Young Hikers Missing in Joshua Tree Since Thursday [7/27/17]

[OtherHand]

29 Palms Hwy is 3.75 miles due north of their vehicle's location (Maze trailhead), almost all downhill. You know, 29 Palms Hwy, the road Orbeso and his buddy drove down to check out the shops and restaurants only a week or two prior to the hike. His buddy was clear they didn't go into the park, just down 29 Palms Hwy.....

[Wildhorse]

Thanks, Otherhand. So easy.

I don't mean to speculate that is what happened. Just wondering about the possibilities.

[OtherHand]

From my sense and feel of that area of JTNP, if I wanted to "get away" then heading north to 29 Palms Hwy is by far the best logical choice. But if I didn't want to get away, but rather disappear and perhaps never be found, the terrain between Quail Mountain and Smith Water Canyon might be the greatest attraction. Looking at that area from Park Road, across a large, empty valley, that terrain appears massive and remote (and it is!). So in many ways the terrain, combined with a motivation, may dictate direction.

[Wildhorse]

What a fascinating observation, Otherhand, about feelings and the possibilities the land offers.

[Perry]

Very interesting, especially hearing this from Otherhand who is knowledgeable of all things SAR-related.

...the possibilities the land offers.

I think NPS doesn't want more people disappearing in JTNP. Could explain the ambiguity. Raises philosophical questions.

[cynthia23]

You are talking about 'suicide by desert?" Whoa. Now that would be an exceptionally unpleasant way to do away with yourself. But he wouldn't be the first.

If we are talking about getting away, though, the South Entrance appeals to me because it's more obscure and dumps quickly into the anonymity of the 10 freeway. Of course, it's also impossibly far from the Maze TH on foot, no one could have walked there. And if someone did walk to either Highway 62 or, somehow, the 10 freeway, there's the problem of what to do next. There is a bus service, the Morongo Basin Bus Authority, that could take you from JT to Palm Springs, but it seems quite possible someone might remember you later on. You could, perhaps, buy a secondary vehicle, like a motorcycle or junk car, and pre-place it somewhere in town. That's a pretty elaborate plan, obviously, and it's likely something would go wrong, i.e. we'd know about it by now.

So much so, that my inclination is to reject the notion of crime and return to the freakish-but--perfectly-possible theory of them falling into one of those crevices. But then, I keep running into those weird little things--like, as Otherhand mentioned, the previous week's trip with the friend to check out ... the restaurants of Joshua Tree?

A hybrid possibility is that a 'get away afterwards' plan was in place, but once the murder was committed, regret and despair set in, and suicide ensued instead of an attempt to get away--a plan which in all likelihood would have failed, after all.

[bretpct]

FWIW, as a semi-young person myself, I find it very hard to believe that one or two people in their early twenties could escape from society without alerting authorities via some sort of technology. (With all due respect to any family relation reading this) If Joseph, or both hikers, decided to leave town they could easily have turned their phones off, or put them in airplane mode. These kids would know that their cell phone would betray their location to authorities, so why leave them on if you're trying to escape?

[cynthia23]

I suppose one argument might be that the phone was deliberately turned on for a moment, in an attempt to deceive authorities into believing they or he were lost on a hike near the Maze TH, as opposed to heading somewhere else.

One issue I want to return to though, is that of their footprints, which were found both near the car and in the North Canyon. I know nothing about it, but I would think it's pretty hard to fake those, so that seems to argue against the theory of a crime followed by a staged disappearance, at least if the theory is that a murder was committed in some other area of the park, where searchers wouldn't look, and then the car driven to the Maze TH to stage a fake hiking disappearance. I mean, the footprints suggest the two of them were actually there, hiking around. I suppose though, that while hiking there, a murder could have been committed, but the murderer hid the body carefully in an area he knew it would be difficult to find. However, there's the dogs, so that theory seems dubious too. Bottom line, at least to me, the footprints seem to argue for the 'natural if freakish death' theory. I'd be very interested to hear other's takes on this issue of the footprints and their meaning.Are they actually sure these footprints they found are those of Orbeso and Nguyen? I guess they took the footprints leading away from their car.

Btw, a detail in one of the news stories said that the last time Orbeso saw his son was 'when Nguyen came to pick him up." That suggests they were driving her car, not his; if he didn't have a car, that suggests he had very little money; if he was working as a security guard, that's probably the case. That argues against an elaborate crime with a planned getaway--pretty difficult to do something like that on a minimum wage job.

[Myth]

Wildhorse On foot? Like OtherHand suggested, I would consider heading due north through the canyon / wash that runs through 34°05.76', -116°14.54' That gets you right back to 29 Palms. And also, like he suggested ( I wrote this before I read his post! ), if I wanted to be fancy and do a bunch of extra work, or get really lost, I’d cross the road and go through Quail Wash.

Or, even easier, I’d wait for evening and stroll out parallel to the road, but far enough from the entrance station that I wouldn’t be picked up on camera.

Some additional info about that area of the Park - Smith Water Canyon has water. There’s water in one or two other unexpected spots in JT too, if you know where to look. A survivalist might have wanted to try to lay low in one of those spots. Who knows? It is easy to spin theories in front of a computer screen.

A ton of things about this case is really strange, but there are also things like cynthia23’s last paragraph that just points to an unfortunate series of decisions that ended up with two young people lost in the desert. It makes sense that Orbeso would be checking out 29 Palms with a friend if he didn’t have a car and persuaded a friend to drive him up there. It is nice to anticipate something by going out ahead of time so you can daydream better about how things might go. That’s exactly the sort of thing I would have done in my own sparsely financed youth. I now have an older, more experienced, less inclined to nonsense brain in my head, but I still remember the stuff I did as a kid and young adult. I did some pretty stupid things and viewed the world a lot differently than I do now - what was logical to me then isn't logical to me now.

[Sean]

A staged disappearance has got to be the least likely theory of them all, except perhaps for alien abduction. I hesitate to even address the notion. But the families have invited such speculation, so whatever.

First of all, let's get something straight. This theory shouldn't be called a staged disappearance. The scene in no way pointed toward a disappearance or kidnapping. If anything, the speculation should be about a staged death.

Those putting forth this fantasy should express the appropriate respect for what these two young adults allegedly accomplished. If Orbeso and Nguyen actually faked this, then they completely fooled the authorities, who believe they perished out there in the desert heat. Calling this a "staged disappearance" drops a whole lotta context and greatly belittles an implied masterful achievement in the art of deception.

People not only disrespect the good character of these two friends by postulating fraud; some also disrespect the couple's alleged bad character, by not recognizing the implied, superior accomplishment. Very few people have the intellect, training, resources, and will necessary to successfully fake their own death. At least do these hikers the courtesy of acknowledging that fact, before suggesting that they perpetrated such a grand imposition upon the world.