In 2013, A college sophomore returns to school after spending the entire summer with his parents and within two weeks he disappears without a trace. According to his roommate and his girlfriend, his behavior had significantly changed and they were both worried about him. Bryce had been mixing alcohol with an ADHD medicine (that was not prescribed to him.) After giving some of his possessions to his roommate and breaking up with his girlfriend, he was driving home to CA to where his parents live. Pretty soon his parents get a phone call from their insurance company stating that the car that Bryce is driving has just requested road side assistance. His parents check their credit card records and find that the card was used in a small town 3 hours away from them called Buttonwillow. His mom gets a hold of the company that serviced the car and they stated that the car had run out of gas and they had filled it up enough so the driver could get to a station. Bryces mom had asked about the state of the driver and they said he seemed coherent and fine. They even volunteered to go back to where the car was located to see if it was still there. Karen, Bryces mom, asked if they could do that that would be great. Carlos, the service man, arrives and calls Karen and says that the car is still there and Bryce is still in it. She asks if she could speak with him since Bryce had been refusing her calls. Bryce gets on the phone and tells his mom he is fine he just ran out of gas is all. She tells him to go fill up and drive home. He agrees and everyone goes on their way. Bryce was only 3 hours away from home and his parents were expecting him around 3:00 PM. 3:00 PM comes and goes. 5:30 PM. Nothing. He is still not answering his phone.
Karen calls the police and they end up finding Bryce sitting in his car only 8 miles away from where the car was serviced. The police tell Bryce to call his mom and he is very reluctant to do so but eventually he does. His mom asks him what he’s doing and he doesn’t have any sort of real answer for her. That he is just blowing off steam. She tells him he needs to come home asap. After speaking with the cop, who did a field sobriety and searched his car, they inform Karen that Bryce seems totally fine. He is answering all of their questions, he’s alert, coherent. Nothing out of the ordinary. So the cop leaves. Carlos, the service man, after his shift returns a missed call from Karen. She tells him how the cops found Bryce only 8 miles away when he should’ve been on the highway heading home. Carlos offered to go check on the new location and see if he was still there. He was. Bryce has now been in the town of Buttonwillow for nearly 13 hours just sitting in his car. Eventually Bryce is convinced to start driving home and Carlos follows him for up to 30 mins until he sees Bryce get on the freeway. After that Carlos calls Karen to say Bryce is on the freeway heading home. While he’s driving on the freeway he is in contact with his parents a few times and eventually he tells them he is going to pull over because he is too tired to drive, mind you it is now 2:30 AM. They agree and he pulls over on the next exit.
Bryce pulls over near a cell tower where there looks to be a large body of water right in front of him. It’s deceiving though because once you go forward there is some brush and then a 25ft drop to a street below before you get to the water. Bryce drives forward towards the water and drives off the cliff. From the car tracks in the brush, he had accelerated his car. There was no sign of him braking so he intentionally is driving, fast, towards this body of water. Eventually his car crashed to the road below first landing on the front bumper and falling on its side. The back passenger window was broken out from the inside and all of the belongings were left in the car. His laptop, his phone, wallet, clothes. Everything. Two spots of blood were located in the car that were Bryces blood but that’s it.
Two bloodhounds tracked his scent on a route that was away from street view to a truck stop and there is where his scent ends. And that’s it. Bryce has vanished.
I should mention that when Bryce broke up with his girlfriend, Kim, Kim had called Karen to say that she took Bryces keys away from him because he didn’t seem like himself and knew he had drugs and alcohol in him and didn’t trust him to drive. Karen spoke to Bryce and offered to fly to him so she can be with him and help him get home. He told her to not book a flight, he was okay, and that he had a lot to talk to her about. Karen told Kim that Bryce seemed okay and to give him his keys.
People now wonder what Bryce had to tell his mom. He had only been back at school for 2 weeks (actually in class for 4 days) and what could have happened in those two weeks. Was he stalling in Buttonville so he didn’t have to confront whatever he had to tell her? Did he have so much alcohol and the ADHD drug in him that he had a psychotic episode and drove off the cliff with intentions on killing himself? Did the car accident give him a concussion to the point where he doesn’t remember who he is?
What happened to Bryce Laspisa?
I would guess that he hit the truckstop and grabbed a ride, and from there who can even guess. A friendly trucker could have him 5 states away in 2 or 3 days and then into the wind. Considering his propensity for drug use he might well have ended up turning to them on the street and meeting a bad end, either as a john doe in a morgue or disappeared by some killer or misadventure.
Alot of times the issues that someone in a bad mental state face aren’t so big a deal to outsiders but are huge to them in the moment. So i doubt there was anything momentous (to us) going on in his life, but to him it was some huge problem.
Probably the failed suicide attempt really had a big emotional impact on him. I know i’d consider it all but a message from god if it happened to me like that.
I hope they find him, and frankly he could well be alive.