WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.859 Imagine this, your teenager calls you in a panic, 00:00:03.060 --> 00:00:06.419 terrified, begging you to come get them. You 00:00:06.419 --> 00:00:09.539 find them shaken, eyes wide, words tumbling out 00:00:09.539 --> 00:00:12.560 in fear. You stay up all night trying to calm 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:16.500 them, watching every move, every word, and then 00:00:16.500 --> 00:00:20.320 by morning they're gone. No phone, no jacket, 00:00:20.539 --> 00:00:24.859 just gone. This is the haunting story of 16 -year 00:00:24.859 --> 00:00:27.940 -old Carly Gousset. and the mystery that still 00:00:27.940 --> 00:00:33.579 grips California today. Welcome to Beyond the 00:00:33.579 --> 00:00:37.259 Silence, Whispers Across America. I'm Sammy, 00:00:37.420 --> 00:00:40.159 your host. Driven to shine light on the dark 00:00:40.159 --> 00:00:43.640 corners of forgotten cases, demand justice, and 00:00:43.640 --> 00:00:46.179 keep alive the voices the world has tried to 00:00:46.179 --> 00:00:50.119 silence. Today, we're confronting one of the 00:00:50.119 --> 00:00:53.619 most bewildering cases I've come across. Maybe 00:00:53.619 --> 00:00:55.899 you have too, if you follow missing persons. 00:00:56.590 --> 00:00:59.429 The disappearance of 16 -year -old Carly Gousset 00:00:59.429 --> 00:01:03.450 from a quiet patch of California is a story heavy 00:01:03.450 --> 00:01:05.989 with heartbreak, confusion, and more questions 00:01:05.989 --> 00:01:09.689 than answers. Before we dig in, I'll warn you. 00:01:09.750 --> 00:01:12.049 This episode will pull you through the tension 00:01:12.049 --> 00:01:14.989 and distress those closest to Carly lived that 00:01:14.989 --> 00:01:19.390 night. Let's start with Friday night, October 00:01:19.390 --> 00:01:23.939 12, 2018. Carly asked her dad, Zachary, and her 00:01:23.939 --> 00:01:27.040 stepmom, Melissa, if she could go to her high 00:01:27.040 --> 00:01:29.840 school's football game. Pretty standard teenage 00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:33.620 stuff, right? Only she actually headed out with 00:01:33.620 --> 00:01:36.340 her boyfriend, Donald, not to the game, but to 00:01:36.340 --> 00:01:39.560 a party on Dixon Lane. Not gonna pretend I never 00:01:39.560 --> 00:01:42.299 lied to my parents when I was a teenager, but 00:01:42.299 --> 00:01:44.719 this detour, that's where the night goes off 00:01:44.719 --> 00:01:48.459 script. At the party, Carly smoked marijuana. 00:01:49.239 --> 00:01:52.400 Now here's where things get murky. Donald, her 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:54.359 boyfriend, said she hadn't smoked in a while. 00:01:54.599 --> 00:01:57.719 Maybe that played a role, or maybe this is what 00:01:57.719 --> 00:02:00.120 her friends wondered too. The weed was laced 00:02:00.120 --> 00:02:03.599 with something. What's clear is she started to 00:02:03.599 --> 00:02:07.659 panic. Music scared her. Even Donald scared her. 00:02:08.020 --> 00:02:10.520 She ended up running off into the night, telling 00:02:10.520 --> 00:02:14.780 Donald not to follow. I mean, I've heard of bad 00:02:14.780 --> 00:02:19.409 reactions, but this kind of paranoia was... Intense. 00:02:19.629 --> 00:02:23.889 Around 8 .45 p .m., Carly called Melissa, dropping 00:02:23.889 --> 00:02:27.870 any pretense about the football game. She's frantic, 00:02:28.050 --> 00:02:30.870 says, Come get me. I'm booking it down Dixon 00:02:30.870 --> 00:02:33.889 Lane. Hurry, hurry, hurry. I'm scared. If you've 00:02:33.889 --> 00:02:37.129 ever had a call like that, you know the feeling 00:02:37.129 --> 00:02:40.409 in your gut. Melissa speeds over and finds Carly 00:02:40.409 --> 00:02:43.229 in the darkness, pale, pupils super dilated. 00:02:44.409 --> 00:02:47.849 The drive home is a mess. Even with Melissa there, 00:02:48.270 --> 00:02:51.330 Carly can't calm down. She's jumping from seat 00:02:51.330 --> 00:02:53.550 to seat, convinced the car is going to kill her, 00:02:53.710 --> 00:02:57.210 then repeating over and over how scared she is. 00:02:57.810 --> 00:03:00.710 Some of us have experienced anxiety attacks before, 00:03:00.949 --> 00:03:04.530 but this was fear pushing straight past any rational 00:03:04.530 --> 00:03:08.409 comfort. Back home, she's either huddled up, 00:03:08.509 --> 00:03:11.110 afraid of everyone, or clinging to her parents, 00:03:11.389 --> 00:03:15.270 desperate for connection. As the evening grinds 00:03:15.270 --> 00:03:18.409 on, Carly keeps shifting. Telling Melissa she 00:03:18.409 --> 00:03:21.569 wants to paint her toenails, color, read the 00:03:21.569 --> 00:03:25.530 Bible. Trying to anchor herself maybe in small 00:03:25.530 --> 00:03:29.349 comforts. Around 10 p .m., Melissa, worried sick, 00:03:29.550 --> 00:03:32.650 secretly records Carly. I get why she did it. 00:03:32.810 --> 00:03:35.770 She thought maybe it'd help Carly realize how 00:03:35.770 --> 00:03:38.990 bad being under the influence could get. No one 00:03:38.990 --> 00:03:41.169 knew these would end up as the last real evidence 00:03:41.169 --> 00:03:44.849 of Carly's mental state that night. Listening 00:03:44.849 --> 00:03:47.870 to those audio clips, Carly's voice is shaky, 00:03:48.030 --> 00:03:51.710 apologizing, telling Melissa she loves her, then 00:03:51.710 --> 00:03:55.909 suddenly asking, are you going to call 911? Am 00:03:55.909 --> 00:03:58.770 I going to live until tomorrow? You can hear 00:03:58.770 --> 00:04:01.490 her fear, her confusion, all of it unfiltered. 00:04:02.389 --> 00:04:05.430 To calm herself, she spent hours writing on a 00:04:05.430 --> 00:04:08.270 piece of paper, possibly her therapy homework. 00:04:10.639 --> 00:04:13.680 Melissa stayed with Carly until after 3 a .m., 00:04:13.680 --> 00:04:16.579 checking on her and the boys into the night. 00:04:17.180 --> 00:04:20.800 Eventually, Carly ebbed into sleep. And that's 00:04:20.800 --> 00:04:23.139 where the strange, sleepless night leaves us, 00:04:23.240 --> 00:04:26.360 right on the edge of something ominous, but nobody 00:04:26.360 --> 00:04:30.459 could imagine what was about to happen. The next 00:04:30.459 --> 00:04:32.639 morning's timeline is a point where things get 00:04:32.639 --> 00:04:37.319 even hazier. Sometime around 7 .15, maybe 7 .30 00:04:37.319 --> 00:04:41.350 a .m., Melissa wakes up. First thing she notices, 00:04:41.569 --> 00:04:45.329 the front door, wide open. Carly's gone. Her 00:04:45.329 --> 00:04:47.850 phone is left on the kitchen island. No jacket, 00:04:47.970 --> 00:04:53.069 no purse, nothing else missing. Instantly, panic 00:04:53.069 --> 00:04:55.930 sets in. Melissa wakes up Zachary and they start 00:04:55.930 --> 00:04:59.189 searching the area. Those first few hours, they're 00:04:59.189 --> 00:05:01.870 make or break. If someone's gone on foot, those 00:05:01.870 --> 00:05:04.029 early witness accounts and tracks are the only 00:05:04.029 --> 00:05:06.029 shot you have to get ahead of the worst outcomes. 00:05:06.910 --> 00:05:10.740 Witnesses did come forward. Kenneth Dutton, a 00:05:10.740 --> 00:05:13.939 neighbor who knew Carly, saw her around 6 .30 00:05:13.939 --> 00:05:16.779 a .m. with a piece of paper in her hand walking 00:05:16.779 --> 00:05:19.300 through the neighborhood. He said she looked 00:05:19.300 --> 00:05:24.220 up at the sky, like almost lost. Then there's 00:05:24.220 --> 00:05:26.939 Richard Eddy, who describes seeing a thin girl 00:05:26.939 --> 00:05:30.480 with long hair, holding paper, walking by his 00:05:30.480 --> 00:05:34.000 house near Highway 6. Was it the therapy homework 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:36.879 she'd been clutching overnight? Most believe 00:05:36.879 --> 00:05:40.889 it was. What really gets me is the direction. 00:05:41.149 --> 00:05:44.129 Highway 6 is no place for a teen girl to wander 00:05:44.129 --> 00:05:47.649 alone. Remote, lots of open, empty land, cold. 00:05:48.329 --> 00:05:51.430 Carly was seen with no coat, just a white t -shirt, 00:05:51.589 --> 00:05:55.810 gray pants, vans. The authorities jumped in right 00:05:55.810 --> 00:05:59.069 away. Dogs, helicopters, every resource they 00:05:59.069 --> 00:06:02.509 could muster, but nothing turned up. Scent dogs 00:06:02.509 --> 00:06:05.209 tracked her to the highway, but the scent vanished 00:06:05.209 --> 00:06:07.569 there. It's like she just disappeared into the 00:06:07.569 --> 00:06:12.699 air. Everything happened so quickly. Zachary 00:06:12.699 --> 00:06:16.379 contacted Carly's biological mom, Lindsay Fairley, 00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:20.600 who immediately felt something was off. The Mono 00:06:20.600 --> 00:06:23.339 County Sheriff's Department was brought in, took 00:06:23.339 --> 00:06:26.459 witness statements, canvassed the area, but Carly 00:06:26.459 --> 00:06:29.660 was nowhere to be found. Her boyfriend Donald 00:06:29.660 --> 00:06:32.759 rushed to the home as soon as he heard. It all 00:06:32.759 --> 00:06:35.680 unfolded in this suffocating rush, but in the 00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:37.899 end... They were left with just those sighting 00:06:37.899 --> 00:06:41.060 reports, that open door, and a vanished 16 -year 00:06:41.060 --> 00:06:45.360 -old. If you ever wonder why people keep covering 00:06:45.360 --> 00:06:49.079 the Carly Gousset case, this is why. It's not 00:06:49.079 --> 00:06:51.980 just the mystery, it's the echoes of real frantic 00:06:51.980 --> 00:06:54.339 fear, and the lives that have never been the 00:06:54.339 --> 00:06:57.759 same since that morning. So what could have happened? 00:06:58.079 --> 00:07:00.920 That's the chasm that splits this case wide open. 00:07:01.100 --> 00:07:04.069 And it splits the family too. There are a few 00:07:04.069 --> 00:07:06.509 main theories floating out there, each with their 00:07:06.509 --> 00:07:11.209 own supporters and skeptics. 1. The accidental 00:07:11.209 --> 00:07:15.110 overdose. Lindsay, Carly's mother, points to 00:07:15.110 --> 00:07:17.069 Melissa's secret recordings and the distress 00:07:17.069 --> 00:07:20.589 Carly was in, believing that Carly died at home 00:07:20.589 --> 00:07:23.470 and her father and Melissa covered it up. She 00:07:23.470 --> 00:07:26.569 said on Doctor, Phil, and elsewhere that the 00:07:26.569 --> 00:07:29.209 shifting stories from Zachary and Melissa raised 00:07:29.209 --> 00:07:33.100 too many questions. Her version is that Carly's 00:07:33.100 --> 00:07:36.560 fear, rambling about dying, asking if she would 00:07:36.560 --> 00:07:39.660 make it to tomorrow, that all points to something 00:07:39.660 --> 00:07:44.519 fatal happening inside that house. On the flip 00:07:44.519 --> 00:07:47.939 side, Zachary and Melissa have stuck unwaveringly 00:07:47.939 --> 00:07:51.360 to their story. They say that Carly left on her 00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:54.100 own, still alive in the morning, and sightings 00:07:54.100 --> 00:07:57.350 back that up. There are witness accounts. The 00:07:57.350 --> 00:08:00.089 dogs, even polygraphs that haven't flagged them 00:08:00.089 --> 00:08:04.230 as deceptive. Some extend the theory to an abduction, 00:08:04.310 --> 00:08:08.290 since the scent trail stops at the highway. Maybe 00:08:08.290 --> 00:08:11.930 someone picked her up willingly or not. There's 00:08:11.930 --> 00:08:14.930 a wild card, too. Was there something in the 00:08:14.930 --> 00:08:17.110 weed that night? Something laced that triggered 00:08:17.110 --> 00:08:20.569 this extreme paranoia and confusion? And then 00:08:20.569 --> 00:08:22.730 there's the possibility that Carly disappeared 00:08:22.730 --> 00:08:26.959 voluntarily? Maybe the paranoia? The episodes 00:08:26.959 --> 00:08:30.360 about being tracked. Maybe what happened wasn't 00:08:30.360 --> 00:08:33.100 just about that night, but about mental health 00:08:33.100 --> 00:08:35.639 struggles that nobody fully understood at the 00:08:35.639 --> 00:08:40.299 time. The desert, though, is unforgiving. There's 00:08:40.299 --> 00:08:43.340 a slim chance someone survives long out there, 00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:47.960 in just a t -shirt and pants. Search efforts 00:08:47.960 --> 00:08:50.779 never really stopped. Every supposed sighting 00:08:50.779 --> 00:08:54.019 sparks hope, but even the lead in Tonopah, 100 00:08:54.019 --> 00:08:58.639 miles away. led nowhere social media churns with 00:08:58.639 --> 00:09:01.679 rumors wild stories false alarms it's haunting 00:09:01.679 --> 00:09:05.240 for families they get pulled between hope and 00:09:05.240 --> 00:09:08.440 despair with every tip that goes nowhere the 00:09:08.440 --> 00:09:11.340 tension within the family is still raw and real 00:09:11.340 --> 00:09:14.679 and the uncertainty has only deepened the divides 00:09:14.679 --> 00:09:20.019 i guess at the end of all this the bigger question 00:09:20.019 --> 00:09:23.399 is how does a kid evaporate into thin air in 00:09:23.399 --> 00:09:27.029 the digital age How do mental health, substance 00:09:27.029 --> 00:09:30.250 use, and the limits of modern search technology 00:09:30.250 --> 00:09:35.129 leave us with so few answers? Carly's case exposes 00:09:35.129 --> 00:09:38.529 not just the pain of one family, but the gaps 00:09:38.529 --> 00:09:41.830 that still exist in how we protect and find vulnerable 00:09:41.830 --> 00:09:46.289 people. If you know something, don't stay silent. 00:09:46.789 --> 00:09:50.129 Call the Mono County Sheriff's Office. Reach 00:09:50.129 --> 00:09:52.490 out to the National Center for Missing and Endangered 00:09:52.490 --> 00:09:56.269 Children. We can't let Carly's story fade. If 00:09:56.269 --> 00:09:58.750 anyone out there holds the key, now is the time 00:09:58.750 --> 00:10:03.429 to speak up. That's it for today's episode. The 00:10:03.429 --> 00:10:06.309 questions remain and the search continues, because 00:10:06.309 --> 00:10:09.289 every lost soul deserves answers, and every story 00:10:09.289 --> 00:10:11.950 deserves to be heard. What are your thoughts? 00:10:12.509 --> 00:10:15.750 What do you believe happened? Share your voice, 00:10:15.750 --> 00:10:18.470 because sometimes the smallest detail can spark 00:10:18.470 --> 00:10:22.039 the biggest breakthrough. I'm Sammy, and this 00:10:22.039 --> 00:10:24.740 is Beyond the Silence, Whispers Across America. 00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:27.840 Thank you for listening, stay safe, and I'll 00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:28.639 see you next time.