I'm Lester Holt, tonight on Deadline, a worldwide adventure or a mind-bending

murder. When a surfer goes missing, a father goes searching for the truth.

I was trying to find my son. They could tell something was wrong. My suspicions

were there. Month after month, you were getting these emails. No phone calls.

No, whoever was emailing us, I felt like this wasn't my son. Who is this?

You're just desperate. To torture his family like this, it's awful. Tonight,

a haunting new interview, a tense jailhouse confrontation. They don't know where their child is.

You've been covering up things for years. Am I right? There are just some

secrets that the man who is willing to go up his life for it. It's as if we were

working with a devil himself.

Here's Keith Morrison with in a lonely place.

Again and again, he wrote them. As if they were his waves. And this is own private

ocean. As if the sea could wash away the trouble that's threatened to sink him.

Why him of all people? He was the dude, the charismatic,

carer-free creative one whose talent would surely make him rich.

He's one of those people that thought anything was possible. He was very

independent. He always wanted to figure out a way to do it on his own.

He was, what would you call it? A beautiful dreamer. Out here on his own,

going his own way, like always. No idea what was waiting for him.

Christmas grew up on California's central coast in a town called Watsonville. A

very close family of deeply committed Christians, parents, Stephen Debbie,

brother Paul. Steve was a cop and then a firefighter. Debbie, a teacher.

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