Replay: Ian Eckles Part 2 - The Manhunt
The Vanished Podcast
Wondery
4.5 • 15K Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode originally aired on June 29, 2021. By May 23, 2020, 41-year-old Ian Eckles had been missing for a week. He had made plans to go hunting with a friend, but never showed up at their meeting spot. When he failed to report to work the next day, concern quickly turned into alarm.
Ian’s family and friends launched a desperate search across the rugged terrain of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest along Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Exhausted and running on adrenaline, they scoured the wilderness for any sign of him.
Then, something surreal happened. Ian’s FJ Cruiser came barreling down the mountain. But Ian wasn’t driving. A brief, tense encounter with the man behind the wheel ended with him fleeing into the forest, and a chase that didn’t last long.
That encounter triggered a massive manhunt for an armed and dangerous fugitive, and it raised even more questions about what really happened to Ian Eckles.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I think that honestly he's a lot smarter for. |
| 0:17.0 | I think he does very well at manipulating people. |
| 0:21.9 | I don't think that this was his first time. |
| 0:26.1 | I just think that it might have been not something that had been planned on his end, but it wasn't hard for him. |
| 0:35.8 | Some people in this world, apparently, that are willing to set aside their humanity to |
| 0:41.4 | survive. I don't understand how somebody could be so negligent with human life. |
| 0:49.5 | It's just a really helpless feeling, though, when you want to help, and there's nothing |
| 0:53.6 | you can do to help. |
| 0:55.0 | But wait for an update. When the updates happen, they can't tell you anything, which I totally |
| 0:59.1 | understand because it is an active investigation and they can't tell you much. But it's very, very |
| 1:05.1 | frustrating when you're out there. And then they have to look at all possibilities, but you're just |
| 1:09.2 | screaming inside. And it's like, he's out there, he's out there somewhere. |
| 1:12.8 | I know he is. |
| 1:14.1 | We don't know when it happened. |
| 1:16.0 | We don't know what happened. |
| 1:17.1 | And all you do when you're sitting there and you have this frantic conversation about somebody else driving this vehicle is the what isifs. Is he being held somewhere? |
| 1:28.3 | Is he tied up? |
| 1:29.3 | Are they holding him? |
| 1:31.2 | Did they hurt him? |
| 1:32.3 | Did they just let him go? |
| 1:33.5 | Is his leg broken? |
| 1:34.4 | And he's trying to climb. |
... |
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