CA CA - Bryce Laspisa, 19, Castaic, 30 Aug 2013 - #10

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Trackergd said:
If what I posted above is the most probable scenario, then the question becomes did he commit suicide elsewhere and has not been discovered, or is he transitioned into a new life elsewhere, where he is not known? I am really not sure which is the more probable path at this point.
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The dog's tracking his footsteps around the lake and toward the highway/parking area had me always thinking he likely hitched a ride somewhere.

If he didn't wander into the desert brush and kill himself I think r could've easily blended in with the homeless population.

I always wondered if whatever he was taking triggered the onset of latent mental health issues like bi polar disorder with psychotic features or schizophrenia.

I think about that poor young woman who came to LA and had a sudden episode during which she acted bizarrely in an elevator and then walked to the roof where he placed herself into a water tank and died. Elisa Lam.

She had bi polar disorder and was on some pretty serious medication that indicates she had maybe had psychosis before, but we don't know that she ever suffered a psychotic break or psychosis prior to that event.

Something can trigger someone to have a seemingly sudden onset of insanity.

IIRC Bryce's pre-disappearance behavior may have been withdrawn and isolating before he went on his hours long video game binge. And that can apparently be evidence of the prodromal? stage of schizophrenia just at onset.
 
gitana1 said:
snipped by me....
The dog's tracking his footsteps around the lake and toward the highway/parking area had me always thinking he likely hitched a ride somewhere.

If he didn't wander into the desert brush and kill himself I think r could've easily blended in with the homeless population.
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That was my first thought too. He hitched a ride somewhere. If he wandered off into the desert brush around there - wouldn't have the dogs tracked him there?
 
I have always speculated Bryce is in the lake, and still do. Males seem to be like moths to light when it comes to water. So many, many threads with males ending up in the water; young and old alike. Despite the lake search, that's where I firmly believe he rests, most likely snagged/wedged on something. His troubles long over.

Amateur opinion and speculation
 
I can't believe 6 years later there are still more questions than answers to the mystery of where Bryce Laspisa is. Praying this is the year that his parents, relatives and loved ones receive those answers and closure in regards to the disappearance of their son, relative and friend.
 
rosesfromangels said:
I have always speculated Bryce is in the lake, and still do. Males seem to be like moths to light when it comes to water. So many, many threads with males ending up in the water; young and old alike. Despite the lake search, that's where I firmly believe he rests, most likely snagged/wedged on something. His troubles long over.

Amateur opinion and speculation
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I've never agreed with that because it's a man made lake with pretty good visibility and because it's man made not a lot of stuff growing out of it naturally that he can snag on. Plus they searched it quite a bit.

 
gitana1 said:
I've never agreed with that because it's a man made lake with pretty good visibility and because it's man made not a lot of stuff growing out of it naturally that he can snag on. Plus they searched it quite a bit.

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My speculation is definitely in the minority, but I’m stickin’ to it. : )
 
Family seeks new information on missing man

https://signalscv.com/2019/08/family-seeks-new-information-on-missing-man/

1001_news_laspisa_vigil_CK_02-990x712.jpg
 
gitana1 said:
I've never agreed with that because it's a man made lake with pretty good visibility and because it's man made not a lot of stuff growing out of it naturally that he can snag on. Plus they searched it quite a bit.

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I agree with you. I think it would be highly unlikely that he is in the lake. I think the dogs got it wrong and he walked off in the opposite direction and is still out in that vast area not far from where his car crashed, waiting to be found.
 
Voice4theSilent said:
I agree with you. I think it would be highly unlikely that he is in the lake. I think the dogs got it wrong and he walked off in the opposite direction and is still out in that vast area not far from where his car crashed, waiting to be found.
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This, IMO, is highly probable as well.

Amateur opinion and speculation
 
Okay, this is weird, but I'm on this thread today because I think I saw a man strongly resembling Bryce, living homeless along my route to work.

This was about 50 miles from where he went missing. I'll keep you all posted. I'm going to take his pictures to the local PD this week and ask them to do a BOLO. I contacted the FB page for Bryce and learned that someone else reported seeing someone who looks like him in the same area about 2 years ago.

I've seen this man more than once. Since I've been on WS, I'm paying more attention to random homeless people plus, I'm trying to collect pictures of faces for my anth lab. I've seen this person twice, he stands on a median strip and holds up a cardboard side, begging for money. He's one of about 5-6 homeless people who do this, and my friend who works in administration at local PD says that all of the people who hold up those signs are doing so while their drug dealer watches nearby. Meth. It's near a Motel Six that is notorious for drug deals and there's a fairly large homeless encampment nearby, but all of them evade the police as much as possible.

ANYWAY, when I saw this man, he struck me because he was smiling hopefully into every car with this very wide but sad smile. The other homeless who beg at this spot are not smiling. Most of them are not young white men, either.

Red-headed, skin very weathered and sun damaged. So I went back and read this thread and also listened to two podcasts. I think Bryce was experiencing the onset of mental illness, perhaps schizoaffective disorder. I have very personal experience with a close family member going through the same thing at about the same age, and I'm convinced that without strong intervention, my family member could easily have "forgotten" who he was and been lost to the system. It's not exactly amnesia, it's more complex.

I also have so much compassion for his parents, because when someone starts into the onset of mental illness, it first seems like they're just acting "weird" and yes, one thinks they should just snap out of it. They are still able to pull together their usual self, but it's a huge effort that eventually fails altogether.

I realize the chances of this actually being Bryce are small (although seriously, the riverbed where this person lives goes directly to the Castaic area). I don't know how to find the man again and although I drive past that intersection 3-4 times a week, I can't be sure I'll see him again. If I do, I'll get a picture. Am feeling really bad that I didn't think to take one - but at the time, I just thought he looked familiar somehow (looks 30-35, though, but Bryce would be 25 by now and of course living outdoors, homeless, ages a person).

I'm trying to find out how to get help in getting an "aged" photo of Bryce. I'm going to take posters into businesses near this intersection (although two sides of it are either open fields or abandoned shopping properties).

Reading that so many of you do not think he's in the lake made me go ahead and post.

If he walked to the truck stop, then he easily could have gotten out toward the coast. I know other homeless (schizophrenic) people who have lived in that riverbed for more than a decade, so it's possible (my cousins adopted the child of a homeless schizophrenic woman who lives in that riverbed; there's a guy I used to call "my homeless guy" who lives a bit further down the riverbed because I bought him food regularly, he's still around). It's possible!

Off to reread this thread again.
 
NL007 said:
I'm not sure of the exact coordinates of where exactly Bryce crashed or where exactly the skull was found, but around 35 minutes away.

I would love every missing person to be found safe, Bryce included, but unfortunately I'm not very hopeful in this case. Many women dye their hair red, but to see a redheaded man is quite rare in California. I believe there'd be way more sightings of him had he simply walked away from his life voluntarily, or had head trauma and forgot who he was. The only likely scenario I can think of where he'd be found alive is if he's been dying his hair to avoid detection, but he'd really have had to be committed to start a new life to go through all that.

Plenty of people have voluntarily gone missing when nobody expected it and later been found alive, so who knows?
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The man I saw has faded red hair, was wearing a backwards baseball cap and yes, his red headedness was part of what caught my attention. Whether he's Bryce or not, he's someone's homeless family member. And to my eye, he's also quite mentally ill (the man I saw).

Someone else sighted the same man 2 years ago (according to the response I got on Bryce's facebook page). The police were alerted, but nothing came of it.

The thing about mental illness (especially the kind I'm thinking of) is that it can erase most of a person's prior personality. While they may still have memories of their past, they do not speak of them and do not mentally reference them, their minds are filled with other things. There's a form of schizophrenia that has what are called "negative" symptoms (instead of hearing voices, the mind apparently becomes empty; we don't know for sure, when I was involved in research on negative symptoms, we had to use MRI's and EEG's to try and figure out what was going on, because we couldn't get the patients to say anything about what they were thinking; they were polite, functioned well as homeless people, passively resisted treatment and appeared to understand a lot of what went on around them). My job was to find these people living homeless in downtown LA, figure out which ones were veterans, and get those veterans to come to a hospital with an offer of care. My allies were social workers assigned to the downtown area, I was shocked how many potential patients there were, but only some were veterans.

Voice4theSilent said:
BBM IMO His girlfriend and roommate know what was going through his head in those last days..... MOO
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That's just it. If he was having the kind of breakdown I think he was, they would have no clue what he was thinking, as he would be unable to describe it or tell them. They'd just say "He's acting weird." When my family member went missing, he had been acting "weird" for several days, and intermittently for a few weeks. He had had a similar but not as serious episode a year earlier, but could recall nothing about why he did the weird things he did. I'd be happy to list some of the weirdnesses if anyone is interested.

For others, the person I saw does strongly resemble this digitally aged photo of Bryce. So many homeless schizophrenics look way older than their actual age.

bryceaged2.jpg

Even if nothing else comes of my experience this past week or so, there's this photo. And the guy I saw definitely looks a lot like this aged photo of Bryce. Deeper grooves (labiodental folds), a smile that's a bit more contorted. I did not notice what he was wearing.

PM me if you are local to northern LA County or Ventura County and I'll give you location information.
 
Thank you, SandSage. But I would not have been looking so carefully at this person had I not been on Websleuths. So, you guys here are amazing.

It's something that I talk about a lot (that the mentally ill homeless people must belong somewhere) but I just wasn't looking carefully at them. I am going to send/take pictures (both the old one and the aged one) to some businesses in the area where I saw him (and to PD and to homeless shelters).
 
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