The STRANGE Disappearance of Aubrey Sacco

The STRANGE Disappearance of Aubrey Sacco

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello friends, Steve Stalkson here with you. Welcome to our
latest episode. In this video, we'll take a look at
the strange disappearance of Aubrey Sacho. Let's walk and see.
On April twenty first, twenty ten, twenty three year old
Aubrey Sacho left her home in Greeley, Colorado to set

(00:24):
out on a week long adventure in Langtad National Park
in Nepal. Aubrey had been traveling in and around Asia
for close to five months by this time, and had
been keeping in almost constant contact with her parents. When
her mother hadn't heard from her for the entire week
she was there on her solo treck, she waited a
few days and then contacted the US Embassy in Catmandu.

(00:47):
She was filled with a sense of dread and worry
as only a mother can be. Aubrey's mother, Connie, was
told by officials in the embassy that Sybil unrest mainly
a Maoist uprising of some sort, had most likely complete
the lay her daughter's trap back out of the mountains.
After waiting three more long days, Connie was overcome with
absolute panic. Finally, on May sixteenth, Auverrey's fifty seven year

(01:12):
old father Paul flew to Katmandu to try and find
his daughter. When he got there, he was greeted with
the almost breathtaking sights of the first day's walk up
central Nepal's lang Tan Valley. He saw the suspension bridges
that were draped with prayer flags, the beautiful and scenic
hillsides where there are large trees complete with white langue
monkeys swimming from one to the other. And while to

(01:34):
the average hiker trekker who would encounter such a sight
may find it majestic and maybe even other worldly, Paul
Sacho comments that the sight of it makes him want
to vomit. Paul and his eldest son, twenty five year
old Crofton, joined his search already in progress, and vowed
to bring Aubrey home. The two hiked through what would
normally be considered idyllic scenery and a lush landscape of

(01:57):
all types of beautiful blooms and other naturally growing wildlife.
And though he was fresh out of a recent surgery,
having had hip surgery, now walking with the joints grinding
into the socket, Paul says it wouldn't stop him, even
if it somewhat slowed him down. He went back and
forth in his mind from imagining coming across his daughter
while searching for and the dreadful fear that creeps in

(02:20):
as he imagined her lying dead at the edge of
a cliff somewhere. Paul and Crofton returned every day to
join the searchers from the embassy, guide services, local villagers,
the Nepali army, and even the local police. Paul hobbled
around and said he's afraid the joint would pop completely
out of the socket and he'd be left paralyzed somewhere

(02:40):
in the middle of the forest. But still he soldiered on.
He called out for his daughter and utilized the help
of a translator to question the locals about anything they
may have known regarding Aubre's disappearance. The search went into
dark caves inside the deep woods, and all along dangerous
trails inside those same woods, and everywhere in between. Between

(03:01):
May one and June fourth, two hundred people scoured the
extens of Alpine Valley, which has a very steep slope
toward the Tibetan border. They searched by air, rope and
foot all over and through the Langtan Trail, both sides
of the swelling and fast rushing river. All the smaller
and out of the way paths and trails, and even
the extremely remote monasteries tucked away deep within the hills

(03:25):
looked to no avail. An American man named Scott McLennon
helped out and join the search. He had an interesting
theory as to what could have happened to Aubrey and
told her father, quote, none of the girls who ever
worked for me and my medical clinic would stay the
night because it was next to an army post unquote.

(03:45):
This was in reference to the fact that he used
to lead medical trips in Langtan for ten years. He
believes Aubrey could have been an easy target for the
young army soldiers who go around in Nepaul's national parks
acting like rangers and who are very unfortunately well known
from using women and worse. Locals have suggested though it's
highly likely it was the river itself that took Aubrey

(04:06):
and left no clue in its wake as to where
she ended up or how she'd gotten there in the
first place. The trails basically hugged the river, and there
are several places where hikers must cross the roiling water.
Aubrey definitely wouldn't be the river's first victim. After all.
Local Tumong villagers offered up several different theories, not only
during the initial investigation, but in the coming months as well.

(04:30):
Some were quite reasonable and others borderlined on the bazaar
and even nonsensical. While some reported having seen Aubrey board
a helicopter in lang Tang village, others swore she fell
victim to random killers who roamed the force at night
just hunting for random and unsuspecting victims. It said these
nighttime hunters not only trapped, torture and kill animals, but

(04:51):
people too. Someone else claimed Aubrey's disappearance was due to
having been sacrificed by witches who worshiped the Hindi death
god Collie. Several nepoly men came out and straight up
accused Aubrey as being to blame for her own death,
stating she must have acted too free and frank, thereby
bringing about an assault and murder onto herself. Could she

(05:13):
have been abducted by traffickers and stowed away and sent
to Pakistan? Was she being held in a monastery somewhere
by renegade Lamas All these theories were brought not only
to the authorities, but also unfortunately Aubrey's family as well.
A teenager from Tamang who claimed to be a psychic,
offered up the information that she was buried beneath the

(05:34):
pile of rocks somewhere by three unknown and unnamed boys.
Female hikers and those who are just in the parks
in general are often attacked and assaulted, so this case
wasn't anything new to the area. On June sixth, Paul
and Crofton left blangtam with no more answers than they
came with and a lot more questions. Being a lawyer

(05:55):
and a judge, Paul couldn't see anything good about the
place his daughter most likely spent her last day. He
was in constant pain with his hip, thought that the
food was too bland, and had no tolerance for what
surely drew his free spirited daughter there in the first place.
He couldn't see the lushness of the forest or the
majesty of the mountains. To him, all of it just
looked like a death saint, and that's basically what he

(06:17):
reported when talking about his search there. Crofton flew back
home to Colorado and Paul remained in Katmandu. He met
with embassy officials and police set up plenty of interviews
to try and keep his daughter's face fresh in the
minds of the locals. Sometime in mid June, Paul escaped
with his wife Connie, and could barely choke the words

(06:37):
out that he isn't going to be delivering on his promise.
After all, he won't be bringing their daughter home. He
sadly and digestedly boarded a very crowded and impersonal luft
Hansa jet, took another look from above down at the
miles of thick and dangerous jungle and ice capped mountains,
and could do nothing but cry as he thought he
filled his daughter was down there somewhere, either dead or

(07:01):
in desperate need of assistant. He felt more helpless than
he ever had in his whole life. In recent years,
these same mountains in Langtang National Park had become sort
of an alternative to Everest and Annapurna due to the
privacy of the much less populated areas to hike and roam,
and track hikers and mountain climbers take a week long
track climbing toward the Tibetan border and the Himalayas. When

(07:24):
Aubrey first arrived in Nepal, she was on something of
an adventure. She had finally finished college and wanted to
get out and see the world more accurately. The Eastern world.
She loved the bright colors of the stucco tea houses
in the Buddhist villages and the cheap beds they offered
an American girl on a post college soul searching mission.
She was determined to go off the beaten path, as

(07:46):
is evident in the activities she chose to participate in.
She visited Sri Lanka and had a crush on a
boy she searched for an octopi with in the Indian Ocean.
In Missouri, India, in the human and almost suffocating heat,
she volunteered in an orphanage. Wanting to finally get away
from the aforementioned heat, she next chose to travel to

(08:06):
the much more forgiving Darjeeling, India. It said that from
there in Darzheling, after looking out from a rooftop and
seeing the Himalayas for the first time, she made the
decision on the spot, right then and there that she
absolutely must go there, And so she did. She walked
away down a two track road and fune, arriving at
an open air and very simple checkpoint post which was

(08:28):
staffed and patrolled all by Nepolo military policewomen, and made
an impression on the guards despite the thousands of people
who passed this way every day. Well, the guard said,
Aubrey signed the register and smiled wide as she walked
to the checkpoint and then turned and waved to the policewomen.
They never forgot her, and they told this story later
on to the authorities. Back in college, Aubrey's nickname was

(08:52):
Aubrey Glitter, as she was known by her peers and
strangers alike as the girl who carried a bottle of
glitter with her at all times and sprinkled it on
everyone to remind him that life was meant to be
lived to the fullest and with gusto. She was also
known as a party girl in college, but her best
friend at the time, who became her sister in law
when Mary Crofton in twenty eleven, said all of that

(09:13):
changed and noticeably so once Aubrey got to India, I
could tell the party girl was gone. Amanda Sacho said,
it was first noticeable when Aubrey called from India, and
Amanda also stated she didn't need all that to feel
energized and happy, apparently referencing Aubrey's former party girl reputation.

(09:34):
On her last day in lang Tang before she went missing,
she visited a red blocky building which housed the Nama
State Tea House. There she met with a local named
Renzen Doorgy, who everyone said she hit it off with immediately.
The two could be seen together almost constantly and sat
and talked for hours on end about everything under the sun.

(09:55):
They had so much in common she even speculated a
romantic relationship was blooming as There are reports that Rensen
and Aubrey did not return to their separate rooms at
the end of the night, but spend the night together.
This can't be confirmed, however, and only the two of
them really know what took place behind closed doors. Whatever
the case may be. It's also reported that faithful morning,

(10:18):
the two could be seen hugging each other tightly and
promising to meet each other again. Two weeks later, in
campman Do, Rensen turned and hiked back down the valley,
while Aubrey continued on up the mountain. Four years after
a curious disappearance after leaving the numb Mustay Tea house.
A Google search of the place showed Aubrey sitting there,
smiling brightly as the sun shone down on her. A

(10:41):
beautiful and talented, adventurous and spirited young woman without a
care in the world. But there is obviously a much
more sinister story behind those beautiful pictures. There are many
other women who either lost their lives or had them
irreparably altered and not for the better. During trips in
and or near Lanyington National Park in two thousand and five,

(11:03):
a french woman named Seline Henry and a German woman
named Sabine Grunkli vanished seemingly into thin air in the
same area where Aubrey seemed to have done the same,
and just five weeks apart from one another, in a
hiking park called Nagarjun Forest. Authorities found and collected some
clothing pages from each woman's passport, and they also found blood.

(11:25):
This particular forest is located on the southernmost edge of
the Langtang Columbu Track. The police reported to the Nepali
Times that they fully believed that a serial killer was
attacking women, killing them and burying them. No killer has
ever been found, though in July twenty ten, three French
girls reported that they had been assaulted by soldiers who

(11:46):
were supposed to be operating and overseeing a checkpoint called
Gora Tabella. What's even more interesting and seemingly sad about
this particular case is that this is very close to
where Aubrey Sacho seems to have gone missing. The police
most likely aren't keeping track of how many women are
either going missing, reporting assaults and or attacks, or being

(12:07):
found murdered, and if they are, they certainly don't seem
to be sharing that information with the media or the
public for that matter. Because there are tourists from so
many different countries visiting Nepal, it's possible that there is
such global reporting on the matter, as in, wherever you're from,
that's where the news of whatever happened to you will
be reported in not many other places. It becomes dangerous

(12:30):
to even contemplate how many people in general, not just women,
have gone missing or have been attacked or murdered throughout
the years. Christopher Patch, deputy consular chief of the US
embassy when Aubrey disappeared, reported that dozens of trekkers from
the Western world have vanished even on the most popular
routes and trails in the last decade alone. Now, that's

(12:51):
as was reported in twenty fourteen. For anyone contemplating a
trip to Nepal, this should be extremely alarming and very concerning.
That is, if they could find the information anywhere while researching.
Paul and Connie and possibly even Aubrey herself had absolutely
no knowledge whatsoever about any of these statistics and horrifying

(13:12):
reports when she called her parents from Darjeelie and said
she would be tricking next into Lang Tang on foot
and by herself. So admittedly, Connie stated she didn't even
know where Nepal was in the world and wouldn't have
been able to locate it on a map. Back then,
she still tried to talk Aubrey out of going. Paul
s hip surgery was scheduled for the same day Aubrey

(13:32):
planned to start her hike there, and Connie was concerned
that if something happened to Paul, nobody would have any
way of informing Aubrey. Still, Aubrey had an adventurous and
determined spirit and went about her way anyway. She was
scheduled to fly back from Sri Lanka on May twenty second,
and her mother kept a countdown clock on the desk
in Aubrey's room, counting down the days until her daughter

(13:55):
was home, safe and within reach again. Unfortunately that day guys,
Aubrey reasoned, don't worry, it's a national park, it's teahouse, trekking,
it's safe. After saying goodbye to Renzen, where they both
left on a monste tea house at the same time,
but not together, Aubrey continued on. There were several witnesses

(14:18):
who later came forward who remembered seeing her here or there,
all along the trail, at a place called Lama Hotel,
which was really a town which consists of about half
a dozen tea houses and is surrounded by vegetable gardens,
prayer flags, and a tent platform which overlooks the valley.
Witnesses reporting seeing Aubrey sitting and eating pizza and drinking
a coke and reading the book Frensen had given her.

(14:41):
According to locals, she was also seen at a place
called Sherpy Lodge, sitting at a long wooden table three
young men either in their late teens or early twenties,
seemed to have struck up a conversation with the outgoing
a friendly American. It seemed lighthearted enough at first, but
it's supported that when Aubrey says she was continued going
on to the next village, which was called Riverside, the

(15:03):
conversation suddenly went south. The men informed her that it
was too far of a trek and too late in
the day for her to try and make it their loan.
Aubrey described herself once in her journal as a strong
traveling woman, and she certainly wasn't going to be told
what she was and was not able to do. She
immediately sped her map out on the tabletop, and the

(15:24):
three men tried once again to dissuade her from leaving,
and then she stood up, pointing to the valley and
proclaimed Riverside is only an hour from here. Don't lie
to me, and with that she turned and left. The
walk from the Lama Hotel to Riverside takes approximately two
hours for someone in Aubrey's physical condition. When trekkers arrived,
they're strongly encouraged to sign the register, and Aubrey had

(15:46):
signed all the other registers up until this point, so
it was expected her name would also be on this one. However,
it wasn't, and there's no evidence at all that she
had even made it to Riverside, even if for some
unknown reasons she didn't sign this particular register. There's also
one at the army checkpoint called Gora Tabella, which is

(16:07):
the site of where the three French girls had reported
being assaulted and attacked by the soldiers who were overseeing
the post. This register is mandatory to be signed for
anyone trekking through, and Aubrey's name was nowhere to be
found on this one. It's almost certain that somewhere in
between the Lama Hotel and Gora Tabella, Aubrey vanished without
a trace. A local kayaking guide named Ramish is the

(16:31):
one who informed the Sacos of what happened at the
Lama Hotel that night, and he also helped out by
questioning the locals in the weeks after Paul had initially
been there searching for his daughter. In July twenty eleven,
after hearing nothing from any of the official channels, the
Sachos returned to Nepal, this time with her younger son Morgan.

(16:52):
They checked all the usual spots and all the places
Aubrey was said to have been, and according to Ramish,
who said he had questioned anyone and everyone they could,
everyone remembered Aubrey and that they had seen her either
eating pizza and drinking a coke or arguing with the
local men a year before. Now that the Sachos had returned, however,
all the stories had suddenly changed, and all the sun people,

(17:14):
mostly those who worked at the establishments Audrey had visited
on her final night, said they didn't remember at all.
The owner and cook of a place called the Sherpe Lodge,
whose entire staff told her me they vividly remembered the
spunky and beautiful, smiling American and whose name was Taizi.
Geroung said, we don't remember seeing this girl, but if
we'd known she was going to go missing, we wouldn't

(17:36):
have let her leave. The Sachos didn't give up on
these workers, though, and went again to attempt to question them.
According to Connie Sacho, when asked again about their daughter's disappearance,
the cook's wife screamed, don't answer. The couple felt many things, anger, betrayal,
possibly discussed, and definitely shocked. All said he was simply shocked.

(17:59):
At the response is he and his wife were getting
from the people who could possibly hold the answers to
what happened to their daughter, whether they know it or not.
When someone goes missing, the tiniest little clue that may
seem insignificant can be the one thing that holds the
key and breaks the case wide open, possibly giving some
poor suffering family like the psychos some peace, at the

(18:21):
very least a small bit of closure. While said he
was thinking, who are those people who would intentionally hamper
our investigation? Who would intentionally stop parents from finding their daughter?
Could the villagers have been too scared of someone or
something to come forward for they flat out lying and
purposely trying to hide what they need for some other

(18:42):
nefarious reasons. Some speculate that perhaps the villagers were thinking
of another time when a local came forward and reported
finding a woman dead in the Langtang River. The fisherman
who came forward with his findings and what he knew,
which was nothing other than where and when he found
the unfortunate deceeized woman floating in the room near where
he was fishing, was imprisoned for an entire decade. Back

(19:04):
in the year two thousand a woman who is searching
for Aubrey and or information as to whereabouts toll cnn
on behalf of the Sacos. All the villagers in the
Langtang area say that the fishermen didn't do anything and
that the people who did it were never caught. The
police and Katmandu gave the Sacos every assurance that they
were doing everything they could and still following leeds and

(19:26):
investigating the case. They even reassured them that they would
be reinterviewing the cook, the young men, and Ringing Dorsey
as well, just to name a few. According to a
spokesman for the Nepali Army, each soldier at guar Tabella,
including those who are on leave at the time of
Aubrey's disappearance, have been questioned on more than one occasion,

(19:47):
and between twenty ten and twenty twelve, troops of searched
the area at least three times. Nepal's political situation hasn't
helped the Sacos at all in their unending quests for
answers and what happened to their daughter. They kept reaching
out to their contacts and finding they had either been fired,
promoted and no longer available, or willing to speak to

(20:08):
and helped them, or even that some had been in prison.
It's also a sad truth that in a country like Nepal,
it's still developing. Police investigations are unceasingly and frustratingly underfunded.
At the end of the day, the only clues ever found,
aside from shaky and often contradictory witness statements, was Aurey's

(20:28):
journal and laptop, neither of which yielded any clues at all. Well, folks,
there you have it. What do you think of this
strange disappearance. Somewhere someone knows something that's without a doubt.
Thank you for listening, and I look forward to your comments.
But please keep it friendly in respect. Till we meet again,

(20:53):
be good to yourselves and others. Stay safe out there.
As for me, I'll see a little farther on down
the trail. I'm Steve Stockton and I'll talk to you
next time. Tell your dog I said hi.