The Vanished Podcast

In February 2022, 21-year-old Rylee James Styler traveled to Leavenworth, Kansas, to spend the weekend with friends. Rylee moved around often, splitting his time between Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, so when his mom, Teri, didn’t hear from him for a few days, it wasn’t immediately alarming. Rylee always resurfaced, but this time, he didn’t.
Shortly before communication stopped, Rylee sent his best friend a scene from the movie Juice, followed by a cryptic message suggesting something was wrong. He also missed a call from Rylee that night and planned to call him back the next day, but never got the chance.
Then, police contacted Teri and said they were trying to locate Rylee because of a car that had turned up in the county. They assured her that Rylee wasn’t in trouble and that they just needed to speak with him. But when Teri tried to contact Rylee to let him know the police were looking for him, her message never went through.
Rylee’s family tried to understand what was happening while investigators revealed very little. What eventually emerged was far more complicated than that initial phone call suggested: a burned vehicle, a suspected murder scene, conflicting accounts of what happened inside a Leavenworth house, and a sprawling racketeering investigation involving the last known people to see Rylee.
Years of arrests, trials, plea agreements, and prison sentences followed. Yet the legal process would prove that resolving one part of a case doesn’t necessarily answer the question a family has been asking from the beginning: What happened to Rylee James Styler, and why has that answer remained so difficult to find?
If you have a missing loved one that you would like to have featured on the show, please fill out our case submission form.
Follow The Vanished on social media at:
Facebook
Instagram
Patreon
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On the evening of August 30, 2001, 44-year-old Edgar Sanchez drove to the Baldwin, New York, home of his older brother, 53-year-old Frank Sanchez. Edgar left his car there, and the brothers headed out together in Frank’s white Chevrolet Lumina. They were believed to be meeting someone they had known for years.
The brothers were close, and cars had always been a major part of both of their lives. Frank was a mechanic and accomplished racer, while Edgar had also built a career around cars. There was nothing unusual about them spending time together, but Frank seemed different that night. He was unusually quiet, and when he left the house, he did something his family immediately noticed: he didn’t kiss his wife goodbye. Frank and Edgar never came home.
By the following day, Frank’s Lumina was parked on Grand Street in Chinatown, more than an hour away from where the brothers were believed to have been headed, and in the opposite direction. The car began accumulating parking tickets, but it would take time before anyone connected it to the missing brothers from Long Island.
Then, just twelve days after Frank and Edgar disappeared, September 11 changed everything. As law enforcement resources across the region were redirected, the Sanchez family was already searching for answers of their own. Over time, they learned more about what may have been troubling Frank that night, a large amount of money the brothers may have been trying to retrieve, and parts of Frank and Edgar’s past that raised an entirely different set of questions.
Twenty-five years later, Frank and Edgar Sanchez have never been found. Their family is still trying to understand where they went that night, how Frank’s car ended up in Chinatown, and what happened after the brothers drove away from Frank’s home.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Frank and Edgar Sanchez, please contact the Nassau County Police Department Missing Persons Squad at 516-573-7347.
If you have a missing loved one that you would like to have featured on the show, please fill out our case submission form.
Follow The Vanished on social media at:
Facebook
Instagram
Patreon
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode first aired on August 8, 2022. On March 26, 2020, 45-year-old Eugene Prins planned a short road trip with a friend to drop off a wood splitter. They started out in Woonsocket, South Dakota, and drove about 25 miles east to the tiny town of Fedora. Afterward, Eugene and his friend stopped at a bar in Forestburg, along their route home. The two were captured on surveillance footage leaving the bar at 7:38 PM. Eugene had been drinking, but witnesses said he didn’t appear to be visibly intoxicated. He had also mentioned that he wanted to get home because he had work the following morning.
According to Eugene’s friend, they made one final detour to a mutual friend’s farm. Eugene stayed in the truck while his friend went inside. When he returned approximately 20 minutes later, Eugene was gone.
Despite extensive searches of the surrounding farmland, Eugene remained missing for more than two years. His family struggled to understand why he would have walked away on a cold March night, leaving behind his job, his loved ones, and his beloved dog, Shadow. As the years passed without answers, they began to question whether there was more to his disappearance.
Just weeks after we shared Eugene's story, a farmer made a discovery that would finally bring his family some answers. Stay tuned to the end of this episode for an update on Eugene’s case.
If you have a missing loved one that you would like to have featured on the show, please fill out our case submission form.
Follow The Vanished on social media at:
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
Patreon
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In April 2010, 24-year-old Tanner Sharp left his sister’s home in California and told his family he was heading to Kansas, where a friend had a job waiting for him. Over the next few weeks, Tanner remained in contact, but his calls were brief, and he shared very little about his new life. During his final calls to family, he said he was getting a new phone and would reach out once he had the new number. But they never heard from Tanner again.
As Tanner’s family began looking for him, they discovered that some of what they believed about those final weeks wasn’t true. What followed was a trail of strange details, unanswered questions, and evidence that seemed to point in more than one direction.
More than 16 years later, Tanner’s family is still searching. Was he trying to leave his old life behind, was he struggling with something his family couldn’t see, or did someone else become part of the story?
If you have any information about the disappearance of Tanner Sharp, please contact the Galt Police Department at 209-366-7000.
If you have a missing loved one that you would like to have featured on the show, please fill out our case submission form.
Follow The Vanished on social media at:
Facebook
Instagram
Patreon
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Last week, in Part 1 of Wade Hack’s story, we followed Wade’s final months in Baltimore and the account of what happened in the days before he disappeared. But as his family and friends began trying to verify that story, they kept running into the same problem: so much of it depended on information they could not independently confirm.
In Part 2, we’ll learn what Wade’s loved ones uncovered when they began working from the opposite direction, setting aside the pieces they could not independently verify and focusing instead on the information they could confirm. As they retraced his time in Baltimore, they uncovered inconsistencies surrounding Wade's belongings, new questions about his relationship with Tony, and messages that suggest Wade may have made other plans to get back to North Carolina.
What they found did not solve the mystery of Wade’s disappearance, but it did suggest that his final days in Baltimore may have looked very different from the story his loved ones were first given.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Wade Hack, please contact the Baltimore County Police Department at (410) 887-2214.
Wade’s loved ones have also created an email address for anyone who may have information related to his disappearance: FindWadeAlan@gmail.com.
If you have a missing loved one that you would like to have featured on the show, please fill out our case submission form.
Follow The Vanished on social media at:
Facebook
Instagram
Patreon
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.