DeOrr Kunz Jr. /// Part 1 /// 677 | Forensic Files

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[Music] 2023 [Music] [Music] Dior Coons was not quite 3 years old when he vanished there was a short version
telling of this true crime case that someone titled little man lost that was and Still Remains a
perfect title for the start of this True Crime Story Dior Coons was a little boy that
at times carried himself like a man in a tiny little body picture a little boy walking around in cowboy boots much too
big for his little feet even his facial expressions would at times remind you of that of an older
child something in his eyes telling you he was WI eyes for his years People magazine called this story Without a
Trace that would sum up the evidence at the scene nicely but there is more more that has been uncovered in the
investigation and more that will be revealed in our follow-up episodes this week here in the
garage two-year-old Dior Coons disappeared on a camping trip in the remote Idaho mountains
well that was the story we were told that was the story delivered to 911 emergency service Personnel back in
2015 from Little dior's Mom and Dad they both told the same story they were out there camping with a small
group and sometime after breakfast Dior went missing but there were holes in their story and questions that they
could not seem to provide clear answers to the suspicion was heavy but things weren't so clear there were in fact two
other people on that trip two others up there that day we first covered this case back in
2019 in episodes 305 and 306 at that time the facts of the case were as follows Dior was missing from limh high
County Idaho it was reported to law enforcement that Dior was last seen on Friday July
10th 2015 on that day Dior J Coons Jr just 2 years old was with his parents Jessica
Mitchell and vernal Dior Coons senior at the time the two were engaged to be married with little Dior and his
mom and dad we have the great-grandfather Bob Walton and Bob's longtime friend Isaac Ren
Walton the group was camping at Timber Creek Campground this is in a remote area filled with Mountains close to leor
Idaho at approximately 2:30 p.m. that day dior's mother Jessica called 911 because her son had
disappeared she said she left the little boy with his great-grandfather and then
then went to walk around the campground with her fiance and when they got back to Camp just a short time later Dior was
gone everyone in the group looked for Dior for several minutes before it was decided that they needed to call
911 the parents told search and rescue and the sheriff's department that Dior never went anywhere without his blanket
or his toy monkey and yet these items were found at the group's camping spot the search that day turned up little to
no clues as to the toddler's whereabouts crew searched until about 4:00 a.m. on July 11th Searchers looked on
Horseback and ATVs they focused on a 2 and 1/2 mile radius around the campground one area of
concern was a creek just about 15 yard away from the campsite Sunday July 12th they had
nearly 200 volunteers show up to assist in the search efforts Monday July 13th there was an official interview
with the media this is when dior's parents Vernal and Jessica explained what happened the
previous Friday afternoon during that interview they said that they no longer believed that
Dior was lost but think that someone may have abducted their son that evening there was a candlelight
vigil over the course of the next 6 days search efforts continued near the campground dive Crews focused on the
stone Reservoir dior's parents remained camped out near the site the Bonville County Sheriff's dive team was called in
to help divers used a sonar robot to search the reservoir on July 19th it had been 10 days since Dior was last seen
and through all of the efforts no evidence has been found to suggest where the 2-year-old boy may
be at the time that Dior was reported missing he was said to be wearing a camouflage jacket blue pajama pants
green and black checkered socks and brown cowboy boots with brown camouflage print in the summer of 2015 Dior was 3T
tall and about 30 lb Caucasian with blonde hair brown eyes and a birth mark on the back of his neck dior's
nickname is little man are little dior's parents hiding something and if so what why did this little boy simply
disappear without a trace this is true crime [Music] garage [Music] all right joining us in the garage today
we have Philip Klein from Klein investigations who has been keeping an eye and actively working the continued
investigation of missing little boy Dior Coons Jr and Philip is here to set the record straight on a couple of items we
covered this case way back in 2019 so there's been some things to come out and there's been some things that
have been uncovered by client investigations and Philip is here to bring us up to speed as to where the
case stands today in 2023 Phillip go ahead and introduce yourself to the listeners and tell us a little
bit about your background or at least the investigations background sure sure I uh have been an investigator since
1982 uh worked with a company called credential Equifax I'm sure you guys have heard of those two companies uh and
I work my way all the way up to senior investigator uh for credential Equifax uh I went away uh for about a year on a
political campaign and I came back um to Southeast Texas and I decided to hang my
own shingle back in 1994 uh we specialized in missing persons cases around the world um we
started off with our first big case which was back in I guess was 1995 when a uh High School teacher ran
off with a student and ended up in centor Island Greece on a cruise ship uh not as a passenger but as an emplo two
employees and we were able to work with uh the United States government um on that and bring them back and extradite
them back to the United States so that was our first big case and then everything just kind of fell from there
we've uh We've brought back both dead and alive uh We've brought back probably over
1,800 uh cases uh in my career um I am the team leader so I'm the guy at the top that takes all the hits and we
really have uh worked hard to uh along with um the missing persons division up at the Department of State uh in the
United States federal government and as well uh we have worked very very hard uh
to work with h state federal and u local law enforcement around the United States
because you know Believe It or Not guys there are police departments that don't have the resources uh some police
departments we've worked with have never seen a homicide some people some some of
the officers that we worked with have never worked a missing person's case or a homicide it's been kind of a a love
relationship that we've had with the private security world and or we're commonly called government contractors
the government itself uh to work together as a team to bring Solace and peace to some of these families out
there that have missing persons little Dior Coons Jr was 2 years old going on three back in 2015 and his parents
Vernal Coons and Jessica Mitchell were due to be married or or were engaged from my understanding at that time in
2015 they go out on a camping trip the three of them along with Jessica Mitchell's grandfather Bob Walton and
his one-time neighbor turned friend Isaac on this camping trip and unfortunately at some point Dior Coons
goes missing or at least that's the narrative that we've been fed for a long period of time and when does client
investigations come into play in this missing person's case so we came into the case uh what we call cold when the
family first contacted us we had just brought back uh a uh a toddler that we found alive as a matter of fact in
Michigan so it played real hard in the media up uh on the Northern side of the unit United States and so they called us
they wanted to talk to us some of the alterior family members not Jessica not Vernal but some of the outerior family
members called us and said look we've read about you guys can can we consult so we got them on a conference call and
we listened to what they had to say it was presented to us that the four people being Bob uh Isaac renwall Jessica and
vernal went up on a camping trip now depending upon who you talk to in this case of those four their stories just
never matched there were some people that said yeah uh we we uh at this time we stopped by Walmart so of course you
know all the police FBI us everybody gets over to the Walmart and they say no we don't have that on camera and that
was the first kind of red flag we went okay maybe maybe the the the camera time is wrong maybe the employees are wrong
maybe Walmart security is wrong you know it happens right some people make mistakes there's there's breakdowns of
equipment that sort of thing so what we did next was we said well okay let's do this let's take a look uh on the actual
fact witnesses that were there that day so we interviewed them just before we even took the case we interviewed them
and they were saying no we don't remember them coming in we don't remember any of this so we kind of
raised our eyebrows a little bit thinking okay there's more to this story so we talked to the family and the
family said we don't have we don't have the money and we said well we're pretty big company and we have a little
internal Foundation inside our group what we will do is we will pay for the employees to come up if you guys pay for
the expense to fly the dogs in if necessary expense to fly in the interviewers if necessary and the
expense to fly the base team in to uh Idaho Falls Idaho and we'll base out of there because that's where you all live
and we'll we'll we'll start this case and so that's how it all got started we flew up there they raised money they did
uh I guess uh what pancake lunches they did did highs they did dinners they people a couple of benefactors up there
put the money uh into the trust account and so what we did at that point was we had enough money to get started they
eventually finished it up within about a month of paying the full retainer we've
already talked about the retainer in to the general public it was $20,000 some people go wow that's a lot
of money well yes it is but coming from Texas bringing dogs and people and putting them up and feeding them you
know that gets to be a little bit expensive people say well you never gave a good accounting well we did we gave a
great accounting the judge looked at it after we were sued we'll get to that and
he said no that's reasonable and there's the receipts and everything's good and we were like we don't just run around
and take people's money because that's going to kill our company if we got CAU doing that so long story short we got up
there and we got started well the first thing we did was we interviewed the family and each one of the people up on
the mountain out of all the interviews that we did and we did not just one interview we did multiple interviews
with them the only one that had the same story every time and I'm talking down to
the minute I'm talking down to the hour I'm talking down to to the date to how it all all got started why they were
going up there everything has been Isaac renwall his his story's never changed once I think the FBI and the local
police we met with them a after five days of interviews of people we sat down with them in a room and then we ended up
at a Mexican restaurant because none of us have eaten for four days we sat down in a room with them and said okay here's
what they've told us and they just stood there with their mouths open and we said what did did we
say something wrong did you know what's going on they said hold on a minute then
they wanted to focus on uh they wanted to focus on the parents at first uh Vernal didn't tell
them 50% of what he told us that's natural sometimes because there's shock and Trauma when you when
you lose somebody is there's little things you forget okay so we we gave room for that okay we were like hey
might have been a little upset but here's the story he told the story Vernal Coons told us was this they got
up to and there was a bunch of you know hey we we left Idaho Falls it's a two and a half hour trip we were had a axle
problem we had they here's where he told us the story that he never told anybody
else he said well we got to a restaurant uh in the city on the night they arrived
uh which was I believe a Thursday night they arrived and um there was a place where we all wanted to eat so we stopped
at this bar restaurant and up there I'm sure as you all know um the the sun doesn't go down till what 11 12 at night
sometimes uh during the midle during the summertime during that period correct and so they come up to the door
and the restaurant owner says we're closed go away well we're closed go away we're not feeding anybody so they all
load back up in their cars and they go up the mountain okay to the um the little camping area that is of subject
of this case they say they Park all the cars in a semicircle we're like okay they parked
in a semicircle once they Park in a semicircle they start unloading everything get the chairs out get the
food get the uh coolers out get all this stuff out of of these cars and little Dior is running around uh in the in the
campfire area they light a campfire it's a pretty big campfire so after they get everything unloaded
and kind of get settled and they start you know having snacks because they haven't eaten any dinner and this is now
at this point it's about 10 or 11 at night um it's getting dark and somebody turns
around and goes where's Dior Vernal says I don't know let me go look around he says daddy daddy over here so Vernal
tells us this story that and I'm paraphrasing he says I went over and I found little Dior with his hands in the
tailpipe he's black head to toe because he's wiped the soot off of the tailpipe all over his face uh on his arms he's
just being a kid right this is how it's it's portray does we're like well kids do that and then he says um well he
there was a lug nut missing from the back tire and he says look daddy no lug nut
and I don't know what kids say that but maybe they do we got to take it at face value then he says well
Daddy um uh look look over here and he goes over to the trailer that was uh The Grandfather's and he points to a Lugnut
and so we're like okay what does this all have to do with your son going missing well I'm just telling you the
story for the timeline oh okay so we sit there and immediately one of the police off
officers had given us the initial written statements from from veral he doesn't mention any of that and then they give
us a forensics sheet that shows us hey the tire he's pointing to there was blood
found uh blood pathogen found on the uh interior rim and also blood pathogen found traces a blood pathogen found on
the bumper in the same place that they're talking about well that kind of raised all of our eyebrows like okay did
we get a match well we don't have anything to match it to no DNA okay is it human yeah we believe it's human but
we're not 100% sure we're about 50% that's what they tell us we're like okay uh so it's just another you know
remember investigators like us what we do is we put things together like a puzzle okay and we put the puzzle
together one piece at a time so that's just a piece of the puzzle when we played that
original interview for the police they were just shocked because not only was that mentioned but the police had
interviewed the people at the at the I guess you call it a bar restaurant right we ate there it was good food uh but
they at the bar restaurant they uh they said no that's that's not true that never happened so the story is what I'm
trying to get to a long way around it is the stories didn't match from the witnesses to Coons and the rest of the
family and you know Jessica goes into a big thing how she got Dior out of the back seat and brought Dior around to the
front of the restaurant and the restaurant people said no she never did that she stayed in the truck the whole
time right so we were all like okay somebody just tell us the truth here but again remember guys when you get
involved in these investigations as long as I've been doing them for 40 years I can tell you that things the the wor
what's the what's the old saying the worst the worst witness is the eyewitness right because you know oh
yeah I remember this now oh yeah I remember that now video works Wonder wonders right and but but eyewitnesses
sometimes forget things so we just chocked it up as that you know maybe they're just maybe everybody's just not
on the same page on this so we interviewed Jessica Jessica was at best evasive the person that handled that um
that part of the interview was MJ Holmes and she is an investigator out of Georgia and she maybe is one of the best
interviewers that I have ever watched and according to a lot of the cops that watch the interview that she did with
him uh they say that she's one of the best interviewers they've worked with in a long time so she was very evasive with
us we all kind of got a shot at her Caroline gear in our office got a shot at her uh and she just kind of she
wouldn't look at us she'd look away she you know did the the funny haha thing knocked her Coke over I mean there was
she was nervous as nervous can be and I get that you got cameras on you you got four seasons investigators shooting
questions at you we get it but we finally got got her at ease and she started to flow she didn't know the
story about the getting head-to toe soot on the child she didn't know anything about a lug nut she didn't so now we
have someone that's there that's the parent going I don't know any of this well who's told you this and we said
well it you know that's the story Vernal gag well he never told me that and we're
like oh that's interesting so we have a breakdown in the story and it's a pretty
good story I mean I don't know if I'm a mommy and I'm out there camping how am I
going to clean my kid up before we go to bed at night right you're not are you going to let a kid have a bunch of soot
and grime and dirt all over them right you know not happening right so the story goes to and I'm just giving you
highlights The Story Goes to the next morning uh Jessica in veral sleep in the back of the Suburban right or the back
of the there's a Suburban up there which is Bob suburban and they sleep in the back of the Suburban and we aswell where
does where does Dior sleep and they said oh he sleeps in the front seat we bundled him up in the front seat and
he's laying down in the front seat and he he he goes to sleep well they say at about 8:30 in their story match there's
a wrap on their window and vernal gets up and goes what and it's Isaac and Isaac goes wakey wakey eggs and bakey so
they kind of look out there and there's Bob and Isaac and they're making breakfast so Vernal says he gets up
Jessica says she gets the baby up and they go wandering around for breakfast well during our interview with Isaac
Isaac says I never saw the kid that day right and we're like what he goes no I never saw
him I mean I I might have saw him one time but I never really placed my eyes on him and we asked uh the dad um and he
the grandpa and the grandpa tell us he says well I I don't know I might have seen him might not have seen him I mean
it's a very telling interview and then he goes he kind of looks over at Holmes and he goes but you know what I gotta
tell y'all this what's done is done and we're like what what's what's done is done and we're like whoa whoa whoa
whoa whoa slow down dude what are you trying to tell us and he says I'm telling you what's done is done they can
they can they can go have sex and have another baby and and I was so infuriated if you
if we ever release the interview to which we will uh I was so infuriated I got a laptop and I threw it against a
wall and I got in his face and I said let me tell you something are you telling us that that baby's dead because
you better start speaking up right now I'm just telling you what's done is done that's what he told us it's right on
camera we got the audio we got the video and uh and so he says I've got I I got to I've got to take a break I said you
take a break get your head together and then get back in here and then let's let's discuss
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mates some fascinating stuff coming out of this investigation from Klein investigations and we're talking to
Phillip Phillip is ramping up the investigation again into missing child Dior J Coons Jr dior's been missing
since July 10th of 2015 so we happen to speak with Philip Klein this week week and oddly enough
Captain we are coming up on 8 years now that the little 2-year-old has been missing he was about 2 and a half years
old at the time that he goes missing on this supposed camping trip now Philip is
able to fill in a lot of the blanks and and add to add some evidence to the speculation that has been and has
remained in this case during that 8-year time period all right Colonel let's get
back to our interview with Phillip well Phillip one of the big questions that most people have in the True Crime
Community is was there evidence that Dior was actually at the campsite uh that well we'll get to that yeah well
yeah you know yeah is the answer we believe he was there and I'll tell you why uh here
in just a second it sounds like from those stories that that Dior may have been there
the night before well that's the theory we've always run with we have never looked at this as a as a homicide right
we have never looked at this as a homicide we've and I think I've said this in public before we've always
looked at this as an accidental death and a cover up and that's what the FBI and I don't speak for them and I'm not
speaking for the sheriff I'm telling you that's the way all of us have looked at
this because on that first meeting when we presented everything that we had they
went yeah you're we have run with Vernal may have been trying to move the the the the
truck or the Suburban that's where the blood came from and he ran over his son and they hid the body and they uh they
went and buried the body or took care of the body and I'll tell you how we think
the whole thing went down bottom line is this when when the grandfather said that
he came back in the room and and and one of the interviewers looked at I think it
was Holmes looked at where he was sitting he had peed all over the chair the floor uh and uh wait wait who who peed
all over the chair on the floor the the grandfather okay and he he was in poor health he was elderly at the time but if
he were to protect somebody he would have a vested interest obviously in protecting his granddaughter Jessica out
of out of you know love for his granddaughter but also she is kind of his caretaker at the time yep you're
right on it so um so we just kind of you know I I moved the chair I said I have a
dry chair for you we went and got some towels and sat down I said listen if I owe you an apology for yelling at you
before we start the cameras back up I I I apologize but I kind of getting the feeling you know more and that's where
we're going with it and he just shook his head like yes I said okay let's turn the
cameras back on and so was kind of what Frank Vil went through that was the first
Pi uh Frank Vil was the first one to um how do I want to say um that we contacted that was former law
enforcement US Marshall we have a great relationship with the marshals so you know and he kind of done some digging on
us and so he knew who we were and and and vilt had offered to put up a re W of his own money
$25,000 and the parents wouldn't let him the parents wouldn't let him and he said
at that point he just bowed out and said no I don't want any part of this he had
the sense he's smart enough to know he had the sense to get get away from it as fast as he could so long story short we
we finished the interviews up we interviewed everybody there was everybody had everybody was every just
every different direction it was horrible absolutely horrible and so again we met with law enforcement we met
with the FBI we all sat in a room we went over our notes the smarter people than me because there are smart a lot
smarter people than me uh Holmes and gear and all these other guys they were talking on a level
psychologically uh and and it it came to the conclusion okay we're in this thing
we're not getting out oh boy the parents are an issue so the the sheriff the first sheriff said um okay what uh we
need to do is Klein keep doing your thing we'll keep doing our thing and we'll all get back together in about six
weeks and we'll we'll discuss where we all are so that's kind of the opening to the
case that's how it got started that's our first trip up there that's our first interview up there that we had with
anybody uh as you guys know it's always smart for an investigator to come in cold uh and and we did we went in cold
and uh you know the the only the thing that kind of broke it broke it open for us uh was uh uh was Bob uh and his
statements and and and what he said in the family generational tree we were able to build of of who the players were
who would protect who if they necessarily needed to uh you know and we were able to put that information
together into a a a great opportunity for all of the the psychological people U to get started on this case both in
quanico Virginia uh in our office and of course up there um so that's how it started where did the investigation lead
you so now you're sitting there you have some information from Bob and what's what's really interesting too is now
you're your meeting with law enforcement and the Jessica and vernal the parents have told one story to law
enforcement and it doesn't sound like they're telling you a different story they're telling you an expanded version
of what they what they conveniently may have left out when talking to law enforcement so you're right and then
what they did was law enforcement was very very smart what they did was um they gave them a written statement now
you guys know about handwriting analysis I've heard y'all talk about it before right um they got vernals and Jess
excuse me Vernal and Jessica's handwriting uh on their initial statement and then the 911 call
they compared it to that and we were talking about that and Jane said uh that's MJ Holmes said well look I've got
a contact with Georgia Bureau of Investigation give me their handwriting analysis give me their handwriting and
we'll send it over for handwriting analysis and everybody that's in the business knows the state of Georgia has
the the best handwriting analysis team in the United States even better than the FBI I'd say and these five guys that
deal with that got these handwriting analysis and they were like those are two Liars they're just lying they're
just flat out Ling so we send sent up the 911 calls to them and they listened to the 911 calls compared to Vernal
statement and compared to Jessica's statement and they said oh no no no no no these these guys are lying bad tell
us about the case and that's kind of that's kind of when we kind of jumped off the ship uh of Jessica and vernal
and and and and what they said there are a couple different times that we have listed for when this call comes in the
911 call is placed by mother Jessica Mitchell and in the reports we have here Captain the time vary from 2:25 p.m. all
the way to 2:36 p.m. now that seems like a minor discrepancy in only a matter of
about 11 minutes but there is some importance to that because we have statements from both
parents that Vernal the father was attempting to get a signal so he drops Jessica Mitchell off because she has one
bar for service on her phone she wants to call 911 as quickly as possible Vernal says that he decides he's going
to continue on down the road to a spot where he knows his phone will have service he was worried that his phone
would cut off halfway and so you can see why the the times of these are important
because what we have here is two things one you can hear something in the background we cannot determine who that
is speaking in the background of Jessica Mitchell's cell phone call to 911 but what we do have on the 911 call at
some point the operator the Emergency Services Personnel ask Jessica is that your husband calling in on another line
and to which she agrees and the reason why this will be important you will see later from Philip Klein statements about
what they uncovered in their investigation is that this is where there are obvious signs of Lies coming
from Vernal and Jessica Mitchell what's the address of your emergency um I'm actually camping in
leor just outside of leor uhhuh um my 2-year-old son um we can't find him how long has he been missing about an hour
an hour yeah are you by water yes do you know which Campground you're in uh it's
Stone Reservoir Timber Creek Creek Stone Reservoir yeah or Timber Creek hold on we need search and rescue
Jessica Jessica yeah what's your son's name okay what is he wearing he was wearing cowboy boots a
blue um hair like pajama pants and a camel jacket and he's got Shaggy blonde hair is your husband calling
too like all down where we were camping at and we can't find him at all okay we need you to stay within cell service we
got people going on on the way thank you so between the discrepancies and the 9111 call in their stories and this
handwriting analysis that shows that they're being not truthful you guys feel like your
investigation is on to something we we knew at that point we had something we were getting somewhere and we were
moving the case forward and that's when we flew up the team the second time for the second uh we we came up I think it
was like five weeks later and we came up for the second time and this time we spent oh my
goodness we spent I think 10 days up there um and we started interviewing everyone the whole team was up there we
spread everyone out from point A to point B and I think they started getting nervous because they knew we went to the
crown bar and that's the name of the place we interviewed the folks over at the bar and they out there in lead lead
it's pronounced lead door every time I every time I uh every time I say it everybody always corrects me no it's not
lead door it's lead door and so um we had the dogs out there Trace Sergeant who is probably one of the best Dog
Handlers out of out of the United States Homeland Security SL there's a county up
there she does she bases her licenses with and she brought her dog and we were able to Garner hits and I'll talk about
that in just a minute um but anyway we got to the bar where they said you know where they first said well we went in
and they told us to leave and we were inside and we had to go to the bathroom we had to do all that the people that
owned the the bar went no that never happened and we said okay then they told us the story during the second set of
interviews they told us the story of how they had to go get diesel fuel for their
pickup truck and that so and she needed to go down to the stage stop and get some feminine products we were like well
well okay so what do good investigators do we go check out their story well we knew the bar was BS right we knew we got
over to the stage Stop and met with them and they said do y'all want their receipts and we were like
huh like receipts like plural we were told they went into the stage Stop and they they bought feminine products and
they bought um what do you call it uh it was like a little Gummy Worms or I forget what it is but anyway uh for the
baby they they they bought a bunch of stuff and they spent about 50 bucks well there were two visits to the stage Stop
the first visit was just gum and candy and that's it and then about an hour later there was a second visit a second
visit to the stage Stop and that's where the tampons came in and and that sort of
thing so we said well we asked Vernal again hey Vernal how many times you go to the stage Stop well once
you didn't go twice no didn't go twice who went in oh that was me I went in we all went in and we said okay well
according to what the witnesses we visited with it was Jessica both times Vernal never came in and there was no
sign of Dior you know Dior goes into this big thing about the the little baby and how the little baby was running
around inside the store and every body was like oh how cute and it was very busy because there's campers everywhere
and he tells this long drawn out story about being a trucker and how the beer truck got there and he wanted to take
the baby over to go see the the beer truck and of course we hunt down the beer truck and the beer truck guy goes
what are you talking about and no guy ever came up to me with the and I never let anybody sit up in my truck and I
never I never saw that and then an 18wheeler and he gave us the name of the 18wheeler company and when he gave us
the name of the 18wheeler company we found out that that company had been defunct for three years number one but
number two um there was there was we found a driver of an 18 wheeler that was there in the same 4H hour period right
because we got that from license plate recognition and he says nobody's ever done that so that part of the story
falls apart so now the whole Stage Stop story that the parents have put out is nothing but misinformation a lie and
we're like okay well wait what's going on here and so I'll move it forward without taking up a bunch of your time
because I know you guys will have a bunch of questions um we uh we called a family meeting and we told the family
hey we got problems and they're like what are you talking about we have problems your story does not match what
the Witnesses are telling us oh you're just trying to say we did it no that's not what I'm saying well I'm going to
hire a lawyer you need to hire a lawyer that's the reason we're here there was like eight family members and my team
sitting at a table and we've got it recorded where we said you need to go hire a lawyer you need to get your story
straight because I'm telling you we know and we're Shar with law enforcement because that's our agreement with them
and you know we're moving the case forward we've got to get this timeline laid out we've got to figure this thing
out because the timeline you give us and the timeline we've developed through witnesses that you gave us doesn't even
come close to matching and that's when one of my uh investigators kept kind of kept you know
trying to hint to me something was going on and I kind of looked around this restaurant and I was like what and she
goes that guy right there and there's a guy sitting above the tables and and it was the he was the now famous
lawyer uh and uh he uh he's walking around and he's trying to hear the conversation it was really kind of
embarrassing uh uh his name was Alan Browning and it was just kind of embarrassing what he was doing and I
said good you got a lawyer I was very POS positive about it and he the lawyer comes down starts screaming and yelling
at me and you know and I'm like dude calm down we're trying to help this family we've been up here three times
now we're trying to help this family if there's a case where an accident happened because that's what it looks
like oh you don't know what you're talking about so Jill uh uh Coons who is the a to uh to to uh Vernal uh hires
pays $1,500 and hires this lawyer and that's when you know he fires us and he gets the father all spun up and we're
like well there you go and then to end this part of it because I I think you guys won't have questions at this point
uh after the attorney was hired we started getting threatening letters uh and the threatening letters were really
really ugly um you know they fired us but once they fired us another family member called us immediately and says
I'm sending you x amount of dollars uh to help for the cause you're hired again I'm going to be the client keep going
and so we said okay and so we did so that gives you the 411 something we should reiterate here captain for the
listeners for those who may not be so familiar with this case Vernal the father also goes by the name Dior so
that can make the story a little confusing at times you hear investigator Philip Klein there he does
reference Vernal as Dior in that last portion of the story now back to the interview philli let's hone in on one
thing real quick here because I find this to be very intriguing and probably the centerpiece of your
investigation the story that Vernal gives you regarding the blood on his truck the blood on the inside of the
tire let's hone in on that now we do not know to be perfectly clear we do not know if in fact that is
human blood or even Dior Jr's blood because that is evidence that is in the custody of law enforcement but
regardless this is a story that Vernal is telling you that they did not tell to the Sheriff's office and very likely
because they know that the sheriff's office has that blood evidence it's it's a little tricky here but let's hone in
on that for a minute please right the the the part of the tire according to Vernal this is a story he gave us the
the tire that was facing the fire you know remember they set up a campfire Etc that he says that there was a lug nut
missing from that tire that interested the baby the baby got back there started putting his hands in tail pipes and one
of my questions was and you can see it when we release it well wait a minute now if you guys had just gotten there
the tail pipes got to be what 200 degrees or coming down from you know running all that time between Idaho
Falls and up the mountain it's got to be hotter than a pistol was there any burns
on his hands just to ask him was her Burns and oh no no no no it was it was cooled off he just had soot he had soot
soot from the tail pipes there's double tail pipes he put his arms in the tail pipes once they got the samples and this
is the other thing that kind of bothered us once they got samples of the blood in
the wheel well and on the bumper uh they got home they left and they went home uh and Burnal sold that
truck and to a scrap yard and it was scrapped and we because we that's the first question we asked where's the
truck well how old how old was the truck do you know no I you know to hear him talk about it it was 50 years old to
hear Witnesses talk about it and look at the title it was at that point this is back in what 16 it was an 11 or a
10 that was a was it a douly a black yeah yeah it was a black black douly and so he he Vernal doesn't tell you about
the blood right this is no Hees tell me anything yeah he tells you the soot Story the lug nut story and then you go
and you're talking with law enforcement law enforcement is like well he never told us the S Story the lug nut story
this is interesting to us because oh by the way private investigators we found what we believe is blood on portions of
that truck yep we threw it out on the table on the napkin and of course everybody that's going to listen to this
they're scratching their heads going well Philip and and uh law enforcement FBI everybody involved
what what's the what's up with that blood and and I think we need to point out here that's that is if it is
evidence of anything that is evidence that is in someone else's custody that's law enforcement's custody something that
you don't have access to and it seems like a a step a big step in the right direction would be to determine if it
was human blood and look I I get it that he's young two two and a half years old
roughly Dior Coons and we may not have his DNA or something like that on file but there should be some kind of record
from his birth of the blood type they did and they and they and and let me tell you the other part of the story so
when the FBI sees the truck and went down to the warehouse and got all the samples uh they did get some bleach
samples uh whereas uh there was an attempt to clean up the wheel well and clean up the bumper now according to
Vernal oh I wash my truck all the time I keep it in clean Immaculate condition um okay well hold on if you
clean your truck all the time and it's an Immaculate condition why are you scrapping your truck there you go now
you're thinking like us everything that comes out of this guy's mouth is is just opposite of of of
what the reality was maybe in his mind he kept it super clean I don't know but I don't think so I mean it just doesn't
make sense why wouldn't he tell why wouldn't he tell the cops on the initial interview why wouldn't he put in his on
on his third interview why didn't he put that in his written statement why didn't
he say well the night before I mean that's important that's very important uh because I don't know about you you
know they said okay tell us the story from the time you got up there to the time you guys left and went back home
without the baby and he mentions nothing to it nothing nothing zero I mean it's crazy now what he did
we did talk to him and I think this is important because this has always been something that some of these internet
sleuths always point to they say well a big bird or a big animal be a bear or a mountain line or something could have
gotten the kid while he was walking around the campsite right and we're like yeah that could have happened so the
first thing in law enforcement especially those guys up there that deal with that all the time right they're not
like inner city cops in Chicago that deal with homicide all the time but they do deal with animals and rabbit animals
and they deal with that crap all the time they um so according to every zoologist that we spoke with I even over
to the city of Houston Zoo this is not a joke I went over City of Houston Zoo and
went over and talked to the the the the the I forget the name of their God I should go back to college uh the the
lions and tigers and bears and all these guys over there and I talked to them said look I got a case I need to know
and each one of them said oh no no no here's what would have happened number one the child would have screamed
because that animal is going to bite down on them and shake them and blood's going to go everywhere guts are going to
go everywhere everything's going to go everywhere and they're going to put their paws on top of that animal because
that's what they do watch and see what some of these Wild Kingdom shows put up he said and that's what they told me go
watch this stuff and I was like I'm not interested but I will go watch it a bear
does the same thing but the bear uses its claws right to kill the animal first and then to start eating on it there
would have been blood guts shoes uh because remember Vernal goes through this big long story about oh he
put boots on that didn't fit him that's what he wore around the campground yeah well we would have had boots we would
had thousands of things and and and none of that happened now to go back to your
question about why we think he was there for a period of time there's a thing called the diaper
tree um I don't know how familiar you guys are with it but there was a thing called a diaper tree so what they do is
when a child pees or poops in the diaper what they do is they put it in a trash bag and they raise it up on a rope up
onto a tree so that it does not attract animals it will attract animals but the animals won't come in and tear it up and
you know being raccoons the animals would dig through the trash if you just put it in the
trash exactly so all the trees up in the chance which is the dog that we brought
up there which is a dog that's F still to this day is finding wor uh turn of the century skeletons in fields up in
Virginia and West Virginia know where all the where the wars happened up there uh he's still finding bodies up there so
that's how good this dog is and so he hit right there now why is that important well not only do are is that
particular dog trained on blood but it's also trained on urine feces you know those sort of things because remember
when you die you lose your bowels you lose your your urine that's what happens you just you lose it all and so there
was no sign of that but equally interesting the dog did not hit anywhere in the campground just the diaper tree
so what does that tell us as investigators okay it didn't happen here that we know of okay so we took the dog
down the hill um from the campsite you know where Vernal says oh I I went a mile and a
half away and used the phone well we went a mile and a half away and there's no Sal service there none zero donut
hole okay it's blocked by the mountains but we did go down to where he SLE flipped at one point and mentioned the
cattle guard and we sent the dog uh down the hill from the cattle guard thinking
okay if somebody's going to dispose of a body what they do is they go down the hill from the cattle guard maybe dig a
hole bury it cover it up none of the search The Searchers just missed it while they were up there Etc the dog
starts hitting all over down the bottom of this hill then the dog stops and we look and the 's like a
little Ravine kind of like a little stream area that goes down that way uh from the top of the hill the dogs ears
perk up and that dog takes off and goes to the top of the hill and goes and sits
down on this big area up there uh of of uh it's it's kind of loose dirt Etc and he's
going nuts he's like oh so we call in the sheriff and the sheriff gets up there uh um limh High County gets up
there everybody gets up there and we do a dig and nobody knows about this dig this is the first time I'm telling
people about it right we do a dig and we dig down and we don't find anything other than loose dirt it's all loose
very very very loose but the dog's still going nuts the dog is like no no no keep
going there's something there and we keep digging and digging and we we couldn't find anything so then we all
start sitting on the back of pickup trucks and we drinking our little Kool-Aid that or whatever we're drinking
to keep our water up and we start talking and somebody says you know what's the inventory on the truck was
there anything missing on in by the campers and we go back to what Bob Walton told us which was well yeah we
got all of our coolers back but one he was trying to deflect from was there anything missing
right was there any was there any shovels missing was there any anything missing and yes there
was a shovel missing so we're like huh wait a minute how big was that cooler and he starts telling us how big that
cooler was we go over and measure it out and guess what the measurements match where we were
digging so we're now we're like okay if you're going to dispose of a body how are you going to do it you're going to
you know you could put it in a cooler and then you could bury it and then when everybody gets up there uh you know the
dogs aren't going to hit on it because the dogs are sent dogs they're not de dogs they're scent dogs there's two
different types of scent dogs there's de and and alive right and they can find a
trail none of the dogs they never brought the dogs over to that area and cars were parked all over the place fire
trucks everything was parked all over the place and I guess they didn't just search that area I asked if they
searched that area and couple the rescue guys were like you know I can't say we did and so now we're like okay now we're
putting a theory together okay now the evidence is giving us a theory and so that that explains the the uh the cooler
missing that explains the lack of a scent in there was no blood there was no nothing so now we know okay big bad bird
or big bad animals didn't get him okay then we go to the kidnapping part you know guys I just got to tell
you I according to the the the wardens down there you know you have to sign up and
get the pass to go up there nobody signed up and get a pass but that doesn't mean anything because people go
up there all the damn time right and so we start going back through about okay guys did you hear any cars did you hear
any to see any headlights did you see any what did you see oh no no no no because because we brought the baby down
to go to the stage Stop and to go get diesel fuel and we went huh let's go find the
diesel fuel guy so we found the diesel fuel guy and he said yeah I remember them I remember them coming in I
remember pumping their gas because I gave them I guess what's it called Green diesel or red diesel he had to give them
red diesel I think it was because that's all he had and it's not a convenience store it's a it's a feed store and these
guys been around forever up there they know everybody and they you know there's a lot of ranching that goes on up there
and so he says uh yeah I remember him I said do you remember seeing a car seat he goes yeah I remember seeing a car
seat I said okay was the baby in the car seat he goes there's no baby in the car
seat the car seat was empty behind the mother's seat the passenger seat so you didn't see a baby no didn't see a baby
you saw no baby now how many gallons of gas you give him he said only about 20 bucks which is about eight gallons gas
well listening to Vernal talk about it his his meter was broken and he didn't know how much gas he had in there he he
he had no idea how much gas he had in there so he liked to keep it topped off and that kind of got us all going oh boy
you know that makes no sense either so and of course he said it took him two hours to find the place for the de for
the diesel and that was his explanation away of the two receipts at the sage stop but again nobody saw
him in the sage stop they saw her right but they didn't see a baby they didn't see sweetest fish that's what the kid
lik sweetest fish and that's those little gummy bear things and um again all we got is more stories more
lies more you know more everything so that leads us back to that meeting again we were fired rehired and then we
went into stage three and four and five of case so there you [Music] go so much more to get to join us back
here in the garage tomorrow same bat time and same bat Channel until then be good be kind and don't
litter [Music] [Applause] [Music] Angie's List is now Angie and we've heard a lot of theories about why I
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DeOrr Kunz Jr. /// Part 1 /// 677

Part 1 of 2

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In the summer of 2015 a two-year-old went missing from a campground in Lemhi County, Idaho. According to the 911 call DeOrr Kunz Jr. vanished on the morning of day two of a weekend long camping trip. Little to no trace of him at all has ever been found. When the case broke everyone was looking for the little boy. Searchers looked for the little boy for ten straight days using every resource available to them at the time. When the search turned up little to nothing, the parents said little DeOrr had been abducted. The Sheriff’s department said that they have evidence that something else happened. Since then Private Investigators have been hired, fired, donated their time to the case and have been sued by DeOrr’s father. Klein Investigations and Consulting was one of those PI firms to join the case. This week in the Garage we are joined by one of the lead Private Investigators who continues to work this case to find DeOrr and get justice for the lost “little man.” We get insider and behind the scenes information about the case as an effort to make a strong push toward finally bringing this case to a close.

If you have ANY information at all that could help this case or that could lead to finding DeOrr Kunz jr. please call the Lemma County Sheriff’s Office at 1-208-756-8980 OR if you are not comfortable talking with Law Enforcement please call Klein Investigations at 1-409-729-8798 or go to www.KleinInvestigations.com (http://www.kleininvestigations.com/)

Thank you for your help and as always - Thank you for listening, and thank you for telling a friend. Cheers.

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Brief Summary

Investigator Philip Klein updates on the 2015 disappearance of Dior Coons Jr. during a camping trip, revealing inconsistencies in the parents' accounts.

Key points

The Disappearance of Dior Coons. A chilling account of the mysterious case of a missing toddler during a camping trip.
Conflicting Stories. Investigators uncover discrepancies in the accounts of Dior's parents and witnesses.
The Infuriating Interview. An investigator confronts a family member about a child's disappearance, leading to a heated exchange.
Handwriting Analysis Exposes Lies. Expert analysis reveals discrepancies in the parents' statements, indicating deceit.
Conflicting Stories Unraveled. Investigators discover major inconsistencies between the parents' account and witness testimonies.
The Blood Evidence Mystery. Vernal's story about blood on his truck raises questions about its origin and significance.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Dior Coons was a little boy that at times carried himself like a man.

Describing Dior's personality and demeanor.

2:15WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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