I just watched his Disappeared episode, and what immediately came to mind was a sort of spooked voluntary disappearance after the confrontation with Max’s associates.
An apparent friend of Chris’s posted on reddit that the family feels certain he left voluntarily. The same friend also said that the town is small enough that if Max’s drug issues had caused or contributed to the disappearance, they would’ve heard the rumors about it.
Obviously they know the place better than I, who doesn’t know it at all. But it just seems really coincidental that Max is arrested and Hoagy goes missing on the same day.
Maybe it’s far fetched but I just can’t help but wonder if the associates threatened or even blackmailed him and he felt that to either protect himself and/or the rest of the family, he had to leave. Leaving wallet, passport, etc behind would actually make sense in that case, so they wouldn’t be able to trace him. Basically like a self-made witness protection program. The friend really seemed to downplay the drug scene in Newtown as not terribly serious, but honestly you just never know when it comes to illicit activities and drug dealers, even ones that seem “low level”