The Trail Went Cold - Episode 277 - Wil Hendrick

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.5 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

January 10, 1999. Moscow, Idaho. While attending a party at an apartment complex, 25-year old University of Idaho theatre student Wil Hendrick vanishes without explanation and his abandoned car is soon discovered downtown. Three-and-a-half years later, Wil’s skull and jawbone are found in a rural wooded area and even though his exact cause of death cannot be determined, he is ruled to be the victim of a homicide. Since Wil was gay, it is speculated that his murder might have been a hate crime. While investigators explore a number of different angles, including the involvement of a truck driver who had once worked for Wil’s partner, no conclusive answers are ever found. On this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we explore the perplexing unsolved death of a beloved stage actor. If you have any information about this case, please contact the Moscow Police Department at (208) 882-2677. Additional Reading: https://unsolved.com/gallery/william-hendrick/ https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Wil_Hendrick https://www.newspapers.com/image/394691372/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/575375908/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/575375972/ https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/575385669/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/575492764/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060128160446/http://www.argonaut.uidaho.edu/archives/020601/newsstory1.html http://dnews.com/local/hendrick-case-gets-assist-from-fbi/article_43106165-3eec-5f6a-bc92-7681493ab6c5.html https://www.khq.com/news/what-happened-to-wil/article_bb295859-b707-5b79-b35a-2f5f1e9f5a18.html https://lmtribune.com/northwest/a-party-leads-to-murder/article_a2be6edf-84fb-5cec-83b6-367d08f2eb84.html https://www.nwpb.org/2022/05/04/remembering-wil-hendrick-a-cold-murder-case-kept-alive/ “The Trail Went Cold” is on Patreon! Visit www.patreon.com/thetrailwentcold to become a patron and gain access to our exclusive bonus content. “The Trail Went Cold” is going to be appearing on podcast row at “Crimecon UK” at the Leonardo Royal Hotel & Spa in London on June 11-12, 2022. To get a 10 % discount on the purchase of tickets to the event, please use our specialized promo code, “COLD22”, by visiting https://www.crimecon.co.uk. “The Trail Went Cold” will be appearing at the True Crime Podcast Festival, taking place at the Westin Park Central Hotel in Dallas, Texas on August 27-28, 2022. To purchase tickets, please visit https://truecrimepodcastfestival.com/ “The Trail Went Cold” is now doing a weekly livestream show on GetVokl every Thursday from 7:00-8:00 PM ET as part of their “True Crime Thursday” line-up. For more information, please visit their website. The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote. All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Transcript

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0:00.0	January 10th, 1999.
0:03.4	Moscow, Idaho.
0:05.6	While attending a party at an apartment complex, 25-year-old University of Idaho theater student
0:10.9	Will Hendrik vanishes without explanation and his abandoned cars soon discovered downtown
0:16.4	Three and a half years later will skull and job owner found in a rural wooded area and even though his exact cause of death cannot be determined, he is
0:24.8	ruled to be the victim of a homicide.
0:27.5	Since Will was gay, it is speculated that he may have been murdered in a hate crime, but even
0:32.3	though a number of different theories are
0:33.8	explored, there are no conclusive answers about how he died.
0:37.9	After that, the trail went cold. old. Oh, uh, uh, uh,
0:55.0	uh, there's uh, there's uh, uh, there's uh, uh,
0:58.0	uh, uh, uh, yeah. Ah, uh, uh, uh,
1:04.0	uh, okay. Oh, uh, Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of the Trail went cold.
1:19.0	I'm your host Robin Warder and today we're going to explore a story which I've received numerous requests to cover
1:24.9	and what I also considered to be one of the more underrated cases featured on Unsalled
1:29.3	Mysteries, the 1999 Murder of Will Hendrick.
1:33.0	As I'm sure you know, perhaps the most infamous hate crime ever perpetuated on an
1:37.8	LGBT-Q victim was the murder of 21-year-old University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, which took place in October of 1998.
1:47.0	So when Will Hendrick, a gay theater student from the University of Idaho, suddenly went missing during a late night party only three months later
1:55.5	there was some fear that history may have repeated itself
1:58.8	when Will's story was profiled on unsolved mysteries it marked the first time the show had ever featured a cold case in which they openly mentioned that the victim was gay and acknowledged that this may have been the reason for his disappearance.
2:11.0	At the time the episode originally aired, Will was technically still a missing person, but one year later, his skull and jawbone would be discovered in a rural area.
	...

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