I live on Vancouver Island on the west coast of Canada.
In the early '90s, a kid was abducted from a park in my neighbourhood, and it quickly
became a very high-profile case, and it still is today.
I was around 3 years old when this happened, and my dad would have been 25-ish, only a
few years into his career as a police officer.
The missing kid part will come into play later, but it's important to know this was going
on when the events of this story happened.
My dad and his partner were on patrol one night, and they had a camera guy with them
who was on a ride-along to film some shitty Canadian version of "COPS" or something.
I don't think this ever actually aired, for reasons that will become obvious.
It was unusual to allow someone along with a camera, and nowadays this would probably
never happen.
It was an otherwise quiet night, and as they were driving around my dad spots this work
van that belonged to a guy named Peter Hogben.
My dad had pulled Hogben over before several times, the most recent being a few days prior
because Hogben's insurance was expired.
At that time, Hogben had a dead chicken hanging from his rearview mirror, which was weird
and very creepy, but not illegal.
My dad let him off with a warning, and told Hogben to get insurance or the next time he
saw him, the van would be getting towed.
So, my dad and his partner see this van and my dad gets dispatch to run it, and it comes
back still without insurance, so they throw on the lights and pull Hogben over.
Meanwhile, the camera man is still filming all of this.
They get out of the car, and Hogben is PISSED.
He's yelling, eyes bugging out of his head, getting in my dad and his partner's space,
probably veins bulging out of his neck, all of that.
My dad explains that since he has no insurance, they were towing his vehicle.
My dad said he remembers thinking Hogben was going to attack them, so they both had their
hands on their holsters in case they needed to draw.
Police shootings here are extremely rare, and in the '90's even more so, so the fact
that they even felt it necessary to be ready to draw their sidearms shows how intense the
situation was.
While Hogben didn't end up attacking either my dad, his partner, or the camera man, he
did end up going full Hulk on the dash of his van, basically ripping it apart with his
bare hands and losing his entire mind.
These days, he'd probably be taken into custody based on that, but again this was the early
'90s, so while crazy and scary, not illegal.
He shitkicked his own car for a bit, tore out parts of the dashboard, and then preternaturally
just calmed the fuck down, and then asked if he could get his tools from the back of
his van as he was a construction worker and needed them for his job the next day.
My dad and his partner said he could, so he grabbed an axe, and his tool belt, which included
a hammer and some other stuff, and off he walked into the night.
As he walked away, my dad's partner said: "Jesus, he looks mad enough to kill someone."
The entire incident was caught on camera by their ride-along camera guy.
They towed Hogben's van, and their night went on as usual, which is to say nobody lost their
shit and destroyed the dash of their own vehicles.
The next night was their second night shift.
They went to briefing, which is like a meeting before you begin your shift so that you know
if you need to look out for anything specifically, or if you need to do curfew checks on people
who are under conditions after being released from jail and that kind of thing.
When they get there, they hear the news that a woman was beaten to death the night prior
and found in the early morning, and that if they have anyone they suspect or any files
they think are related, they should let their Sergeant know so he can pass it onto detectives.
My dad said he and his partner just looked at each other and raised their hands to say
"I think we know who did this."
Hogben was arrested very quickly after.
Turns out, he was in fact pissed enough to kill someone.
He initially followed another woman but she managed to get into her house without Hogben
actually doing anything to her aside from scaring the shit out of her by stalking her.
The woman he did kill was completely random.
He beat her to death with the blunt end of his axe, where her blood and DNA were found.
The evidence that convicted him was overwhelming.
Okay so..
here's the part where the missing kid comes into play.
The FBI's behavioural unit was here to assist on creating a profile on who may have abducted
the kid.
They caught wind of the Hogben file, and that the entire incident preceding the murder where
Hogben was pulled over was caught on tape.
They immediately demanded to see the tape, and when they did they explained that it is
extremely rare to capture the moment when a psychopath "snaps" and decides to kill someone
on video, and that they wanted to take the video back to Quantico for training purposes,
so they can show recruits what it looks like when someone makes that decision.
So, my dad and his partner are in a video used for training in the FBI.
My dad has said he thinks his former partner carries a lot of guilt for this case, because
of the remark he made about Hogben being angry enough to kill someone.
I'm of the opinion it wasn't anybody's fault, and since that happened people are able to
be arrested for that kind of behaviour.
They were also both still rookie cops, and within that situation they did everything
"right" in a by-the-book sense.
They did not have grounds to arrest Hogben then.
But I understand why he'd feel so fucked up about it.
In case you're wondering what happened with the missing kid, he's still missing.
The FBI Unit couldn't reach a full consensus on whether a family member or a stranger abducted
him.
The kid's name is Michael Dunahee, and if you're from Canada you've likely heard of
him.
He became the cautionary tale our parents told us about talking to strangers.
His absence permeated the childhood of my friends and I, to the point where we once
found some deer bones and were convinced we found Michael's remains.
My mom has been a police officer for two years and she was recently put on FTO for the patrol
division a few months ago.
For those of you that don’t know what FTO is, it stands for Field Training Officer.
Essentially when a cop switches from one team to another, they are paired with an FTO who
teaches them all about how to do their job in the new division.
My mom moved from working in the jail to working on the patrol team.
Now what a lot of people don’t realize is that patrol is an extremely dangerous division
to be a part of.
On patrol, a cop is out there by themselves with no idea of what they might face.
In my mom’s case she had one other person with her, which is a little safer, but not
much.
On patrol a backup car could be miles away which puts the officer in an extremely dangerous
and vulnerable position should anything bad happen on the road.
What you should know is that the county I live in is known for being one of the safest,
most cop-friendly counties in the US.
You would think that that gave my mom and her FTO some kind of advantage over the bad
guys… you would think.
On September 2nd my mom and her FTO received a call that there was a suicidal man with
a gun who was holing up in his house.
They raced over to the scene and parked the car several yards from the house as was customary
of arriving on any scene.
This guy lived in a semi rural part of town where houses were spread a little apart.
This rural-ish neighborhood backs up to a middle and elementary school on one side,
there is also a hospital and a daycare just behind the schools, which will be important
later.
Anyway, my mom and her training officer exit the car and begin to approach the house to
contact this armed suicidal man.
The two stop dead in their tracks when they hear a gunshot being fired off, right at them.
My mom and her FTO scramble to get behind the doors of the patrol car and frantically
radio for back-up.
My mom’s FTO quickly pulls out his rifle for better defense.
Several other cars rush to the scene just as the guy charges out of the house firing
shots off at random.
BANG!
One shot!
Seconds later several more are fired off in the direction of the officers.
They begin firing just as a strange sound grabs everyone’s attention: a school bell.
Shit!
School just ended for about a thousand middle school students who would soon be gathering
in busses, cars, and worst yet, walking home.
The suspect heard the school bell too and quickly rushed into his RV, driving off in
the direction of the school.
All the while this asshole is firing off shots at the officers.
As officers chase off after him, attempting to cut him off, shoot out his tires, anything!,
a haunting call comes over the radio.
“Officer down!
Officer down!”
someone cries out.
Everyone at the call had no time to lose, they had to keep going and chase down the
perp.
They had to make sure he didn’t get the chance to get to those middle school students.
People were frantic, asking questions and looking for answers which no one knew “Holy
shit!
Who’s hit?
Are they alive?
Did anyone else get hit?”
Suddenly someone cried out that it was my mom who got hit.
Within minutes, I got dozens of texts asking if I knew what was going on, if I was okay,
and some just informing me that my mom was shot.
At the time I was at work with no knowledge that any of this was happening.
I stepped into the hall after receiving multiple text messages.
I fell to my knees.
My mom was shot.
She was dead or dying.
I could feel myself break.
This fucker killed my mom.
Moments later everyone got word that the threat had been eliminated.
One of the officers shot the guy through the window of his RV just as he entered the hospital
parking lot.
There was still no word of what was happening to my mom.
I was panicking.
She’s dead.
I thought.
She’s dead.
Suddenly, I felt my phone buzz once again.
I checked it with tears in my eyes.
It read.
“Hey I don’t know what you heard, but I’m okay.
I wasn’t the one that got shot.”
My heart fell, but this time in relief.
What had happened was that one of my mom’s former co-workers in the jail had been listening
in on the shooting situation and had heard that my mom was first on scene and then later
heard that someone was shot.
In his shock, he put two and two together and assumed that the one that was shot was
my mom.
However, a swat deputy who arrived with the impact team had attempted to eliminate the
threat and keep him away from the middle school students.
The suspect brutally shot the swat deputy point blank in the chest with an AK-47 round.
The deputy was rushed off to the hospital.
He was dead when they got him off the ground and into the ambulance.
Using electric shock therapy they brought him back to life.
Moments later, his heart stopped again.
At the hospital they shocked him again for several minutes before he came back to life.
After being rushed into emergency trauma surgery, his heart stopped again.
At this point the doctor literally held his heart in his hands and was squeezing his heart
by hand to get it to begin beating again.
After several surgeries, the deputy survived.
He lost a lot of blood, brain cells, and body control.
But he is alive to this day, thankfully.
I still can hardly believe that something this traumatic happened in my quiet, safe
town.
But I’m so glad they took that fucker out and I’m so glad all the officers are still
alive today.
Got a report of a missing husband.
He told his wife and family of 6 children that he was going to get his tires changed,
but never returned, and this was 12 hours ago.
They had purchased another house in a neighboring community, and the relationship with the wife
was under pressure, so the wife assumed he was staying at the other house.
The strange thing about this report though was that he emptied his personal bank account
into his wife's this morning as well.
The wife explained this off saying that they recently had a fight about finances, and he
agreed that he was bad with money and maybe they should just have a joint account that
she controls.
On a hunch, I asked his 14 year old boy if there were any areas in the mountains nearby
that his father enjoyed going, and the son identified a road about 10 miles away.
It was nearing midnight, but I decided to drive to the top of this old and abandoned
forest service road.
As I drove through the snow and started to climb the road, I felt a gut feeling that
I would 100% find this guy up there either thinking about suicide, or already committing
suicide.
The snow-laid gravel road had some sign of travel, but no real indication of how fresh
the vehicle tracks could be.
As I reached the top of the road after an hour of travel I was honestly surprised that
I did not find his black truck.
I spent the drive back down thinking about "gut-feelings" and how they are unreliable,
but that I somehow felt different about this one.
As I traveled up the road, I did notice over a dozen smaller roads branching off, but they
were not mapped, and I had already spent too much time on a single occurrence in a busy
city with too few police officers.
Nonetheless, I decided to check a single of these secondary roads, and about 3/4's of
the way down I picked a road at random to check, and sure enough my headlights lit up
the back end of a black truck about 100 yards past the first corner.
Even if I hadn't memorized the licence plate beforehand, I wouldn't have had to run it
- it was clearly his.
I radioed that I had found the truck, parked my vehicle, and traveled the 20 feet to his
truck with my heart beating like I was doing it at a sprint rather than a normal walk.
What I found inside was a mess of brains and blood caused by a self-inflicted shotgun wound
under the chin.
I'll save you from the description.
There was just something about that gut-feeling while traveling this abandoned and quiet mountain
road, followed by a sense of being tricked by the gut-feeling, then finding out it was
true by discovering such a gruesome scene, having to wait 3 hours next to his truck waiting
for body removal, and then to end it all by having to go to the family who was expecting
good news to deliver to them the worst news possible, that makes me feel creeped out to
this day.
Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed the video.
So, i'm sure many of you are confused as to where i've been, and rightfully so.
I don't think that the end of a video is a good place to even begin explaining, and many
people aren't here for that, so here's the plan
After the release of this video, i'm going to try to put 1 or 2 more videos out on time,
before doing a livestream where I will be transparently adressing a
lot of things, explaining where I was, and what's happening best I can.
That way I can focus on getting the ball rolling on videos again, and afterwards just sit,
be open and talk to you guys if i'm able.
So, like I said, that's the plan, and I didn't want to take too much time at the end of this
video.
To make sure you don't miss the livestream if you're interested,
please press the bell icon near the subscribe button so that you're notified.
That will also notify you instanly every time I upload.
If you don't want to do that, I usually notify everyone via Twitter and Snapchat a day or
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If you can, I recomend you following me on social media.
That way if you're wondering where I am or something, you can just check Twitter and
be like "oh, hey, he's alive, that's pretty cool."
, or maybe you genuinely like me or something, but let's not get carried away.
We also joke around sometimes, as you can see by this picture.
Or on Snapchat you can hear me lose my mind or post incoherent ramblings to my story that
I usually regret in the morning . Pretty sure someone uploaded a video of
screaming to YouTube.
Ahh, yep, here it is.
"Corpse Husband Screaming on Snapchat" , wow, bless you guys
Anyways, thanks for watching, I appreciate everyone who's watching this for sticking
around and have an awesome day