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The Manhunt for Pilot Mike Bullinger · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: July twelfth, twenty seventeen. I want you to close your
0:03
Speaker 1: eyes for a second and just picture the deep royd
0:07
Speaker 1: woods of the Pacific Creek Campground.
0:09
Speaker 2: Oh, up in Jackson, Wyoming, press.
0:10
Speaker 1: Exactly up in Jackson Hole. It is high summer, so
0:13
Speaker 1: the air is just thick, you know, it's baking in
0:15
Speaker 1: that afternoon heat, right, and it's carrying that sharp, clean
0:19
Speaker 1: scent of dry pine needles. But beneath all that tranquility,
0:23
Speaker 1: if you really listen, there's this oppressive silence.
0:27
Speaker 2: Because you are out there. I mean, this is the
0:29
Speaker 2: deep wilderness.
0:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, actual grizzly bear country. Like if you scream out here,
0:33
Speaker 1: the trees are the only things listening.
0:35
Speaker 2: It's the kind of isolation that you know, it looks
0:37
Speaker 2: breath taking on a postcard, but it's actually deeply unnerving
0:41
Speaker 2: to physically stand in. Yeah, you are entirely at the
0:44
Speaker 2: mercy of nature out there.
0:45
Speaker 1: You really are. And standing right in the middle of
0:47
Speaker 1: it is a seventeen year old girl named Gina Okay,
0:50
Speaker 1: and she's swinging a weed whacker, just doing some routine
0:53
Speaker 1: maintenance for her dad's campground company. So the buzzing of
0:56
Speaker 1: that engine is literally the only sound.
0:58
Speaker 2: For miles, just cutting through the silence.
1:01
Speaker 1: Exactly, but her eyes keep drifting. She's fixated on Campsite
1:06
Speaker 1: number four because sitting right there in the dirt is
1:08
Speaker 1: a white Ford focus just completely out of place, totally,
1:12
Speaker 1: and it's abandoned. There is this thick, opaque layer of
1:15
Speaker 1: dust coating the windshield, basically telling you this car hasn't
1:19
Speaker 1: moved in weeks.
1:20
Speaker 2: And I mean a car sitting idle for that long
1:22
Speaker 2: in a remote wilderness area that instantly sets off alarm
1:26
Speaker 2: bills for locals.
1:26
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, you.
1:28
Speaker 2: Immediately assumed the worst, like maybe a hiker got turned around,
1:31
Speaker 2: twisted an ankle, or you know, encountered a hungry bear
1:35
Speaker 2: waking up from hibernation.
1:36
Speaker 1: Right, and Gina feels that exact same dread creeping in,
1:40
Speaker 1: so she turns off the weed whacker. She walks over
1:42
Speaker 1: to the car, and that heavy silence just rushes back in.
1:46
Speaker 2: That's terrifying.
1:47
Speaker 1: She cuts her hands against the dusty glass and she
1:50
Speaker 1: peers inside, bracing herself. Right, but there's no sign of
1:53
Speaker 1: a struggle, just empty basically, just a blanket, a hat,
1:56
Speaker 1: and a disposable coffee cup. But still she trusts her gut.
2:00
Speaker 1: She pulls out her phone, which by the way, has
2:02
Speaker 1: absolutely zero service out here, and she snaps a photo
2:06
Speaker 1: of the Utah license plate one two nine. Ump.
2:09
Speaker 2: It's such a simple instinctual decision, but that one photo
2:12
Speaker 2: is about to blow a massive nationwide investigation wide open.
2:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, because hours later Gina finally gets home to civilization,
2:21
Speaker 1: she hops on her computer and googles that license play,
2:23
Speaker 1: and instantly her screen is just flooded with these terrifying
2:26
Speaker 1: headlines I can only imagine, like nationwide manhunt underway and
2:31
Speaker 1: triple murder victims identified and suspect last scene driving a
2:36
Speaker 1: white Ford focus.
2:38
Speaker 2: Wow, just sitting right there in her dad's campground.
2:41
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, let's unpack this because today we are doing
2:43
Speaker 1: a deep dive into police files, psychological profiles of family annihilators,
2:48
Speaker 1: and wilderness survival tracking report.
2:50
Speaker 2: There's a lot to get through.
2:51
Speaker 1: It is, but we're trying to answer one terrifying question.
2:55
Speaker 1: How does a sixty year old pilot slaughter his entire family,
2:58
Speaker 1: walk into the woods and completely vamp.
3:00
Speaker 2: It's honestly a labyrinth of a case. Yeah, and to
3:03
Speaker 2: really understand how that white Ford focus ended up collecting
3:06
Speaker 2: dust in the wyoming wilderness. We have to rewind the clock.
3:09
Speaker 1: We gotta go back, right.
3:10
Speaker 2: We need to take you back three weeks and about
3:12
Speaker 2: seven hours west to a quiet, seemingly idyllic suburban property
3:18
Speaker 2: in Caldwell, Idaho, Okay.
3:19
Speaker 1: So June eighteenth, twenty seventeen. Over the course of two days,
3:23
Speaker 1: the tension at this Idaho property is just slowly, unbearably escalating.
3:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're.
3:29
Speaker 1: Probably wondering, how does a mass murder go completely unnoticed
3:32
Speaker 1: in a suburban neighborhood in the middle of summer.
3:35
Speaker 2: Right with neighbors everywhere exactly.
3:37
Speaker 1: Well, it starts with the welfare checks. First, Mike Bullinger's
3:40
Speaker 1: adult son calls the local sheriff's office. He lives out
3:43
Speaker 1: of state and he just can't reach his dad or
3:45
Speaker 1: his stepmom.
3:46
Speaker 2: So they send someone out.
3:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, a deputy drives out. He sees cars in the
3:50
Speaker 1: driveway and everything looks completely normal from the street, you know,
3:53
Speaker 1: but no one answers the door, and without probable cause
3:56
Speaker 1: of a crime, he leaves, which, to.
3:58
Speaker 2: Be fair, is standard protocell. They can't just bust down.
4:01
Speaker 1: The door exactly. But the very next day a second
4:04
Speaker 1: call comes in, and this time it's from a woman
4:06
Speaker 1: in Utah, Ah. She is terrified because her friend Nadia
4:11
Speaker 1: and Nadia's fourteen year old daughter Peyton have gone totally
4:14
Speaker 1: dark and not He.
4:16
Speaker 2: Was usually super active online, right.
4:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was a prolific Facebook poster documenting every little
4:22
Speaker 1: detail of her life. And now absolute silence.
4:25
Speaker 2: That's a huge red flag.
4:26
Speaker 1: Right, And she tells police that Naughty and Peyton had
4:28
Speaker 1: just moved into that exact same Caldwell, Idaho house with Nadia's.
4:32
Speaker 2: Boyfriend, Mike Bullinger.
4:34
Speaker 1: Yep, Mike Bullinger. So a second deputy is dispatched. He
4:38
Speaker 1: arrives at the property and the house is still quiet,
4:40
Speaker 1: but this time he decides to walk the grounds.
4:43
Speaker 2: Good call.
4:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. He moves past the house, stepping out into the
4:46
Speaker 1: back of this half acre lot, and as he approaches
4:49
Speaker 1: an old wooden shed, the wind shifts.
4:52
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, he.
4:53
Speaker 1: Has hit with a sudden, heavy smell. And if you
4:57
Speaker 1: have ever worked in law enforcement, you know this sent
4:59
Speaker 1: a media.
5:00
Speaker 2: You never forget it.
5:01
Speaker 1: Never. It's the sweet, sickening odor of human decomposition.
5:05
Speaker 2: He opens the door to that shed and what he
5:08
Speaker 2: finds inside is just a scene of unimmeasurable calculated horror.
5:12
Speaker 1: It's awful. Three heavily decomposed bodies, just stacked together.
5:16
Speaker 2: Covered in hay, right, yes, covered.
5:18
Speaker 1: In hay, deliberately hiding them from view and masking the scent.
5:22
Speaker 1: And each one has been shot squarely in the head.
5:25
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
5:26
Speaker 1: And the cruelty didn't stop with the humans. The family
5:29
Speaker 1: dogs were executed, just left to rot, likely just to
5:32
Speaker 1: silence their barking so neighbors wouldn't complain.
5:35
Speaker 2: They even found caged pet birds dead inside the main house.
5:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, starve to death.
5:40
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the terrifying juxtaposition of this crime scene.
5:44
Speaker 2: What do you mean, Well, usually when you see a
5:46
Speaker 2: domestic mass murder, there is chaos, you know, there are
5:51
Speaker 2: signs of a frantic struggle, a trail of blood, a
5:53
Speaker 2: dropped weapon, maybe a suicide note.
5:56
Speaker 3: Right, like an explosion of emotion exactly, it's a crime
5:59
Speaker 3: of exploding passion. But here you have this intensely brutal,
6:03
Speaker 3: intimate mass murder. But it's executed with chilling, methodical precision. Yeah,
6:09
Speaker 3: no note, no note, no murder weapon left behind, no
6:11
Speaker 3: frantic disarray at all. It is a sterile, silent aftermath.
6:15
Speaker 1: It's like watching a dark magic trick where the magician
6:18
Speaker 1: makes himself disappear but leaves the assistance trapped in the box.
6:21
Speaker 2: You know, that's a great way to put it.
6:23
Speaker 1: He leaves the victims behind to be found, completely discarding them.
6:27
Speaker 1: But the husband, Mike has entirely erased his own physical
6:31
Speaker 1: presence from the property. He didn't just leave, he evaporated.
6:35
Speaker 2: He did. But that shed didn't just hold bodies, it
6:38
Speaker 2: held the explosive fatal collision of Mike Bollinger's two separate lives.
6:44
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, let's talk about that, because you're probably listening
6:46
Speaker 1: to this thinking how does a person pull off a
6:49
Speaker 1: double life?
6:50
Speaker 2: It takes a staggering amount of lying, so much lying,
6:54
Speaker 2: And let's look at his deception, because this guy look
6:56
Speaker 2: like everybody's grandpa.
6:57
Speaker 1: He was six feet tall, two hundred and forty pounds, soft.
6:59
Speaker 2: Gray hair, completely unassuming.
7:01
Speaker 1: Totally in Ogden, Utah. Mike had been with fifty six
7:04
Speaker 1: year old Cheryl Baker for a decade. They had been
7:07
Speaker 1: married for five years.
7:08
Speaker 2: And they bought this beautiful Caldwell, Idaho house together.
7:11
Speaker 1: Right right, supposedly for their quote unquote retirement.
7:14
Speaker 2: But that was just the narrative he sold Cheryl the reality.
7:18
Speaker 3: Was vastly different, insanely different.
7:20
Speaker 2: Without Cheryl knowing at all, Mike had a secret girlfriend
7:24
Speaker 2: of two years, forty seven year old Nadia Medley, and
7:28
Speaker 2: Mike moved Nadia and her fourteen year old daughter Peyton
7:33
Speaker 2: into that Idaho.
7:34
Speaker 1: House, into the retirement house.
7:35
Speaker 2: Yes, Peyton even called him dad. He was literally playing
7:39
Speaker 2: house with a completely different family.
7:41
Speaker 1: It's like running two separate operating systems on the exact
7:43
Speaker 1: same computer. Eventually the hard drive is going to crash
7:46
Speaker 1: and crash it did big time. Around June eighth or ninth,
7:51
Speaker 1: Cheryl Baker showed up in Idaho unannounced.
7:54
Speaker 2: Do they know why she went early?
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Speaker 1: Her family thinks she was suspicious, like she skipped a
7:59
Speaker 1: religious retreat just to finally see what her husband was
8:02
Speaker 1: really doing up there. She pulls into the driveway and
8:05
Speaker 1: the walls instantly cave.
8:06
Speaker 2: In, the lies unravel in real time.
8:09
Speaker 3: Exactly.
8:10
Speaker 2: From a forensic psychology standpoint, this moment of collision is crucial, like,
8:14
Speaker 2: how does a seemingly normal man resort to slaughtering everyone involved? Right?
8:18
Speaker 1: Why not just get a divorce?
8:19
Speaker 2: Well? Bullinger was raised in a very strict religious household,
8:23
Speaker 2: and individuals with that background, coupled with a history of
8:26
Speaker 2: profound deception, often develop an insecure attachment style and massive
8:31
Speaker 2: cognitive dissonance. They become highly, sometimes violently reactive to pull
8:37
Speaker 2: a humiliation.
8:38
Speaker 1: So the shame is the trigger exactly.
8:40
Speaker 2: Rather than face the shame of his two worlds colliding,
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Speaker 2: his total lack of empathy provided a terrifyingly violent, quote
8:47
Speaker 2: unquote logical solution.
8:49
Speaker 1: He just eliminates the problem.
8:51
Speaker 2: He mirrors the infamous family annihilator John List, who murdered
8:55
Speaker 2: his entire family back in nineteen seventy one simply to
8:58
Speaker 2: avoid the social shame of financial ruin.
9:00
Speaker 1: Oh I remember that case.
9:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, to these men, erasing the family is preferable to
9:05
Speaker 2: facing their judgment.
9:06
Speaker 1: I hear that, and I understand the psychology of that,
9:09
Speaker 1: you know, panicked reaction to save face. But I have
9:12
Speaker 1: to push back on the theory that this was a
9:14
Speaker 1: spontaneous snap. Really why because there is a deeply chilling
9:18
Speaker 1: detail that suggests this was highly calculated. Right before this
9:21
Speaker 1: moved to Idaho, Mike put massive pressure on Cheryl to
9:24
Speaker 1: put his name on the deed to her house in Utah.
9:27
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I didn't realize the timing on.
9:29
Speaker 1: That Yeah, he was aggressively trying to secure financial assets
9:32
Speaker 1: before she went to Idaho. So you have to wonder
9:35
Speaker 1: was this collision actually an accident or was Mike quietly
9:39
Speaker 1: plotting to eliminate these women all along so he could
9:41
Speaker 1: cash out.
9:42
Speaker 2: That is a haunting question, and honestly, when you analyze
9:46
Speaker 2: his actions immediately following the murders, the argument for cold,
9:51
Speaker 2: calculated premeditation only grows stronger.
9:54
Speaker 1: Definitely, yeah, because whether it was panic or a plotted execution,
9:58
Speaker 1: his immediate getaway was ice cold.
10:00
Speaker 2: Completely.
10:01
Speaker 1: Let me walk you through the timeline of a ghost.
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Speaker 1: It is June teenth. Just hours after executing three people,
10:07
Speaker 1: stacking their bodies in a shed and shooting their pets,
10:10
Speaker 1: Mike walks into a local diner called the Griddle a diner, yes,
10:13
Speaker 1: He sits down all alone and eats a plate of
10:16
Speaker 1: eggs and sausage.
10:17
Speaker 2: The psychological mechanism required to compartmentalize a slaughter and then
10:21
Speaker 2: sit down for a casual breakfast is staggering.
10:24
Speaker 1: It's hard to even wrap your head around.
10:26
Speaker 2: It requires a complete severing of the emotional sell from
10:29
Speaker 2: the physical reality.
10:30
Speaker 1: And it gets colder. After breakfast. He gets into his
10:33
Speaker 1: pickup truck and drives four and a half hours back
10:36
Speaker 1: to his house in Ogden, Utah, Okay. He leaves his
10:38
Speaker 1: truck there, he gets on a bicycle. He rides that
10:42
Speaker 1: bicycle to a local dealership where Cheryl's white Ford Focus
10:45
Speaker 1: is being serviced, and he steals it.
10:47
Speaker 2: Wow.
10:48
Speaker 1: Then a deeply sinister text is sent from Cheryl's phone
10:51
Speaker 1: to one of her friends. It says, take care of
10:54
Speaker 1: my dogs. I don't know if I'm coming back.
10:56
Speaker 2: See this is pure manipulation, total mysterytion. He is by
11:00
Speaker 2: time he knows the decomposition process will eventually alert the neighbors.
11:05
Speaker 2: By switching vehicles from his truck to a bike to
11:08
Speaker 2: his dead wife's car and sending that text, he is
11:11
Speaker 2: actively laying down a smoke screen.
11:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wants police looking for Cheryl, not him exactly,
11:17
Speaker 1: which brings us back to Wyoming, to that dusty white
11:19
Speaker 1: Ford Focus sitting at Campsite four. When the police finally
11:22
Speaker 1: arrive and pop the trunk of that car, they find
11:24
Speaker 1: an inventory that tells a terrifying story.
11:26
Speaker 2: Survival gear right, yeah, packed.
11:28
Speaker 1: For pure long term survival, a tent, a sleeping bag,
11:31
Speaker 1: a heavy tarp, water, a utility tool.
11:34
Speaker 2: But the survival gear wasn't even the most important part.
11:37
Speaker 2: That trunk contained his entire life, his laptop, his IDs,
11:41
Speaker 2: his wallet, thirty six hundred dollars in cash, and a
11:44
Speaker 2: fully loaded point three to five seven revolver.
11:47
Speaker 1: And here are the most chilling details inside that Trenk
11:51
Speaker 1: plus found all three murdered victims.
11:54
Speaker 2: Smartphones just piled in there.
11:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, they found Mike's own smartphone. They found both Cheryl
12:00
Speaker 1: and Naughtius purses, and tucked away under all the gear,
12:04
Speaker 1: they found an empty letter holster designed for a very
12:07
Speaker 1: large revolver.
12:08
Speaker 2: Not the point thirty five to seven they found in
12:09
Speaker 2: the trunk.
12:10
Speaker 1: No, an empty holster. So what does this all mean?
12:12
Speaker 2: It means he was severing every single tie to the
12:15
Speaker 2: modern world. He knew the phones could be tracked via
12:18
Speaker 2: GPS and cell tower pings, so he ditched them exactly.
12:21
Speaker 1: That trunk wasn't just a getaway bag, It was a
12:23
Speaker 1: tomb for his old life. Absolutely, he stripped these women
12:27
Speaker 1: of their identities, their money, and their connection to the
12:29
Speaker 1: outside world. He literally buried their digital footprints in the
12:32
Speaker 1: trunk of a car to fund a ghost like disappearance, and.
12:36
Speaker 2: Armed with whatever large revolver used to occupy that empty holster.
12:40
Speaker 2: Mike Bollinger walked away from that car and into.
12:43
Speaker 1: The thoroughfare, which is brutal terrain.
12:45
Speaker 2: It's the most remote, unforgiving wilderness in the lower forty
12:49
Speaker 2: eight States.
12:49
Speaker 1: So let's put you on the trail. It is July first.
12:53
Speaker 1: A local district ranger's wife and her teenage kids are
12:56
Speaker 1: hiking the Pacific Creek Trail.
12:58
Speaker 2: Just the normal family hike.
13:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the trail climbs fast up to seven thousand feet,
13:03
Speaker 1: where summer turns back into winter and thick snow still
13:07
Speaker 1: covers the ground.
13:07
Speaker 2: Right, it gets cold up there, very cold.
13:10
Speaker 1: Up ahead, they see a man. He has gray hair,
13:13
Speaker 1: a baseball cap and jeans, but he is filthy like.
13:17
Speaker 1: He looks like he has been living in the dirt
13:19
Speaker 1: for weeks. No gear, none, he isn't carrying a pack,
13:22
Speaker 1: no water. As the mother and kids pass him, the
13:25
Speaker 1: mother says hello. The man sharply turns his face away
13:28
Speaker 1: and he refuses to speak.
13:30
Speaker 2: Which is super weird for hikers. Usually everyone says high
13:32
Speaker 2: on the trail.
13:33
Speaker 1: Right, and when she sees the news broadcasts weeks later,
13:36
Speaker 1: she is certain. She tells police that the dirty, silent
13:39
Speaker 1: man on the snowy trail was Mike Bullinger?
13:41
Speaker 2: And then the mountain just keeps its secrets.
13:43
Speaker 1: Right yep, for a whole year until the summer of
13:46
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen.
13:47
Speaker 2: Okay, what happened?
13:48
Speaker 1: A backpacker is hiking along the creek in that exact
13:50
Speaker 1: same area, and the light catches something shiny under a
13:54
Speaker 1: log submerged in the freezing water.
13:57
Speaker 2: Oh, a gun.
13:58
Speaker 1: He digs it out. It is a stainless steel, fully
14:01
Speaker 1: loaded Ruger point three to five seven revolver. He turns
14:05
Speaker 1: it into the authorities and guess what, well mean?
14:07
Speaker 2: Guess it fits the empty leather holster from the trunk
14:11
Speaker 2: of the ford. Focus.
14:12
Speaker 1: It perfectly fits the holster.
14:13
Speaker 2: See this is where the narrative fractures and where the
14:16
Speaker 2: investigation hits a wall of just bizarre circumstances.
14:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets wild here.
14:21
Speaker 2: This raises an important question. In the Mountain West, large
14:24
Speaker 2: revolvers like a point three to five seven are commonly
14:27
Speaker 2: known as bear guns, carried specifically for grizzly protection.
14:30
Speaker 1: Right.
14:31
Speaker 2: Did Bullinger drop this gun in a frantic, terrifying height
14:34
Speaker 2: through bear country or was it a deliberate plant like
14:37
Speaker 2: a shiny bread crumb? Left? Behind in the creek to
14:39
Speaker 2: make authorities believe he died out there in the woods.
14:42
Speaker 1: Wait, I'm stuck on something here. If he is so
14:44
Speaker 1: calculated that he's stealing his dead wife's car to lay
14:47
Speaker 1: a smoke screen, why on earth would he leave a
14:51
Speaker 1: registered gun in the creek that could be traced right
14:53
Speaker 1: back to him.
14:54
Speaker 2: That is the genius of it. The trace on that
14:57
Speaker 2: gun is mine bending.
14:58
Speaker 1: Oh so.
15:00
Speaker 2: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives runs a
15:04
Speaker 2: gun trace. They don't just punch it into a magic computer.
15:07
Speaker 1: Right, It's not like the movies.
15:08
Speaker 2: Exactly. They have to call the manufacturer, trace it to
15:11
Speaker 2: the wholesaler, then the original dealer, and physically look through
15:15
Speaker 2: old paper ledger books.
15:17
Speaker 3: Ugh.
15:17
Speaker 1: What a nightmare.
15:18
Speaker 2: And when they finally ran the serial number, they hit
15:21
Speaker 2: a dead end. It didn't belong to Mike Bolinger at all.
15:24
Speaker 1: Wait really, really, it.
15:26
Speaker 2: Traced back to an older man living in Utah who
15:28
Speaker 2: sold it privately for cash twenty years ago. There was
15:31
Speaker 2: absolutely no paper trail connecting to Mike.
15:34
Speaker 1: So it is a phantom gun.
15:35
Speaker 2: Exactly, a phantom gun that could have held the key
15:38
Speaker 2: to the entire case. Like were Mike's fingerprints on it
15:42
Speaker 2: was their microscopic biological material in the barrel, suggesting it
15:45
Speaker 2: was used in the Idaho murders. We will never know.
15:48
Speaker 1: We will never know because I am still an utter
15:51
Speaker 1: disbelief about what happens next. The police log this critical
15:57
Speaker 1: piece of evidence, right, yes, and then in twenty two,
16:00
Speaker 1: for reasons that remain entirely unexplained, police evidence technicians mysteriously
16:05
Speaker 1: destroyed the gun Canfury. They literally melted it down.
16:09
Speaker 2: It does a catastrophic failure of the justice system. I mean,
16:12
Speaker 2: you have to understand how chaotic police evidence rooms can
16:15
Speaker 2: be sure things are mislabeled, statute of limitations are miscalculated,
16:19
Speaker 2: routine purges happen, But destroying a potential murder weapon in
16:23
Speaker 2: an active, high profile manhunt, that is a devastating loss
16:27
Speaker 2: of evidence uge laws. And if it was Bullinger's gun
16:31
Speaker 2: and it was found fully loaded as reported, it strongly
16:34
Speaker 2: suggests he didn't use it to take his own life.
16:36
Speaker 1: Right, which plays perfectly into the hands of a fugitive
16:39
Speaker 1: who seems to be manipulating the entire investigation from the shadows.
16:42
Speaker 1: You destroy the gun, you destroy the answers.
16:44
Speaker 2: Which leads investigators with two wildly competing theories.
16:48
Speaker 1: Did nature take its course or did a master manipulator
16:50
Speaker 1: launch a third life.
16:51
Speaker 2: The first theory is that the wilderness claimed him. Yeah,
16:54
Speaker 2: authorities didn't just casually look around out there. They launched
16:58
Speaker 2: a massive search effort.
16:59
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, huge.
17:00
Speaker 2: We're talking highly trained canine units sniffing for cadaverreen helicopters
17:05
Speaker 2: equipped with infrared scanners picking out heat signatures, rangers on
17:09
Speaker 2: horseback scouring the remote cabins.
17:12
Speaker 1: If he died by suicide or exposure or a grizzly attack,
17:17
Speaker 1: where is the body? They searched a four mile radius
17:21
Speaker 1: of that trail.
17:22
Speaker 2: It's a huge area.
17:23
Speaker 1: But still right, And you're probably wondering, well, couldn't grizzly
17:25
Speaker 1: just eat him? Sure, but bears are messy scavengers. Even
17:30
Speaker 1: if a hungry post hibernation grizzly got to him and
17:32
Speaker 1: scattered his remains, searchers would find something.
17:35
Speaker 2: Right, a built buckle, something.
17:37
Speaker 1: A scrap of torn denim, a large femur bone, a boot.
17:40
Speaker 1: Bears don't eat boots. But they found absolutely zero physical
17:45
Speaker 1: trace of a human body, which.
17:46
Speaker 2: Forces us to look at the second theory, the escape master.
17:49
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting because Mike Bullinger wasn't
17:52
Speaker 1: just some grandpa going for a hike. He is a
17:55
Speaker 1: highly trained backcountry wilderness guide, right.
17:58
Speaker 2: He knows the outdoors.
17:59
Speaker 1: He is a career pilot who flew private planes for
18:03
Speaker 1: ultra wealthy, well connected clients. He knew how to move
18:07
Speaker 1: off the grid and cross borders.
18:09
Speaker 2: And didn't they find out he had other vehicles?
18:12
Speaker 1: Yes, during the investigation, police uncovered that he had an unregistered,
18:16
Speaker 1: completely unknown second motorcycle wow. And on top of that,
18:20
Speaker 1: he was registers to attend a massive biker rally in Billings, Montana,
18:24
Speaker 1: taking place just days after he had been in the
18:26
Speaker 1: car in Wyoming.
18:27
Speaker 2: And Billings that's where he grew up exactly.
18:29
Speaker 1: He knows the back roads, he knows the terrain.
18:32
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, to the
18:34
Speaker 2: deep seated psychology of this man, the escape theory holds
18:38
Speaker 2: heavy weight.
18:38
Speaker 1: It makes a lot of sense.
18:40
Speaker 2: Think about the cognitive dissonance we discussed earlier. A man
18:43
Speaker 2: arrogant enough to believe he can run two entirely separate
18:45
Speaker 2: families for years. Yeah, a man callous enough to murder
18:49
Speaker 2: a fourteen year old girl in a shed just to
18:51
Speaker 2: save face. That man is likely far too egotistical, far
18:54
Speaker 2: too narcissistic to take his own life shivering alone in
18:58
Speaker 2: the freezing woods.
18:59
Speaker 1: He didn't want to die, He wanted to start over.
19:01
Speaker 1: He shed his old life in that trunk, and he
19:04
Speaker 1: had the elite skills to slip right through the net.
19:07
Speaker 2: And if he is out there living a third life,
19:10
Speaker 2: it just leaves a gaping open wound for the families
19:14
Speaker 2: left behind, It really does.
19:16
Speaker 1: We absolutely have to bring this back to the human toll.
19:18
Speaker 1: This isn't just a puzzle to be solved. It's a
19:20
Speaker 1: profound tragedy. Three innocent lives were brutally cut short. Yeah,
19:26
Speaker 1: Cheryl Baker was a beloved Buddhist teacher. She loved rafting,
19:29
Speaker 1: she loved her dogs, She made beautiful quilts for her friends.
19:33
Speaker 2: And Nadiamedley was an optimistic widow trying to build a
19:36
Speaker 2: new life, posting proudly about her new blended family on Facebook.
19:39
Speaker 1: And Peyton. Peyton was just fourteen years old, so young,
19:42
Speaker 1: just a typical teenager who loved animals, played volleyball, and
19:46
Speaker 1: tragically looked up to her murderer enough to call him dad.
19:50
Speaker 2: They deserve so much more. They were just collateral damage
19:53
Speaker 2: in a man's desperate, violent attempt to preserve a fragile illusion.
19:57
Speaker 1: I want to leave you with the thought that is
19:58
Speaker 1: frankly hard to shake. We started this deep dive looking
20:02
Speaker 1: through a dusty windshield, trying to see what was hidden
20:05
Speaker 1: inside an abandoned car, right, But the real terrifying mystery
20:10
Speaker 1: isn't what was in the car, or even where Mike
20:12
Speaker 1: Belinger is today. It's the chilling reality of human compartmentalization.
20:17
Speaker 2: It really is.
20:18
Speaker 1: If a man can bruly execute three women who loved
20:21
Speaker 1: and trusted him, walk out of a shed, sit down
20:23
Speaker 1: in a diner for a plate of eggs and sausage,
20:25
Speaker 1: and completely erase his existence, how well do we ever
20:29
Speaker 1: really know the people we share our lives with. What
20:32
Speaker 1: if the person's sitting next to you right now, the
20:34
Speaker 1: person who looks like everybody's grandpa, is just wearing a
20:37
Speaker 1: mask that hasn't slipped yet,