Doug is still missing.
I just finished listening to his episode of the Vanished podcast from 2021 and was left with some questions I don't think were addressed. Mainly- did Doug have a handgun at the time of his disappearance, and if so, was it accounted for after he vanished? My first question when a man goes missing and his vehicle is found with no sign of foul play is that he's going to be somewhere nearby with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But unless I missed it, I don't think anyone was asked if he had a weapon and if it was accounted for after he went missing.
It seems like a lot of people want to insinuate that his wife was responsible for his disappearance, and she definitely is not a very sympathetic character so I get it. She was abusive and clearly suffering from mental health issues herself, and then she made the bizarre choice to go ahead with the planned trip to Disney World the next day. That definitely doesn't make her look like Wife of the Year, but I can't quite get there with believing it makes her responsible for his disappearance. She sounds like she was a very paranoid woman along with her other mental health struggles. Trying to put myself in her shoes, what would I think if we had this fun trip planned to take our child on their first trip to Disney and then he just vanished the day before? Do I call off the trip, lose all the money on the nonrefundable reservations we've likely made, and disappoint the child who is probably over the moon with excitement about going to see Mickey Mouse? Especially when he did leave once before and maybe in my paranoid state of mind I'm thinking he's just done a runner again and left me high and dry with the kids? Although it's not what I would most likely do in her shoes, I can see her choosing to decide to try to maintain a semblance of normalcy for the child and go on the trip anyway.
I also can't really see how a mom with an infant and toddler at home is going to pull off a murder (or accidental killing, I suppose), bury or dispose of the body somewhere, drive his truck a mile away and ditch it on the side of the road, and then hustle back home without the 3-year-old seeing anything or anyone noticing these babies have been left alone at home while all this is happening. Surely she couldn't have dragged them along with her while she was doing all this. And then there was the $300 that was left in his truck, his emergency stash- according to his brother, everyone knew he had this money in the truck, so surely his wife knew it was there. Why wouldn't she have taken it? Disney's expensive, that money would have come in handy on the trip. When the truck was found, anyone else who knew the money should have been there would have just assumed he was robbed, or maybe an opportunistic thief came along and found it when the truck was left abandoned.
Also, the part he bought at one of his last stops was meant to be for a job he had to complete that day, but he never made it to the job site. It doesn't sound like he would have gone home if he hadn't yet finished work for the day.
I think the most likely scenario is that his mental health issues got the best of him that day and he did leave his truck where it was found, and he did head off into the woods to self-harm. The fact that his body hasn't been found means little to me because we see it over and over again that bodies are found in places that have been searched extensively. I expect one day a hiker or someone will come across his remains in an area that has been searched and we will add his name to our list of people who were found after extensive searching.
IMO, MOO, etc., etc.
