This is my first writeup - please be gentle! :)

Loy Vannapho is 75 years old, 5 foot 3, and 135 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. Loy is diabetic and experiences problems with his memory. He also suffered a heart attack in the year prior to his disappearance on August 11, 2016 from Richland, WA. What follows is a rough timeline of his disappearance and the strange circumstances surrounding it.

Thursday, August 11
9:00 a.m.: Loy drops off his wife, Ma, at her workplace, The Emerald of Siam, a restaurant and bar on Jadwin Avenue in the Uptown shopping center.

Afternoon/Evening: Ma begins to worry when Loy does not return to pick her up in the afternoon, something that has been part of their daily routine for years. After dropping Ma off at work, Loy would usually visit Jokers Comedy Club for a game of poker or pool, go home for lunch, and then return to pick her up.

1:00 p.m.: A witness reports seeing Loy sitting on a bench at Howard Amon Park. Other witnesses report seeing Loy, dressed in a white polo shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, around the dock at this time. (These sightings are reported to police the following day.)

4:00 p.m.: When D.T. Luu, Loy’s son-in-law, calls Loy’s phone, it goes straight to voicemail, which is unusual. Loy’s phone was an older flip phone, which he kept charged.

11:15 p.m.: Loy does not arrive home; his family calls police to report him missing. Luu is adamant that Loy would never miss picking up his wife and that being out of reach is uncharacteristic of his father-in-law.

Friday, August 12
Morning: Crews from Columbia Basin Dive Rescue, along with Richland and West Richland police, begin to scour the Columbia River for any sign of Loy.

Afternoon: Employees at Jokers Comedy Club report that they saw Loy two days prior to his disappearance (Tuesday, August 9), but have not seen him since. Their surveillance footage confirms that Loy never made it to Jokers on Thursday.

3:20 p.m.: Richland police Sergeant. Alan Jenkins finds Loy’s truck, a gray 2005 two-door Toyota Tundra, at Columbia Point Marina Park, a popular boating and hiking spot in Richland. Police recover blood samples and fingerprints inside the abandoned truck. The blood is spread about the interior and a single sandal is found outside the truck. Police and family are uncertain whether the sandal belongs to Loy or someone else. Blood and fingerprints are sent to a lab for processing.

The pattern of blood inside the truck shows small pools and drops of blood rather than spray or smearing, leading police and family to believe that Loy did not drive himself to the area near the dock and that he did not commit suicide.

Friends and family are puzzled by the truck’s location, as Loy was never known to spend time in the area and it was not a part of his regular travel route. “A 70-something-year-old, slow walking person to take a stroll in the park would be highly unlikely,” says Luu.

Search dogs do not find Loy’s scent anywhere outside of the truck.

Loy’s family members search the truck for any receipts that might indicate where he has gone, but find nothing. The family notes that the gas tank was down to 1/8th, which is unusual as Loy tends to keep the truck filled.

7:30 p.m.: Having found nothing apart from Loy’s truck, the search is called off.

August 13-19
Columbia Basin Dive Rescue continues to send out search teams over the course of the week. Friends, family members, and other community members conduct separate searches between Richland and West Richland. None of the groups find anything.

Captain Mike Cobb of the Richland police department is able to track Loy’s cell phone location on the day he went missing and discovers that he may have gone as far as Pendleton, Oregon before returning to Richland.

“We know the technology was there, but we don’t know that the person was there,” Cobb points out. Police do not know exactly when the cell phone signals came from different areas, but suspect that the phone had died by 4 p.m., when Luu called and got Loy’s voicemail. If the phone was still on, it is possible that Loy did not or could not pick it up.

Police follow up with Luu almost weekly as they continue their investigation.

Saturday, August 20
An update to the “Justice for Loy” Facebook page notes that at the time of his disappearance, Loy was wearing a thick, flat, 24-karat gold chain. The family estimates that the chain and charm, a likeness of a Buddhist monk, is worth roughly $3,200. The post asks that people keep an eye out for this piece at local jewelry or pawn shops in the Tri-Cities, Seattle, or Tacoma areas - especially the “Little Saigon” section of the International District.

Wednesday, September 21
Richland detectives, aided by the Department of Homeland Security, search the areas between Coffin Road and the Columbia River just off I-82 by helicopter flyover, but find nothing.

Present day: Initially, the family hoped to find Loy unharmed. As Loy has now been missing for over six months without medication for his diabetes, they now believe that he is likely deceased. Still, the family is hoping for some closure and has used their Facebook page to urge anyone with information to come forward.

Sources: Tri-City Herald 1, Tri-City Herald 2, Tri-City Herald 3, YakTri News, and the Justice for Loy FB page (not linked due to Reddit rules, obvs).

I got obsessed with this case right at its beginning, as it’s local to me and I had seen Loy around the Uptown prior to his disappearance without knowing who he was. I’ve been amazed that he hasn’t been found and no one seems to have any idea what might have happened to him. Since his disappearance, three bodies have been found in the Columbia river, but all of them have been identified and were (obviously) not Loy.

I set up a Google alert and have been keeping a close eye on local news, but I haven’t seen any updates to the case or any new information on it since December. So I’m left with these questions:
1. Did police ever determine whether the shoe belonged to Loy or to someone else?
2. Was the phone itself recovered, or just the phone data?
3. Has anything come back from the lab and has it provided any new leads or theories?
4. What on earth happened?!

Any brilliant theories out there?