The family of a survivalist who mysteriously vanished in the ‘Valley of Death’ eight years ago are still searching for answers.
Justin Alexander Shetler, from Oregon, went missing in the Parvati Valley in India while on a spiritual trek into the Himalayan Mountains in 2016, carrying only a walking stick he had turned into a flute and a woollen wrap.
While the circumstances of his disappearance point to murder, his chilling final social media post still haunts his loved ones and leaves question marks over his death.
Now, the case is being explored in the Tenderfoot TV podcast Status: Untraced, which is hosted by Liam Luxon, who embarked on a journey to find out what really happened to Justin.
Justin decided to retire at just 32 years old to travel the world indefinitely, announcing the decision on his blog in 2013.
Justin Alexander Shetler, from Oregon, mysteriously vanished in ‘Valley of Death’ 8 years ago and his family are still searching for answers
‘So this week I retired,’ he told followers. ‘And I’m in the process of selling everything I own, save a Royal Enfield motorcycle, my computer, phone, a change of clothes, a passport, toiletries and credit card, which all fit into a backpack smaller than a school bag.’
Appearing on a podcast before his disappearance, Justin explained how he was able to retire at such a young age.
‘In 2009, a friend and I started a technology company,’ he explained. ‘Did anti-counterfeiting, tracking and marketing for luxury goods.
‘And I wasn’t really proud of who I was or what I was doing. I didn’t think it was very cool.
‘None of my heroes are tech entrepreneurs. They’re all adventurers. So the company did well enough that I was able to step back and still have a passive income coming from my ownership position.’
Justin trained in the art of survival at the age of 15 when he left public high school to enroll into an alternative education program called Wilderness Awareness School.
He learned how to build winter-resistant shelters from foliage, observe birds and listen to their calls, and locate predators and food. He even trained with Marines and learned methods to escape and withstand torture.
Justin’s extensive experience in the wilderness as a survivalist is what makes his disappearance stand out from other missing persons cases – as well as the cryptic social media post he shared just days before his disappearance.
In his own words, he wrote: ‘I should return mid-September or so. If I’m not back by then, don’t look for me.’
Justin told friends and family that he’d met Satya Nairyawan Rwad, a Baba, which means a holy man, who invited him on a trek into the mountains, to a sacred ground. He was last seen on September 3, 2016, when he posed for a snap with hikers.
Justin went missing in the Parvati Valley, in India, while on a spiritual trek into the Himalayan Mountains in 2016. He was carrying nothing more than a walking stick, which he turned into a flute, (pictured) and a woollen wrap
After this somehow Justin and the Baba becamse separated. Satya and a porter, who also joined them on the trip to carry essentials, returned without the 35-year-old, but they never reported him missing.
It wasn’t until Justin’s mother, Susie Reeb, flew to the Parvati to report her son missing that the Baba was detained and interrogated, however he took his own life while in custody.
It was reported that police found the man hanging and tried to resuscitate him without success.
For the podcast, Luxon connected with many of Justin’s loved ones, including friends, family members, wilderness survival trainers and mentors.
Over the past 25 years, according to both official and unofficial reports, at least two dozen foreign tourists have died or disappeared in and around the Parvati Valley, Outside reported.
According to the outlet, it is well-documented to see distraught loved ones post stories of the missing on social media, online message forums and travel boards in hopes anyone with information will come forward. The destination has since garnered the nickname ‘The Valley of Death.’
Since Justin’s disappearance, numerous conspiracy theories have emerged, attempting to explain what happened to him.
Some claimed he was murdered, while others alleged he was a victim of a local mafia. Many also wondered if Justin slipped and fell into the river.
According to Outside Online, there is only one road in and out of the Parvati Valley, which is so narrow that buses swerve with inches to spare as they pass. Some cliffs drop hundreds of feet down to the Parvati River.
Meanwhile, others also insist that there are travellers who simply do not want to be found.
Luxon said: ‘The Parvati Valley is associated with India Syndrome, a pattern in which foreigners, mostly westerners, are mystified by Indian spirituality and culture, and decide to start a whole new life on a whim.
‘They leave behind everything, belongings, friends, family. I read of one case where an Austrian man resurfaced after 12 years.’
Justin’s on and off girlfriend Ashley didn’t believe he would vanish on purpose, saying he would never have intentionally left his family behind.
She said: ‘No, there’s not a chance. He’s dead, he’s not alive. There’s no way, there’s no way. There’s no way that he would have done that to his mother.’
She went on to say he was grappling with a deep-seated trauma from his childhood which he never spoke about.
‘The amount of internal pain and struggle, like nobody should have to feel that way,’ she added.
Jonathan Skeels, a friend of Justin’s, and the man who spearheaded the ground search for him flew out to India to help look for his missing pal.
He said: ‘I told the group that I was working for, “I have to go to India and figure out what’s happened to my mate. I don’t know when I’ll be back”.’
Jonathan met Susie Reeve at Heathrow Airport and together, they embarked on the long flight to New Delhi, where they met with embassy officials and pleaded for help.
Justin was a spiritual trek into the Himalayan Mountains (pictured) in 2016, when he disappeared
While in India, Jonathan managed to find out that the reputation of the Baba Justin had signed up for the trek with was far from what you’d expect of a spiritual leader.
Lenox said: ‘He was a fake holy man. He went to stealing from all the different camps, and, had a serious drug habit.’
Jonathan later paid for a helicopter to scour the vast mountain terrain accompanied by an Indian mountaineer. They were dropped off where the last photograph of Justin was taken and they descended the mountain, scanning on and off the trail for any clues.
‘A couple hours later is when we were leapfrogging each other to vantage points looking down around the river,’ he said. ‘That’s when he spotted his flute. We found a bunch of items.
‘There was like a headband he was wearing, and lighter, and a couple other bits. It was the only point on the trail that’s like knife-edge. And all it would take is someone behind you to come up and just give you that tiny little nudge. Anyone could have pushed him there.’
Just a few days later, the porter Anil Kumar, who was on the spiritual hike with Justin and the Baba, was placed under formal arrest and was held on suspicion of foul play.
However, he was later released without charge.
To this day, Justin’s mother wholeheartedly believes the porter and the Baba murdered her son on the hike.
Speaking about her last phone call with Justin, she said: ‘The last experience he had with Rwad, I didn’t feel good about it. In fact, I felt it was dangerous. It sounds strange, but I just, in my mother’s heart, something was not okay.
‘I felt that he was a nefarious character, in my heart, in my gut. This is a nefarious character.’
Asked if she thought Anil had anything to do with her son’s disappearance, she added: ‘Let’s put it this way. It was a team effort. And I know that later, that the porter helped in the search effort when I left.
‘You know, people that light fires, arsonists, or do crimes often return and observe. He changed his story three or four times, just like the Baba. The Baba changed his story about five or six times.
‘And by the way, he’s left India. Nobody knows where he’s at. They think he went back to Nepal. And Rawat wasn’t Indian after all. He was Nepalese. No, it was a team effort. This I am sure of. That’s all I can say to you. It was both of them.’
Another friend of Justin’s, Tom McElroy, a wilderness survival instructor, wasn’t initially involved in the search, but decided to fly to India midway through October to help in the search of the hiking trail.
He said: ‘We walked down to where they found his flute and I looked up this cliff. Something very clearly heavy went off the cliff because there’s just broken branches all the way down the cliff to where Justin’s stuff was found.
‘There were some branches, two inches in diameter that were snapped in half, going down the cliff and fairly fresh. And it wasn’t like a steep cliff. I never in my life would fall off a cliff like that.
‘And Justin was more agile than I am. Even if you did fall off of that cliff, you’d probably be able to grab something on the way down. It wasn’t that big a deal.’
Tom inspected this location two months after Justin was last seen, therefore he admitted the broken branches could have been the result of an experiment by search teams throwing things down the cliff.
Luxon managed to gain access to Justin’s Google account and found a very worrying online journal which was updated numerous time on the run up to Justin’s disappearance.
In it he talks about suicide, saying he is ‘lonely’ and worries he might be a ‘narcissist’.
One entry read: ‘I think about suicide, not like putting a knife on my wrist and I won’t do it today, but maybe someday. It’s funny, anything can be funny if you make it so. I think about killing myself, I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. I’m lonely, I don’t like myself very much right now and I don’t think anyone else does either.’
Meanwhile some private text messages revealed that Justin was also buying and selling hashish – a psychoactive drug more commonly known as ‘hash’.
Another diary entry read: ‘I am feeling pretty negative about myself. Money seems to be slowly closing tap. I’m smuggling and selling drugs to get by. I’m having all kinds of relationship problems, wanting for amazing and beautiful women to love me, to be their hero, yet not prevent me from travelling alone and loving other women.
‘And I feel slightly jealous and immature when these women find other men. It’s childish. I wonder if all I am doing on this adventure is not letting anyone tell me what to do, but wanted to feel special and unique somehow.’
However when reflecting on his trip to India he said it was ‘about healing’.
A few days before his trek with Baba he wrote in his journal: ‘I might take acid, maybe half a dose. I’m nervous that he might be able to do black magic stuff, but this feels like the perfect situation for something spiritual maybe.’
Lenox ended up flying to India to see if he could find out any more information while on the ground and he managed to get hold of the police interrogation tape of the porter.
In the tape the porter claimed that there were ‘five to six people’ on the trek with them, saying there was also a man and a woman who embarked on the hike that day, but law enforcement have never interviewed them.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System reported that there was no indication that Justin had returned to the United States. It noted that the Lake Oswego Police Department is handling the case.
