Podcast appearances and mentions of will cierzan

Update on the Will Cierzan case from 2017 and the indictment of his nephew Daniel Cierzan for his murder. Will's case has been previously covered in Episodes #4, 120, 164 and other murdertizer updates. 

Over the course of these first three-and-a-half seasons of this podcast, Melissa has been presented with a wide array of missing persons cases from Tip-Sters from around the world.  Melissa has followed up, done her research, and presented many of them as episodes.  The inspiration for “Just The Tip-Sters” itself was inspired by Melissa's deep devotion to solving the 2017 disappearance of Will Cierzan – an ongoing mission that could be culminating soon with the trial of Will's nephew Daniel.  But hovering over every such case are questions – about the nature of the case itself – and how to actually help when help is needed.  What makes one missing persons case more compelling or worthy of attention than another?  How can one tell if a reported vanishing is evidence of wrongdoing or someone walking away from their life or a hoax?  And if one is motivated to help the family and friends of a missing person, how does one do so without getting in the way or actually hindering the investigation?  And what, in fact, are one's motivations to help in the first place?  In this episode Melissa touches on all of the above by focusing on three recent missing persons cases – two of which are now closed (with the missing persons in question now known to be alive and well) and one of which is still open (with the missing person still missing and actively being sought)…  Dane Elkins, a 23-time world champion professional racquetball player, disappeared in mid-December 2020 after visiting friends in Northern California.  His brand-new car – with four flat tires and his wallet and cell phone inside – was found abandoned near a rural exit off Interstate 5 between Bakersfield and Los Angeles.  All indications are that the then-21 year-old had become delusional and paranoid for reasons that are still unclear.  His family believes he has gone “off the grid” and is slowly working his way up to Oregon – and is seeking help from anyone who thinks they've spotted him.  John Stivers is the owner of an RV campground and marina in Jamestown, California in tiny Tuolumne County.  On August 2, 2021 Stivers left his wife and daughter to run some errands and did not return.  His van was found abandoned on a nearby road.  Local residents, friends and family rushed to social media to find him – and started a GoFundMe account that raised nearly $20,000 to help the family conduct the search.  On September 4, 2021, just over one month since his disappearance, the Tuolumne County Sheriff's Office issued a statement that Stivers was located;  that he has been removed from the missing person database; that foul play was not indicated; and that all other information will remain confidential.  As word has spread, outrage by some of the volunteers who helped search for him has grown – many believing that the entire case was a fraud, and that they are owed payback for the time they devoted in the search.  Others – Melissa being one – believe that sometimes people just walk away from their lives – for whatever reason – and that if one volunteers to help find someone before anything else is known, that should be the end of the discussion – that volunteering means letting go of pride or any sense of being “owed.”  Ron Brown, a 62 year-old resident of the small mountain community of Sierra Madre in Southern California, is a part-time golf instructor and longtime server at a well-known high end restaurant in next-door Pasadena.  He went missing on August 9, 2021 after his car was found – engine running – in the parking lot of a Pasadena fast-food restaurant.  Melissa relates her personal investment in getting involved in the search for Brown – the frustration of a day in the field – and the joy she felt when she learned, just after arriving home from the field trip, that Brown had been found alive and well.  All three of these cases demonstrate the varying but equally important considerations that must be taken when getting involved in missing persons cases.  Melissa doesn't hold back on her opinions – and she also offers kudos to those who are helping find the missing – and some helpful hints from her own experience on how to be prepared when going into the field to help search.  During her search for Ron Brown, Melissa discovered the AWARE Foundation – a Virginia-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit made up completely of volunteers dedicated to locating those who have gone missing, wherever their help is needed.  AWARE can be contacted by phone at (540) 357-5135.

One unseasonably cool (as opposed to freezing) late winter morning on March 10, 1997, at a small  travel stop gas station and convenience store right off Interstate 80 in Cozad, a tiny farming community in the heart of Nebraska, a late model Pontiac Grand Am pulled into the parking lot and up to the pumps.  Inside the store, 41 year-old Leah Rowlands was behind the counter on her very first day in her new role as manager – her hard work and happy attitude had earned her that position after just a few months.  The divorced mother of two was finally getting her life back in order after a tough breakup with a new town, a new boyfriend and a future that appeared nothing but bright.  Back at the gas pumps, a large man wearing a hoodie under a leather jacket, sweat pants rolled up to his knees and wearing no shoes got out of the Pontiac, filled the tank and headed into the store.  Once inside he grabbed a canned soft drink out of the cooler, opened it and started drinking from it while he waited for a mother and her young son to complete their transaction at the counter and leave.  He then went up to Leah at the counter, told her to empty the cash register and get down on the floor.  Once she was face down on the floor, he calmly pulled a 9mm semiautomatic handgun from his right pocket, reached over the counter and calmly shot Leah Rowlands to death.  After just three minutes after walking into the store, the killer nonchalantly walked out, carrying his soda, a pack of cigarettes and $150 in cash.  He got back into the Grand Am and drove off.  Never to be seen again.  Right up to this moment, no one knows who the big man in the hoodie is.  There has never been an arrest.  And here's the truly weird and truly awful – and awfully amazing – thing about all of this:  The convenience store was completely wired with surveillance cameras.  The entire event was caught on videotape, from several angles.  The killer stared straight into one of the cameras as he waited for the store to clear out.  His unshielded face – while mildly blurry – is clearly visible on the footage from behind the counter, where the murder is recorded in horrifying detail.  And no one – no one – has ever identified him.  A California license plate on the rear of the Grand Am is illegible.  And even though authorities have searched the for that car, it's never been found.  The calmness of the killer's demeanor – his seeming complete lack of concern that his face, his body features, his clothing were being recorded – makes the entire episode not just tragic – but haunting…to Leah's family and loved ones and especially to law enforcement.  Every available agency, from local police to state authorities to the FBI, continues to work on this case – but until that one person who recognizes her killer comes forward, the case is at a standstill.  Take a chilling ride with Melissa back to that Nebraska morning 24 years ago and imagine that you or someone you know can be the one link to bring justice to Leah Rowlands.  ALSO - this week Melissa has an update on the Will Cierzan case - a new development that could finally bring justice to Will's family.

This Thanksgiving week Melissa updates a couple of unsolved missing person cases – one we’ve not yet covered but which has been covered extensively and one we’ve covered extensively and almost no one else has…and as with all unsolved cases, it’s a mixed bag.  The first update has to do with the 2015 disappearance of Crystal Rogers, the then 35 year-old mother of five from Bardstown Kentucky who went missing during the Independence Day holiday.  The last person to see Crystal was her live-in boyfriend, Brooks Houck, who claims that Crystal was playing video games on her phone when he went to bed on the evening of July 2, 2015, only to find Crystal and her car gone the next morning.  Two days later, Crystal’s Chevrolet was found with a flat tire, abandoned off the side of the Bluegrass Parkway – its keys in the ignition and her purse and phone left behind.  The case has been analyzed in detail by several podcasts, most notably the serial Bardstown.  In this episode of JUST THE TIP-STERS, Melissa updates the Rogers case and the recent news stories regarding remains found in July 2020 near where Crystal’s car was found, and the FBI investigation into those remains.  The other update concerns the case that most significantly caused Melissa to start this podcast – the 2017 disappearance of Will Cierzan here in Melissa’s current home town of Santa Clarita, California.  Melissa has covered the case and its progress in Episodes 4, 64, 120 and 149.  Will’s wife Linda Cierzan came home from work on the evening of January 26, 2017 to find the chicken Will had made for dinner out of the oven; his car keys, cell phone and wallet on the kitchen counter – and Will gone.  In a case so frustrating as to be unbelievable, the police investigation took more than three-and-a-half years to arrest the only obvious suspect in the case, Will’s nephew Daniel.   Daniel had admitted to being at his uncle’s house early in the day to watch a golf tournament on TV, but claimed to have left for home by 1:30 pm (a claim backed by Daniel’s dad – Will’s brother Chuck Cierzan.  Father and son were both proven to be lying when a neighbor’s time-stamped security camera caught Daniel leaving Will’s house, then backing his SUV into Will’s driveway right around 5 pm, loading something into the back of the vehicle and then driving off in the opposite direction from his home.  Both Daniel and Chuck have been under suspicion ever since, but not until August of 2020 did police believe they had enough evidence – and then against only one of the two – Daniel.  Chuck is still a free man.  On this episode’s update of the Will Cierzan case, Melissa describes her attendance at a recent preliminary hearing in Daniel Cierzan’s murder trial, her introduction to the kick-butt Assistant District Attorney who will be prosecuting the case, and the new hope that is floating in the air that we may be closer to a conclusion to this matter and some relief to Linda Cierzan and the rest of Will’s family, who only want to know where he is so he can come home.

One of the very reasons this podcast got started nearly three years ago was that Melissa became involved with her local community in searching for a man who seemingly disappeared into thin air back in 2017.  As far as Linda Cierzan knew, her husband, Will Cierzan was at home making dinner on the evening of January 26, 2017.  But when she entered the house upon returning from work, a chicken was sitting out of the oven,  Will’s personal belongings (including his wallet and keys) were out in the open and Will was nowhere to be found.  Melissa covered this case in Episodes 4, 64 and 120 – the first, second and third anniversaries of Will’s disappearance.  As covered in those episodes, while the search for Will himself is frustrating, the frustration that comes from the fact that the people who are responsible for his disappearance were still free was even more frustrating.  Well some of that frustration has now been dissipated.  On this MURDERTIZER, Melissa breaks the happy news that law enforcement has finally made an arrest – one that has been anticipated for a long time.  There’s still a way to go – and another potential perpetrator still uncharged – but progress seems to be the word of the day in this incredibly sad story.

Weird circumstances surround the disappearance of Will Cierzan- is he possibly still alive somewhere or did he meet foul play?

This is the case that inspired Melissa to start this very podcast.  As she has since the first January of "Just The Tip-Sters," Melissa recaps and updates the "shouldn't-be-a" cold case of Will Cierzan, a regular guy living a simple life with the love of his life in the Southern California suburb of Santa Clarita - whose wife came home from work one early evening in January 2017 to find dinner sitting on the counter, Will's wallet and keys out in the open - and her husband - gone.  Disappeared.  Seemingly without a trace.  Over the next days and months, as his wife Linda and his loved ones fought to keep public attention and law enforcement dedicated to finding him, Will's "disappearance," it quickly became clear, was no disappearance at all - that something sinister happened at the Cierzan home between 5:06 and 5:12 p.m. - six minutes caught on camera that said so much but proved so little  And the two people who were most likely involved almost immediately lawyered up and laid low.  They have yet to be arrested.  But the saddest part of it all is who those people are - family.  Listen in as Melissa details all of the facts known so far, and highlights the most recent efforts of those who have dedicated themselves to bringing solace to a grieving wife and a multitude of friends, loved ones and co-workers whose life this sweet, kind man brought into the world.

Melissa's first MURDERTIZER (an appetizer of murder!) of 2019 catches us up on some important developments in the Will Cierzan and Thomas Brown cases.  PLUS a preview of an upcoming interview with one of the world's top DNA experts - AND a report on Melissa's personal taste test on that Trader Joe's garlic dip she's heard so much about from Tip-Ster Charlotte.  Oh and so very much more!

The very case that first inspired Melissa to host her own podcast - the case of the 2017 disappearance in Santa Clarita, California of Will Cierzan, beloved husband, brother and friend of just about everyone he met.  On the two-year anniversary of his vanishing, Melissa takes another look, determined to keep the case alive until Will is found.  The facts of Cierzan's disappearance (he has not been located to this day) are frustrating, angering - and above all, sad.  In this episode Melissa catches up on the developments of the case in the past 12 months, the maddening slowness of the investigation, the obvious priority shift since the lead detective in the case was assigned to a more glitzy, Hollywood-based investigation and the nagging sense that those responsible for Cierzan's disappearance (and likely demise) may never be brought to justice.  A call to all Tip-Sters to be vigilant, look for clues, keep all ears and eyes open and if you know something, TELL SOMEONE.

Melissa is joined by special guest KARI HEWITT of The Finders, a Southern California band of dedicated volunteers who work with law enforcement and other volunteer organizations to help families of missing persons find their loved ones.  In this episode, Melissa and Kari discuss the strange, sad, maddening case of Will Cierzan, who appeared to have disappeared without a trace in January of 2017 when his wife returned home from work to discover the door unlocked, dinner ready, her husband's keys and wallet still in the house - but no husband.  A fascinating look at a fascinating case and the tough, single-minded searcher determined to solve it.

Elaine Park’s car was found near a Malibu beach 3 days after her family reported the 20-year-old missing following a date with her boyfriend. Her car keys, cell phone and personal items were still inside. Will Cierzan, 58, vanished from the kitchen of his Valencia home after cooking dinner for his wife. Security video does not show him leaving. Nancy Grace & Alan Duke look at these new Los Angeles cases and new info about Maricela Garcia, who vanished while shopping at a Goodwill store.