Ozarks. The
Speaker 2: wilderness is beautiful but also dangerous because, needless to say,
Speaker 2: you do not want to get disoriented and stranded out there.
Speaker 2: People do not last long. A lot of secrets are
Speaker 2: buried out there in that desert, including bodies and evidence
Speaker 2: that could be lost forever. They have found six bodies
Speaker 2: along that strip of road in the past three years alone.
Speaker 2: While the hunter was out there, he saw bones. At
Speaker 2: first he thought they might belong to an animal, but
Speaker 2: then he saw jeans and black nikes. He called the
Speaker 2: police and showed the deputy you came to the scene
Speaker 2: his OSX app. The deputy was able to see the
Speaker 2: exact location where he walked and the location of the body.
Speaker 2: Police went out there and recovered the remains. They confirmed
Speaker 2: that the body was human, and in December, the coroner
Speaker 2: called James's family to confirm that body was James Escalante.
Speaker 2: I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen
Speaker 2: Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans
Speaker 2: and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine
Speaker 2: Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy
Speaker 2: Tubbs for her research assistance. This episode was sound designed
Speaker 2: and mixed by Noah Kamer. Our theme song is by
Speaker 2: Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and l. C. Crowley.
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Speaker 2: were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case,
Speaker 2: you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen gonepott.
Speaker 2: If you have a case you'd like me and my
Speaker 2: team to look into, you can reach out to us
Speaker 2: at our helengoone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
Speaker 2: four four six one four five. That's six seven eight
Speaker 2: seven four four six one four five.
Speaker 1: School of Humans,