 For the last few mystery Mondays, we have been covering people who have vanished in national parks. And if you joined us last Tuesday night on Beyond Mystic, you know that with Jean-Claude and Janine, we looked a little bit deeper into these cases that we had already covered. Now, if you've been following along, you know those cases were relatively old. We had the Bennington Triangle, which was from 1945 to 1950. And of course, we had the case of Glenn and Bessie Hyde from 1928. But today, we're going to shift into more modern times. We're going to go to a case that occurred in 1999. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, a very, very special thank you to all of our patrons and our producers on this channel. If you would like to join our Patreon community, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce. And today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be talking about the disappearance of Jared Atadero. Hooter Canyon, Colorado is a very narrow canyon in Colorado that is about 40 miles long. And on October 2 of 1999 in Hooter Canyon, Colorado, little Jared Atadero went missing. At the time of Jared's disappearance, he was only three years old. Jared's father, Alan Atadero, had recently purchased a resort in a canyon. This was the Hooter River Resort that offered fishing, hunting, mountain biking, hiking, river rafting, and kayaking. The resort itself runs along Highway 14, which is located along the Cache La Puder River. Jared's father, Alan, and his mother, Stacy, had been divorced since she was pregnant with Jared. And at this time, Alan Atadero, Jared's father, who had been a high school PE teacher, decided to purchase this resort so that he could raise his two children, Jared, again, who was three when he went missing, and his oldest daughter, Jocelyn, who was six at the time in the great Colorado outdoors. After purchasing the resort, Alan moved into a little apartment that was located in the back of the convenience store on the property. Now, Alan would often rent out the property to big groups, corporations, and more specifically, for our story, church groups. During the weekend of October 2nd, 1999, Alan Atadero was busy trying to winterize his resort. Now, to be honest with you guys, because I come from Georgia, I have no idea what winterizing something is like. I mean, let's just put it this way. My best friend lives up in Canada, and one time I was on the phone with him while he was getting his winter tires put on, and I had no idea what that was. I had no idea that there are places in the world where you have to actually change your tires out for the winter. Down here in the good old Bible Belt, Hot Lanna, the Deep South, if they even think it might snow just for a second, everything shuts down in the pigly wiggly cells out of bread and water. So to be honest with you, I don't really know what it takes to winterize something, but nonetheless, that's what Alan Atadero was doing on October 2nd. An op property on this weekend was a Christian singles group that was based out of Denver, Colorado. Now, from what I understand, this Christian singles group had used this property a lot, had rented out this resort a lot for their getaways. And so the Atadero clan, Alan and his two children, Jared and Jocelyn, got to know the members of this group pretty well. In this particular weekend, the group was up there to actually exchange work with Alan. They were going to help him winterize his property in exchange for them staying on the property for free. On the morning of October 2nd, the group decided that they wanted to take a field trip to the Puda River Fish Hatchery. I had to look up what a fish hatchery is. Apparently it's a business where you artificially raise fish and other types of food, like a breeding ground for trout, I guess. Learn something new every day, right? Now, this fish hatchery was only about a mile and a half down the road from the resort. And once Jocelyn, the six-year-old little girl, heard that this group was going to go on a field trip to the fish hatchery, she decided that she wanted to go too. And then, of course, Jared, being her little brother, had to obviously do what his older sister was going to do, so he pitched a fit saying he wanted to go as well. Now, anybody watching who's ever dealt with a three-year-old knows that it's hard work. Toddlers are hard. Three-year-olds are hard. I mean, honestly, two three-year-olds, they're like little drunk adults. They stumble around. They fall. You can't really understand what they're saying. They throw temper tantrums at random times. It takes a lot of work to mind a three-year-old. But nonetheless, the group assured Alan that they would be able to manage both of the children, especially this one particular lady in the group who went by the name of Janet. Apparently, the children had grown very fond of Janet, and she assured Alan that the kids would be fine and it would give him some time by himself to make sure that he had gotten everything he needed to get done done. And so around 9 a.m. on October 2nd, the 11 adults and two children headed down to the Fish Hatchery. Now, the story goes that when they got to the Fish Hatchery, they decided that it was not as entertaining as they thought it was going to be. And so collectively, they made the decision that they were going to find a good hiking trail to go hike. They decided to take what is called the Big South Trail. Now, the Big South Trail is about 16 miles down the road, and this is relatively from what I understand could be a difficult trail. It's about seven miles through the wilderness. Now, of course, nobody in the group contacted Alan to let him know that his children were now going to be even further down the road at a hiking trail because, again, this was 1999. So not many people had their own cell phones. Cell phones were just kind of like on the precipice of coming about at this time. Actually, I turned 16 in 1999, and when I got my first car, my parents did give me like a little, it wasn't little, it was huge. You don't remember those old cell phones. They were pretty big. I had one in my car, but I was told by my parents under no circumstances should I use that phone for socializing. It was only to be in my car in cases of emergency. And the only reason why I think my parents had access to that phone is because my father is a veterinarian. And so he had had a car phone, as we called it back then for a while. I remember those big boxes with Velcro that had the phone in the cord. Yeah, my dad had one of those in his truck because he was a veterinarian. And so that technically belonged to the clinic. And so for me, it's 16 to get another phone from my car, probably went through the clinic too. That's probably why my parents had that for me. But needless to say, in 1999, cell phones were not common. Again, they were so uncommon that we actually called them car phones. And so needless to say, Allen was not contacted regarding the change of location. Now, again, for me, if I was in the group and I had a three-year-old and a six-year-old in the resort was like a mile and a half down the road, I probably would have just taken them back anyway, because what a load of responsibility to have these two young children on this adult hiking trail. But that's not what this group did. These 11 adults and two children proceeded to go to the Big South Trail. Once they got to the Big South Trail, they divided into two groups. There was one group of hikers that were going to be walking fast. Then there was another group in the back of the slower hikers. And this is where the kids were going to be located. They were going to be with this slower moving group of adults. Well, a few hours after the expedition had started, two of the women in the group drove back to the resort to find Allen. They were frantically looking for him. And when they found him, he was in the back of the convenience store in his apartment. Apparently, they had lost Jared. Now, in interviews, Allen says he remembers specifically what they said. They said, Jared is okay, we just can't find him. The adults in the group, as well as Allen himself, just assumed that Jared was probably playing hide and go seek or had just run off a little ways on the trail. No big deal. Allen was going to come down to the trail, see if he could find him. I mean, nothing is scarier as a child than hearing your father screaming at you when he's upset. So, you know, I kind of see where his head was when it came to finding Jared. But nonetheless, one of the managers of the resort wanted to go ahead and call, search, and rescue. However, Allen said, no, not quite yet. Let's see if we can find him ourselves. And Allen proceeded to head down to the big south trail. Allen got to the trail and started searching for Jared. He too had no luck. And so he came out of the trail frustrated, needing to find a location to put a call into search and rescue. But Allen was quite lucky. Even though he had told his manager not to call search and rescue, his manager didn't listen to him and went ahead and called search and rescue. This is important because again, this is in the Rocky Mountains. It's not like it's easy to travel around the Rocky Mountains and they were losing precious daylight hours. So if Allen had waited to call search and rescue when he wanted to, it would have been a few hours later before anybody would have been able to get to the ground. So while in the parking lot, while the search and rescue were getting ready to go search the trail, there was also a bit of confusion because how far could a three year old really go? I mean, we're talking about a small child with very short legs. Literally how far can a three year old really go? This should not be an issue. He should be easy to find. However, as the minutes in the time went by, there was still no sign of Jared. As Allen was waiting in the parking lot, he saw his friend from the church group, Janet, pull into the parking lot with Jocelyn in the car with her. According to Janet, it seems that she was going to bring Jocelyn back to the resort because she had assumed that somebody else in the group had already brought Jared back to the resort, even though Janet was the woman who was basically the main caregiver, like she was like the one that was really close to the kids and was supposed to be looking out for them. And we'll get back to some speculation and some theories surrounding Janet at the end of this episode. As time went on, it became apparent that the 11 members of this Christian group all had slightly different variations of the story. As I said earlier, they had divided the group into two separate groups, the faster group and the slower group. And the original story was that even though Jocelyn and Jared were in the slower group, Jared was having some fun running back and forth between the two groups. And according to the 11 people, even though Jared was doing this, they still could see him and hear him. But there was one bit of information that the group neglected to tell Allen. And this was the story of the two fishermen. And Allen only heard this information on the radio one day, not from the group themselves again. They neglected to tell Allen about these two characters that all of a sudden emerged in the story, according to a radio presenter. It seems that when little Jared was running back and forth between the two group of hikers, he ran across some fishermen. The two fishermen claimed that they got started on the trail a little bit after the slower group had started on the trail, but they quickly passed the slower group to get to their destination to fish. Well, Jared, being the hyperactive three-year-old running back and forth between the two groups, quickly caught up with the fishermen. Apparently, and Jared was asking the fishermen all sorts of questions, typical of a three-year-old asking the fishermen if they had seen any bears, all sorts of stuff. Well, about a mile and a half into this trail, there's a point in the trail that takes a fork in the road. One way goes to the river while the rest of the way goes up to the rest of the trail. When the fishermen got to the fork in the road, they departed towards the river while Jared went up the direction towards the rest of the trail. Now, many people have asked, why did these two fishermen just leave a three-year-old alone at this trail? Apparently, according to the fishermen and according to the other 11 witnesses, where they were, it was really easy to see. It wasn't like they were just leaving this three-year-old by himself. They figured that the group behind could actually see where Jared was going because, again, there wasn't anything blocking their view. But even though the visibility allegedly was pretty good, it's pretty obvious that no one was watching Jared that closely because he disappeared. That day, the search and rescue went all over the seven-mile trail. They combed through everything. I mean, again, how far could a three-year-old truly, truly get? But at the end of day, there was still no sign of Jared. Some of the search and rescue members speculated that Jared might have gotten tired and just laid down somewhere in the wilderness and went to sleep. And so they had this plan that they would get back to the trail early the next morning when Jared would wake up and be there to bring him back home. I mean, listen guys, I don't have any kids. I do have a nephew and two nieces, and I was a kid at one point myself. And I just don't know if a three-year-old would just curl up under a tree and go to sleep. I don't think I would have done that, especially if my parents weren't around. I mean, a three-year-old's still kind of a baby. So I find that kind of a weird idea for them to have had. But let me know down in the comment section below if you think that is reasonable that a three-year-old would just kind of curl up under a tree and go to sleep or not. I would love to hear your thoughts on that because that sounded really strange to me. The next morning, search and rescue went back into the trail and still they found nothing. So they started to expand their search. They went into other nearby campsites to see if, for some reason, Jared ended up at another campsite. Maybe a family had found them and brought him back to their campsite, looking for his parents. Who knows? But nonetheless, again, no sign of Jared. The next step was to bring in dive teams. The dive teams combed the river and the creeks around the area to see if it was possible that little Jared had slipped into the water. They also brought in dogs. And the dogs did pick up a scent around campsites four and five, but eventually the trail went cold. In the meantime, the local police set up a command center at the resort owned by the Atadero family. And one would think that by doing this, this would be really great for the family because seeing that they lived at the resort, they would be in constant contact with the police in case any new developments were to break in the case. But this was kind of the beginning of some really suspicious behavior coming from the sheriff's department and major tension between Alan Atadero, his family, and the police. When the police set up their command center at the resort, they got really strict all of a sudden about who could enter the trail and who could not. They had blocked the whole thing off and apparently some of the extended family had flown into Colorado to help with the search. When this family got to the trail the next day to help the police, the police actually threatened to arrest them for making it more difficult for them. I mean, super odd behavior. I mean, literally the extended family was trying to help find this little boy. I mean, again, if this happened to my nephew or my nieces, you best believe I would be out there trying to find them. But according to the police, the family was causing problems. The police also had a habit of not letting Alan know anything about the case to the point where Alan got so frustrated that he threatened the police department with going to the media if they did not fill him in on any of the details surrounding his son's disappearance. Communication between the police and Alan Atidero was so bad that at one point the police brought a helicopter in to search the area and the helicopter ended up crashing. Now, there were no fatalities with this helicopter crash. However, ambulances were called in to check on the passengers and the driver of the helicopter. And when Alan Atidero saw the ambulances going down the street, he assumed that they had found Jared. But because he couldn't get any information from the police, he had to drive down to the neighboring resort to find out what was going on, that the ambulance was actually for the helicopter and not for any news about Jared. So there's something really weird going on here between the police department, the sheriff's department, and the Atidero family. If I were the Atidero family, I would probably be pissed too. Around this time as well, there was a guy who was in the military that just happened to be in the area when he heard that this three-year-old little boy had gone missing. Now, this particular military man had been trained to track in the Middle East. So knowing that this person had the highest level of military training as a tracker, he decided that he would put his skills to use and he would help find this little boy. This military man booked a room at the resort, not knowing that this particular resort was actually owned by Jared's family, the missing boy's family. And one day, as luck would have it, as fate would have it, this military man was in the convenience store purchasing some food. He was explaining to the cashier that he was super exhausted, that he had been looking for this missing boy, and he was getting really frustrated with the authorities. Now, the funny thing is, is the cashier was actually Alan Atidero, Jared's father. When Alan introduced himself to the military man as Jared's father, the military men suddenly told him that he needed to talk to him. While talking to Alan, the military man drew a map and he put a big X on the map. According to this military man, he told Jared that this X was most likely where Jared was located. However, it was in an area that he could not get to and he needed the authorities' help to get to this specific area. This is actually going to be the area where they're going to find some of the remains of Jared later on in the story. So I want you to hold on to the fact that he was actually trying to get the authorities to get to this area. And when he told Alan that the authorities were not responding to him, Alan decided that he would go to the authorities with this information. I mean, surely to God, if this military tracker had figured out that there was a possibility, a high probable possibility, that Jared was in this specific area, then hopefully the authorities would send people up there to retrieve whatever was up there, whatever was left of Jared or Jared himself. But when Alan went to the authorities, they basically slammed the door in his face and told him that the area had already been searched. After that, shit gets even weirder because a ranger, a park ranger, stepped forward claiming that he had seen a little boy with an older man. He claimed that the little boy looked like he was trying to get away from this older man. However, when the ranger saw this happening live then and there, he just assumed that the little boy was the man's son or grandson and he was just being a difficult three-year-old and thought nothing of it until he got home that night and saw Jared's picture on the news and realized that was a little boy that he had seen. Now, even though the ranger came forward to give this information, the police never questioned the ranger. In fact, the ranger called the police out saying, you never questioned me. I saw this happen. I know I saw a man with this little boy and no one's ever come to question me even after I told you guys what I saw. Then the police snapped back and said, oh yeah, we did. We totally questioned you and the ranger was like, bullshit. You never questioned me. Three weeks after Jared Atadero went missing, a film crew was in the area filming for this vanishing of this child. They were interviewing the sheriff and the sheriff at this time was a man named Jim Alderdam. Now, once the interview was over, the sheriff thought that the cameras were turned off. However, the cameras were not turned off and the sheriff proceeded to say, with the cameras rolling, are you as tired of this story as I am? Well, you better believe that footage of him saying that and laughing about it was leaked everywhere. And I'm sure at this point, Alan Atadero didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. You know, it's almost like those things, it's like when you're in these bad relationships where sometimes you think you're the crazy one because something's not right. And this whole time, this whole three week period between the time that Jared went missing and this interview was going on, Alan had had so many issues with the police to the point where the police were threatening to even arrest members of his family, including himself for being problems when they literally just wanted information about the search efforts for their child. And then to hear the sheriff say this, it kind of confirmed that the police department was not really interested in finding this child, either that or as I speculate, they had something to cover up regarding the vanishing of this three year old little boy. Things got even more frustrating when groups like the National Guard got into contact with Alan. According to these specific groups, again, like the National Guard, they had been contacting the sheriff's department requesting to come in and help with the search and rescue. Now, I learned this with this case. This was not something that I knew, but apparently in order for these organizations to come in and help find people, they have to be brought in and asked requested to come in by the sheriff of the county. So they couldn't do anything. Their hands were tied unless the sheriff actually did the paperwork and had them come in to help with the search and rescue. But every time the National Guard contacted the sheriff, he would always decline their help. And so they went to Alan. Well, Alan decided to go again to the sheriff's department and say, Hey, listen, the National Guard, they want to come in and help find my kid. And you guys aren't letting them what's going on. Well, the sheriff's department told Alan that they could not afford to pay these volunteers to help in the search. So Alan, then being none the wiser, because I would be none the wiser either, went back and called the National Guard people back and were like, So the sheriff tells me you guys can't help because unfortunately, they can't afford to pay you. But the National Guard tell him that what are you talking about? We don't get paid for this. We volunteer. And the sheriff knows this. This is like sheriffing 101 apparently, like it comes in your first day manual of what to do. You don't have to freaking pay the National Guard. They're volunteering to help. So why the hell was the sheriff not allowing the National Guard in to find this three year old child? Then to make matters worse, Alan found out that when they came to his house to get a clothing piece, piece of article of clothing for the dogs to smell to help them track Jared, they grabbed a pair of Alan shorts, not Jared's shorts. Now Alan was a full grown adult man. Jared was a three year old child. It's not rocket science. A man's shorts are not a kid's shorts. Three year old shorts are like smaller than my underwear. They're tiny and a man's shorts. I mean like what? Like this is crazy. This is freaking crazy. The people, what dumb ass didn't realize that a three year old doesn't wear a grown man's shorts. So needless to say at this point, Alan at Darrow was beyond pissed. But then finally it appeared that there was going to be some relief in the search for a little Jared. When the Arapaho search and rescue department was approved by the sheriff to come in and help them in the search, all the paperwork had been filled out. The Arapaho search and rescue were ready to go. But the night before they were due to come in and assist the police department, they got a call from the sheriff telling them if they were to show up to help search and rescue, he would have them arrested. It's almost like this sheriff wanted to arrest anybody that actually wanted to find this three year old. And knowing what we know now about some people in authority, that is highly, highly suspicious. Well according to some of the volunteers at the Arapaho search and rescue, they decided to show up anyway except they weren't going to show up in their uniform. They were just going to show up in their regular civilian clothes and do what they could do. One of these members was at the time a US congressman. And he was one of the people that showed up again in civilian clothing to try to find this child. And when he got to the location, he pulled Alan aside and he told Alan a very strange story. He said that his office had received a call the day before from the authorities basically telling him he would stay away if he knew what was good for him. Eventually the authorities sat Alan down and they told him that they theorized that little Jared had fallen into the river. They theorized that his body had been pulled down along the river and giving that the temperatures of the water were really cold, that it would probably take about four years for his body to surface. This is quite specific, this four-year mark because on June 4th, 2003, there was a break in the case. Rock climbers were climbing above the big south trail. They were going up a 500-foot vertical incline. When they were about two miles up, they found some kids clothing. Now because this was a vertical incline and these people were like professional climbers, they knew that there was no way that these clothes of this child got there by a child. They immediately got back down to the earth and they called the police. The clothes were identified as the clothes that Jared had on the day that he went missing. Now the strange thing about these clothes, yes, they have some tears in them that looked like they were probably done by animals, but there was absolutely no blood on the clothes whatsoever. There was some hair found in the collar of the shirt and that will come back forensically as non-human hair and non-mountain lion hair. However, the specifics of where the hair came from would never be disclosed to the Atadero family or the general public. The real peculiar thing about these clothes again was that they had allegedly been outside for four years. It had been almost four years since Jared disappeared, but yet there was not a lot of discoloration in the fabric and in fact the shoe laces and the shoes were still pristine white. Like no way these clothes had been sitting outside in the elements of Colorado for four years is just not possible. And again as I said, there was no blood anywhere on the clothes. Besides the theory of falling into the river, it was also speculated that Jared was taken by a mountain lion. If he had been taken by a mountain lion there would absolutely be blood on the clothes, but there was not. Now people, especially journalists, news crews, were pretty weirded out by the fact that these clothes just showed up but there was like no bones. No bones whatsoever, just the clothes hanging out in a vertical incline that a three-year-old can't possibly get to by himself with no bones. But never fear because one week later part of a skull appeared and part of a tooth. However, where they appeared it looked like somebody just placed them down. Like they weren't seen. They were not there. When the rock climbers found his clothes and the authorities went up there to look for whatever else was up there, there was no bones up there. This place was searched. So obviously someone had come back a week later and placed part of a skull and one tooth on this incline. And the real bizarre thing about this whole situation, even though it was apparent that these clothes in the remainder of a skull and a tooth were there, this was the exact location that the military man had marked on his map. So my speculation is, is there something underneath this vertical incline? Is there like a tunnel there? Like how did this military man know to track to this particular area when it's obvious by the evidence that the clothes nor the bones had been left in this particular area in the elements of nature for four years? Like shit's weird. It's just weird. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation tested the skull and it got an 81% match to the possibility of it belonging to Jared Otodaro. But because Alan Otodaro obviously had distrust in the authorities, he sent the remainder of the skull and the remainder of the tooth to a private institution in Ohio. The people in Ohio found that the skull was inconclusive to belonging to Jared and that the tooth actually had the DNA of two people on it. So what that means is that either somebody nefariously touched the tooth without gloves on or one of the authorities searching for the tooth or searching for Jared or anything having to do with Jared picks the tooth up without proper protocol in order to preserve evidence. Regardless, very frustrating for Alan Otodaro. But in 2006, it was finally concluded that this skull and this tooth did most likely belong to Jared, meaning that unfortunately Jared was no longer with us on this earth plane. On the part of the skull that was found, there were scratch marks on it and one day Alan Otodaro got an email from someone claiming to be a medical examiner and she said the scratches on the skull were indicative of a skull being pulled along the riverbed. Well that would make sense except that the skull was found up on a 500-foot vertical incline. It didn't make sense. Well the medical examiner emailed Alan back and said oh there must have been some heavy rains and the river you know got a little higher and it lifted the skull up and pressed it into this vertical incline. But the the height distance Alan was very confused and so he emailed her back and was like that makes no sense. If there had been that much flooding it would have been like a national disaster. We're talking Jared's remains are what we have of Jared's remains. We're so high up there's no way that that would even have been a possibility. But as luck would have it for Alan Otodaro, when he emailed the medical examiner back to say like that that doesn't make sense, she never responded. Now again the three leading theories are first of all a mountain lion but again there was no blood found on the clothes and again the second theory is that he slipped into the river and drowned and then his remains just magically appeared four years later but once again they appear really high up. And the third theory and speculation goes back to Janet because you see many people believe that Janet had the hots for Alan Otodaro. This is all alleged. I don't want anybody reaching out to this woman because this is just theory. She might be innocent but this is a theory. Now when Alan divorced Stacy the mother of his children and he decided to up and move to this resort to have a home there for his children obviously that takes a lot of energy right. Like I can understand for anybody not just Alan but for any parent who is recently divorced with two small children moving into a new home a new business opportunity it's probably not the best time to date anybody. You're trying to get your life reorganized create a new a new normal for yourself and for of course your children who should be your first priority. Well people speculate that Janet had the hots for Alan and so she was really trying to butter her way into Alan's life maybe being like pseudo stepmom like cool stepmom to the children. However hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. People believe that there's a possibility that something happened between Janet and Alan to make Janet maybe take her revenge out on Jared or try to do something to get Alan's attention who knows. Now for me even though I know a lot about crazy stepmothers story for a different day I don't actually believe this theory I think there's way more going on here having to do with the sheriff's department having to do with the government itself. Why would the sheriff be so hell bent on not allowing people to help them search. Why would the sheriff threaten to arrest anyone who even attempted to call them out or do anything to try to help this small child and why would this US congressman get a call from the authorities telling him not to participate in the search. In my opinion this has dark cult written all over it. But once again I would like to know your thoughts and your opinions down in the comment section below. Is there anything about this case that I missed that you know of and I know that we had such a fun time on Tuesday night going over some of the old national park cases that if you want us to I will add this to the list to discuss with Jeanine and of course Jean-Claude on Beyond Mystic the next time we three film together. Just let me know down in the comment section below if that's something that you would like. So hopefully we can get some more clarity on poor little Jared Otteros case. All right guys I hope that you're having a wonderful wonderful week ahead. Hold the line. Keep your head held high and please know that the best is yet to come. If you would like to purchase our opening song there is a link down in the description box below. Thank you again to Josh McKay as always for doing our opening music. All right guys I hope you have a good day. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.