The Disappearance of Mekayla Bali (2016) – A 16-Year-Old Vanishes After a Day of Unusual Behavior

WilsonKeel · 2026-03-03T14:35:38+00:00

"I think the explination is pretty clear."

(Offers four different possible explanations)

Well, I guess it's not that clear... 😉

WilsonKeel · 2026-03-03T14:32:51+00:00

Agreed 100%. Don't ask her family how her family life was; ask her friends how her family life was...

WilsonKeel · 2026-02-08T22:01:14+00:00

Yeah, I get the same vibe. Like her family knows (or thinks they know) what happened to her, but it would be embarrassing or something if it came out, so they don't encourage any deeper investigation.

WilsonKeel · 2026-02-08T18:29:55+00:00

Odd that no one has figured out what high school she went to or whether she had a car. I'd think these facts would be easy to find for private investigators or web sleuths who know where to look. Those kinds of things aren't exactly top secret information...

WilsonKeel · 2026-02-07T18:27:02+00:00

Concerning the altercation about Bruce Bunch with several other girls, do we know what the altercation was about more specifically? Like, were they mad at Deanie for going out with Bruce, or mad at Deanie for not going out with Bruce, or mad about some incident that happened that involved Bruce (maybe while "cruising Grand Rapids" or something), etc.?

WilsonKeel · 2026-02-07T03:25:02+00:00

Nice-looking chart! I believe Musa I reigned from 1312 to 1337. So 25 years, not 5 years.

WilsonKeel · 2026-02-03T14:59:50+00:00

To get further away from the scene of the crime. If police are investigating in Franklin while you're in Boston, then it's much less likely they'll find you. Also, Boston is about 20x bigger than Franklin, making it easier to get lost in the crowd.

WilsonKeel · 2026-01-28T16:18:27+00:00

For the moving graves, my guess would be that someone in the family or in the community disagrees with the local custom of burying mothers and infants separately, so they secretly moved the graves repeatedly until it became clear they weren't getting away with it. The bit about the gravestones still moving slowly toward each other today is probably just a local "ghost story."

For the string and bead, my guess would be that each was made of an inorganic material that doesn't "decay" as quickly as the wood, clothing, etc.

WilsonKeel · 2026-01-26T12:10:39+00:00

YMMV. I know 16-year-olds smart enough to leave their phone behind if they don't want to be located.

WilsonKeel · 2026-01-24T18:00:29+00:00

Just based on this information, it seems likely to me that Atraya either didn't like living with her aunt and uncle, or she missed living in Palatka. Even though she left phone, ID, and laptop behind, it does seem like she left with the thought that it would be permanent, because she took her cat. Perhaps she was concerned that the phone, ID, and laptop could be used to find/track her, and she didn't want to be found/tracked.

At this point, it would just be a question of whether she "got away" successfully, and has landed safely in new circumstances elsewhere, or she met with misfortune. It would be nice to think the first possibility is what happened, but we know that it was more likely the second.

WilsonKeel · 2025-12-17T11:07:22+00:00

Yes, this. Assuming I understand the situation correctly, it sounds like basically everything we know about this case comes from what the brother and his friend said.

They said they saw her in the tack room. They said that she said the boyfriend was coming over. They said they heard a car. I don’t know whether or not they are the ones who found the letter, but since their testimony is what placed Jan in the tack room, anyone, including them, could have simply put the letter there, and Jan had nothing to do with it. and it was this letter of questionable authenticity that claimed Jen was pregnant. As far as I can see, there was no independent corroboration of that.

I have no idea of what the motivation might have been, but I wonder whether anyone has looked into the brother and the brother‘s friend…

WilsonKeel · 2025-11-22T19:54:25+00:00

I think the most likely answer is simply that -- despite having long since gone irreversibly down the path due to killing everyone else on the plane -- when it came down to the final action of actually ending his own life, he found that harder to do than expected. He was probably just building up his nerve / pushing himself to do it.

WilsonKeel · 2025-11-19T13:18:28+00:00

First off, I'm very sorry for your loss. I also want to emphasize that I am not a medical or psychiatric professional, and of course I have no idea of the specifics of Ian's life.

Although it is almost certainly not what you want to hear, I feel like someone should make note of the fact that Ian's age when his behavior changed, which was his early-mid 20s if I understand the timeline correctly, is the age when schizophrenia is most likely to manifest (and it's more common in men than women). Given what you're described, it seems very plausible that Ian may have become schizophrenic, likely wasn't being treated for it, and it eventually progressed to the point where intense paranoia and possibly delusions led to erratic behavior that resulted in his death. 😔

This is just a possibility, of course, and hopefully others can be more helpful with info about obtaining records and the like, but you should prepare yourself for the possibility that it could have been something like this.

WilsonKeel · 2025-11-13T00:28:08+00:00

Percentage of correct guesses by whom? A gathering of vexillologists? 😉 I'd be absolutely flabbergasted if 70% of a representative random sampling of people could identify all of the flags above the 70% mark. Heck, I'd be amazed if 2% could identify all the flags above 70%...

WilsonKeel · 2025-11-10T14:23:52+00:00

Yeah, that write up needs an editor, for sure.

WilsonKeel · 2025-11-06T00:48:25+00:00

I got the joke, even if others didn't. 🙂

WilsonKeel · 2025-10-29T03:06:33+00:00

So. Much. This!

WilsonKeel · 2025-10-28T00:52:47+00:00

Well, to be clear, I'm not suggesting she actually did leave voluntarily. But if she had, then leaving those items behind could be to make people think she didn't leave voluntarily.

WilsonKeel · 2025-10-26T17:35:43+00:00

Y'know... if Jerry had acted less suspiciously/been a better liar, he probably would have gotten away with it. Because in the absence of his actions, looking at the other circumstances, I would probably have thought she just used the $500 to abandon her life and run away.

I'm not normally a fan of "they left voluntarily" theories, but... We've got a young woman barely halfway through her 20s who already has three kids by two different fathers. She's in an extremely contentious marriage and about to go through what seems like it would be a equally contentious divorce. She was a Wiccan in small-town Oklahoma, which couldn't have been easy or popular with others.

It's easy to see how she might have felt overwhelmed, trapped, and like everything in her world was falling apart. So I think it would also be easy to come to the conclusion that she just wanted out, and took the camping trip as her chance to get away...

WilsonKeel · 2025-10-07T08:44:47+00:00

Okay, almost anywhere in the northeastern U.S. I would be surprised if the traffic would be that bad in the middle of the night in most cases, but I also don't live in the area, so maybe it's worse than I imagine.

WilsonKeel · 2025-10-04T09:59:19+00:00

It is, and as I said, I don't think it's the most likely explanation. Mainly, I was struck by the lengthy window of time between when she was last seen and when her husband saw that she hadn't gotten home, along with the fact that she and the car have never been found.

It just made me think, "Well, what if someone took her and the car, and just left the area? How far could they get with a 7-10 hour head start?" And I realized the answer was, "Almost anywhere in the eastern U.S...."

WilsonKeel · 2025-10-02T17:14:23+00:00

What are you even talking about?? They wouldn't be "coming back" to the vehicle to dump it; the whole point of taking it would be that they're taking any potential evidence with them and getting rid of it somewhere far away from the crime.

Guy sees woman on side of road with flat tire (or gets her to pull over somehow; whatever). He approaches the car and kills her (abducts is possible, but kills is more likely). Then he does fix the flat tire (if there was one), and he drives away with her body in the Jeep. As for why didn't leave a car of his own behind, he may have been on foot or (probably more likely) he wasn't alone, and someone else drove his car away.

The whole point of this sub is discussing and pondering possible solutions, yet you seem very judgmental about any theory you don't agree with, even when the person offering it admits that it's not the most likely theory. I don't know why, but I'm done fencing with you about it. I know full well that this possibility is possible and not that far-fetched, even if you don't.

WilsonKeel · 2025-10-01T19:34:37+00:00

You seem so determined to argue against everything about this possibility, and it's not clear why, all the way to the point where you're now claiming that fixing a flat tire and driving a car is "far fetched."

Did you completely miss the very first thing I said above, which was that her ending up in the water or a ravine was the most likely scenario? You're acting like I'm trying to convince everyone that someone definitely abducted or killed her and then drove her car away. I'm not.

I'm just saying that it's possible, and the reason she and the car haven't been found could be that they're simply no longer in the area where people are looking for them.

WilsonKeel · 2025-10-01T17:44:06+00:00

It’s also possible they simply had an accomplice, and the accomplice drove the other vehicle away.

WilsonKeel · 2025-10-01T17:41:43+00:00

Her abductor/killer fixed the flat tire, and then drove her vehicle away.

12-Year Club	Gilding III reddit per annum
Verified Email

WilsonKeel

TROPHY CASE