Missing Child: Karlie Lain Guse
Hello, guys and welcome to a genre that is new to my blog — true crime. In my last post I had declared that I would now be covering topics besides mental health related ones. True crime happens to be a world that fascinates me, so I felt convicted (no pun intended) to start sharing both facts and my opinions on cases. Since becoming interested in crime, I have also been wanting to help. With a platform such as my blog, who knows? Maybe the awareness of a case being spread from my blog can bring a missing person home. That would be awesome, wouldn’t it? For my first crime related post, I have decided to discuss the story of Karlie Guse.
I selected Karlie’s case as my first crime case to post about because it is a fairly recent case with essentially no clues, resulting in less media coverage and information than high profile cases that have been slipping in and out of the media for longer spans of time.
Karlie Lain Guse was born on May 13, 2002, making her 17 years old today. She lives in California with her two brothers, her father Zac Guse and her stepmother Melissa Guse. Her mother, Lindsay Fairley, lives in Nevada. Karlie is a junior at Bishop Union High School and according to her mother, is very well-liked and funny.
On the night of October 12, 2018, although Karlie told her father and stepmother that she was going to a football game, she attended a party with her boyfriend. Karlie frantically called her stepmother and told her that she was scared and asked her if she could come pick her up from the party. Before Melissa had even arrived at the party to get Karlie, Karlie was running down the street toward her. She kept telling Melissa that she was scared but did not elaborate. Karlie had begged Melissa to not be angry because Karlie had smoked marijuana.
According to Melissa, once she and Karlie arrived at home, Melissa gave Karlie a salad and Karlie spit it out all over her bed stating that “this is the devil’s lettuce.” Melissa, concerned and bewildered, texted Karlie’s boyfriend who informed her that they both smoked marijuana and did not ingest any other substance. Since Karlie was mysteriously frightened and paranoid, she had asked Melissa to stay with her all night. Melissa accepted and she and Karlie spent time together and then went and laid down in Karlie’s bed for the night. Melissa’s last text to Karlie’s boyfriend was at 5:48AM on October 13 and Karlie was asleep next to her. However, when Melissa awoke at 7:15AM, Karlie was no longer next to her. She scoured the house and there was no sign of the sixteen-year-old. Her cell phone was still in the kitchen and no other personal belongings were noted as missing from the home.
Zac and Melissa drove around the area surrounding their home in hopes that they would spot Karlie. When the search came up empty, they called Lindsay and the Mono County police. The police conducted a ten hour search consisting of off-road vehicles that searched the nearby desert (the town the Guses live in is not far from California’s border with Nevada), cadaver dogs and helicopters. In attempts to unearth clues, the family and police spoke with three people claiming to have seen Karlie walking that morning.
Unfortunately, it is unclear what exactly Karlie was wearing when she disappeared. Melissa claims that Karlie slept in just a white tee shirt and her underwear the night before she went missing. The witnesses’ reports confirm the white tee shirt, which is why that is the description that is displayed on Karlie’s missing person posters. However, according to Melissa and Zac’s interview with Nancy Grace, Melissa could not confirm that Karlie did not change her shirt before leaving the house that morning. Furthermore, according to Search for me Foundation’s website, the white tee shirt Karlie wore to sleep that night was later found in the home. There are also no concrete details regarding what pants Karlie was wearing when she disappeared. Witnesses stated she was wearing gray sweat pants at the time of the sightings, but Melissa has asserted that Karlie did not typically leave the house in sweatpants — skinny jeans were her thing. Karlie, as many other typical teenage girl, had a plethora of different pairs of skinny jeans so Melissa was unable to conclude if a pair was missing. It was supposedly noted that a pair of Karlie’s Vans sneakers was missing, so it is assumed this was her footwear when she vanished.
Theories (of others and my own):
When Zac and Melissa appeared on the Dr. Phil show back in March of 2019, Dr. Phil listened off-camera to an audio recording of the night before Karlie disappeared. Melissa had used her cell phone to record Karlie so she could play it for her the next day as evidence of what Karlie sounds like while under the influence, as a teaching experience. Dr. Phil deducted that Karlie did not smoke pure marijuana that evening. He believes it was laced with something else and so do Zac and Melissa. All three of them believe that upon Karlie’s approach to Highway 6, she was abducted by a passerby and possibly sold into sex trafficking.
My opinion: I do believe that there was more than mere marijuana in Karlie’s system. While certain strains of marijuana can certainly cause paranoia, to my knowledge it is not to the extent of the paranoia that Karlie was experiencing. Marijuana-induced paranoia, in my opinion, would not last for hours and would not cause one to literally be afraid of lettuce. I believe that either the marijuana was laced with something or that she was unknowingly given another type of drug. I think it is very possible that Karlie was still high from whatever she was high from the morning she disappeared. In her stupor, she could have decided to go for a stroll. However, although it is quite possible for her to have been abducted, I feel it is unlikely that on this exact morning that she was disoriented, an abductor happened to be passing her on the highway. I am not ruling it out. She deserves investigation into every possibility, especially considering the sad fact that sex trafficking is so common; I am simply saying that I feel like it would have been quite the coincidence. Another possibility that I have conjured up in my mind that I have not seen elsewhere (which does not mean nobody else has presented it), is that someone at the party she attended instructed her to leave her home the next morning and meet them somewhere and threatened her, coercing her to comply. They probably could not have abducted her at the party — too many witnesses. Early on a Saturday morning, however, there would be less people awake in the area. This could explain why Karlie was so frightened at and after the party and why she wanted Melissa to stay with her all night in her bedroom.
A theory widely believed on the Internet as well as by Karlie’s mother, Lindsay, states that Melissa knows a lot more than she leads on. Lindsay told Dr. Phil that she devastatingly believes that Karlie died the night of the party from a drug overdose and that Zac and Melissa covered it up. Some online spectators believe that Melissa could have even killed Karlie.
Melissa had changed her account of events from the morning Karlie went missing, which does not exactly proclaim her innocence. Shortly after Karlie went missing, Melissa did an interview with DateLine in which she stated that she woke up that morning and went into the bedrooms of Karlie and her two brothers and that is when she noticed Karlie was gone. After this interview, she maintained the story that she had slept next to Karlie and she realized Karlie was not there upon waking up.
Dr. Phil questioned Melissa about this story change and her reasoning was that when she was about to do the DateLine interview, she was told not to say too much because it was still a brand new and open investigation. She was also wrangled with nervousness.
To further tarnish the public’s opinion of Melissa, there are multiple YouTube videos dissecting a statement she made on the Dr. Phil show. She was recounting the morning of October 13th and she allegedly stated “I looked at her and said ‘Karlie”. This obviously contradicts her statement that she realized Karlie was not there upon awakening.
My opinions: With most cases, I am able to lean one way or another in terms of what I think happened to the victim. In this case, however, there is not enough evidence in my opinion to lean in a specific direction. Is it possible that Melissa is lying and that is why she changed her story of events? Yes but to me it is equally as possible that she is telling the truth. Her argument about being instructed not to say too much does not really make much sense to me. She would have been giving the same amount of information if she said she woke up to Karlie gone as if she had said she went to check on Karlie and she was gone. However, she could have been so distraught by Karlie’s disappearance since it was quite recent at that time and did not want to be judged by saying she woke up and Karlie was no longer in the bed next to her. She could have been concerned that people would ask questions like “how did Karlie arising from the bed or exiting the bedroom not have woken you up?”
As far as the “embedded confession” she made on Dr. Phil, I listened to that segment probably half a dozen times and was unable to clearly hear “I looked at her and said Karlie”. What she said is not so far off from this that I can say “she definitely did not say that”, but to me, it was not clear enough to say with absolute certainty that she did say that. In my opinion, it is possible that she said “I looked around and said Karlie”.
Even if she DID say “I looked at her and said Karlie”, yes that would be a tad suspicious but at the same time, she was inches away from the infamous Dr. Phil and in front of a live audience and was anticipating to be viewed by millions. Her nerves could have overtaken her causing her to misspeak.
No matter what, if any, of these theories are true, the priority is bringing Karlie home. If any of you have happened to see or hear anything related to this case, please call the phone number that is on the missing poster above. Please pray for Karlie’s safe return and for comfort for those who love her.
Thank you for reading, guys.
Until next time,
-K
