January 10, 1999 Moscow, Idaho While attending a party at an apartment complex,

25-year-old University of Idaho theater student Will Hendrick vanishes with an explanation

and is abandoned cars soon discovered downtown. Three and a half years later,

Will'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 Will was gay, it is speculated that he may have been murdered in a hate crime,

but even though a number of different theories are explored, there are no conclusive answers

about how he died. After that, the trail went cold.

Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of The Trail Went Cold.

I'm your host Robin Warder, and today we're going to explore a story which I've received

numerous requests to cover, and what I also considered to be one of the more underrated cases

featured on Unsaw Mysteries, the 1999 murder of Will Hendrick. As I'm sure you know,

perhaps the most infamous hate crime ever perpetuated on an LGBTQ victim was the murder of

21-year-old University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, which took place in October of 1998.

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,

there was some fear that history may have repeated itself.

When Will's story was profiled on Unsaw 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.

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.

...