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Dark Cast Network. Welcome to the dark Side of podcasting.
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Now to the latest in the death investigation of Utah
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CEO Aaron Valenti. Now Valenti disappearing in California, and yesterday
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reports are that her body was found inside a park card.
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Her voice was calm but distant. She spoke in fragments
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as if she was somewhere else entirely, and then her
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final words, it's all a game. It's a thought experiment.
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We're in the matrix. I'm your host Hopper.
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Daily, and I'm Mackenzie, and this is.
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The final trace of Aaron Valenti. Today, we have a
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story that's gonna make you question everything you thought you
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knew about reality. So, Mackenzie, quick question for you. How
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would you feel if I called you out of the
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blue and just told you, Hey, we're living in the matrix.
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I probably asked you what you've been watching on Netflix?
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Fair?
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But what if I sounded dead serious, no sarcasm, no joking,
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just calm and certain.
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Then I'm probably really concerned.
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Maybe start googling like how to do an exorcism on
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a podcast host?
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Mm hmm.
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See that's what makes this case sol unraveling. Aaron Valenti
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actually made that phone call to her family and days
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later she was gone.
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Oh thanks, Okay, welly, I'm not laughing anymore.
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Yeah. This one's one of those stories where you can't
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tell if the scariest part is what happened to her
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or what she might have known before any of this.
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Aaron Valenti wasn't someone who seemed destined to be a
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tragic headline. She wasn't some conspiracy theorist or someone with
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the history of mental illness. She was a successful businesswoman,
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CEO of a company called Tinker Ventures, married to her
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college sweetheart, a psychologist, a Georgetown graduate, and by all accounts,
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she was just a rock star. She was thirty three
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years old, based in Utah, and she had what a
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lot of people would call the dream life. She was
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running a company she'd built from the ground up. She
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was sharp, ambitious, the kind of person who saw opportunity everywhere.
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Her company, Tinker Ventures, specialized in iOS, android and web applications.
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But here's what's interesting. She was also really into something
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called brain machine interface technology.
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Okay, and what the heck is that?
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Well, basically technology that connects your brain directly to computers.
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So think of it, like being able to control your
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phone just by thinking about it.
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That's site some science fiction stuff.
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Mm hmm, that's what I thought too, But apparently it's
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very real. And Aaron was working with some cutting edge
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companies in this field, and she wasn't just business minded.
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Friends described her as funny, magnetic, and always up for
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an adventure. She traveled, she pushed herself, and she had
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this energy that made people want to be around her.
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So basically the opposite of someone you'd expect to vanish
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and end up on a true crime podcast episode exactly.
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No criminal past, no mental health struggles that anyone knew about,
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just a young entrepreneur who seemed to be right in
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the middle of her prime, which is why what happened
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next just makes zero sense. In late September twenty nineteen,
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Aaron made a Facebook post saying, quote headed to San
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Francisco in LA soon. Who's around dm me? End quote.
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Then on October first, Aaron flew from Utah to California
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for a business trip. Nothing unusual, She'd done this plenty
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of times before. The plan was to meet with contacts
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in the Bay Area, attend a couple of tech related events,
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and then fly back home. Everything seemed totally normal. She
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spent a few days bouncing around between meetings, networking, just
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normal business trip stuff, and by all accounts, she seemed fine.
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Friends she saw that week didn't notice anything strange. So
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no signs that she was stressed out, upset, or you know,
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about to spiral into something no one could explain.
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Okay, So how do we get from the cool, calm,
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quickted woman to a frankly call about the matrix.
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That's the mystery, because on October seventh, everything just shifted.
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On the afternoon of October seventh, Aaron was supposed to
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fly back to Utah. Around three thirty pm, she called
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her parents from California. She sounded distressed. She told them
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she couldn't find her rental car. It was a gray
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Nissan Morano. Her dad, Joseph later said that she was
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talking a mile a minute, jumping from thought to thought
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and not really making sense. It was the first clear
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sign that something was seriously off.
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What do you mean she couldn't find a real car
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like she'd lost in a parking lot.
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I mean, I've done that before. Is that what we're
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talking about here?
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Exactly same, I've done it before. Too, but she was frantic.
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She'd just come from a meeting on sand Hill Road,
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nothing unusual about the day until that moment. But now
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she's wandering around, couldn't find the car, and her words
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just started to feel scattered. She did eventually find it,
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so crisis avoided, but instead of calming down, things just
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got stranger. She stayed on the phone with her parents
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as she drove, and the conversation started veering from confused
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to almost surreal. Her mom, Agnes, later remembered, Aaron sounded
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completely disconnected, and then Aaron said the words her family
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will never forget. It's all a game, it's a thought experiment.
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We're in the matrix. This was the moment her family
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knew they were dealing with something that they couldn't explain.
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Ah, so this is the moment where their rabbit hole opened.
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Yep. And once she said that, it was like Aaron
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started unraveling in real time.
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Okay, but wait, didn't you say her husband was a psychologist.
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Wouldn't he recognize signs of mental health crisis?
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Did he not see anything?
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That's exactly what makes this so strange. Her husband, Harrison
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said this behavior was completely out of character for Aaron.
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She had no history of mental illness, no hospitalizations, no
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substance of use, just nothing.
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If like her mind just flipped a switch from normal
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everyday Aaron to someone sounding like she'd seen behind the
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curtain exactly.
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Imagine being on the phone knowing something's wrong, but you
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can't get to them. You can't even see them, You're
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just listening to their voice drift further and further away.
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The calls stretched for hours, and every so often Aaron
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would circle back to that same thought. It's all a game,
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it's a thought experiment. We're in the matrix. Her parents
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knew she needed help, but Aaron was behind the wheel
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driving through the Bay Area and they had no way
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to pin down exactly where she was.
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That's terrifying.
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So she's just out there in a confused state, driving
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sepwhere around California.
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As a family or luck one, I'd be so upset,
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spitting at home, not being able to get to her
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and help her get her the help that she needs.
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The same I can't even imagine what they felt. She
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was out there just moving between San Jose and pala Otto,
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and there was nothing that they could do. Sometimes she'd
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say she was driving home. Sometimes she'd say she was lost,
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but none of it really lined up. By the time
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the sun went down, Her family was frantic. As the
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night wore on and Aaron didn't show up at the airport,
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she missed her flight. Her family knew this was big
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and something was really wrong. So the family, desperate to
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know that she's say if they call the police in
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California and beg for help, They asked them to do
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a welfare check. A San Jose officer actually called Aaron
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that night. She answered the phone, but when he asked
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if she was okay, her reply was just unsettling. She said,
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I'm just joking around, and then the line went silent.
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After that, officers treated Aaron as a voluntary missing adult,
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someone who had simply chosen to disappear, and that decision
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would shape everything that followed.
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So she told the cops she was joking. That makes
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my stomach drop. It makes me.
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Wonder what was really going on, because at that moment
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she wasn't manning. She was lucid, I mean lucid enough
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to answer to cover herself, almost like she'd realized she
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said too much to her family, So when the police
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stepped in, she had to play it off, to cover
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her tracks.
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Mm hmm, exactly. And here's the part that makes it
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even heavier. The police were actually the last people to
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ever hear from Aaron after that call, when she told
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them she was just joking. Every attempt to reach her
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went straight to voicemail. Her parents couldn't get through, her
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husband couldn't get through. The only line of communication just
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went dead. So if she was lucid in that moment,
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if she really was covering her tracks, then the last
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thing she ever did was shut the door on her family,
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leaving them with nothing but questions.
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That's just so terrifying for them.
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I'm sure it was. And yet, even as her family
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begged from action, police still didn't treat Aaron's case as urgent.
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To them, she was an adult who had chosen to
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go off the grid, But to her family, every hour
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felt critical. Days slipped by with no words. Her husband, Harrison,
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even flew out from Utah to search for her himself,
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but still no erin no car. Just the silence remained.
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So at what point did this Ashley become a missing
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person case? When did the police finally stop treating it
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by she'd just gone off the grid.
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Well, that's where things get really frustrating. Aaron's family did
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exactly what you'd hope they had, immediately contacted the police
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when they couldn't reach her. They gave them everything, her description,
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the fact that she was alone, even the details of
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the rental car, a gray twenty twenty Nissan Morano license
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plate a dash lud Dash six four to one.
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Good, so they had something concrete to.
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Look for, you would think. But here's the part that
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still stings. The official missing person report wasn't filed until
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October tenth, three full days after Aaron disappeared.
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Three days Why the delay? That's an attorney when someone's
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out there in trouble.
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The police ended up classifying her as a voluntary missing person.
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Their reasoning Aaron was an adult over eighteen, with the
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legal right to disappear if she wanted to.
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But her family knew this wasn't normal for her.
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Right they did, and they pushed back hard, telling officers
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that Aaron's behavior was completely out of character. But here's
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what's really frustrating. Police just brushed it off. They said,
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stress related spontaneous trips are common, So instead of treating
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Aaron's case like an emergency, it was just pushed aside,
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not top priority, just another missing adult.
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Ah, that's so bizarre, it is.
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And while the police are dragging their feet, Aaron's parents
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are growing desperate. They're all the way in New York
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and Erner's is somewhere out there in California. It's not
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like they can just hop in the car and go
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search for her. They're relying on phone calls an officer
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they don't trust to take it seriously. And every hour
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that passes by feels like Aaron is slipping further and
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further out of reach.
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So what else can they do? Like, what did they
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do next?
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Well, they started a Facebook group called help Find Aaron
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Valenti and launch their own social media campaign trying to
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get the word out in San Jose and pala Alta,
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anywhere that Aaron might have been seen. They shared her photos,
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they shared the car details, anything that might catch someone's attention.
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Mark, Okay, that's a good move.
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Now she was calling them on our phone though, like
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they at one time had contact on her cell phone,
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So at any point did they try tracking that phone?
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They tried, but the problem was her phone kept bouncing
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off of different towers in the Bay area. At times
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it looked like she was in pala Alto other times
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San Jose. It gave them movements, but not an exact pin.
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Harrison contacted Verizon and confirmed her last pings came from
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Menlo Drive, just north of the Albadden Expressway in San Jose.
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For a short while, the phone even showed up pinging
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further north, but then it just went dark. Her family
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clung to that last location, praying that it would lead
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to her. Police allegedly searched that area, even checked local hospitals,
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but they found nothing. That was the last digital trace
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of Aaron Valente.
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That's terrifying to have a location and to know she
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was right there somewhere and still come up empty. So
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what about the rental car? So she was in a
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rental don't vehicles like that usually have GPS tracking?
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Could that have located her?
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Well, that's what you would think, right. Most major rental
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companies equipped some of their vehicles with GPS trackers for
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fleet management, theft prevention, or just monitoring the mileage. But
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in Aaron's case, her husband posted on social media after
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it happened, saying the car surprisingly didn't have any tracking
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devices installed, so no phone tracking and no GPS from
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the rental company either were left with the same problem.
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There just wasn't a live digital trail to follow.
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Yeah, that seems like a really unfortunate coincident.
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It does. So now we have Aaron missing for several days,