Over time I have done a lot of research on this case. I have collected a ton of information, discussion points, and formed multiple theories I believe could hold out. I am not one who can settle on one theory and believe it wholeheartedly, instead I have crafted multiple theories. My hope is to produce thought provoking questions, and get peoples minds back on Marshals case.
To start, I want to make it very clear that I do not believe this was a suicide. Ever since the beginning, suicide did not seem plausible for me even one time. My reasons why are as follows:
1. Where is the body? There have been helicopters and cadaver dogs out to the truck site and there was no hit on anything. Cadaver dogs will hit on the scent of decomposition, whether a body has been there for an hour or for years. So the fact that they did not hit on ANYTHING is really interesting. Even IF he was out there and let's say predators and scavengers got to his body, the dogs still would have been able to smell something.
"
Dogs are able to pick up a scent within minutes of the death or years later. In some studies, they have found 25-year-old skeletonized remains, buried in an area of 300 by 150 feet."
2. Location, Location, Location. Many people believe the location of the burn site is indicative of suicidal behaviour due to it's remoteness. Calgary, where Marshal was living at the time of his disappearance is an hours drive away from the mountains. If he wanted somewhere remote, he could have easily found a place much closer. It doesn't make sense to drive 1200km away, that is a lot of time to talk yourself out of committing suicide. Canmore, Banff, Lake Louise all have endless avenues to disappear and are also way, way closer.
3. Impulse. Statistics show that men can be more impulsive or take more drastic action with suicide attempts. Yes, some of the evidence shows that some sort of drastic action was taken. However, driving 14 hours away isn't necessarily impulsive IMO. This point is more objective in the sense that everyone is different but that's just my take on it.
4. He was PACKING. Marshals sister mentioned in an interview that he had enough clothing with him to last him a week or more. And that's just what was outside of the truck, who knows what could have been burned with it. Not to mention everything else that was scattered around. Laptops, toiletry bags, extra pairs of shoes, random electronics? If you decide you're going to commit suicide, you're not going to pack up a bunch of your stuff and bring it with you.
5. The note, or lack thereof. Marshal doesn't strike me as the type of guy who would commit suicide without saying goodbye to his family with a note. He seemed to be extremely close with not only his mom and sister, but his extended family as well. The Iwaasa clan is very tightknit, Marshal was a huge part of the family. I don't believe he would willingly leave them with the pain of wondering what happened to him.
6. The computer game. Marshals family confirmed he was working on developing a computer game that he had spent over 800 hours working on. Based on saved files (I assume) they could tell that the last day Marshal worked on his game was the morning of November 17, 2019. The day before he went missing. If Marshals plan was to commit suicide, why would he choose to work on developing this game? From my own experiences with depression, the last thing I would want to do is work on something that takes a lot of focus/effort/passion. So that tidbit of information does not make sense to me whatsoever.
7. The steering column. Someone on Marshals FB group pointed out that the column would have been made of magnesium alloy and the fire would have been hot enough to disintegrate it. But the RCMP confirmed that the column was in fact removed. Yet another point that does not make sense for this to be a suicide. Why remove your steering column if you're going to commit suicide? And better yet, where is the steering column? If your plan is to walk off into the wilderness to commit suicide, is it logical to bring a steering column with you?
8. The prescription. He recently went to refill a prescription, the pill bottle was found at the scene of the truck. Although we have public healthcare in Canada, prescriptions still cost money unless you have benefits. Why if you are suicidal would you refill your prescription? (And don't say to OD - I am under the impression the pill bottle was found mostly full. They also never stated what his prescription was for.)
Those are my main 8 reasons as to why I believe he did not commit suicide. I hold out hope that LE could get on the same page. I mean, it doesn't take much to piece bits of information together to realize what this wasn't. But now we have to try and figure out what it was.
The last place Marshal was confirmed to be at was the storage locker,
3656 32 St N, Lethbridge, AB T1H 0E8. He was in the area from approximately 11pm on November 17 to 8:30am on November 18. That part of Lethbridge is secluded and quiet, if police had been diligent from the start it would have been easy to try and find footage from surrounding businesses to see if there was anybody else in the area during that period of time. I wasn't able to find anything that confirmed or denied that the area surrounding the locker had been searched. I did see a comment from MI's sister Paige explaining that due to the fact that most of the properties around that area are private, it would be hard to get permission for a grid search. However, I wonder if LE even went to poke around the area. There are storm ponds nearby, and vast farmers fields. I am certain that if the family asked the owners of the properties, they would let them search. The Iwaasa's are a well respected family in the Lethbridge area, and by now I am sure 98% of the people in Lethbridge are aware of Marshals disappearance.
Marshals family confirmed he was in the midst of developing a computer game. He was last known to be working on his game on the morning of November 17, 2019. He told his mom he had to go to the storage locker to get a part for his computer. Without knowing he was working on a computer game, this sounded like a strange reason IMO. But now knowing that he had been working on the development that morning, it does make sense that he ran into something during development that required a specific part that he didn't have handy.
It isn't unlikely that something may have happened at that storage locker, or on his way back to Calgary on the 18th. Or even in Calgary. I live in Calgary. In December 2019, I was selling a PC on Facebook marketplace. I made arrangements to meet this person at 10pm, they said they work late. They sent me an address around
Sarcee Tr. NW and when I arrived I knocked on the door and nobody answered. I went back to my car, messaged them and waited a bit longer. I immediately got a very sick feeling in my stomach and I felt like something was not right. Then I went and knocked again, and someone answered the door, but it was not the person who I had connected with via marketplace. The person who sent me to this location was not answering my messages and later on blocked me. I had a friend with me during this experience but had I been alone, this could have played out much differently. I wonder if something like this happened to Marshal?
On Marshals episode of Never Seen Again, they included a photo of a prescription that he recently refilled. The address of the Shoppers Drug Mart on his prescription was the
Beacon Hill location off of
Sarcee Tr. NW.
When the hikers found the burnt out truck on November 23, 2019, they described the scene as "eerie". They said it felt like a crime scene and they felt like they were being watched. The photos they took of the scene are extremely eerie, I get uneasy when I look at them for too long. I took
this comparison photo and added certain pointers between the hikers and RCMP photos. See mine
here. The truck was cool to the touch when the hikers found it, but they explained that it smelled fresh. So we know that the very earliest the truck could have been burnt is late at night on November 18th and the latest it could have been burned is sometime on November 22.
The most significant items found at the truck site were:
- A ton of clothes, some of which the family was able to confirm did not belong to Marshal
- Work boots and gym shoes; the work boots were not Marshal's size and the family does not believe they are his
- Coveralls, tie down straps, welding gloves, a hammer; the family checked Marshals apartment and they found all of his work clothes and other equipment at his place. They do not believe that any of these items belonged to Marshal
- One active passport with the ID page torn out, later confirmed to be Marshals. One expired passport that also belonged to Marshal.
- 3 broken cellphones, two of which the family is sure belonged to Marshal, but one they couldn't be certain
- A smashed laptop
- A smashed Xbox console with the inside components removed; no way to identify who it belonged to, but the family confirmed that Marshals Xbox was at his his apartment so they don't believe it to be his
- A smashed Playstation console with the inside components removed; no way to identify, and family confirms that they don't believe this one belonged to Marshal either
- A red cooler that the family does not believe to be Marshals
Some things that had not been found at the truck site were:
- Marshals current Samsung galaxy s6 cellphone
- A SAIT issued laptop
- His backpack
- His wallet
- The clothes he was last seen wearing
- His glasses
- His eye contacts and contact solution
It is possible that certain items that are missing could have been burned in the truck. Because the fire was so intense, I can't imagine any kind of identifiable remnants were left behind. I was watching
this video posted by Kassi Iwaasa from when the family was finally able to visit the truck site and I couldn't help but notice it looked like the back seats were up. So I searched for any kind of proof that a 2009 GMC Sierra had that rear seat feature. I found
this video of a 2010 Sierra and it appears to look similar to the video of Marshals truck.
Why would the back seats have been up? One theory that I came up with, is that whoever did this to the truck had MI in the back of the truck. Possibly covered up with all of that stuff that was scattered around the truck. And when they set the truck on fire, they set MI on fire with it. But then I had to try and poke holes in my theory and cadaver dogs are trained to smell for burnt human remains aka human cremains. So had Marshals body been in that truck when it burned, the dogs would have smelled it. And they would have smelled decomposition on the items that had been scattered around as well.
"
Human cremains (burnt bodies) have a distinct scent that cadaver dogs are trained to detect and locate. Cadaver dogs can easily locate the burnt remains in a building that has been destroyed by wildfires. This is because a canine's sense of smell is 100,000 times more powerful compared to a human's sense of smell"
But that still leads me to wonder why the back seats were up. Is it insignificant? Were they up to make space for all of the things that were in the truck? It's interesting how even on the video that was originally posted on the FB group, nobody noticed the rear seats were up.
Going back to the photos that the hikers took vs the RCMP - in the RCMP photos, it's clear that someone had been back between the 23rd and the 25th of November to rummage through items. Some things are in different places, some things seem to be completely gone. Not to mention that the expired passport, another form of ID, and a smashed phone were grouped together in a pile. IMO this was not caused by animals rummaging around, because as Dawson MI's brother in law pointed out, animals do not group things together in neat little piles.
Police stated they found a path of clothes that were partially burned “as if that person may have caught on fire when the vehicle was burning.” I wonder if the police would have checked nearby clinics, urgent cares, and hospitals to see if anyone had been in to treat burns? They could have been severe enough to leave blisters, scars, etc. No confirmation was ever made on if the partially burnt clothes were Marshals or not.
One question I had but I have never been able to find an answer for was whether or not the license plate was removed from the truck before burning it or not. Alberta plate BLL-1099. Because if it wasn't left on the truck, then where could it be? By now, the registration would be up. But would it be reasonable to assume that someone could have used that plate to drive around for a few days at least? According to the Alberta vehicle registration list, Marshals registration would have expired in January. So if someone knew that information, could they have flown under the radar by using his plate on a different vehicle or something?
I spent two hours trying to find some kind of satellite imagery of the
exact truck location and the surrounding area, but I had no luck. I was wondering if there could be cabins, small trails off of the main trail, or anything else that could have given a clue as to why that location was the place they chose to leave and burn the truck. Around the
Brian Waddington Hut, there are several bodies of water which could have been a factor as to why they chose that location. Perhaps the goal was to drive the truck into the water but when they realized they couldn't get it all the way up there, they chose to burn it instead. There is also
Birkenhead Lake and the
Birkenhead Lake Campground which are in a relative proximity to the truck and the hut. To stay at the campsite you have to pay, and I assume give some form of identification, whether it be a license plate number, photo ID, etc. I wonder if the police ever checked in to see if anyone had been staying there any time between November 17-November 25.
In January 2020, MI's family organized a grid search at
Indian Battle Park in Lethbridge. Nobody has ever explained why they chose to search this area, which makes me wonder if there was a tip that he had been down there at some point between 11pm and 8:30am. The family reported that MI tried to get in their locker multiple times that night but nobody actually knows if he stayed there all night long. Indian Battle Park is about a 12 minute drive from the storage locker.
I collected some images from when the family visited the truck. Some of these photos could hold potential clues, however I find it hard to make out what some of the things in the photos are. I am hoping someone else could look at them and try to shed some insight.
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
Image 5
There is a lot of metal debris in the bed of the truck. I doubt police ever thought to look back there or take anything in for evidence. Because they wrote off the investigation right away, I feel as though they missed a lot of opportunities to collect potential evidence.
During their trip to the truck, the private fire investigator confirmed the truck was set on fire by arson. His reasons being that the doors were open, the fire did not start in the engine compartment but in the passengers side of the truck. Because of the intensity of the fire he confirmed that there had to be some kind of accelerant used. And the pièce de ré·sis·tance was the zippo lighter that was found in the floorboards on the passengers side.
Which leads me to wonder - was Marshal a smoker of cigarettes or marijuana? Would he own a zippo lighter? The family never commented on whether they thought the zippo lighter was his or not. What kinds of people just carry Zippo's around with them? I wonder if they could take that zippo to see if there had been any sort of engravement on it which could be a potential lead.
Also - if accelerants were used, where are the jerry cans or the bottles of accelerant? Were they thrown into the fire or were they hauled back out?
The private fire investigator said in the documentary-episode that the main motivating factor to burn out a vehicle is to cover up evidence of a crime. I don't agree or disagree with him, in Marshal's case I guess I do believe that the truck was some sort of crime scene. But a lot of people seem to think nothing of it, because it is quite common in BC to burn out vehicles in the back country. Which would make this a great cover up, as a local would know its common to find burnt out vehicles, they would know that others from the area wouldn't really bat an eye. While searching MI's FB Group, someone said to look up a specific name in the
Four Wheel Drive Association of BC FB Group. He posted
this, which at first I thought was MI's truck... but then reading the comments found out it was a very similar scene but in different part of the province, closer to Chilliwack/Stave Lake. So clearly scenes like this show up all around the province, but the one that makes MI's different is that the vehicle is tied to a missing person. And the way the items were strewn around the truck. It is similar to other burnouts, but it is not the same.
The
group that took the Iwaasa family up to the truck site are quite familiar with vehicles and while they were there, they did tell the family that it looked like there were missing parts.
“They told our family that it looks like there’s all these extra vehicle parts, there’s all these other things that are at the truck site… it kind of looks odd, like maybe some pieces are missing. We still have to confirm that with police, but it does look odd to us.”
After the family had visited the truck site, Paige Fogen MI's sister explained that she and her family do not believe Marshal was ever at that truck site. Some of the reasons given as to why they didn't believe MI had ever been up there was because of the remoteness of the location. He was not familiar with the location and had no ties to it. Locals of Pemberton have come out to say that they've lived there their whole lives and didn't know about that trailhead/logging road. That leads me to believe that whoever was up there with the truck had to have either been a local, been into the hiking/backpacking scene, or both.
Marshal seemed to hang out with a group of people who were quite the avid hikers, but it seems to me like they were mostly day hikers and typically stayed in the Alberta Rockies. But maybe one of his friends knew about the hut and told MI about it? Since the Brian Waddington Hut is taken care of by UBC students, I wonder if MI knows anybody who was attending or attended UBC in the past. I highly doubt that if MI was the one who drove his truck up there, that it was just by chance. This location isn't a place you just stumble upon, you have to know where you're going.
Marshal and Paige's estranged father and step mother attempted to
insert themselves in the situation. Perry Iwaasa (bio dad) essentially said that he believes Marshal was at the truck site (opposite to what Marshals close family thinks) and he believes that Marshal is dead. As soon as I heard this, I wondered if Perry and Myrna Iwaasa knew more than they were leading on to. Did they have something to do with his disappearance? Did Marshal have some kind of life insurance policy that they wanted to take advantage of? MI's brother in law Dawson said "Perry is the worst person I know, and I wouldn't put anything past him." Myrna Iwaasa has a son from a previous relationship named Mark Adam, who studies at the University of Victoria in BC. He lives in Galiano Island, BC. In terms of closeness to Pemberton, it's not... you would have to take a ferry from Vancouver Island to Vancouver, and then drive 2 hours to Pemberton. That being said, it's a theory that could explain why or how Marshals vehicle ended up in BC. Perry Iwaasa is now deceased as of June 2021.
The active passport with the torn out ID page has always made me wonder if it was taken in order to create or obtain a forged passport? I have no idea how that works but is it possible? That is such an odd detail and I can't come up with anything that seems plausible.
The way the scene was found makes absolutely zero sense to me. Why torch the truck but not the contents? If you're trying to conceal a crime scene, you wouldn't want to risk not getting rid of something with evidence on it. There is no explanation IMO for the way the scene was left. Whoever did torch it would need a way back down, did they walk, or was there a vehicle meant for that terrain that followed the truck? Or perhaps led the truck? I'm sure so many locals in that area have ATV's but November isn't the best time of year for going out on your ATV. The RCMP should have asked around if anyone noticed any odd activity in regards to people taking their ATV's out. If RCMP had been diligent, people in the area could have checked footage on ring cameras, businesses could have checked footage to see if they had anything. I know by the time the truck was found it was too late to check the footage at the storage lockers in Lethbridge, but it wasn't too late to check footage in and around Pemberton. If we could go back in time, I would urge the police to work backwards from Pemberton. All they would have had to do is check the dates from the 18th-23rd. Yes that is a huge amount of footage but they could have narrowed it down to look for GMC's and Alberta plates. It is their job to investigate after all. There were so many missed opportunities and it kills me to know that we may never be able to find anything concrete.
The
Daniel Reoch connection was the theory I wanted to save for last. I am 50/50 on this theory, on one hand it makes complete, total sense. On the other hand it doesn't.
Daniel went missing in Squamish, BC on November 26, 2019. Squamish to Pemberton is about 90km/55 miles. He was reportedly in an alarming state of mind when he went missing. Some people say he was on drugs at the time, but Daniel stated on his Facebook in the months leading up to it that he was not using drugs. Some of the last things he said to his family before going missing was that he was getting married, which was not true. He was reportedly calling the name of a dog who wasn't around. And the most interesting is that Daniel told his uncle that he was "living on a different timeline".
Daniel Reoch's vehicle was found abandoned on November 26, 2019. The drivers door was open, left idling. There has been no sign of him since.
The man from Squamish who claimed to have seen Daniel, Marshal, and a "sketchy dude" together around the end of November. The relativity in time and location, the fact that Daniels family and friends have been able to identify items from the truck site as Daniels. The same items that MI's family said from the beginning are not his are the items that DR's family has identified as Daniels. It could all just be a coincidence or these two cases truly could be linked.
Items that are not Marshals/reported to be Daniels are as follows:
The blue work coveralls - MI's family said they are not Marshals, as his were at his apartment in Calgary
The strap-down belts - again MI's family has stated that all of his work gear was left in Calgary
The red cooler - it allegedly has DR's cousins name written on it, Cody Lewis
The welding gloves - DR was said to be doing welding during the time of his disappearance
The hammer - MI's family does not think it's his, not sure what ties it directly to DR but the family say they recognize it
The black hiking boots - they are not MI's size. DR's ex Keylela was able to confirm DR's shoe size and she also said she recognizes them as his.
This is JMO and MOO. I hope that this can get the conversation back on Marshal. I believe that we will find him one day. I hope LE is working on it. Marshal deserves to be found.
Marshal, if you're out there- please let your family know you're okay. You are loved and missed, we want you to come home.
