I'm very late on this one. Somehow I had never heard about this until I saw the billboard in Castaic recently and started reading more on the Internet, I watched the disappeared show, read through most of the 9 threads on here and I've been trying to put the puzzle together. I had actually went through Castaic, Buttonwillow etc on a trip to Northern California that weekend but several days after it all took place.
There are a few things that I didn't really see much info about so I'm not sure if they were covered. It seems that he had lived in Illinois through high school and then moved out to California with his family. I thought it seemed a little odd that someone who had just moved to southern California would go 7-8 hours to Northern California to go to a community college. I don't think that's a school people typically move away to go to. That detail seems important because it would indicate that he is the type of person who is not afraid to drop everything and relocate.
I also didn't understand the Xbox story. It said he gave the Xbox to his roommate but why would you give something to someone you lived with? That hints at a plan to escape. Whether it be suicide, running away, moving away, etc. I also thought it was strange that he reportedly told the roommate he would be back on Labor Day. It was early in the school year and unless he had a schedule that didn't have Thursday or Friday classes, that is a bad time of year to be missing classes. When I was in school, that would get you dropped from classes. The text messages between him and the roommate also seemed way too heavy. Even if this was just the drugs and sleep deprivation doing the talking, it speaks to his mind state at the time.
The show also seemed to try to focus heavily on the theory that he bumped his head in the accident and has amnesia. While that's a possibility, the other details seemed to indicate he was trying to break away and the show seemed like it was not telling not the whole story. Maybe the assumption is that if people think he was depressed and on drugs, there is no reason to look for him but I think it's best to explore all possible ideas, not just the ones we prefer. I actually don't think the amnesia story is a happy one unless we assume that seeing family and friends will make him regain his memory.
I'm assuming they did thorough checks on his phone and computer to see who he had been talking to and what he had been saying on those days and if he had done searches on any specific areas. Possibly areas that are easy to panhandle and live as a homeless person, places with communes, religious sects, etc. I am guessing nothing came out of that and maybe he even had a burner phone if the plan was more elaborate.
I am not convinced he ever planned to see his parents. I think it's just the assumption because his house was in that direction. He drove through the night and ended up in the Bakersfield area. The paper trail starts at 9am but he could have arrived there a few hours earlier. His parents only found out he was there because of the credit card charges so unless he was planning to surprise them, he may have been in that area for another reason entirely.
Since he had been up all night (and some stories indicate he had been up for as many as 3 days straight), I don't think it's that odd that he rested in the Bakersfield area for so long. It does seem weird that he was not answering his phone or being very forthcoming about his plans. Since he did seem calm and aware according to those who saw and talked to him, he doesn't sound like someone pondering suicide. It would seem that being approached by police and being forced to talk to his parents and stuff would have rattled him if he was in an emotional state.
I feel bad that people are critical of his parents for not driving up to see him. According to the timeline, they thought he was leaving the area at 12pm and didn't find out he was still there until 9pm. If they left their house at 9, they would have been there after midnight and how silly would it be to be in Bakersfield at midnight and your son is arriving to an empty house 3-4 hours away?
The easiest explanation to me is that he was supposed to be meeting someone there. Maybe a friend, maybe a drug contact, maybe someone that was going to help him escape, etc but again, if his phone showed no evidence of that, he would have needed a burner phone to pull this off.
As he progresses through Castaic, I am not sure why he stops there. The grapevine is the most treacherous part of the whole drive (and if suicide is your plan, has the best cliffs for doing that) and I always feel like I'm home once I get to that area. I would feel much safer driving two more hours and getting home than sleeping in a car in a dark area. It also makes no sense why he is driving around that small area for hours. Maybe the GPS malfunctioned and he got lost? Or maybe he was looking for a place out of the way and somehow lost control and then panicked when his car was destroyed. Or he was purposely trying to stage a crash so he could run away and it was foiled because it didn't reach the water. Maybe he had to act quickly because he was realizing he was leaving a paper trail.
I also wonder if maybe things weren't strange at all. He was just dead tired from being up so long and finally had it catch up to him. He gets down to Castaic, has an accident while trying to find a safe place to sleep, can't find his phone and goes for help but by awful luck, the first person he comes across is bad news.
I just don't believe he killed himself there. If driving off the ravine was an attempt to do that, it was sloppy. There's no guarantee he would have died in a crash into the water and drowning is not a quick and painless way to do it. It seems hard to believe that if that was his plan a, that he would have had a plan B that would have allowed him to die without being found. It's pretty hard to do that.
I think he left the area quickly. People would remember seeing a red haired college kid wandering around for too long. He had to either have a get away driver, a good story "hey mr trucker, its pledge week and I need to make it back to ____ by tomorrow to get into my frat, can you help?", or a "Good Samaritan" picked him up and turned out to be something bad.
My hunch is that he was going to run away, possibly temporarily, but maybe it got escalated because of the way things played out. The roommate even said he thought he was just hiding out for a few days. Maybe he adjusted well to life off the grid and doesn't have desire or doesn't really know how to step back into his regular life again. I wouldn't be shocked if the roommate knows more than he shared with everyone but is respecting Bryce's wishes not to tell people.
I just hope there is some kind of conclusion to this story. It's so horrible for his loved ones to not know if he is still out there somewhere or if he is in need.