January 23, 2025 • 32 mins
Six bodies were found in Wonder Valley between December of 2019 and January of 2021. Some of the bodies in the desert, including the disappearance of 37 year old single mother Erika Lloyd, started making local, then national, news. But there were no national news reports about James Escalante.
We’re going to dive into the missing persons report and compare accounts from the last people who saw James to see if we can shed more light into what really happened out there in the desert on June 25, 2020.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Six bodies were found in Wonder Valley, California, between December
of twenty nineteen and January of twenty twenty one. Some
of the bodies in the desert, including the disappearance of
thirty seven year old single mother Erica Lloyd, started to
make local and then national news, but there were no
national news reports about James Escalante. I've been talking together
(00:37):
Escalante about this case, and she's been disheartened by how
little James's case has been covered compared to the others
in Wonder Valley.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
They ended up doing a news broadcast out there in
twenty twenty one. I do believe it was, and they
actually interviewed Detective Halloway, who was the detective that was
assigned to James's missing person's key, and they were talking
about the amount of people going missing out in the desert.
They mentioned Erica Lloyd, they mentioned Lauren to they mentioned
(01:07):
some couple that had gone missing out there. They never
made the first mention of James. It's not like he
didn't know about James. He was the detective on his caase.
Like they've made it abundantly clear to me, they're not
look in the case now. And they're not going to
Nothing has really worked for us in this We could
barely get anybody that wanted to cover his story. That's
been I mean like nobody. If you look up Eric Alloyd,
(01:32):
there's i mean countless coverage on her story all the
way up you know, pretty high in news coverage world.
You can't get anybody to want to touch James's face.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
We're going to dive into the missing Persons report and
compare accounts from the last people who saw James to
see if we can shed more light into what really
happened out there in the desert on June twenty fifth,
twenty twenty. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years
of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I've learned
(02:05):
that there is no such thing as a small town
where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages
from people all around the country asking for help with
an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.
If you have a case you'd like me and my
team to look into, you can reach out to us
at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight
(02:27):
seven four four six one four five. That's six seven
eight seven four four six ' one four five, or
you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gonepod.
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. As we said last week,
(03:31):
people go missing in the desert under a lot of
different circumstances. One of the things that really stood out
to me about James Escalante's case is that in Wonder Valley,
a lot of the body discoveries haven't been made by
the police at all, but by one man, a cave
and mining expert named Doug Billings. Doug Billings was helping
(03:52):
the family of thirty seven year old Eric Lloyd, who
went missing nine days before James, and while he was
looking for Erica's car, he found James's bike. But Heather
said that not only did police know not find the bike,
but that when Doug Billings told him about the bike,
at first, they didn't seem to be interested.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
He had been helping search for Eric Alloyd and he
had seen a bike out there and it has turned
out to be recording the Sherry, the bike that James
left on. It seemed out there twice. The first time
he tried to report it to the police, they said
they didn't think it was related. To Eric Alloyd's case,
and of course James had not been reported missing yet
at that point in time. Tops weren't interested at that
(04:34):
point because at that point they were looking for Erica
and a black car. You know, it didn't seem important
to them at the time, so he did not take
a picture at that time or anything like that. He
again found it on it's still sitting out there on
August ninth, so the day after the remains that turned
out to be James's were found, because him and his
team and went back out to that area. You know,
(04:56):
it's at that time they clearly weren't sure if those
were Eric Alloyd's remained and that's when he took a
picture of the bike. He locked the coordinate. He notified
the police again, but again, given the distance between where
the bike was located and where James's remains were located,
the police didn't think they were linked and left the
bike there.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Heather's family ran into Doug's team and got the picture
of the bike from him and then sent that picture
to James's girlfriend, Sherry. She said that, yes, that was
the bike that James was riding the day he disappeared.
Heather contacted law enforcement, and they finally went out to
that intersection near Highway sixty two and Shelton Road and
(05:36):
retrieved the red bike. But it was odd because when
Heather talked to Sherry, Sherry said that they weren't able
to go look for James because they didn't have a vehicle.
But then she would tell Heather that they went out
to talk to people, people who Heather said lived a
lot further out than the intersection where James disappeared. So
Heather was thinking, how could she get out there when
(05:58):
she just told Heather she didn't have transportation. Heather has
said multiple times that she's suspicious because over time, Sherry's
story appeared to keep changing.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Nothing she said had made sense. The stories have changed,
Like the main story, you know, d he got stuck
in the sand. James went out to get her this
he called, you know from this intersection. That stuff has
never changed. The times have changed. The description of the
shoes he was wearing has changed. How long it took
them to get to that intersection once he left, that's
all changed. What he was wearing, you know, like accessories
(06:34):
that he was wearing has changed. Things that he's owned this,
you know, all those things keep changing right, which has
been nothing but red flags for me.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Heather said that Sherry had told her two versions of
the story. They both started out the same, with James
leaving to go help their friend D, but Heather said
Sherry gave her different times. According to Heather, Sherry first
said that James went out early in the morning, around
eight thirty am, and later she said that it was
(07:03):
around ten or ten thirty am. In both versions, James
never reached their friend D. But in one version, according
to the Missing Persons report, Sherry told someone else that
James never reached D and took a ride to San
Bernardino and went to rehab. Finding Sherry unreliable, Heather started
(07:25):
talking to more people. A lot of these people are
difficult to find. We've been trying to reach out to
them in Wonder Valley and it's been challenging. A lot
of them live off the grid, and a lot of
them have changed numbers since then, and Heather found out
that James's love life was a little bit more complicated
than it seemed to be on the surface. Heather talked
to D, the woman who got stuck in the desert
(07:47):
and who called Sherry for help, and D told Heather
something she hadn't heard before. The story that Sherry told
was that d had gone out in the desert in
the early morning hours of June twenty fifth to go
rock Honting. That's when her car got stuck in sand.
But D filled in some more details. She told Heather
the reason she had gone out so early was because
(08:09):
she had been hanging out at James and Sherry's house
and they had started fighting, and she said they were
fighting about Tank. Now, remember Tank is the friend of
James and Sherry's who also lived on that same property
with them. Tank and Sherry had a history. At some
point they were romantically involved.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
She told me that basically Sherry was kind of bouncings
back and forth between Tank and James, and that she
had been hanging out with them and she was really
tired of hearing James and Sherry fighting about that, and
so she left in the middle of the night, got
out there, got part, took a nap, and woke up
with the intentions of looking for rocks and fossils and
(08:52):
things like that. So she colected them. So that made
a little bit more sense because I was like, he's
going to go out where there's like no street lights
changing at four four foot thirty in the morning to
hunt Rock when you can't even really see them other
than your headlights in the black light. Yeah, so that
made it make a little more sense as to why
she was out there at that hour. But apparently they
were fighting and that's why it according her, that's why
(09:12):
that she left. She got tired of hearing it.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Heather tried to get the police to talk to more
people about James's case, but she discovered that the police
hadn't even canvassed people in the immediate area about James's disappearance.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
There's only like a handful of houses right there on
that little stretch of Shelton, And I asked them specifically
multiple times between September and January, like, Hey, have you
guys gone out and questioned those people in those houses,
like if they saw James around that time, they didn't
have the bike ended up there anything. Oh, they've been questioned,
They've been questioned. Finally I asked, I was like, Okay,
(09:50):
who keeps saying they've been questioned? What questions did y'all
ask them in relation to James. That's when it came
out that oh, no, they had been questioned in relation
to Erica Lloyd, And I said, okay, so you're telling
me that y'all went out there knocking on these doors
and asked them if they have seen a thirty something
year old white girl in a black car. And you'd
(10:11):
think that was sent to somehow spawn them to say no.
But I saw this fifty something year old Indian man
on a red bike. Like that's not even in the
realm of the same thing. But I can tell you,
like I have the missing person's file from James's case.
It's nine pages, one sided, not too exited. Just the
amount of information I provided to law enforcement should have
(10:33):
been more than nine pages.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
So let's look at that missing person's report. When police
talked to Sherry on October first, twenty twenty, according to
the missing Person's report, the story she told them was
again different from the one she told Heather. She said
that d called between eight and eight thirty on the
morning of June twenty fifth, and that d told her
she was stuck in her truck, not that James actually
(10:58):
went out at that time. Sherry told detectives that after
that she called Gary, another friend of theirs, and Gary
went out to get but Gary was unable to move
D's vehicle, and then Gary and D both showed up
at Sherry's house. She said James was there also. At
some point D went back out to where her truck was.
(11:18):
Then D called again at around one fifteen to one
thirty in the afternoon. That's when James put air into
the bike tires and went out to look for D.
Now again, this is still according to Sherry. Several hours later,
Tank showed up at their house. This was at around
three thirty. Then, when they realized they hadn't heard from James,
Tank went out to d to rescue her. This is
(11:41):
a big difference. First of all, this would mean that
instead of James going out at eight or eight thirty
in the morning, this would mean he was out in
the hottest part of the afternoon, and there appears to
be a discrepancy of several hours. There's something else in
the police report that Heather says is inconsistent. Sherry told
detectives she had contacted several people about James being missing,
(12:04):
including Heather Connie, who was James's legal wife, though they
hadn't been in a relationship or lived together in a
long time, and several other people. Meanwhile, none of these
people said that Sherry had contacted them. Sherry told police
that James was a heavy heroin user, that he would
use thirty to thirty five CC's per day. She said
(12:24):
that he used drugs to deal with various physical problems
that he had, and it's certainly possible that something happened
to James that did not involve foul play. Maybe he
was doing drugs that day, maybe he accidentally overdosed. But
if that's the case, Heather wants to know so that
she and her husband, John, and the rest of their
family can have some kind of closure. She does not
(12:46):
believe that that should be the automatic assumption by police
just because James had a drug habit. Police also talked
to Tank. He said he was at work when he
got a call about d being stuck that day. He
said that he came to where he and James and
Sherry lived. He said that he helped James fill up
those by Sickles tires with air, and then several hours
(13:08):
later D and Gary showed up in Gary's truck. Then
he said they all three went out to the desert
to pull D's truck out, that they were finally able
to get it unstuck from the sand. D had a
slightly different story. She told police she left home at
around four thirty am to go rock hunting near Shelton
Road in Highway sixty two. Then she said that around
(13:30):
five thirty am, her truck got stuck on a barrier
somewhere south of Highway sixty two. She described it as
being two streets away from Shelton Road. Since it was
still dark, she said she decided to wait it out.
She took a nap in her truck, and then she
woke up at six am. That's when she called Gary
and Sherry for help. She said that Gary came out
(13:51):
first and tried for around four hours to pull the
truck out. He was there by himself, but he didn't
have any luck. By this point, D said she was overheated,
so she rode with Gary in his vehicle back to
Tank's trailer to lie down, which was on the same
property where James and Sherry lived. D said that Gary
and Tank left there and went to pull her truck
(14:13):
out without her. Now again, if you notice, it's the
same general story, but if you look closer, some very
important details have been changed because the story that D
told the police was that she was calling Sherry at
around one thirty that afternoon. Sherry did put her on
with James. James said he would go out there to
(14:36):
help her get the truck unstuck. But then the story
seems to make even less sense because D said that
on that three way call, she was honking her horn.
She heard him say I hear the horn, but he
never showed up, she said. She later assumed that James
was angry, that he didn't want to deal with it anymore,
or maybe he just got too hot and bailed out.
(14:57):
But if that's true, then her others story about being
taken back to Sherry's property to lie down can't be true.
So which one is it? Where was D? Was she
back at Sherry's trailer or was she back at her truck?
And if so, who drove her there? These stories don't match,
(15:17):
yet law enforcement did not seem to ask too many
questions about these inconsistencies. Police reached out to Gary. His
story is that he was at home that day. He
said he lived near Sherry in Wonder Valley. He said
he got the call between around eleven and noon. He
said Sherry called him, not d. D drove a Champagne
(15:38):
colored Ford Expedition. He went out to the desert and
was unable to get the vehicle out, So by that
point his story seems to match D's. He said she
was super dehydrated. He took her to Sherry's house so
that she could lie down. While he was at Sherry's house,
he picked up Tank, who again lived there, in a trailer.
They went back out to the vehicle and got it unstuck.
(15:59):
So in Gary's version of the story, only he and
Tank are out there with the truck. After they got
it unstuck, He said, Tank drove D's car and he
drove his own truck. He said when they got back
to Sherry's it was around three to four pm. Gary
said he never saw James that day. He said he
never met James. He had no idea who he was,
(16:21):
and he had no idea that James had gone out
to assist D on a bike. Police executed a search
warrant to get Sherry's phone records, but they hit a
wall there because Sherry at that point no longer had
the same phone or a phone plan. She told police
the phone she had at the time James disappeared, was
stolen from the Tortoise Rock Casino. That she had a
(16:43):
new phone and no access to the old account, so
it seems like police didn't pursue it any further. So
the phone appeared to be another dead inn. But then
Heather talked to Detective Halloway, the investigator in charge of
the case. Detective Halloway was able to do a data
dump of the calls and text messages for the month
of June from James's phone logs, and we have seen
(17:04):
a copy of those phone logs now. One thing to
note is that almost all of the calls and texts
on James's phone are incoming. When he has an outgoing text,
it's usually one or two words, so Heather's comments about
James being a man a few words appears to be true.
Almost all of the calls are very short in duration,
(17:26):
just a few seconds, maybe up to a minute. But
we did notice something else, James was talking to other women.
Heather said that Detective Holloway told her that he'd taken
a look at the phone records and that Sherry's phone
(17:48):
records basically matched James's. Another question I have is when
did the detective actually see and compare those phone records,
because I thought he told Heather that Sherry didn't have
the account anymore. Heather said that she was told since
everyone basically admitted to being out there in the desert,
there was no need to subpoena any more phone records
(18:09):
because it appeared on the surface that the story about
the three way call was true. James's incoming text do
show that shortly after nine am, James was receiving texts
from Sherry, first a location at seventy six fifteen Shelton
Road in twenty nine Palms. Then Sherry texted him I
gave her your number for her to call you, so
(18:30):
answer your phone. Then another one saying my location. The
final incoming text came from D and Heather says that
the address that she texted was not right at that intersection.
It was the address of a private home. So what
could D and potentially James have been doing at someone
(18:53):
else's home and was that homeowner? Ever questioned? I took
a look at James's phone logs from the days before
he disappeared to try and understand what was going on
in his life. The night before, on June twenty fourth,
there was a text from Sherry just after ten PM,
asking you planning on staying out all night. James replied no.
(19:16):
Sherry also texted him earlier that day saying that Nancy
James's X was trying to get a hold of him.
She had been looking for him regarding James moving some
of his stuff off of her property. So James did
have some conflict in his love life. But on the surface,
it does look like James was out in the desert
looking for d James's phone records showed that he did
(19:39):
get an incoming call from Sherry. The duration was twenty
two seconds at nine to twenty three in the morning.
Then there were three more calls from Sherry at nine
twenty five, nine thirty five, and nine forty nine. None
of them went through after that nothing. This would seem
to be very out of character for James, just based
on looking at this spreadsheet of his calls and texts
(20:00):
and looking for patterns, because yes, most of James's calls
were very shortened duration, but there were multiple incoming and
outgoing calls every single day, the line's share of them
were to Sherry, and then there was absolutely nothing at all. Also,
the time when Sherry was calling James. That was much
(20:21):
earlier than Sherry told detectives he went out. And also
it's odd that there are absolutely no messages or calls
after that, not one text asking where James is, Is
he okay? When is he coming back? I feel weird
about going through James's phone records because if someone has
a complicated or messy love life, I really hate to
(20:42):
invade their privacy. Unfortunately, it's really a crucial step in
figuring out what's going on. We do know he was
talking to women other than Sherry. One of them was
an ex girlfriend named Nancy. Nancy told police she last
talked to James in June when they argued about him
moving a trailer off her property, and that matches what
we've seen in the text and phone records. But there
(21:05):
were other rumors going around after James disappeared. One was
that someone had put a hit out on James, and
that rumor intensified when something else was found on James's phone.
Apparently there was an image on the phone. There was
a woman who, according to Heather, is the girlfriend of
a guy who knew James. This guy has a long
(21:26):
criminal record. Police talked to this woman and She told
investigators that she had seen James years ago, but that
she had not seen him in a long time. She
confirmed that the photos on the phone were hers. She
said she had no idea why they were there, how
they got there, or why you would have them. She
said she did not know James like that a guess,
(21:46):
meaning she didn't know him intimately. Police talked to another
man who, according to rumors, had been asked by this
woman's boyfriend to remove someone from a property, presumably meaning
to take James out. But when this guy was questioned
by police and asked if he had had anyone ask
him to removed someone, he completely denied ever having any
(22:08):
part in anything like that. There's something else that's interesting
in this missing person's report because one of the people
who police questioned was a guy named Christian. Remember Erica
Lloyd wrote in her journal and told people she was
camping in Joshua Tree with two men, James and Christian.
Heather still wonders if these mystery men could have been
(22:30):
James Esclante and his friend Christian, who was questioned by police.
Detectives did talk to Christian, but it's just a couple
of lines in the report. Police asked Christian if he
had ever gone camping with James or Erica Lloyd. He
said that he hadn't. There were a few more things
found at that intersection other than the bike that could
(22:51):
be potential clues. It turned out Doug Billings found more
than a red bike out there at the intersection of
Danby and a Boy Road, near where the bike was found,
in less than a mile from where James lived. Doug
found drug paraphernalia in straps that you use to tie
off your arms to inject drugs, and a water bottle
and a half full bottle of phana, And there was
(23:13):
something else out there. There was a box for a
digital scale, which a lot of drug dealers use. So
I'm wondering what if James went out there to make
a deal or saw a deal in progress and something
went wrong. There were only thirteen photos taken of James's body.
The pocket knife that the deputy found was entered into
evidence in the Sheriff's department and booked into the property room,
(23:36):
but according to Heather, it was never tested for fingerprints,
and the mysterious stains that the deputy noted weren't tested either.
James Escalante's case seems to be stalled. Heather wants to
make sure that James is not forgotten. Meanwhile, Erica Lloyd's
family is trying to do the same thing. David Krow
(23:56):
and Tila Campbell were both arrested in charge with stealing
Erica's car, which may have indirectly led to her death
since they moved it from the spot where she probably wrecked,
which meant that rescuers were looking in the wrong place.
David made a plea deal, but Tela's case continues. Erica's mother,
Ruth Lloyd, continues to post updates about the case. She
(24:18):
wrote quote. Her initial bail was a million dollars back
in June of twenty twenty one. Since then, she has
had over twenty four scheduled court dates. The first several years,
we had deputy district attorneys that were very familiar with
Eric's case, but as the years slide by, our fears
and concerns are that Eric's case will be lost in
the mire of just another case out there, a candle
(24:41):
in the wind end. Quote. Erica's family are asking people
who want to help to write letters to the San
Bernardino District Attorney's office. Heather Escalante and her husband John
continue in their fight to understand what happened to James
during what should have been a fifteen minute bike ride
and whine no one reported him missing. Heather is no
(25:02):
longer in contact with Sherry or d And and has
been unable to speak to Tank or Gary, the other
two people involved in the story. There's something else that
haunts Heather. What Sherry said about James's ring.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So one of the first things she said to my
husband after apologizing profusely, was that she told my husband
James gave me a ring and told me he wanted
me to give it to you. She was like, I'm
currently wearing it. I'm gonna wear it until I can
give it you in person, and said she had some
other personal belongings of James's to give this John and
(25:37):
then said, you know, I'm so sorry. I'm the one
who sent him out there to help her, which she's
changed that as well later in multiple stories she said
she didn't send him out there. The thing that struck
me with the ring multiple things. One, if she didn't
know us and we didn't know her prior to this,
why would James give her anything to get to my husband?
He had my husband's phone number, he could have easily
(25:59):
just been like, Hey, John, I want to send you
something fun. What's you know? Give me your address I
can mail it to you. Not only that, but he
was still in contact with my husband's ex and they
had a son together who at that time was living
with us, So we obviously had contact with her because
of our son, and she was sending things out here
pretty regularly for him, and James was aware of that.
(26:22):
So if he was going to give it to anybody
out there to give to John, I feel like it
would have been her. Yeah. Like so nothing about that
made sense, right, No, No, So that one automatically struck
me as odd, and then the ring thing does get
odder later shortly after there, we actually ended up leaving
the next day. No one knew we were coming. My
(26:43):
husband and I flew out to California and stay for
a few days, trying to get some things through the
coroner's office so that we could find out if a
body that was found out there near that area on
August eighth was James's, which it actually turned out it
was his. But when we got there, we called her
that same day and we're like, hey, we're in town.
Can we meet with you so that we can get
(27:03):
some things of James's out of histy things like that
to meet her? And Tank met us out in the
middle of the desert, said that they were having some
car trouble and so Tank was going to need to
get their vehicle back to their place. Could Marry just
ride with us for lovely adventure? And I was like,
oh yes, sure, lovely pop on it. And so, because
you know, my husband and I are in our little
rental car, he ends up at that time giving my
(27:28):
husband this ring, and now he's got it in his possession.
We still have it to this day now, mind you.
In the beginning, I'd asked her like, well, was he
wearing any jewelry? Oh no, which was to me weird
because Dame's always word gerty. She said he wasn't, and
I was like, okay, yes, maybe less than a rush. Sure, okay,
Like I said, a few weeks after us to give
the ring to my husband, I'm messaging with her because
(27:48):
I found that if you asked her the same thing
multiple times, multiple different ways, and it kind of space it apart.
Her answer changes. So I was like, well, right again.
So after her again, like, well, besides his clothes, And
Sue was like, what was he wearing jeelry? Did he
have anything his pockets? Like I need everything? You can
give me this. Once she told me he was wearing jewelry,
and we started going through pictures trying to figure out,
(28:09):
like what story he was wearing. She tells me, oh,
these are the rings he was wearing. I look, and
one of the rings he claims he was wearing when
he went missing is the one she gave my husband.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
In September, Heather said that she was floored when Sherry
told her that the ring that she had given them
was one that James had supposedly been wearing when he
left the house on the day he disappeared. If that
(28:40):
was true, then Heather wondered, how exactly did Sherry get
that ring?
Speaker 1 (28:45):
So I was like, oh, okay, this is about to
not go well. So that's kind of when her and
I really started not getting along very well at that point,
because I was like, wait a minute, no, so that
can't be Yeah, you're going to have to make that
make a lot more sense. So when I confronted her
on it, he comes back and says, oh, I must
(29:08):
have been mistaken about which ring it was that he
was wearing. The ring I gave your husband is a
ring that James had lost before he went missing, out
on our property that we were living at. I found
it after he went missing, and I sat in his
favorite teir and asked him what shall I do? What
(29:30):
shall I do with your ring? And James's spirit told
her to give it to my husband. And I was like, uh, huh, okay,
So that whole thing, clearly fighty senses were not right,
they were opining. So that was all kind of the
first stuff that I was like, Oh wait a minute,
(29:51):
something's really off here with her story, with things being
missing everything, something's really bad off.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Heather thought that this was bizarre, and look, I can
accept the fact some people may believe that they have
some kind of psychic premonitions. Or Sherry may have believed
that James was dead simply because he did have a
drug habit, and we know that even without drugs that
desert can be fatal. But what if something else happened?
What if James stumbled on the wrong people out there,
(30:20):
What if he overdosed, What if the area where he
was found wasn't his last location? But a dump sight. Sherry,
according to Heather, was talking about James in the past tense,
as if he was definitely dead, when in her mind,
he was just a missing person, a missing person who,
by the way, had a history of going off alone.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
The other thing that really struck me in my husband's
first conversation with her over the phone was that when
they went to hang up that day, she said to
him right before they hung up again, this is on
September tenth, at the twenty of a missing person. He say,
let me know when your father or when his services
will be. I'd really like to attend if possible. What
(31:03):
services he's a missing person.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Heather wondered why, in her opinion, did Sherry seem so
sure that James was dead. Does she know more than
she's letting on. Heather doesn't want James to become just
another cautionary tale of someone lost to the desert, written
off because no one cared. Heather, John and the rest
of James Escalante's family want justice. I'm Catherine Townsend. This
(31:32):
is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is
a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's
written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by
Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance.
This episode was sound designed and mixed by Noah Cameron.
Our theme song is by Ben Sleek, Executive producers of
(31:53):
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. Listen to
Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True
Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested
in seeing documents and material from the case, you can
follow the show on Instagram at Helen gonpot. If you
have a case you'd like me and my team to
look into, you can reach out to us at our
(32:14):
Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four
four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven
four four six one four five. School of Humans
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Six bodies were found in Wonder Valley, California, between December
of twenty nineteen and January of twenty twenty one. Some
of the bodies in the desert, including the disappearance of
thirty seven year old single mother Erica Lloyd, started to
make local and then national news, but there were no
national news reports about James Escalante. I've been talking together
(00:37):
Escalante about this case, and she's been disheartened by how
little James's case has been covered compared to the others
in Wonder Valley.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
They ended up doing a news broadcast out there in
twenty twenty one. I do believe it was, and they
actually interviewed Detective Halloway, who was the detective that was
assigned to James's missing person's key, and they were talking
about the amount of people going missing out in the desert.
They mentioned Erica Lloyd, they mentioned Lauren to they mentioned
(01:07):
some couple that had gone missing out there. They never
made the first mention of James. It's not like he
didn't know about James. He was the detective on his caase.
Like they've made it abundantly clear to me, they're not
look in the case now. And they're not going to
Nothing has really worked for us in this We could
barely get anybody that wanted to cover his story. That's
been I mean like nobody. If you look up Eric Alloyd,
(01:32):
there's i mean countless coverage on her story all the
way up you know, pretty high in news coverage world.
You can't get anybody to want to touch James's face.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
We're going to dive into the missing Persons report and
compare accounts from the last people who saw James to
see if we can shed more light into what really
happened out there in the desert on June twenty fifth,
twenty twenty. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years
of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I've learned
(02:05):
that there is no such thing as a small town
where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages
from people all around the country asking for help with
an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.
If you have a case you'd like me and my
team to look into, you can reach out to us
at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight
(02:27):
seven four four six one four five. That's six seven
eight seven four four six ' one four five, or
you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gonepod.
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. As we said last week,
(03:31):
people go missing in the desert under a lot of
different circumstances. One of the things that really stood out
to me about James Escalante's case is that in Wonder Valley,
a lot of the body discoveries haven't been made by
the police at all, but by one man, a cave
and mining expert named Doug Billings. Doug Billings was helping
(03:52):
the family of thirty seven year old Eric Lloyd, who
went missing nine days before James, and while he was
looking for Erica's car, he found James's bike. But Heather
said that not only did police know not find the bike,
but that when Doug Billings told him about the bike,
at first, they didn't seem to be interested.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
He had been helping search for Eric Alloyd and he
had seen a bike out there and it has turned
out to be recording the Sherry, the bike that James
left on. It seemed out there twice. The first time
he tried to report it to the police, they said
they didn't think it was related. To Eric Alloyd's case,
and of course James had not been reported missing yet
at that point in time. Tops weren't interested at that
(04:34):
point because at that point they were looking for Erica
and a black car. You know, it didn't seem important
to them at the time, so he did not take
a picture at that time or anything like that. He
again found it on it's still sitting out there on
August ninth, so the day after the remains that turned
out to be James's were found, because him and his
team and went back out to that area. You know,
(04:56):
it's at that time they clearly weren't sure if those
were Eric Alloyd's remained and that's when he took a
picture of the bike. He locked the coordinate. He notified
the police again, but again, given the distance between where
the bike was located and where James's remains were located,
the police didn't think they were linked and left the
bike there.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Heather's family ran into Doug's team and got the picture
of the bike from him and then sent that picture
to James's girlfriend, Sherry. She said that, yes, that was
the bike that James was riding the day he disappeared.
Heather contacted law enforcement, and they finally went out to
that intersection near Highway sixty two and Shelton Road and
(05:36):
retrieved the red bike. But it was odd because when
Heather talked to Sherry, Sherry said that they weren't able
to go look for James because they didn't have a vehicle.
But then she would tell Heather that they went out
to talk to people, people who Heather said lived a
lot further out than the intersection where James disappeared. So
Heather was thinking, how could she get out there when
(05:58):
she just told Heather she didn't have transportation. Heather has
said multiple times that she's suspicious because over time, Sherry's
story appeared to keep changing.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Nothing she said had made sense. The stories have changed,
Like the main story, you know, d he got stuck
in the sand. James went out to get her this
he called, you know from this intersection. That stuff has
never changed. The times have changed. The description of the
shoes he was wearing has changed. How long it took
them to get to that intersection once he left, that's
all changed. What he was wearing, you know, like accessories
(06:34):
that he was wearing has changed. Things that he's owned this,
you know, all those things keep changing right, which has
been nothing but red flags for me.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Heather said that Sherry had told her two versions of
the story. They both started out the same, with James
leaving to go help their friend D, but Heather said
Sherry gave her different times. According to Heather, Sherry first
said that James went out early in the morning, around
eight thirty am, and later she said that it was
(07:03):
around ten or ten thirty am. In both versions, James
never reached their friend D. But in one version, according
to the Missing Persons report, Sherry told someone else that
James never reached D and took a ride to San
Bernardino and went to rehab. Finding Sherry unreliable, Heather started
(07:25):
talking to more people. A lot of these people are
difficult to find. We've been trying to reach out to
them in Wonder Valley and it's been challenging. A lot
of them live off the grid, and a lot of
them have changed numbers since then, and Heather found out
that James's love life was a little bit more complicated
than it seemed to be on the surface. Heather talked
to D, the woman who got stuck in the desert
(07:47):
and who called Sherry for help, and D told Heather
something she hadn't heard before. The story that Sherry told
was that d had gone out in the desert in
the early morning hours of June twenty fifth to go
rock Honting. That's when her car got stuck in sand.
But D filled in some more details. She told Heather
the reason she had gone out so early was because
(08:09):
she had been hanging out at James and Sherry's house
and they had started fighting, and she said they were
fighting about Tank. Now, remember Tank is the friend of
James and Sherry's who also lived on that same property
with them. Tank and Sherry had a history. At some
point they were romantically involved.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
She told me that basically Sherry was kind of bouncings
back and forth between Tank and James, and that she
had been hanging out with them and she was really
tired of hearing James and Sherry fighting about that, and
so she left in the middle of the night, got
out there, got part, took a nap, and woke up
with the intentions of looking for rocks and fossils and
(08:52):
things like that. So she colected them. So that made
a little bit more sense because I was like, he's
going to go out where there's like no street lights
changing at four four foot thirty in the morning to
hunt Rock when you can't even really see them other
than your headlights in the black light. Yeah, so that
made it make a little more sense as to why
she was out there at that hour. But apparently they
were fighting and that's why it according her, that's why
(09:12):
that she left. She got tired of hearing it.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Heather tried to get the police to talk to more
people about James's case, but she discovered that the police
hadn't even canvassed people in the immediate area about James's disappearance.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
There's only like a handful of houses right there on
that little stretch of Shelton, And I asked them specifically
multiple times between September and January, like, Hey, have you
guys gone out and questioned those people in those houses,
like if they saw James around that time, they didn't
have the bike ended up there anything. Oh, they've been questioned,
They've been questioned. Finally I asked, I was like, Okay,
(09:50):
who keeps saying they've been questioned? What questions did y'all
ask them in relation to James. That's when it came
out that oh, no, they had been questioned in relation
to Erica Lloyd, And I said, okay, so you're telling
me that y'all went out there knocking on these doors
and asked them if they have seen a thirty something
year old white girl in a black car. And you'd
(10:11):
think that was sent to somehow spawn them to say no.
But I saw this fifty something year old Indian man
on a red bike. Like that's not even in the
realm of the same thing. But I can tell you,
like I have the missing person's file from James's case.
It's nine pages, one sided, not too exited. Just the
amount of information I provided to law enforcement should have
(10:33):
been more than nine pages.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
So let's look at that missing person's report. When police
talked to Sherry on October first, twenty twenty, according to
the missing Person's report, the story she told them was
again different from the one she told Heather. She said
that d called between eight and eight thirty on the
morning of June twenty fifth, and that d told her
she was stuck in her truck, not that James actually
(10:58):
went out at that time. Sherry told detectives that after
that she called Gary, another friend of theirs, and Gary
went out to get but Gary was unable to move
D's vehicle, and then Gary and D both showed up
at Sherry's house. She said James was there also. At
some point D went back out to where her truck was.
(11:18):
Then D called again at around one fifteen to one
thirty in the afternoon. That's when James put air into
the bike tires and went out to look for D.
Now again, this is still according to Sherry. Several hours later,
Tank showed up at their house. This was at around
three thirty. Then, when they realized they hadn't heard from James,
Tank went out to d to rescue her. This is
(11:41):
a big difference. First of all, this would mean that
instead of James going out at eight or eight thirty
in the morning, this would mean he was out in
the hottest part of the afternoon, and there appears to
be a discrepancy of several hours. There's something else in
the police report that Heather says is inconsistent. Sherry told
detectives she had contacted several people about James being missing,
(12:04):
including Heather Connie, who was James's legal wife, though they
hadn't been in a relationship or lived together in a
long time, and several other people. Meanwhile, none of these
people said that Sherry had contacted them. Sherry told police
that James was a heavy heroin user, that he would
use thirty to thirty five CC's per day. She said
(12:24):
that he used drugs to deal with various physical problems
that he had, and it's certainly possible that something happened
to James that did not involve foul play. Maybe he
was doing drugs that day, maybe he accidentally overdosed. But
if that's the case, Heather wants to know so that
she and her husband, John, and the rest of their
family can have some kind of closure. She does not
(12:46):
believe that that should be the automatic assumption by police
just because James had a drug habit. Police also talked
to Tank. He said he was at work when he
got a call about d being stuck that day. He
said that he came to where he and James and
Sherry lived. He said that he helped James fill up
those by Sickles tires with air, and then several hours
(13:08):
later D and Gary showed up in Gary's truck. Then
he said they all three went out to the desert
to pull D's truck out, that they were finally able
to get it unstuck from the sand. D had a
slightly different story. She told police she left home at
around four thirty am to go rock hunting near Shelton
Road in Highway sixty two. Then she said that around
(13:30):
five thirty am, her truck got stuck on a barrier
somewhere south of Highway sixty two. She described it as
being two streets away from Shelton Road. Since it was
still dark, she said she decided to wait it out.
She took a nap in her truck, and then she
woke up at six am. That's when she called Gary
and Sherry for help. She said that Gary came out
(13:51):
first and tried for around four hours to pull the
truck out. He was there by himself, but he didn't
have any luck. By this point, D said she was overheated,
so she rode with Gary in his vehicle back to
Tank's trailer to lie down, which was on the same
property where James and Sherry lived. D said that Gary
and Tank left there and went to pull her truck
(14:13):
out without her. Now again, if you notice, it's the
same general story, but if you look closer, some very
important details have been changed because the story that D
told the police was that she was calling Sherry at
around one thirty that afternoon. Sherry did put her on
with James. James said he would go out there to
(14:36):
help her get the truck unstuck. But then the story
seems to make even less sense because D said that
on that three way call, she was honking her horn.
She heard him say I hear the horn, but he
never showed up, she said. She later assumed that James
was angry, that he didn't want to deal with it anymore,
or maybe he just got too hot and bailed out.
(14:57):
But if that's true, then her others story about being
taken back to Sherry's property to lie down can't be true.
So which one is it? Where was D? Was she
back at Sherry's trailer or was she back at her truck?
And if so, who drove her there? These stories don't match,
(15:17):
yet law enforcement did not seem to ask too many
questions about these inconsistencies. Police reached out to Gary. His
story is that he was at home that day. He
said he lived near Sherry in Wonder Valley. He said
he got the call between around eleven and noon. He
said Sherry called him, not d. D drove a Champagne
(15:38):
colored Ford Expedition. He went out to the desert and
was unable to get the vehicle out, So by that
point his story seems to match D's. He said she
was super dehydrated. He took her to Sherry's house so
that she could lie down. While he was at Sherry's house,
he picked up Tank, who again lived there, in a trailer.
They went back out to the vehicle and got it unstuck.
(15:59):
So in Gary's version of the story, only he and
Tank are out there with the truck. After they got
it unstuck, He said, Tank drove D's car and he
drove his own truck. He said when they got back
to Sherry's it was around three to four pm. Gary
said he never saw James that day. He said he
never met James. He had no idea who he was,
(16:21):
and he had no idea that James had gone out
to assist D on a bike. Police executed a search
warrant to get Sherry's phone records, but they hit a
wall there because Sherry at that point no longer had
the same phone or a phone plan. She told police
the phone she had at the time James disappeared, was
stolen from the Tortoise Rock Casino. That she had a
(16:43):
new phone and no access to the old account, so
it seems like police didn't pursue it any further. So
the phone appeared to be another dead inn. But then
Heather talked to Detective Halloway, the investigator in charge of
the case. Detective Halloway was able to do a data
dump of the calls and text messages for the month
of June from James's phone logs, and we have seen
(17:04):
a copy of those phone logs now. One thing to
note is that almost all of the calls and texts
on James's phone are incoming. When he has an outgoing text,
it's usually one or two words, so Heather's comments about
James being a man a few words appears to be true.
Almost all of the calls are very short in duration,
(17:26):
just a few seconds, maybe up to a minute. But
we did notice something else, James was talking to other women.
Heather said that Detective Holloway told her that he'd taken
a look at the phone records and that Sherry's phone
(17:48):
records basically matched James's. Another question I have is when
did the detective actually see and compare those phone records,
because I thought he told Heather that Sherry didn't have
the account anymore. Heather said that she was told since
everyone basically admitted to being out there in the desert,
there was no need to subpoena any more phone records
(18:09):
because it appeared on the surface that the story about
the three way call was true. James's incoming text do
show that shortly after nine am, James was receiving texts
from Sherry, first a location at seventy six fifteen Shelton
Road in twenty nine Palms. Then Sherry texted him I
gave her your number for her to call you, so
(18:30):
answer your phone. Then another one saying my location. The
final incoming text came from D and Heather says that
the address that she texted was not right at that intersection.
It was the address of a private home. So what
could D and potentially James have been doing at someone
(18:53):
else's home and was that homeowner? Ever questioned? I took
a look at James's phone logs from the days before
he disappeared to try and understand what was going on
in his life. The night before, on June twenty fourth,
there was a text from Sherry just after ten PM,
asking you planning on staying out all night. James replied no.
(19:16):
Sherry also texted him earlier that day saying that Nancy
James's X was trying to get a hold of him.
She had been looking for him regarding James moving some
of his stuff off of her property. So James did
have some conflict in his love life. But on the surface,
it does look like James was out in the desert
looking for d James's phone records showed that he did
(19:39):
get an incoming call from Sherry. The duration was twenty
two seconds at nine to twenty three in the morning.
Then there were three more calls from Sherry at nine
twenty five, nine thirty five, and nine forty nine. None
of them went through after that nothing. This would seem
to be very out of character for James, just based
on looking at this spreadsheet of his calls and texts
(20:00):
and looking for patterns, because yes, most of James's calls
were very shortened duration, but there were multiple incoming and
outgoing calls every single day, the line's share of them
were to Sherry, and then there was absolutely nothing at all. Also,
the time when Sherry was calling James. That was much
(20:21):
earlier than Sherry told detectives he went out. And also
it's odd that there are absolutely no messages or calls
after that, not one text asking where James is, Is
he okay? When is he coming back? I feel weird
about going through James's phone records because if someone has
a complicated or messy love life, I really hate to
(20:42):
invade their privacy. Unfortunately, it's really a crucial step in
figuring out what's going on. We do know he was
talking to women other than Sherry. One of them was
an ex girlfriend named Nancy. Nancy told police she last
talked to James in June when they argued about him
moving a trailer off her property, and that matches what
we've seen in the text and phone records. But there
(21:05):
were other rumors going around after James disappeared. One was
that someone had put a hit out on James, and
that rumor intensified when something else was found on James's phone.
Apparently there was an image on the phone. There was
a woman who, according to Heather, is the girlfriend of
a guy who knew James. This guy has a long
(21:26):
criminal record. Police talked to this woman and She told
investigators that she had seen James years ago, but that
she had not seen him in a long time. She
confirmed that the photos on the phone were hers. She
said she had no idea why they were there, how
they got there, or why you would have them. She
said she did not know James like that a guess,
(21:46):
meaning she didn't know him intimately. Police talked to another
man who, according to rumors, had been asked by this
woman's boyfriend to remove someone from a property, presumably meaning
to take James out. But when this guy was questioned
by police and asked if he had had anyone ask
him to removed someone, he completely denied ever having any
(22:08):
part in anything like that. There's something else that's interesting
in this missing person's report because one of the people
who police questioned was a guy named Christian. Remember Erica
Lloyd wrote in her journal and told people she was
camping in Joshua Tree with two men, James and Christian.
Heather still wonders if these mystery men could have been
(22:30):
James Esclante and his friend Christian, who was questioned by police.
Detectives did talk to Christian, but it's just a couple
of lines in the report. Police asked Christian if he
had ever gone camping with James or Erica Lloyd. He
said that he hadn't. There were a few more things
found at that intersection other than the bike that could
(22:51):
be potential clues. It turned out Doug Billings found more
than a red bike out there at the intersection of
Danby and a Boy Road, near where the bike was found,
in less than a mile from where James lived. Doug
found drug paraphernalia in straps that you use to tie
off your arms to inject drugs, and a water bottle
and a half full bottle of phana, And there was
(23:13):
something else out there. There was a box for a
digital scale, which a lot of drug dealers use. So
I'm wondering what if James went out there to make
a deal or saw a deal in progress and something
went wrong. There were only thirteen photos taken of James's body.
The pocket knife that the deputy found was entered into
evidence in the Sheriff's department and booked into the property room,
(23:36):
but according to Heather, it was never tested for fingerprints,
and the mysterious stains that the deputy noted weren't tested either.
James Escalante's case seems to be stalled. Heather wants to
make sure that James is not forgotten. Meanwhile, Erica Lloyd's
family is trying to do the same thing. David Krow
(23:56):
and Tila Campbell were both arrested in charge with stealing
Erica's car, which may have indirectly led to her death
since they moved it from the spot where she probably wrecked,
which meant that rescuers were looking in the wrong place.
David made a plea deal, but Tela's case continues. Erica's mother,
Ruth Lloyd, continues to post updates about the case. She
(24:18):
wrote quote. Her initial bail was a million dollars back
in June of twenty twenty one. Since then, she has
had over twenty four scheduled court dates. The first several years,
we had deputy district attorneys that were very familiar with
Eric's case, but as the years slide by, our fears
and concerns are that Eric's case will be lost in
the mire of just another case out there, a candle
(24:41):
in the wind end. Quote. Erica's family are asking people
who want to help to write letters to the San
Bernardino District Attorney's office. Heather Escalante and her husband John
continue in their fight to understand what happened to James
during what should have been a fifteen minute bike ride
and whine no one reported him missing. Heather is no
(25:02):
longer in contact with Sherry or d And and has
been unable to speak to Tank or Gary, the other
two people involved in the story. There's something else that
haunts Heather. What Sherry said about James's ring.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So one of the first things she said to my
husband after apologizing profusely, was that she told my husband
James gave me a ring and told me he wanted
me to give it to you. She was like, I'm
currently wearing it. I'm gonna wear it until I can
give it you in person, and said she had some
other personal belongings of James's to give this John and
(25:37):
then said, you know, I'm so sorry. I'm the one
who sent him out there to help her, which she's
changed that as well later in multiple stories she said
she didn't send him out there. The thing that struck
me with the ring multiple things. One, if she didn't
know us and we didn't know her prior to this,
why would James give her anything to get to my husband?
He had my husband's phone number, he could have easily
(25:59):
just been like, Hey, John, I want to send you
something fun. What's you know? Give me your address I
can mail it to you. Not only that, but he
was still in contact with my husband's ex and they
had a son together who at that time was living
with us, So we obviously had contact with her because
of our son, and she was sending things out here
pretty regularly for him, and James was aware of that.
(26:22):
So if he was going to give it to anybody
out there to give to John, I feel like it
would have been her. Yeah. Like so nothing about that
made sense, right, No, No, So that one automatically struck
me as odd, and then the ring thing does get
odder later shortly after there, we actually ended up leaving
the next day. No one knew we were coming. My
(26:43):
husband and I flew out to California and stay for
a few days, trying to get some things through the
coroner's office so that we could find out if a
body that was found out there near that area on
August eighth was James's, which it actually turned out it
was his. But when we got there, we called her
that same day and we're like, hey, we're in town.
Can we meet with you so that we can get
(27:03):
some things of James's out of histy things like that
to meet her? And Tank met us out in the
middle of the desert, said that they were having some
car trouble and so Tank was going to need to
get their vehicle back to their place. Could Marry just
ride with us for lovely adventure? And I was like,
oh yes, sure, lovely pop on it. And so, because
you know, my husband and I are in our little
rental car, he ends up at that time giving my
(27:28):
husband this ring, and now he's got it in his possession.
We still have it to this day now, mind you.
In the beginning, I'd asked her like, well, was he
wearing any jewelry? Oh no, which was to me weird
because Dame's always word gerty. She said he wasn't, and
I was like, okay, yes, maybe less than a rush. Sure, okay,
Like I said, a few weeks after us to give
the ring to my husband, I'm messaging with her because
(27:48):
I found that if you asked her the same thing
multiple times, multiple different ways, and it kind of space it apart.
Her answer changes. So I was like, well, right again.
So after her again, like, well, besides his clothes, And
Sue was like, what was he wearing jeelry? Did he
have anything his pockets? Like I need everything? You can
give me this. Once she told me he was wearing jewelry,
and we started going through pictures trying to figure out,
(28:09):
like what story he was wearing. She tells me, oh,
these are the rings he was wearing. I look, and
one of the rings he claims he was wearing when
he went missing is the one she gave my husband.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
In September, Heather said that she was floored when Sherry
told her that the ring that she had given them
was one that James had supposedly been wearing when he
left the house on the day he disappeared. If that
(28:40):
was true, then Heather wondered, how exactly did Sherry get
that ring?
Speaker 1 (28:45):
So I was like, oh, okay, this is about to
not go well. So that's kind of when her and
I really started not getting along very well at that point,
because I was like, wait a minute, no, so that
can't be Yeah, you're going to have to make that
make a lot more sense. So when I confronted her
on it, he comes back and says, oh, I must
(29:08):
have been mistaken about which ring it was that he
was wearing. The ring I gave your husband is a
ring that James had lost before he went missing, out
on our property that we were living at. I found
it after he went missing, and I sat in his
favorite teir and asked him what shall I do? What
(29:30):
shall I do with your ring? And James's spirit told
her to give it to my husband. And I was like, uh, huh, okay,
So that whole thing, clearly fighty senses were not right,
they were opining. So that was all kind of the
first stuff that I was like, Oh wait a minute,
(29:51):
something's really off here with her story, with things being
missing everything, something's really bad off.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Heather thought that this was bizarre, and look, I can
accept the fact some people may believe that they have
some kind of psychic premonitions. Or Sherry may have believed
that James was dead simply because he did have a
drug habit, and we know that even without drugs that
desert can be fatal. But what if something else happened?
What if James stumbled on the wrong people out there,
(30:20):
What if he overdosed, What if the area where he
was found wasn't his last location? But a dump sight. Sherry,
according to Heather, was talking about James in the past tense,
as if he was definitely dead, when in her mind,
he was just a missing person, a missing person who,
by the way, had a history of going off alone.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
The other thing that really struck me in my husband's
first conversation with her over the phone was that when
they went to hang up that day, she said to
him right before they hung up again, this is on
September tenth, at the twenty of a missing person. He say,
let me know when your father or when his services
will be. I'd really like to attend if possible. What
(31:03):
services he's a missing person.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Heather wondered why, in her opinion, did Sherry seem so
sure that James was dead. Does she know more than
she's letting on. Heather doesn't want James to become just
another cautionary tale of someone lost to the desert, written
off because no one cared. Heather, John and the rest
of James Escalante's family want justice. I'm Catherine Townsend. This
(31:32):
is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is
a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's
written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by
Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance.
This episode was sound designed and mixed by Noah Cameron.
Our theme song is by Ben Sleek, Executive producers of
(31:53):
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. Listen to
Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True
Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested
in seeing documents and material from the case, you can
follow the show on Instagram at Helen gonpot. If you
have a case you'd like me and my team to
look into, you can reach out to us at our
(32:14):
Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four
four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven
four four six one four five. School of Humans
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