Welcome to this month's Pathway Chili Bonus Patriticsclusive Minniesot, I'm Robin, I'm Jules.
And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this month's case.
May eighth, nineteen ninety five, Coconino County, Arizona. Twenty eight year old Devin Williams, a long hauled truck driver from Kansas, recklessly drives his semi trailer truck into Tonto National Forest before it becomes stuck in some mud. After Devin exits the truck, witnesses see him exhibiting bizarre behavior before he takes off into the woods and disappears. Devon had been in the midst of transporting a shipment from California to Kansas until he drove over sixty miles off course for
unknown reasons. Two years later, Devon's skull is discovered near the bottom of a cliff, but no one can figure out his cause of death or why he wound up in the forest to begin with.
After that, the path went chilly. So on this month's bonus episode, we're going to be covering a very odd case, the unexplained nineteen ninety five death of Devon Williams. This is the story of a long cal truck driver and family man with a loving wife and three children, who lived a seemingly ordinary, uneventful life until he suddenly found
himself at the center of an unsaw mystery. Devon was in the midst of transporting a shipment from California to his home state of Kansas when he inexplicably wound up driving his truck into Arizona's Taunto National Forest. This was an area where eighteen wheeler trucks would not normally go, and a number of witnesses would see Devon exit his truck and take off into the woods before he vanished
without a trace. While the initial search efforts turned up nothing, Devon's skull would be discovered in the area two years later, but the rest of his remains were never found and
no one could figure out how he died. As you probably know, the trail went cold and the path went Chile have always had a fascination with cases in which victims traveled to places they have no reason to be at before they wind up missing or dead under very mysterious circumstances, and the Devon Williams case is definitely one of the strangest examples of this. Since there was no logical reason for him to divert from his original route and drive into this forest, it's certainly possible that he
suffered some sort of mental breakdown or medical issue. That everyone who interacted with Devon prior to this incident said they did not notice anything unusual about him. This case is so baffling that, yes, aliens were even brought up as a serious possibility to explain what happened. And you can bet we're going to discuss that angle on this episode.
Awesome, bring it on. I love cases like this where you go like what happened? Because we have Devin who seemingly is just doing his normal routine job.
Right.
This is the absolute ordinary days for him, where he's trucking and doing all these things. He's a family man, there's really nothing eventful going on, and then all of a sudden, he's part of this unsolved mystery. Now, Robin, you said everyone said he was fine when he left, But Jules, you mentioned that there was a witness who
said that they observed bizarre behavior from him. So do we have multiple people saying, look, there could have really been this mental distress happening towards the very end of his life, or Robin, it sounds like you're alluding to perhaps he had been abducted or experienced something traumatic that could have also triggered a kind of break for him.
Well, all the people in the forest said he was hiving bizarre behavior, but it was all the people who interacted it with him, like when he was doing his truck route before he arrived in the forest that said, everything seemed completely normal with them. So it just seemed like this came completely out of left field, that something happened which just compelled him to drive to this spot and started acting strangely.
Our story begins in nineteen ninety five, and our central figure is twenty nine year old Devin Williams, who lives in the small town of Americus, Kansas, with his wife, Mary Lou and their three children. Devon works as a long distance truck driver from Flint Hills Transportation, Incorporated, and on Tuesday, May twenty third, Devon drove to Kansas City in his forty eight foot eighteen wheeler semi truck to pick up a shipment before he embarked on a sixteen
hundred mile cross country road trip. To Los Angeles. After he arrived, Devon picked up a new shipment containing over twelve hundred boxes of lettuce and strawberries, and began the drive back to Kansas City. But it wasn't long before
a very odd series of events would occur. On the morning of Sunday, May twenty eighth, campers in Tonto National Forest, which is located in Coconino County, Arizona, were taken by complete surprise when Devon's truck came barreling down Forest Service Road one thirty seven, a dirt road which is not often frequented by two ton eighteen wheelers. The truck was being driven incredibly recklessly at around fifty miles per hour, and came dangerously close to crashing into an suv containing
two campers. The suv had been heading on the service road in the opposite direction, but they were forced to put the vehicle into reverse and back out of the truck's path. The campers would later say that they got a look at the truck driver, who didn't seem to have any expression on his face and had no intention of slowing down. The truck eventually came to a stop in a forest meadow off the service road in the Buck Springs camping area. A car of picnickers would drive
by and witness Devin Klim out of the truck. He was exhibiting bizarre behavior and rambling incoherently, saying stuff like they made me do it. I'm going to jail. The Coconino County Sheriff's Department were notified about what was happening, but by the time a deputy arrived at the scene to check the truck, Devon was gone. Well, the truck had gotten stuck in some mud, there didn't seem to
be anything wrong with it. The entire cargo of lettuce and strawberries was still intact, and the refrigeration unit was still running. Many of Devn's personal items were left behind in the truck's cab, including his briefcase, an ice chest, a sleeping bag, a police scanner, and his favorite hat. But Devin's stuffle bag and his collection of audio tapes were missing.
This is one of those things where I'm wondering if he had gotten into Let's say he has a mental break and he thinks something has happened like that's screaming they made me do it. I'm going to jail right, and people say there's no expression. Is he and sh shock from a real traumatic incident, like maybe someone forced him to do something. Was he part of some trucker drugs or sex trafficking or something like that. I kind
of think unlikely. I more so think something occurred that he interpreted as being incredibly risky, and then he is not in his reality at that point, because I've seen people like that or that stare of like I'm doing something so dangerous like almost hitting campers in this park and having no affect at all. It shows this kind of disconnect that you are no longer rational and present.
So man, I'm trying to think of what he could have really encountered to make him go from hugging his wife goodbye, making this normal transport and then literally putting people in extreme harm's way, with people acknowledging he did not know what was going on.
Did either if you watch the documentary What's Wrong with Ant or something.
Like that, Yes, oh yes, yes, definitely.
Yeah. It made me think of that, just like this blank affect and this complete disregard for the safety of other people.
I mean, I know with Aunt Diane, like she was known for being like an alcoholic and had like a lot of mental health issues. But that's what's weird about Devin is that he didn't seem to have any history of that stuff. So but he still is doing the same thing where he's driving through a forest. He's in danger of running over this suv and endangering other people,
but just does not seem to care. So at around four pm the following day, a couple was driving through Tonto National Forest on Service Road three twenty one when they came across Devon. This was about a mile and a half away from the spot where the truck was abandoned, and once again Devin appeared to be acting strangely and mumbling incoherently. The couple said that Devin was barefoot and appeared to be hitting a twenty dollars bill with a rock.
When they asked if he needed help, Devin replied, quote, I got to light the grill. Devin then through a rock in the direction of the couple's car, which prompted them to drive away. But this turned out to be the last time Devon was seen alive. When he failed to arrive in Kansas City as scheduled with his shipment, Devon was reported missing, and it wasn't long before witnesses identified him as the man seen driving the truck. A search of Tauto National Forest turned up no trace of Devon,
so investigators attempted to track his movements. After he picked up his cargo in Los Angeles, he drove over three hundred miles to Kingman, Arizona, where he phoned his trucking company headquarters and checked in on evening a Saturday in May the twenty seventh well, Devon did complain about being unable to sleep, he said he was still determined to get back on the road and make it back home
as quickly as possible. His route would have involved traveling east on Interstate forty, but for unknown reasons, after driving around two hundred miles, Devon apparently got off the interstate near the town of Winslow. He subsequently drove forty miles south down Arizona Highway eighty seven, which would have taken him to the Blue Ridge Range, where he subsequently turned
onto Forest Service Road one thirty seven. After driving another twenty miles, Devin turned into a small path and wound up getting his truck stuck in the mud.
When he throws this rock. Is he is he being a like? Is he being aggressive? Do is he being aggressive? Or is he just like not?
I think he was. I think he was being aggressive because the couple seemed like pretty frightened when he threw the rock, as if he was like being violent towards them.
Okay, because I'm wondering in my head, I'm trying to picture this because it's like I could see it going one of two ways where he's literally so out of control that you know this has nothing to do with us, do you know what I mean? Like he's just kind of lost his mind and were watching or is he like targeting us? And you're saying it it's like he was literally targeting them without really having any concept of what was going on there.
Yeah, it almost seems like he genuinely thought he was trying to light a grill and here come these strangers who are interrupting him, and I guess they were in his face or something, and it just kind of freaked him out. And that's why he threw the rock because before they were genuinely concerned about him, but now that he's being aggressive, they're like, Okay, this guy's dangerous. We're not going to offer him a ride or anything. We're just going to get the hell out of here.
This is so bizarre, Like this behavior seems to be completely against everything that Devin would have ever done, and you've got to wonder, like, what was the catalyst for this.
Did something happen where he believed that he did something that would be punishable by law and it caused him to have like a psychotic break Because for him to just have this blatant disregard and to be driving almost into this other vehicle where these people have got to swerve out of the way to miss him, and then he's throwing this rock at these other people, it just seems like aggressive behavior, but it doesn't seem to be in line with it all who he is as a
person and what we know so far. So it's just completely confounding. Since Stefan was known for being a very dependable employee and family man, no one could come up
with an explanation for his actions. Since he'd recently he bought a house, and his wife said that they were currently experiencing the happiest time of their lives, there didn't seem to be any reason for him to disappear voluntarily Devon had no known history of mental illness, and while drug use was looked at as a possible theory for his bizarre behavior, he was regularly drug tested by his
employer and the results always came back clean. The case was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries which aired in March nineteen ninety six, and fourteen months later there would finally be a partial resolution. In May nineteen ninety seven, hikers discovered a human skull near the bottom of a steep cliff. The location was about a half mile from the spot where Devon was last seen, and dental records
positively identified the skull as belonging to him. There was no trauma found on the skull, and since the rest of Devon's remains could still not be found, authorities suspected that they'd been spread around by coyotes or other wild animals. Well, there was no direct evidence of foul play. The exact circumstances of how Devin died or why he wound up in Tonto National Forest to begin with, remain unknown.
So I guess you could say the path with Chili.
It doesn't sound like in this case that you have somebody who's a murder victim. In my mind, I mean it is always possible, because if he is struggling with any kind of break from reality or mental distress, someone like that would target you, would become a target, a very easy target to say, Wow, that person's vulnerable. I could take advantage of them or hurt them. But nothing's missing, there's nothing really, it's something to say that he really
was at risk at the moment. And for what I find it incredible that he has these drug tests that always come back clean, that his wife says, we are happy, we were doing fabulous, Like this is not an issue that sounds anything like my husband. I think something had to happen that put him into a traumatic state, whether real or not. Something happened to Devin that made him go into a place where he truly felt fearful of his life, where he felt that he was putting other
people at risk. And then it sounds like he walked off and didn't make it back, Like was he in such distress he lost his way? Was he in such distress that he took his own life? But there's no trauma to the skull.
Right exactly, Like there's no noticeable evidence of foul play. They can't find the rest of the remains, so they can't completely rule it out. But generally when people go missing in like a remote wooded area, I generally assume they died of exposure, because what are the odds of someone coming across them and killing him in such a remote place.
It's like the Dior Koons Junior case, right, Like, what are the chances that you're going to have some predator come up out of nowhere in this area where you'd have to see them drive a vehicle and then just abduct this child? Like the more likely scenario there is you know, potentially the parents had something to do with it. But here, like most national forest cases, they aren't typically murders. They are usually exposure. When you know, sometimes we don't
have a resolution and we don't know what happens. And I just think this is one of those cases where it seems like there was clear psychological distress and we don't know what brought that on, but enough that it seemed that Devin lost his bearings and really wasn't in touch with reality at that moment, and he seemed to be delusional, like I've got to light the grill while he's like hitting a bill like it just it didn't
make any sense. And then his actions didn't seem to be in line with who he was, and he was at this really great place in his life, which just makes this all the more tragic because his wife is like, We've got three kids, we just bought a house. Everything is so great, and then this happens. It just it's heartbreaking.
Oh yeah, Like, nothing I've read about his background indicates that he was violent or abusive or an angry person. So every I've heard makes me think that trying to run over people with his truck and throwing rocks at them was just completely out of character. He had just become an entirely different person. So Unsolved Mysteries had more than its fair share of stories about someone who displayed erratic behavior shortly before they went missing in a remote area.
In many of these cases, the initial search efforts failed to find the victim until someone just happened to stumble across the remains years after the fact. In fact, the very first case to be featured on the very first episode of Unsolved Mysteries, which also got covered on the Trail Went Cold and the Path Went Chili completely fits
this criteria. Of course, I'm referring to the unexplained death of Dawn Kemp, who abandoned his SUV wandered out onto a desolate Wyoming prairie before his remains were discovered a couple years later. Another memorable example of this from the show was the nineteen eighty eight disappearance of Dan Wilson, who appeared to be going through some odd personality changes and mood swings before he inexplicably drove from washing Rington
State to remote area of Montana. Once again, his abandoned car was found by the side of the road, and even though search efforts failed to find him, his skull was eventually discovered a couple miles away in nineteen ninety seven.
In this particular case, there was actually a logical explanation for what happened, as it turned out that dance car had a carbon monoxide leak, which may have been the source of his erratic behavior and influenced his decision to drive to remote location and wandered away from his vehicle before he succumbed to exposure. This could also provide a potential explanation for what happened to Devin Williams, but I see no indication that carbon monoxide leaks were found in
his truck. I'll stay right up front that I have my doubts that Devon was a victim of foul play, and it's far more likely he simply died of exposure in the woods. But even so, the circumstances of how he wound up in that situation to begin with are incredibly bizarre, and there is zero explanation for why he drove an eighteen wheeler in is a Tanto National Forest
in Arizona. By all accounts, Devin was just an ordinary, dependable, working class family man who never caused any issues at his job until something just went completely wrong during what was supposed to be a routine cross country delivery. If there were any warning signs that something was off with him, he hid them well.
And what's so sad is it likely whatever stress and distress he was under caused him to walk just a few miles off the path and probably find himself in a position to not know how to navigate back because his reality was so skewed at that point, or because he's so overwhelmed, or his psychosis is so bad at the moment. I can't make it back those couple of miles, which could have been a very clear shot back to
his truck. But I'm with you, Robin, I think this sounds much more like someone who wandered off and couldn't get back and died of exposure. But it's also so confusing and so tragic because other than strangers who knew him on this trip, there was no warning sign. It's very scary to think about, and.
Even the whole thing about I'm going to jail, even though it's possible he was just living in an alternate reality and just thought he had done something that was going to get him arrested, but he wasn't actually true. I guess you can't discount the possibility that maybe he could have done something where he legitimately thought that he was going to get into serious legal trouble and this
is what caused him to panic. But because no one could really account for his whereabouts between the time he checked into headquarters the night before and when he wound up in the forest, we will just never know for sure.
Believe it or not, During the two year period Devin was missing, the possibility of him being abducted by aliens actually entered the equation. In August of nineteen ninety six, an article about the case was published in the Arizona Republic, and it genuinely explored the UFO angle. I think this largely stemmed from the fact that Tonto National Forest bordered Apache Site Grieves National Forest, the site of the infamous incident where Travis Walton claimed he was a reducted by
aliens in nineteen seventy five. In the article, Charlie Green, a member of an organization called the Mutual UFO Network, discussed the similarities between the Travis Walton incident and Devin's disappearance. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, the following quote actually ran in several newspapers. He's the right age. This all has to do with the puerile semen. They take the semen from the males and the ovaries from females and mix it with alien juice to make a half breed. But
I still don't understand why he wasn't brought back end quote. Well, I guess that about closes the books on this case. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next month.
Wow.
I was ready for it.
No, okay, okay, okay, So yes, it's all true facts. No, So the Travis Walton incident, that's the one with the six logger who are doing their job. All of a sudden they all see this very similar light. Travis instantly disappears and has found, i want to say, like nude and beaten and stuff like that, like a pretty far distance away. A couple days later, and he says that he was abducted by aliens, that he can remember these experiments that were being done on him by humans that
were performing them helping these aliens. And as crazy as it sounded, there's six men who all independently gave the same story of watching this light come and Travis instantly disappearing while the five of them look at each other going what the hell happened? I often have wondered, why would a group of people want to lie about something that makes you look not all mentally there, you know, Like we all laugh about the people who say, oh I got abducted by aliens and they're off their rocker
and you can tell. But there have also been some people who are very sane and very smart and very accomplished, and they have similar stories. So I'm not a massive UFO believer. I'm from Golf Breeze, Florida, which is the UFO capital. Oh yes, yes, until they proved that it wasn't. But I don't know. I mean, the Travis Walton. As crazy as that case sounds, they've quote proven it didn't happen. I don't know how you can prove that.
But shoot, I.
Don't think it was just for the semen. But I definitely think that something happened. Aliens are probably laid down on my list, but I feel like something happened. He was exposed to something, a trigger from childhood trauma or something occurred. Maybe he did run into somebody who he witness hurt somebody and now he can't wrap his head around it. Or maybe he was taken by aliens. I can't argue any any of those not to be true.
I believe in aliens. I think that there's whole entire governments now that admit that there are UFOs or things that we do not understand. I don't think we can discount the possibility that people are abducted, potentially Travis Walton. I think that there are a lot of people that want to discount people's experiences. I don't think all of
them are legitimate. I think there's things like crop circles where yes, we did have someones that were really imprecise, but then we've got some that just materialize out of nowhere and mathematically they are perfect. So how do we explain these things? We've got places like Skinwalker Ranch. And although I do believe in aliens, and I think that there's a lot in this universe that we just do not understand. But in this case, do I think that
it was aliens? No, unless the aliens somehow made Devin do something illegal and that's what caused him to run off into the woods.
You know.
The trekking groups though, can be rough as well. And so like, what if someone had been hanging out with him a truck stop or something, And I know this sounds really dumb, but like put something in his drink or laced a cigarette or something like that that really triggered him to just god like psychosis set in because of something that he ingested and maybe not even knowing what he was ingesting.
That's possible could have been something like that, because even though he was drug tested, he could have had someone slip of matt after his last drug test and no
one would be able to tell. But going back to the aliens thing, like the Travis Walton case is one of the most famous UFO stories of all time and was made into a movie called Fire in the Sky, which came out in the nineteen nineties, And actually I think it came out only three years or two years before Devin went missing, So I can understand why people would be compelled to make the connection because their forests were so close together that people may have thought it
was kind of like an alien haven for abducting people. But I do think it's kind of finding you that that quote about the semen like you'd expect to find that and maybe the National Inquirer or the Weekly World News, but actually got published in several mainstream newspapers like the Arizona Republic. And I feel so bad for Devon's wife and children, Like, imagine reading that quote about your father
while he's missing, while dealing with the trauma. It's like, I can't believe they actually published that considering the circumstances. So okay, okay, in all seriousness, we're now going to explore all the other potential explanations which don't involve alien abductions and harvesting seamen. When Devon's skull was found in the forest less than a year after that article was published, I don't think it was because the aliens brought him back.
I think his remains were simply mis during the original search efforts, and wild animals probably spread them around, which is why nothing besides the skull was recovered. Devin probably either die from exposure or since his skull was found near the bottom of the cliff, perhaps he was the victim of an accidental fall. But of course, the big mystery which still remains is how did Devin wind up at this location to begin with?
Exactly how did he end up in the location in the first place. I honestly don't think it would be a fall or anything like that. I think he had to. You can see it the way that people are describing him. I can physically see it. The eyes are just black. He's not looking at anybody. He's screaming absurdities. He's confronting and taunting this couple that he's throwing the rock at. He's screaming, oh my god, they made me do it.
I'm going to jail. There is like a lot of extreme distress that's coming out in kind of this angry, scared, unstable manner. So I feel like he walks off and finds himself literally like envisioning some alternate universe where he has no direction to get back, and he just starts to crumble physically and eventually succumbs to the elements. Because there's just not a whole lot of other things that
make sense. Again, unless some crazy serial killer is just watching for a vulnerable person to come by and happens to be there, just doesn't seem probable.
Highly improbable. In fact, I think you're right. I think a fall would make less sense because if you were to fall from this big cliff, I think there'd be a strong likelihood that there would be some type of trauma to the skull. But since we're not seeing any trauma to the skull, I think unless it was a fall from a short distance, I think it's probably likely that he just became completely disoriented and, like you said, physically just broke down and eventually just died from exposure
and dehydration. Well, given that Devon was a long hal truck driver, there are a number of explanations which could account for this. As far as anyone can tell, everything seemed normal with him when he picked up his cargo in Los Angeles and started his cross country trip back to Kansas City. The last communications from Devon was when he checked into his headquarters from Kingman, Arizona, on Saturday, May twenty seventh, but he did complain that he wasn't
getting any sleep. Nevertheless, he said he was determined to get back on the road, and you can kind of understand why. At this point he still had over nineteen hours of driving left to get back home, and since May twenty ninth happened to be Memorial Day, I'm sure Devin wanted to spend it with his wife and children, even if that meant that he had to forego sleep.
During the Unsolved Mystery segment, one investigator commented that the only time Devon was known to be irritated on the job was when he had to wait a long period of time for a shipment that he was picking up because he wanted to get back home to his family.
I think that that's a very big possibility here, is it that he hasn't gotten any sleep and so he's incredibly stressed about, Okay, I have to make the delivery. Because there are different standards that people have to follow in trucking, Right, you have this many hours to get to this point. Now, they do then factor in rest
time and those kinds of things. But if you're not sleeping during your rest time and you're functioning like you're on drugs or alcohol because you've been going for hours and days with no rest, it can manifest just like you're under the influence. And so if he says, I have to make this deadline and my kids need me home, my wife needs me home, I could easily see a
lack of sleep starting that kind of distress. And then again, something let's say he stops and takes a cigarette and it's some guy who's like, I don't give two cruds. I put you know, fitanyl in my cigarettes. And if this guy wants when that's cool too, I could see something like that happening.
It could trigger an underlying mental illness. We know that he isn't diagnosed with anything, but sometimes you can have, you know, issues that might not come to the surface until an extreme amount of stress and pressure has been put on the body. And after you know a couple of days of not sleeping, the behaviors that are going to arise are going to be completely atypical of that person that they will be, like Ashley said, akin to somebody being under the influence. We really as human beings
can't survive longer than like a week without sleep. They've done all of these different sleep experiments, and the behavior becomes stranger and stranger, and the body starts to break down, and the mind is very quick to follow. After just a couple of days, your immune system is operating at like a complete subpar level, and your ability to problem
solve is diminish, almost entirely. So the fact that he wasn't sleeping, it is it opens up a door that he potentially was making poor decisions, but also that his psychology was impacted that he could have had a psychotic break.
It could have been something so simple as like Ashley said, he stopped at a roadside diner or biker bar to get a drink, and by accident he drank or smoked something that was laced with something, and that contributed to the state that he was already in and he had like a full he was in full on psychosis by the time these people saw. Because it's hard to believe that in this very short period of time since he last checked in and said that he hadn't got much
sleep that somehow they made me do. It would indicate that he actually had committed a crime that he could go to jail for. I mean, there's always a possibility that we're missing a big chunk of the story, but it seems like this lack of sleep was a major contributing factor.
And we technically don't know the last time Devin did sleep because he was traveling alone, and we don't know if he slept in king In that night, which was right before he showed up in the forest. We don't know if he slept before he arrived in Los Angeles. So for all we know, he could have gone a lengthy period of time without sleeping before he made this phone call and it would have affected his mental health.
So when you look at the geography, Devon's route should have involved him traveling east on Interstate forty through Arizona before he turned off onto another route in either New Mexico or Oklahoma to travel northeast towards Kansas City. But it seems like after he left Kingman, Devin traveled about two hundred miles east of the town of Winslow before he got off the interstate and started traveling south until he wound up in Tonto National Forests, about sixty miles away.
The last witnesses who saw Devin described him as behaving erradically and claimed that while he was behind the wheel of the truck, he appeared to have a blank look on his face, as if he had no regard for the safety of himself or anyone else in the forest. Of course, the first theory everyone jumped on was that Devin might be on drugs, but his family denied that he ever used them, and he was regularly drug test
at his job and came up clean. But just because Devin never tested positive for drugs in the past does not necessarily mean he could have decided to experiment and take something shortly before this incident which caused him the spiral out of control.
Of course, and there have always been ways to beat drug test, right if you know how your employer test, and you're not highly monitored during the test itself, you can beat those. But I am deeply convicted he was not using drugs, or at least that he was not voluntarily using drugs, that maybe something else was going on.
You know, like he's middle aged, you'd be shocked. The older we get, folks like you start to have very different hormonal reactions, You start to have different mental health reactions. I struggle with things today I never struggled with when I was younger, and vice versa. Things I used to struggle with when I was younger I no longer struggle with, so like on set of allergies and on set of
other conditions, those things happen. I am still wondering who did he hang out with while he's stressed out and sleep deprived. Was there someone who said, this will be fun to mess with this guy and slip him something, or were they sharing something just to be kind, like, yeah, you can bum a cigarette off me and it has
cocaine in it or something like that. I mean, I don't It just seems like the crowd he would be hanging out with at the truck stops, that there's potential for that with certain types of truckers.
Long truck drivers are known to be regular users of meth because you need to stay awake for long periods of time, and you make more money if you can complete your job in an expedient manner. So there is
a huge motivation to stay up at like these ungodly hours. So, although it says that he was tested and he was clean, was his employer really fastidious about doing surprise testing or did they schedule testing so the employees knew when they would be tested just so they were like achieving some kind of compliance and then that way they could kind of skirt around it by making sure they didn't use
within certain timeframes. And like, unless we know what the exact policy is, it's really hard to know just because he was clean when he was tested, if he in fact never used drugs in order to stay awake, because as we well know, I mean, you can stay awake for a while with red bull and stuff, but staying awake for multiple days without some sort of subs since is damn near impossible. However, a far more logical explanation for Devon's behavior might be, like we mentioned, sleep deprivation.
Devon was complaining about being unable to sleep during his final phone call from Kingman the night before, and it's unclear if he did get any sleep before he wound up in the forest. Sleep deprivation and fatigue have always been a major issue in the trucking industry, as drivers are sometimes put on tight schedules to deliver their loads and do not take the appropriate amount of time to rest.
And even if Devon wasn't facing pressure to deliver his shipment, he may have been pressuring himself to be home in time to spend Memorial Day with his family. Sleep deprivation can cause a person to become completely disoriented, and this very well could have led to Devon going off course and barreling his truck down a forest service road which
was not equipped to handle an eighteen wheeler. After he got his truck stuck in the mud, witnesses reported seeing him climb out will saying stuff like they made me do it and I'm going to jail. In his disoriented state, Devin may have thought he was going to face serious consequences for this, which is what compelled him to abandon
the truck and take off into the forest. We know that Devin survived in the elements for at least twenty four hours, since a couple saw him the following day, But since he was attempting to light a non existent grill, it was apparent that he was in a bad state of mind and had no idea where he was or what he was doing. As far as anyone can tell, Devin did not have any history of mental illness or
medical issues which could have caused this behavior. But what if he had some kind of undiagnosed medical issue that he didn't even know about for sure?
How old is Devon? I was twenty nine, twenty nine, and there are a lot of mental health conditions that do worsen in your twenties, so that's very possible for him. What was also sad is that you know, there's no fault or blame here. In hindsight's always so easy to see, but like, you know, you see people like Devin, He's sitting there trying to light an imaginary flame. I mean, we see people here who are addicted to drugs and they're talking to themselves at the grocery store and things
like that. If there was only better resources to call and get people mental health care and help, and we were all alert enough to know what those resources were, I wonder if people like Devin could be saved, you know what I mean, or at least gotten help. But it's like we don't have the mechanisms in place. Had anyone even called and said, Hey, there's a guy struggling out here. He seems like he's not got it all together, Like, what would they have even done for him? Would someone
have even shown up to help. It's sad to think that a man who is likely struggling for mental health didn't have anyone kind of reach out and try to get assistance for him. But then again, what assistance would you be getting, especially when this wasn't twenty twenty three? Do you know what I mean? And we're still at a point where many of us feel helpless of who do I ask for help when I know someone struggling with mental illness.
It's pretty heartbreaking because at the age of twenty nine, I think people will think, oh, that's kind of old to be diagnosed with a mental health condition. But a lot of mental health conditions are diagnosed in your twenties. Oftentimes they'll be indicators earlier on. But psychiatrists and psychologists are really reticent to label you when you're in your teens unless there is some kind of major event right where say there is a suicide attempt or something like that.
Somebody may be diagnosed as bipolar when they're seventeen, whereas people really like to wait and see how the brain develops. When the brain isn't fully developed until you're twenty five, so twenty nine wouldn't be completely outside the realm of what would be characterized as typical. I have bipolar two, and I wasn't diagnosed until my early thirties, although there were major indicators that I've been suffering from it earlier.
And my mom is bipolar one. So I think each individual's kind of mental health journey is highly individualized and will be completely dependent on the type of care available and also the people around you.
And what year was this, Robin nineteen ninety five, Yeah.
Nineteen ninety five. The conversations around mental health and mental health treatment aren't what they are today, So if we're looking at it through a lens of nineteen ninety five, I think it is entirely possible that he may have been struggling mightily and might not have been able to articulate that struggle, and maybe other people didn't know, because I know personally and I know from watching other people around me, that when you're struggling, you can sometimes hide
that very well from others, and you might not reach out for help when you need it.
Well. There are a couple of discussion threads about this case on the Unsolved Mysteries message board at the Sitcoms online forum I always frequent. One of the most interesting theories I've read there is that Devin was suffering from severe hypoglycemia aka low blood sugar and went into diabetic shock. In fact, a poster on those threads under the username Caine seventy four or seventy four shared a very interesting story about a friend of his who was a truck driver.
One day, this guy suddenly drove his truck around erratically for no reason, and when he pulled over and climbed out, he started to pretend he was going fishing. His behavior suggested that he legitimately believed what he was doing, much like when Devon was attempting to light the grill. It turned out this guy was acting this way because he was a diabetic whose blood sugar had gotten too low.
But once he ate a candy bar, he started acting normally again and had no memory whatsoever of his erratic behavior. Whenever someone suffers from low blood sugar, they can lapse into a diabetic coma if they are not treated. But given that Devon was out there by himself in a remote area. It may not have even been aware of what was happening to him. I can see a situation like this taking place absolutely.
I could absolutely see something like that taking place. I had no idea idea how bad blood sugar would affect your behavior, like I know personally when I haven't eaten and I can feel the shakes coming on. My mental health struggles as well. But I also have a bonus baby who has type one diabetes. And my mom was a type two diabetic for many years, and especially with our type one diabetic, mood and attitude is very much
tied to keeping that blood sugar in line. And we had no idea that she had type one diabetes, and so there were several months where we were very confused of the radical behavior changes and things like that. And when she's soaring and doing well, you can really see the mental health come as a blessing and bonus to having her blood sugar inline. So I didn't even think about blood sugar and diabetes or something to that extent, and having late onset of that kind of condition is
just as probable as something like you were saying. Jewels so vulnerably and beautifully that yes, later in life, it's not abnormal to be diagne with a mental health condition and to have symptoms get stronger before they get better. So, man, we've got a lot of things on the table as possibilities to what Devon was going through. I think any kind of violence against Devin was probably not the case.
Now.
There's no indication that Devon was ever diagnosed as having diabetes, but I could see him getting it. He was overweight and working as a long haul truck driver, a job which requires you to be seated for long periods of time does not lend itself to having an active, healthy lifestyle. But most importantly, one potential cause of diabetes is sleep deprivation,
as it inhibits the body's ability to produce insulin. So if Devin had been living an unhealthy sleep deprived lifestyle for a while, he could have developed diabetes without even realizing it. Unfortunately, since all that was found of Devon was his skull, it will be impossible to ever determine if any health problems contributed to his death. The one thing I'm pretty certain of is that Devin Williams was not abducted by UFOs, nor was he the victim of
foul play. He likely just suffered some sort of episode which caused him to have a breakdown and wander off into the woods before he passed away.
It is so sad. Yeah, I mean, I don't think UFOs had anything to do with this one either, Jules. When you do have his wife and all, what breaks my heart is it She's saying he was fine, like we were doing so well, there were no problematic signs, And then imagine her sitting there hearing from police and detectives and people saying, oh, a lot of people saw him.
He was really struggling. She's having to wrap around her mind around not only is he not found, and not only does she not know where he is, but she's also being told about a man she doesn't know, Like the behaviors that are being described, She's going, who are they talking about? He was aggressive towards somebody, he was screaming, he was going to jail. He almost ran a couple off the road or hit their campaign site. Like she's having to kind of come to terms with like I
wasn't able to be there to help. I don't know what happened to him, And it's I can't imagine the added complexities that she'd be feeling as she's being told about his last days on earth.
Yeah, even if there was no crime here, you still have to feel terrible for Devin's family because there is really no way to conclusively determine what happened to him, and they will always be left with unanswered questions. So, even though this case is pretty creepy on the surface and has a number of inexplicable details, it's probably more
of a senseless tragedy than anything else. All that being said, if you happen to have any information to suggest that foul play may have been involved in the death of Devin Williams, or you can shed some additional light on what he drove into Tonto National Forest, please contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any final thoughts on this case.
It's sad, I mean, that's what I basically say. At the end of any of these someone lost their life and there's a family grievingness. Again, I think this is one of those cases where it leads me going like what if what if someone had been able to get in touch with authorities that could have made contact with Devin, and what if they were able to get him proper
medical or mental health support. Something was going wrong. And what said is so many people were able to say, oh, yeah, I saw him and he was acting very you know, abnormal. He wasn't acting like himself, or he wasn't acting sane or like he was present in his body. But the reality is, like I said earlier, I don't really know
that we have services in place too help people. I encounter many homeless individuals and addicts in my small little town every day, and it's like we just don't have the resources in place here to help any of them. It feels like, right like you can help them for an afternoon, or you can get them food or get them to a safe space, but it doesn't address any of the deeper issues that are going on. And hear, what's so crazy is that these weren't signs that anyone
who loved and cared about him had ever seen. It's just really like he left, and when he left, something happened that completely changed the individual who was driving behind the wheel of that truck. So, my god, it's pitiful. It's so pitiful. I wish that the whole skeletal remains had been found to see if there's any indication of what had happened. But I just I pray that Devin's family is safe and has you know, this idea of look, we just don't know what happened, and we still have
to create a life for ourselves. So many families end up really dying alongside with the victim when they have no answers and they don't know what's happening. So, my God, my prayers that they're thriving and that one day they would have answers in this case, but even if not, that they would know Devn is not hurting anymore and that they have this potential to have an amazing life and his legacy. So thank you for sharing this case with me. Super sad.
My heart goes out to the family. Like Ashley said, I really hope that they've found some sort of peace, And it's really difficult when there aren't any clear answers. All you have is a skull. I mean, it is a blessing. I suppose that they were able to find the skull and that there was no trauma to the skull, and so with regards to was it murder or was this you know, an accident exposure type of thing. I think it's pretty clear that it was exposure was the
most likely cause. But what led to Devin driving his truck down this dirt road, nearly mowing people over, and then behaving very strangely and out of character. I think there is a lot of hidden variables. Like Robin had brought up about the diabetes, it is possible because he was sedentary, he was only twenty nine, it very well could have been something like that. Or it could have
been drug use. Like we said, he managed to come back clean, but we don't know if he was managing to stay up for all of these concurrent days by taking some kind of substance and maybe that triggered a
psychotic break. I think there's any number of things that could have happened, and we could talk about those things at nauseum, but the reality is, I just don't think we're ever going to get any clear answers because unless this was murder and somebody comes forward and says that they indeed did it, or they said that, oh I
know what he did. That is the thing that was the catalyst for this, that he was saying, I'm going to go to jail, then I don't think there's any answers because we don't have the body, so we're not going to know exactly what it was that caused his death. But I just, like Ashley said, I just really pray for the family, and I hope that they found some resolution in being able to bury his remains or do whatever they chose to do, whatever their chosen funerary practice is.
Yeah, since you mentioned Devon's family, I know the former moderator of the Unsolved Mysteries message board, and many years ago she actually had a bit of communication with Devon's daughter, who pretty much said that we still have no idea what happened to our father and why he wound up
on those woods and how he wound up dead. But even though it was a sad situation for them, at least they knew that he wasn't still missing at that point, and at least we're able to confirm that he was deceased and that he was not out there somewhere possibly
in danger. I know that when it first aired on Unsolved Mysteries, I was pretty mind blown by it because I had no idea what was going on, why he wound up where he did, why he was acting so strangely, but a lot of the mystery was taken away when they found his skull, because that pretty much was conclusive proof that he never left the forest. He probably died of exposure, and the big mystery was there was no foul play, But there was still a big mystery how
we wound up there. And I think it was probably maybe we talked about possibly diabetes or a mental health issue, or someone slipped him some drugs which totally lose his grip on reality, or maybe it was sleep deprivation which caused him to be confused about what he was doing. And like we said, the very sad thing about it is that since we only found a skull, we will never know the answer. And that's why in a lot of these cases, you want there to be like a crime.
You want there to be a criminal because then you could least get answers about what happened. But if he was out there alone and just simply a diet of exposure, there's just no way of knowing for sure. I tend
to think that is what happened. But I still think that this case is worth discussing because at least Devin's family knows that he's not forgotten, and that people still care about finding the truth about what happened to him, which is why it's important to keep these cases alive on this podcast like this.
Thanks to all of the amazing Patreon fans who have logged on and listened to us this month. We can't wait to connect with you next month, So for now, bye guys.