From the Vault - Gwen Hasselquist - INTV w/ Dawn, Her Friend of 30 Years - Part 3

Locations Unknown

Unknown Media Group

Places & Travel, True Crime, Society & Culture

4.6 • 756 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With all the buzz surrounding the Gwen Hasselquist case and the upcoming Crime Junkie episode (releasing October 27, 2025), we thought it was the perfect time to re-release our original four-part series on Gwen’s story, first published in 2021. For Gwen’s family, friends, and everyone who cared deeply for her, we’re truly grateful her case is finally receiving the attention it deserves.

That said, we need to get something off our chests.
We first discovered Gwen’s case in September 2021, when one of our co-hosts happened to meet a lawyer in Chicago who was quietly investigating it on his own time. What he shared shocked us, there was no coverage anywhere. No news articles, no Reddit threads, no social media discussions. Gwen’s story had been completely forgotten.

We decided to change that.
Over the following years, we poured countless hours into investigating this case, speaking with dozens of people close to Gwen (many of whom still haven’t given permission for their accounts to be made public), filing FOIA requests, and combing through hundreds of pages of messages and correspondence. The result was over six hours of in-depth reporting, released across four episodes between November 2021 and August 2022. To this day, people continue to reach out to us about Gwen’s story.

Unfortunately, Crime Junkie has now released an episode claiming they “discovered” and “investigated” the case. That is simply not true. Their work appears to have been directly lifted from our years of research and a Reddit (post), without any acknowledgment or attempt to contact us. Sadly, this behavior is not new for Crime Junkie, which has previously faced plagiarism accusations from several other creators, including On the Case with Paula Zahn, The Trail Went Cold, Trace Evidence, Once Upon a Crime, and Dealing Justice.

What’s most disappointing is that we genuinely believe the hosts of Crime Junkie share our ultimate goal, to give Gwen’s story the attention it deserves. We’re not backed by a mega corporation with an army of researchers; we’re an independent show run by two guys with full-time jobs and families who simply love telling meaningful stories.

At the end of the day, if their episode helps spread awareness about Gwen, that’s a win for her and her loved ones, and that’s what matters most.

We hope you’ll take this opportunity to listen (or re-listen) to our updated and remastered four-part series on the disappearance of Gwen Hasselquist, releasing this weekend. And don’t worry, Part 2 of Lost in the Shadow of the Rockies is still scheduled for release on October 31.

Thank you for continuing to support independent podcasts like ours. We truly appreciate every one of you.

Original Episode Summary:

In Episode 66, we continue our investigation of the suspicious death of Gwen Hasselquist, interviewing Dawn, who was Gwen's best friend for decades and was in contact with Gwen in the weeks leading up to her death. Join us this week as we learn new details about Gwen and her life leading up to her tragic death in March of 2020.

Gwen Hasselquist Part 1 - The Original Investigation (Orig. Released 11/8/2021)
Gwen Hasselquist Part 2 - The Police Report (Orig. Released 12/27/2021)
Gwen Hasselquist Part 3 - Interview with Gwen's Best Friend, Dawn (Orig. Released 07/25/2022)
Gwen Hasselquist Part 4 - Interview with Gwen's Step Sister, Dora (Orig. Released 08/22/2022)

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Crime Off The Grid
Off The Trails
The Weirdos We Know
Who Runs This Park

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Presented by Unknown Media Group.

Hosts:
Mike Van de Bogert
Joe Erato

Intro/Outro “Cornfield Chase” – Cinematic Waves & Rafael Krux (licensed) → https://soundcloud.com/cinematicwav3s/cornfield-chase

Disclaimers:
Episode 3 of Gwen Hasselquist’s story on Locations Unknown continues exploring the unresolved questions surrounding her 2020 death. This episode draws solely from publicly available sources, including the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department police report, statements by family and friends, and Erik Hasselquist’s publicly accessible social-media posts (e.g., Facebook, Twitter).

All discussion in this episode represents personal opinions, interpretations, and speculation by the hosts and guests, not verified facts or legal conclusions. No statement should be understood as an accusation of guilt, criminal conduct, or wrongdoing by any individual.

Locations Unknown is committed to accuracy and fairness. We share these perspectives to raise awareness and encourage further inquiry, not to assign blame. If you have firsthand information, factual corrections, or wish to provide context, please contact us confidentially at 208-391-6913.
We will promptly review and, if appropriate, correct or clarify future updates.

We welcome statements, clarifications, or responses from Erik Hasselquist or anyone else directly involved to ensure a complete and balanced record. Our intent is not harm, but to shed light on an under-reported case of public interest.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/locations-unknown--6183838/support.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thousands of people have mysteriously vanished in America's wilderness.
0:13.0	Join us as we dive into the deep end of the unexplainable and try to piece together what happened.
0:20.0	You are listening to Locations Unknown. What's up, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Locations Unknown.
1:00.2	I'm your co-host, and with me as always is a guy who never gets information about Bears wrong.
1:06.0	Mike Van de Bogart.
1:07.4	Thank you, and he's our co-host, Joey Rado.
1:10.1	He had a little... What did I say? You just forgot your name. What did I say? I said And he's our co-host, Joey Roddo. He had a little...
1:11.2	What did I say? You just forgot your name. What did I say? I said, I'm the co-host and... Oh, I didn't even say my name? No. You know, I was reading at the same time that I was talking. I screwed it up. But no, thank you once again to all of our loyal listeners for tuning in. Just a couple of quick announcements here.
1:26.3	We'd like to get to our Patreon supporters.
1:28.7	Well,
1:28.8	and we have to introduce our special guest,
1:30.8	Andy, he's coming back to the studio. Andy is back. Yeah. I should have, we should have probably went over all this beforehand, but in the earlier days, we probably would have just stopped and re-recorded that. No, not anymore. We'll just keep going. Yeah, roll to punches. Yeah, this is our third episode on Gwen Hasselquist, so Andy is back in the studio. Thanks for ever to be back, boys. Yeah. Absolutely. So just... The whiskey comes out when you come back, so it's a fun time. Yeah, just a quick shout out to our new patron supporters. Samantha Porter, Christopher Stiles, Angel Osorio, Cindy Lindsay. And this was pretty funny. As we were typing these into
2:03.9	our show notes, Heather Johnson just supported the page. So thank you, Heather for. You're like a part of
2:10.3	the show. We were prepping for the show. Mike's phone lit up and goes, oh, we just got a patron
2:15.4	supporter. I'm like, add her to the list, quick.
2:24.2	Thank you. And like we say every episode, if you want to call our phone number and leave a really funny voicemail or a mean voicemail or a review for us, just call 208, 391, 6913. Yep.
2:31.9	Sure. Write it on toilet walls and bathrooms everywhere.
2:35.3	Everywhere.
2:36.1	Call it.
2:36.7	So this one's going to be a little bit different because what we're going to be doing
2:39.2	is playing an interview that Mike and I already did about a week and a half ago.
2:44.4	We interviewed Gwen Hasselquest's best friend.
	...

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