1 | No Place Like Nome
Up and Vanished
Host Payne Lindsey travels to the remote town of Nome, Alaska, to investigate the 2020 disappearance of Florence Okpialuk. The episode detai
Key takeaways
- Florence Okpialuk disappeared on August 31, 2020, from the West Beach area in Nome, Alaska.
- Investigators found Florence's shoes and jacket abandoned near a tent, but the owner of that tent remains unknown.
Main topics
- The disappearance of Florence Okpieluk
- Law enforcement accountability in Nome
Notable quotes
I know why the victim's family wants me to come here. And I know why the police have never stepped foot here.
Conclusion
The episode sets the stage for a deep investigation into a cold case s
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:00) Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun is released every Friday and brought to you absolutely free. But for ad-free listening, exclusive bonuses, and early access starting next week, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts. You're listening to Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun, a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating. This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. I've been on four different flights in the last 18 hours. Small rickety planes in the remote region of northern Alaska. After a while, you get used to the turbulence. The plane's engine starts to feel like white noise. Speaker 3 (1:19) When I get here, I'm going to have to face the music. For about a year now, I've been investigating an unsolved missing persons case. And it's all led me to this moment. To this place. A tiny town in remote Alaska. I'm minutes away from what is likely the most terrifying encounter of my entire life. And there's no escape plan. But I've mentally prepared for this moment. I know exactly why I'm here. I know why the victim's family wants me to come here. And I know why the police have never stepped foot here. I'm about to meet the number one suspect in a murder case. I know they're dangerous. I know that they're armed. There's no time for second thoughts now. But what if I'm walking into a trap? What if this confrontation goes way south? You need to snap out of it. Turn around. But we both know we can't do that. I didn't come this far for nothing. It's time to approach them. And even though the anxiety Speaker 8 (2:47) is crippling me, Speaker 8 (2:50) I took a breath and looked back on the wild journey that's led me here. Speaker 2 (2:59) It's safer to be in numbers. Never alone. That's not safe. Speaker 6 (3:05) She was murdered, taken out on the tundra and dumped somewhere. Speaker 8 (3:09) There's no way they'd say something like that if they didn't know what happened. Speaker 5 (3:14) Somebody's being heard or taken advantage of. You don't just look the other way. Speaker 1 (3:18) Stay on the phone with you, please. Sure. Do you have a mic? Speaker 1 (3:23) There's a truck that's following you guys. Speaker 4 (3:25) We heard gunshots. Speaker 1 (3:27) Where were the gunshots at? Speaker 4 (3:29) If you think you're investigating a murder scene, things have to be documented. We Speaker 3 (3:36) made the right decision here. He Speaker 4 (3:37) says, you know what, I could have killed you and nobody would have known about it. Speaker 8 (3:41) If I walk out this door with him, you have to follow me or else this is way more dangerous than we thought it was. Speaker 4 (3:46) We don't know who to trust. We don't know who to trust. Speaker 3 (3:53) Welcome to season four of Up and Vanished in the Midnight Sun. Speaker 3 (3:58) I'm your host, Payne Lindsey. Speaker 8 (4:40) About a year ago, one of my good friends, Cooper, who also works as a producer on this show, sent me an article about a missing person. Her name is Florence Akpialik. She's 33 years old, an Alaska native, and was last seen on the evening of August 31st, 2020. She went missing from a small town in the subarctic region of Alaska, a town called Nome. Speaker 8 (5:08) What struck me immediately was how incredibly small this place was. Nome, Alaska has a population of barely over 3,000 people, and the town area itself is geographically under one square mile. .53 square miles to be exact. How does anyone at all go missing from a place like this? I spent a few weeks trying to read as much as I could about Florence Akpialik's disappearance. Speaker 8 (5:35) According to the official missing poster from the Alaska State Troopers, her last known clothing description and direction of travel remain unknown. And after four years, the case had gone completely cold. Speaker 8 (5:51) From Atlanta, Georgia, where I live, Nome, Alaska is nearly 4,000 miles away. And that's if you drew a straight line on a map. Driving there isn't even possible. That's because no road systems connect to this town. The only way in or out of Nome, Alaska Speaker 3 (6:07) is by boat Speaker 8 (6:08) or Speaker 3 (6:09) plane. Logistically speaking, this case would be very difficult to cover. I'd need to spend time on the ground there and genuinely immerse myself in the environment. I'm not interested in doing a quick gloss over of this case. I want to try and solve it. So I kept researching Florence Okpialik's disappearance. The coverage on her case was pretty limited, but I needed to find anything there was on the internet. I found a Reddit post about it. It seemed to have a few more details about the case. She's the youngest of seven siblings. To friends and family, she went by Flo. She has a daughter, who was six years old at the time of her disappearance. She was born in Wales, Alaska, one of the oldest communities in the Bering Strait region, called Inupiat. Nome, where she went missing, has a very high population of indigenous people, 53%. Having covered the disappearance of Ashley Loring Heavy Runner in season three of Up and Vanished, I learned firsthand about the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous people. The statistics are just horrific. According to data collected from 1979 to 2020, Speaker 8 (7:21) the Speaker 3 (7:21) rate of violent crimes Speaker 8 (7:22) in Alaska has been on a steady increase since 1993. American Indians and Alaska Natives are two and a half times more likely to experience violent crimes. More than four in five women have Speaker 3 (7:35) experienced violence in their lifetime. And homicide is the fifth leading cause of death between the ages of 25 and 34. Florence Okpialuk was 33 when she went missing. I eventually found another website called The Charlie Project, an independent internet database of missing persons cases. Here, I discovered some more details about the night she vanished. According to The Charlie Project, Florence was last seen in Nome, Alaska, in an area called West Beach, at around 4 p.m. in the afternoon on August 31, 2020. She was allegedly seen coming out of a tent on West Beach, and she's never been seen since then. But perhaps the most important detail is what the police found outside that tent. In the sand, they discovered her shoes and her jacket. My first question is who the hell's tent is that? And trust me, if that fact existed somewhere on the internet, I would have already found it. I looked for days. The owner of this tent that Florence was last seen leaving remains a complete mystery. Who was she with that night? And who was the witness who saw her leaving that tent? Why would she leave her shoes and jacket behind? Where was she going? If she wandered barefoot down the beach, how far could she have actually gone? And how could nobody find her if that was the case? Based on this information alone, finding the owner of that tent is my number one priority. Speaker 3 (9:09) Before I knew it, I was up late almost every night of the week, completely submerged in this case, trying to make sense of it all. It was driving me crazy. I kept searching her name, hoping I'd magically find some new information I hadn't already seen yet. It was becoming clear that I'd reached the end of the trail. If I wanted to know more, I was going to have to go and find it myself. Speaker 3 (9:37) Getting to Nome would take me roughly two days, accounting for connecting flights to Anchorage, 10 hours of airtime, and an overnight layover. If I was going to take on this case, I wouldn't have the freedom to quickly bounce back and forth. But if I planned it all out, meticulously, I know I could make it work. At this point, the case was becoming a bit of an obsession. But this was the exact energy I needed in order to take on this case. So I made it official. Let's go. I booked a flight to Nome, Alaska, completely unsure of where I was going to even start. This case was going to be the focus of the newest season of Up and Vanished. Speaker 8 (10:25) Since 2016, when I first started the podcast, we've received tens of thousands of emails, many from other families in search of their loved ones. And the team and I do our best to read as many of them as possible, Speaker 3 (10:37) offering support whenever and however we can. Speaker 3 (10:42) One morning, about a year ago now, just a few days before my flight to Nome, I woke up with this strange feeling. I couldn't really pinpoint it. I logged into the Up and Vanished email account, typed in Alaska, Speaker 8 (10:59) 14 different results, different missing persons cases spanning all the way back to 1978. Then I typed in Nome, and lo and behold, there was one email. Speaker 8 (11:17) It read, I love the podcast. I started listening a month ago, and I'm all caught up on the latest episode in season three. I'd like to request that you look into the case of my friend who went missing. She's a young Native American. Law enforcement has made zero progress. I want your help. Nobody trusts the police station in Nome. I'd like to find Florence Akpialik. Someone hurt her. Speaker 3 (11:49) An email from one of Florence Okpialik's friends, buried in the Up and Vanished inbox from over two years ago. I don't really believe in luck, but I do believe in serendipity. Speaker 8 (12:04) Discovering a lost email in my inbox about an unsolved case I've been obsessing over for the past month. You could call Speaker 3 (12:10) it fate or kismet, but I don't. The logical part of my brain yearns for a more grounded explanation of things, even if my emotions want to override it. Having Speaker 8 (12:22) the right intentions and following your gut instincts is everything. Leaning into life's mysteries instead of being fearful of the unexplained. I have that funny, familiar feeling inside me right now. So instead of looking at this email as if the world's conspired to bring it to my attention, I simply see it as a sign that I'm heading in the right direction. And if I can stay the course, maybe I can help find the truth that's been eluding this community. What really happened to Florence Akpialik? Speaker 8 (12:55) The email was from October 2021, signed D'Ila. But she left no number. And I'm not convinced she even uses that email address anymore. So I tried to find her on social media. Okay, there's her Facebook. I think. I'm gonna message her here, too. Speaker 8 (13:16) Days before Speaker 3 (13:17) my scheduled flight to Nome, we had a change of plans. My producer Mike and I took a detour to the coast of Oregon, where Florence Akpialik's friend, Diayla, currently resides. Hi, Speaker 8 (13:28) Diayla. Nice to finally meet you in person.