June 12, 1993. Santa Clara, California. 21-year-old US Army private Justin Berkwinkel

leaves his girlfriend's apartment and never returns. One week earlier, Justin had gone

AWOL from Fort Lewis, the post where he was stationed in Washington,

and kept hinting to his girlfriend that he was working on some sort of secret mission.

Three months later, Justin's abandoned car was found in a motel in Monterey with his military

dog tags and most of his personal items inside. And while the army denies that Justin was ever

involved in any secret operation, no trace of them has ever found. After that, the trail went cold.

Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of the trail went cold. I'm your host Robin

Water, and this week we're going to be exploring a bizarre mystery involving a missing soldier

from the United States Army, the 1993 disappearance of Justin Berkwinkel. This case was featured

on Unsolved Mysteries, and not surprisingly, I've received numerous requests to cover this one

since the inception of this podcast. During the mid-1990s, Unsolved Mysteries went through a period

where they produced a lot of segments involving potential conspiracies within the military.

They would usually focus on an American servicemen who was found dead under suspicious

circumstances, but even though their deaths were officially ruled to be suicides,

their loved ones were certain that they were murdered, and the military was covering something up.

However, the Justin Berkwinkel case stands out from the others because he was never confirmed to

be dead. Instead, he went absent without leave from his base in Washington State and traveled to

California before he vanished without a trace, and he's not been seen in nearly 30 years.

Prior to his disappearance, Justin had been displaying paranoid and erratic behavior,

and applied that he was working on some sort of secret mission, though the military has always

denied this. The two potential explanations seem to be that Justin either got himself in way

...