The Strange Disappearance of Bryce Laspisa
In the True Crime Community, Bryce Laspisa has been referred to as the male, Maura Murray. If you don’t know who Maura is, go back to Episode 1 of this podcast.
There isn’t much readily available about Bryce and his childhood or personal life on the internet, though I guess one would assume that it has nothing to do with his disappearance, so why would there be anything? This episode is going to be a little bit different than what y’all are used to from Murder & Mediumship.
Bryce was born to Karen Laspisa in 1994. His father, Michael Laspisa was his adoptive father who had been in his life since he was a small baby. Everything I can find describes him as a really cheerful kid who was always making people laugh. Though his parents describe him as a really good kid who didn’t do anything normal teens wouldn’t do, kids from his school say he was the kid who would bring alcohol to class. Not long after Bryce graduated from Naperville High School in Illinois where he played football and recreational baseball, his parents retired and moved to Laguna Niguel, California. Bryce moved with them, but went to college about seven hours away from his parents at Sierra College - a community college in Rocklin, California. He made a ton of friends fairly quickly and even met his girlfriend, Kim Sly. Not much else is said about his freshman year of college, but he spent his summer between freshman and sophomore year back at home with his parents in Laguna Niguel.
The pictures you can find of Bryce during his freshman year portray a fun-loving and outgoing young man who also appears to be incredibly social. This can’t necessarily be verified, but it would seem that Bryce brought the party with him wherever he went. His facebook is still active and posted on one photo in particular, there’s a comment about Bryce being the only one, “going ham,” in the group, and it’s quickly expressed that he was also wasted and that was why. So - maybe an isolated incident, but not necessarily the impression that I get.
Despite his alleged tendency to drink regularly, he earned good grades as a graphic and industrial design major. According to his mom on Investigation Discovery’s, “Disappeared,” he had an impressive portfolio for how young he was as well. The story of Bryce’s disappearance leaves a lot of questions. I can definitely see why true crime fans would compare his case to that of Maura Murray.
It all begins (at least what we know of things) on August 28, 2013 when Bryce tells his mom over the phone that he’s breaking up with his girlfriend, Kim. Roughly an hour later, he texted his roommate, Sean, “I love you bro, seriously. You are the best person I’ve ever met. You saved my soul.” Sean then texts back, “I love you too man. You have an amazing life, full of love and blessings. Don’t waste that. You have too many people who love you, Bryce.” The timeline gets confusing, especially the more sources you find, but ultimately somewhere in all of this, I believe the day before, he broke up with his girlfriend of one year via text. He told her, “You’re better off without me,” and she asked in return, “Are you breaking up with me?” He replied, “Yes.” Not okay. So the same day that he texted his roommate, he drove two hours north to Kim’s house to talk to her in person, I’m assuming about their breakup. Now again, depending on the source, I have seen that Bryce calls his mom, and that Kim calls his mom and his mom asks to speak with Bryce. I believe she called his mom though. She expresses her concern that he’s acting super strangely and doesn’t think that he’s okay to drive back to his dorm, so she confiscated his keys. In whatever world a college kid calls someone’s parents to tell them their child is acting strangely, there must really be a problem. Now they never describe what exactly he was doing that concerned Kim, but what I see when I read these statements is pacing and waving of arms. However, Bryce convinces Karen that Kim was only upset over the breakup and was lashing out at him and that’s all this was. He was fine to drive. Karen had already received a phone call from his roommate Sean expressing concern. Knowing this, Karen tells Kim to give the keys back to Bryce and that he seems fine to drive. While she was still talking to Bryce, she did ask him if she needed to come up there. She told him that she would book a flight and be up there as soon as possible so they could sort things out. He declined, but also let her know that there was a lot that he wanted to talk to her about. This is so bizarre to me, which shouldn’t be surprising, because all of his behavior is bizarre at this point, but wouldn’t the amount of time it would take for her to book a flight, and get there be enough for him to get his thoughts together to talk to her?
After all of this, at about 11:30 p.m. on August 28th, Bryce leaves Kim’s place driving back to his dorm - or so we all thought. At 11:00 a.m. on the 29th, Karen received a call from their insurance company that roadside assistance had been used on their Toyota Highlander. When Karen calls Bryce’s cell phone, he doesn’t answer. Beginning to worry, she calls his roommate Sean and checks in to make sure Bryce had made it home ok. That’s when Karen learned that he had not made it home. I wonder at this point why they hadn’t called the police and maybe it has something to do with Bryce being a legal adult or God only knows, but after how he was acting and the expressed concern from all parties, I just feel like some sort of law enforcement involvement would have been necessary at this point. I don’t know, maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, Michael and Karen looked at their credit card activity online and saw that yes in fact, roadside assistance had been charged to their credit card in Buttonwillow, CA. According to Google maps, Buttonwillow is only about 2 and a half hours from Laguna Niguel. So why wasn’t Bryce home yet??? To circle back - Bryce never even told his parents that he was coming home. He told Karen not to fly up there, but that he had a lot to talk to her about. So now that he was about two and half hours away from their home in Laguna Niguel, one could only assume he was headed home, right? The owner of the service station that helped Bryce out with gas said he did so around 9 a.m. If that was the case then he should be almost back to Karen and Michael’s, if not back already. This guy who owned the shop, his name was Christian and Christian actually went back to check on Bryce for his parents. When he gets out there, Bryce is still sitting in the same spot hours later. Christian calls Karen and she asks him what on earth he’s doing and asks him to come home. So it is once again assumed that Bryce is on his way home, this time around 3pm.
So a few more hours go by… and a few more… and unable to reach him, they file a missing persons report with the police department. Now when they do this, it enables AT&T (his cell provider) to ping his cell phone to find him - as it’s finally considered an emergency. Wouldn’t you know it - the police find him 8 miles down the road from where he had been seen by Christian. He was sitting in a hotel parking lot. When asked by the police what he’s doing just sitting there - he tells them he’s waiting to meet a friend. He passed a field sobriety test and seemed fine to the officers, so they call his parents and let them know. The officer encourages him to call his parents and Bryce refuses. He’s eventually persuaded to let the officer call and he tells his mom he’s fine he was just meeting up with some friends. Once again, they encourage him to come home and he agrees. Remember the service shop owner, Christian? Well he’s back. Karen asks him to once again check on Bryce and Christian goes above and beyond his call of duty here and tells Karen and Michael that he’ll watch follow Bryce for a bit to make sure he gets back on the road. So now they call him every so often to get time estimates and ask got landmarks. Bryce tells them he can’t see street signs or anything, but let them know his GPS had the time he’d be home by and he was fine.
Now we’re into 2 AM on August 30th. His parents are expecting him back at now around 3:25 AM. This whole ordeal began at 11:30pm on the 28th. Bryce tells his lol that he’s too tired to keep driving (hello it’s been well over 24 hours at this point) and that he’s going to pull over to go to bed. His parents tell him that’s a great idea. Seriously at this point I’m not sure how they’re not on their way to get him, but that’s just not how it went down. They went back to sleep - assuming he’d be there when they woke up. I’m face palming. But they don’t get up until 8:00 the next morning and *what* wakes them?
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At 8:00 AM on the 30th, a police officer shows up at the door of Michael and Karen Laspisa and tells them that their son’s Toyota Highlander was found by a construction worker at the bottom of a 25-foot embankment. Side note - it kind of blows my MIND to know that this is what woke his parents up - at 8:00 in the morning. How do you sleep when your son is having a mental breakdown and driving home? How could they not go get him, right???
A traffic camera was actually able to catch his car passing by near Castaic Lake Recreation Center driving up the hill that his car was later found at the bottom of. His car drove by not once, but twice within minutes. Once again, yes only 1 hour and 50 minutes from home - just under two hours and why his parents didn’t go get him, I will never fully understand. He came up this direction right after telling his parents he would be pulling over to rest. His car went off of the top of the hill and down a 25 foot embankment. There was evidence present that he actually accelerated to go faster down the embankment, though another podcast, Morbid, actually brought up a good point, that as exhausted as he was, it’s very possible that he panicked and hit the gas instead of the brake when he started to go over the side. Frankly, he could have fallen asleep then jerked awake and hit the wrong pedal. We will never know, because Bryce’s car was found flipped on its side and the back window was busted out from the inside. There was no indication that he suffered any sort of serious injury, at least not to the outside of his body, as there were only about two drops of blood found in the car. And that traffic camera is the last that was ever caught of him, and no one has been able to find him or spoken to him ever since.
If Bryce was coherent enough to bust out the back window of the Highlander, you would assume he would take his wallet or something with him, yes? His phone, lapop, and wallet were all left behind along with a duffle back that was left unzipped and allegedly empty as if he had stopped to take something from it - or so it has been speculated by many. We don’t really know if it was just left unzipped in the car. Maybe he kept his booze in there or something and had grabbed whatever was in it days before. We just don’t know stuff like that enough to call it suspicious or not.
This case has stumped friends, family, detectives, and internet sleuths alike for six, almost seven years now. The two main questions being, what did Bryce want to talk to his mom about and where the heck did he go? Diverse combed Lake Castaic for two days using sonar to find his body in the lake, and nothing was recovered. The lake has been searched by law enforcement and also privately since then and no bodies were recovered then either. Scent dogs were called in and his scent was tracked to a nearby truck stop. His scent was lost at the truck stop, but he wasn’t found there.
So many theories have been formed around the few clues that were left behind. Some speculate that he intentionally went off of the top of the hill because from up there, it appeared that the lake was directly at the bottom of the embankment and that Bryce was trying to drown himself in his car crashing into the lake. This isn’t so hard to wrap your head around, considering he gave away his xBox and diamond earrings, broke up with his girlfriend, and expressed his appreciation to his roommate in a way that kind of screams suicide or runaway. Another theory is that he kicked out the back window in the car and once he got out, he was disoriented, possibly had a head injury, wandered off to the truck stop, hitched a ride and started over somewhere. And still a third theory is that he was meeting someone at the truck stop. Maybe he had a burner phone and that’s what was in the duffle bag? I don’t know for sure either. Other theories have him back in Illinois, some in LA homeless, and some think he’s in the lake despite how many times it has been searched.
When he said he was waiting for a friend outside the hotel, was he? Perhaps someone was coming to help him start his life over, away from the life his parents had envisioned for him. Getting to what makes this show different from the rest of the true crime podcasts - my intuitive insight into the disappearance of Bryce Laspisa:
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Let’s start with what I feel was going on with Bryce. If this is your first time listening, then know that I will never speak of details I wouldn’t want to accidentally stumble on with a family member of mine. With that being said, I think that freshman year brought an escalation to the drugs and alcohol Bryce would have used in his high school senior days. I think that’s why his parents kept him so close to them over that summer. When his mom talks about how he couldn’t have gotten into that much in two weeks,” referencing the two weeks he had been back on campus for his sophomore year, I think she kind of knew that Bryce had already been into more, though I don’t think she would see it or admit it to herself. I think that he had been drinking fairly heavily prior to returning to campus and had messed around with a few different pills freshman year as well. However, getting back to sophomore year, I think Bryce was feeling super depressed. I think he feels heavy and that he wasn’t in a good place mentally. I know that it’s mentioned that Michael wasn’t his biological father. Maybe there’s a history of mental illness like schizophrenia or bipolar or something else that’s in the family and otherwise unknown, or that just hasn’t been shared with the media. Regardless of whether it was brought on by the use of the drugs and alcohol, or if it was just starting to come out because of his age being about the age that mental health disorders such as these begin to develop and become symptomatic. Bryce was most definitely having a mental breakdown.
Why didn’t his parents come get him? I think they had bailed him out of trouble plenty of times and that they were kind of “sticking to their guns,” in making him suffer the consequences of whatever was going on. I can’t really get much more on that, but ultimately, it went way too far. I feel his dad, Michael, had more to do with not going to get him than his mom did. I believe she cut him a lot more slack than Michael would have otherwise. Furthermore, when they discuss how his alcohol use wasn’t any worse than anyone else his age, I beg to differ. Bryce wasn’t drinking just to party. Bryce was drinking to numb out or to go somewhere else, or to ease anxiety or rising symptoms of his mental health issues. I do believe his suffering was exacerbated by his drug use. Why would his parents lie about this behavior? I think it was partly due to wanting to maintain an image and partly due to being in denial over what was going on with her only child.
Why was he giving his stuff away? I think he was intending on killing himself. I know that his family refuses to accept that as an option, but I don’t blame them as that’s not something easy to admit. I believe that he broke up with his girlfriend to try to make it easier for her and gave away his belongings because he wasn’t coming back for them. If he had been planning to start over, he would have sold them - especially the XBox and the diamond earrings. It kind of surprises me he didn’t give the earrings to Kim, but regardless, he didn’t necessarily need money where he was going, right?
Why tell his mom he had a lot to tell her? What was that all about? As a psychic medium who does readings regularly, I have had plenty of people ask me if I can read anyone, even if they don’t know or don’t want to be read. I will be the first to say that in my experience, and I know that it’s the experience of plenty of others in my community, if someone doesn’t want to be read, it makes it a hell of a lot more difficult. If your energy is closed off, then I can’t get into it to read it. If you don’t want to be read, I can still get stuff about you, but what you’re hiding or hoping I don’t see, I likely won’t. So when I sat down to feel into this case, my experience was so vastly different than it was with Brittanee Drexel, who seemingly sat on the edge of my desk and readily made herself available, or like with Relisha Rudd last week, who practically showed a movie to me of what happened to her. Even with JonBenét, she wouldn’t necessarily communicate with me as a medium, but I was able to see psychically what happened.
I did pick up on “drugs,” and specifically pills. I did get the sense of him “tripping,” on drugs, but I believe that was him going through the psychotic break. As much as I tried to see what happened to Bryce, I can see his car rolling down the hill, I can see him kicking out the back window, and I can see him walking away with something in his hand, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. I can even see him walking up to the truck stop. I heard the words, “tire iron,” about as clear as day, but after that, I just don’t see it. Why do this case then? I could invent a whole story around what I think happened, but I believe suicide was his intention. I’m not sure that he carried it through. You would think it would be super easy to be able to tell if someone were dead or alive, but it isn’t always that simple. Their energy can be so powerful that they feel alive, or they can choose to not answer your calls on the other side. If they don’t want to be found, then I believe it’s disrespectful to continue to look. The final thing I will share with you is that I did also see a desert area, but I’m not sure what it means. Did he drive through the desert? Did he have a burner phone and called someone who was going to come get him so he could start over? That seems unrealistic, as crashing a car and risking actually getting hurt seems insane, however, he was experiencing a psychotic break at the time.
Vyvanse can cause hallucinations. My overall suspicion is that he may have been experiencing those while coming off of it or maybe he still had a lot of it in his system. He wouldn’t have appeared to be under the influence of something in a way that would cause him to fail a field sobriety test, because it doesn’t impair you in that way. I was prescribed Vyvanse at one point and I hated it. I didn’t take it for long, but my personal experience was intense brain fog and some confusion and frankly, if you’re taking it for focus, that’s kind of counter productive. Then let’s factor in that he was up for days at this point. I mean literally, he was awake for more than a day or two. He started using Vyvanse to stay up all night playing video games. Lack of sleep can cause hallucinations even with or without the drugs that also cause that side effect.
The whole situation is insanely tragic, but the best that I could guess with the tire iron, the truck stop, and the wandering away is that he was even more disoriented after his accident, and left his belongings in the car because he was just focused on getting out of the vehicle. If he’s that tired and either coming off of or still on drugs, we can’t try to apply logic to his actions. He clearly wasn’t thinking from a logical state of mind. He likely met with foul play and that is maybe what was used as a weapon against him and he was left in a desert area? This is where I remind you that I really can’t say for sure though, except for what I have said I can say for sure.
Do I think he’s still out there? Again, I can’t be 100% sure, but it would be my theory that no, he isn’t still there. I do believe he tried to commit suicide and that it failed. He wandered off and happened to choose the correct direction to the gas station and was picked up at the truck stop looking for a ride. I get a sense of embarrassment and shame from him and whether he’s dead or alive, I would invite anyone who listens to send him some light and some love, as I believe the last few known weeks of his existence were tumultuous and incredibly confusing and unsettling for Bryce.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call the national suicide hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
Sources:
48 Hours Leading up to Bryce Laspisa's Disappearance
Disappearing Case Progress After 7 Years - Bryce Laspisa
Crime Junkies Podcast - Bryce Laspisa
Morbid Podcast - Bryce Laspisa
