Gone Without A Trace | The Haunting Case of Mindy

On Friday, August 3rd, 2007, a 52-year-old nurse named Mindy Schllo was at her home in Anchorage, Alaska, preparing to visit a few patients in the city of Fairbanks in a couple of days. Those trips to Fairbanks were a regular thing for Mindy. She would often visit there for a couple of days and then return home.

 But this time, mysteriously, she had disappeared without a trace. Mindy never showed up for work in Fairbanks. As the authorities worked handinhand with one of Mindy’s friends, they uncovered a trail of murders, some of which even dated back to the mid90s. Where could Mindy, an ordinary nurse in her 50s, have vanished? Did she fall prey to a monster? Or was there more to the story? Our case today takes us to Anchorage, a humble city in the state of Alaska in the USA.

 Known for its cultural sites, traditional crafts, and stage dances, Anchorage attracts many adventurers. This vibrant city also has many positives, such as its stunning scenery, no sales tax, and a friendly community. However, the city also has its downsides. Anchorage has consistently been in the top 10 most dangerous cities in the US.

 Being Alaska’s largest city, criminals enjoy the advantage of traveling through the area virtually undetected. The violent crime rate in Anchorage is more than double the national average of the USA. And back in 2007, a selfless nurse’s life was tragically snatched away from her in this very place. Mindy was born on July 16th, 1955 in Brooklyn Kings, New York to the couple Walter and May Schllo.

 She grew up in Syracuse, New York with her brother, William Schllo. When Mindy was in her early 20s, she left home and settled in Seattle, where she met a man named Robert Conway, or simply Bob Conway. Mindy and Robert got along well and soon fell in love with each other. By 1980, the soulmates moved to Alaska. For a very long time, Mindy had wanted to pursue a career in nursing.

 She knew it was not going to be an easy job, but she was dedicated to devoting long hours to achieve something that really mattered to her. Mindy earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Alaska Anchorage. She worked tirelessly to advance her knowledge and skills to improve her ability to serve her patients by earning a master’s degree in public health from John’s Hopkins, an adult nurse practitioner degree from the University of Portland, and a psychiatric nurse practitioner degree from the University

of New York Stonybrook. Even though Mindy was doing well in her career, she had to go through many hardships. Her mother’s passing in 1999, followed by her father’s in 2001, took a huge toll on her. Thankfully, Robert was there to get her through this tragic time. In the years that followed, as she recovered, Mindy developed a passion for baking.

Each year, she would eagerly wait for her favorite time of year, which was the berry picking season. Mindy had a Jones for picking. Mindy greatly enjoyed traveling. Whether it was to some exotic destination with Robert or wherever her work took her, she went happily. She served the public in various nursing positions in both rural and urban Alaska.

 And on top of that, she helped a wide variety of public health programs with her excellence in the nursing field, which was reflected in Mindy’s exceptional professionalism and work ethic. During the latter period of her career, Minnie devoted her practice to helping take care of psychiatric patients. She was responsible and dedicated, always willing to give more than 100%.

 Her passion for life shown through every day as she encouraged all the people to live their lives to their fullest potential. During all of Mindy’s ups and downs, Robert was always by her side, planning his next holiday destination with Mindy to make sure she took breaks from her busy life. Just like any other day on Friday, August 3rd, 2007, Mindy arrived at her home on Codyark Street in Anchorage, Alaska, after a busy day at work.

 She was supposed to leave for Fairbanks to tend to some patients there in a few days and was preparing for that. But on Sunday, August 5th, 2007, she missed her flight out of Anchorage in all of her appointments in Fairbanks. Jerry, one of Mindy’s closest friends, tried to contact Mindy to figure out where she had been, but she never answered any of her calls.

 Saturday, when I called her, there was no answer. And then on Sunday, her cell phone was full, not taking messages. And that was not like Mindy. Bob, Mindy’s boyfriend, also tried contacting Mindy and reached out for help to Jerry after failing multiple times. I knew there was something really wrong. I didn’t know which way to turn. I didn’t know what to think.

 You You don’t know where to begin. You don’t know where to look. On August 7th, 2007, one day after Mindy had failed to show up for work, Jerry called the Anchorage Police Department and officially reported her friend missing. I was on my way home one night and the sergeant of our unit called uh said that we had a suspicious missing person and asked if I could come back in and work on the case.

 Jerry and Mindy had been friends for 18 years. They first became acquainted while working together as nurses and gradually they became best friends in this busy field of work. They were each other’s biggest supporters. They loved to spend time together and frequently went on small trips. They took care of each other and Jerry would even look after Mindy’s cat Willie when she had to go away.

 But everything changed in that one week of August 2007. On Tuesday, August 7th, 2007, Detective Pam Paranoor arrived with her team at Mindy’s house to conduct an investigation. She was very responsible, reliable uh person that um took commitment very seriously and had never been out of contact for this long.

 She met with Jerry who claimed that earlier when she arrived at Mindy’s house to check on her, she found the house to be in complete disarray. I didn’t see anything Jerry yet. Mindy’s really good friend showed up and we talked inside the house for a while and uh she told me the things that seemed out of place to her. Although there were any signs of a burglary or a break-in, there were some details that Jerry found odd.

 It definitely was not in a state that Mindy would have left it even if she was in a rush to leave for work. I made her a special custom-made apron and it was all of her favorite colors and it had moons and stars and I had given her her that for her birthday and the apron was wadded up in the garbage and I said Mindy didn’t put that there.

 In addition to that, there was an empty bottle of wine and knowing how restless Mindy’s sleep was, the bed seemed to be too perfectly made. Taking a look around the house, detectives found that Mindy’s car was gone, too. Jerry told the detectives about Mindy’s flight to Fairbanks, but pointed out that Mindy didn’t like driving to the airport since it was so close to her place and also she always thought that the parking there was expensive.

 The sudden disappearance wasn’t making any sense to Jerry. But looking at the circumstances, she couldn’t help but fear the worst. Maybe she’d gone out Sunday berry-picking or doing something and something physically had happened. As Jerry grew more and more worried, the detectives decided to take a look around Mindy’s neighborhood and asked people if they had seen anything, even minutely suspicious.

Every single house pointed to this house, saying that this house had a lot of young people that were living in it, that it was loud, there were parties, uh, people coming and going at all hours of the night. They didn’t have a good accounting for who actually lived there and who didn’t.

 After an initial round of questioning a few of Mindy’s neighbors, the detectives were able to gather some information. Mindy was last seen at her home at about 7:00 p.m. on Friday, August 3rd, 2007. They also learned that Mindy had frequent arguments with her nextdoor neighbors, who were known for being overly chaotic and rowdy.

 From the very beginning, detectives suspected foul play and thought that Mindy’s long-term boyfriend, Bob Conway, might have something to do with her disappearance. However, after multiple rounds of interrogating Bob, I wasn’t really happy they were looking at me, but I knew they were pursuing every angle. So, I guess in a way, you’re you’re thankful a little bit for that.

 But he was soon dismissed as a suspect when he was able to provide a solid alibi, confirming that he hadn’t seen Mindy that weekend. A few days later, after Bob was left off the hook, the detectives noticed some activity in Mindy’s bank account. You just kind of can look at someone’s bank information and figure out if if things are normal in their life at that point or if things are unusual and something’s wrong.

 Authorities discovered that two $500 cash withdrawals had been made at two different ATMs from Mindy’s account. They said that it was unusual for her to withdraw cash and the cash withdrawals were in the early morning hours. CCTV footage from the ATMs. They found it wasn’t Mindy who used her debit card to make those transactions.

That he could to get that ATM card back because he knew there was $20,000 sitting in a bank account that he just lost his access to. On August 9th, 2007, Mindy’s car, a red 2000 Acura Integra hatchback, was found in the area of 4370 Old International Airport Road near Alaska Air Cargo. It had been parked strangely at a spot at the airport parking lot.

 Luckily, that spot had surveillance cameras, and the detectives were able to obtain the CCTV footage of the car being parked and left. We’re able to see Mindy Sloths’s red Acura come into view, park in a stall, and see what appears to be a male wearing a backpack, exit the vehicle, and then walk outside of view of the camera.

 When Mindy’s car was searched, her purse was recovered, which had Mindy’s wallet, house keys, and car keys, but her ATM card was still missing. Figured the man who left the car there and the man who made the withdrawals from Mindy’s bank account must have been the same guy. To collect more evidence from the car, detectives made use of the scent transfer technology, a technology which is used to sense, transmit, and receive scent enabled digital media.

 And through that, they were able to figure out that Mindy might have been sitting in the passenger seat. Even though the investigators were getting close to solving the puzzle, there were still a few pieces missing. With each passing day, detectives worked hours to hunt down Mindy’s killer. However, they didn’t have any potential leads.

 A few days after the investigation had started, Kathy Easley, one of Mindy’s neighbors, eventually came forward with some crucial information about a suspicious man. She informed the detective about a 26-year-old man named Joshua Wade, who was another one of Mindy’s neighbors. Kathy told the detective that Joshua acted very strangely when the detectives were conducting an investigation into Mindy’s disappearance earlier that same year.

 To support her accusation, she even recalled an old incident she had with Joshua during the investigation period. Allegedly, when the detectives were working to locate Mindy, Joshua came up to Kathy and asked, listening to Joshua’s eerie words and didn’t hesitate to inquire further. Kathy asked why he had a warrant out for him. Joshua fumbled with his words a bit and said that he had broken into a drug dealer’s home by peeping through his window a few times so that I knew he would see that.

And it was now when Kathy had decided to tell the police about the whole incident. The name Joshua Wei didn’t ring a bell for the detectives. It turned out that Joshua had a history of violence and there were reports that Mindy had expressed discomfort around him. Based on recent findings, the detectives tagged Joshua as a prime suspect in Mindy’s homicide.

 But the detectives still needed some concrete proof to formally charge him. Using the evidence gathered through scent transfer technology, the detectives focused on the scent from the driver’s seat in Mindy’s car. This was done to isolate the abductor’s scent from the passengers. The FBI brought in the dogs to track the abductors.

 Armed with samples of scent, which most likely belonged to Mindy’s abductor, tracking dogs were typically used immediately after a crime had taken place. But since there was no evidence in the initial stages of Mindy’s case, they were never brought in. Since the trail was weeks old, the dog’s jobs were made even more challenging.

 However, even after facing difficulties, the dogs traced the scent to Joshua Wade. Detectives were shocked by the dog’s findings. But sometimes these searches could be tricky, and so for confirmation, the FBI used the dogs again to track Mindy’s bank card, which eventually led them to Joshua’s house. Even though the search didn’t find Joshua as he was on the run, evidence connecting him to the crime began to emerge.

 When the detectives conducted a search of Joshua’s house, they found a jacket that matched the one seen on the surveillance footage from the ATM. Furthermore, the jacket also had a receipt for a bank transaction whose time stamp aligned perfectly with the one in the ATM footage. His phone was recovered as well, which had a picture of a gun similar to the one used to kill Mindy.

 The investigation took a shocking turn when the investigators looked further into Joshua’s criminal history. He was eventually identified as an ex-convict who had previously been accused of another murder. Wade was once accused of murdering a 33-year-old woman named Dela Brown in 2000. The case went to trial. Every time he went to court, I went to court.

 Even if that hearing lasted for 10 minutes, I still went to court. But he was acquitted of the murder charge back then and was only convicted on one charge of tampering with evidence and given a 6 and 1/2ear sentence in 2003. Once they read the verdict of not guilty. Absolutely f sick to my stomach. After serving little more than 3 years, Joshua was released on probation on December 12th, 2006.

Trying to find Joshua Wade turned out to be a a difficult task. APD and FBI at the streets tried to find him almost on a daily basis. Discovered that that we were minutes, hours behind where he had just been. As the search for Joshua intensified, the police started receiving tips from the public. But still, Joshua continued to evade capture, leading to a cat-and- mouse game.

A photo of Joshua from the ATM was released as well, and an old girlfriend recognized him. Her name was Christina Greaser and she claimed to have driven Joshua around. Tina Greaser, Christina’s mother, never liked Joshua and didn’t want her daughter to be with him. My daughter was hanging out with him quite a bit at that time, giving him rides, taking him places, um, sharing everything with me cuz of course I was really concerned at the point, you know, I was like telling her things, his behavior was really weird.

Christina decided to come forward when she found out some incriminating items in Joshua’s backpack, which he had accidentally left behind in Christina’s car. These items almost confirmed Christina and her mother of Joshua’s questionable background. By the end of August 2007, the detectives were able to track Joshua down.

 He had gone back to Christina’s apartment, asking her to drive him to a safe spot. When the detectives went to arrest Joshua, he held a few people as hostage in Christina’s apartment building. The detectives were able to get everyone out safely, arrest Joshua, and take him into custody. When the detectives interrogated Joshua, he maintained a defying attitude and smirked when confronted with evidence.

 Lisa, another one of Joshua’s former girlfriends, eventually made a crucial confession. She revealed that Joshua had confessed to killing Mindy. With this information and Lisa’s further cooperation, the detectives were now working to build a stronger case against Joshua. Joshua was finally charged with multiple state and federal charges such as carjacking, theft, and bank fraud.

[Music] On Thursday, September 13th, 2007, a municipal worker doing site surveying work in the woods near Kick Goose Bay Road about 5 miles from Wasilla, Alaska, came across a severely burned and decomposing body. He contacted the authorities right away. When the detectives arrived at the crime scene to investigate, they were taken aback looking at the gruesome conditions of the body.

 Using dental records, they were able to identify the victim as the 52-year-old Mindy Schllo. Once they found her body, you couldn’t really put yourself in a denial position anymore. Was really hard because it was a confirmation of everything you knew in your heart. Later, an autopsy was conducted which confirmed that Mindy was a victim of a homicide.

 The killer shot Mindy in the back of her head and tried to burn her body. But that wasn’t even the worst part. Some other signs showed that Mindy had been gagged and bound with zip ties. A DNA sample was obtained from the crime scene and sent for forensic analysis. The results came back and confirmed a match between Joshua’s DNA and the one found at the crime scene.

 This placed Joshua at the crime scene and also linked him to Mindy’s ATM card usage. As the detectives intensified the search for Mindy’s killer, her loved ones gathered for her cremation. It was Mindy’s wish that she be cremated after her time in this world. Mindy’s ashes were scattered across the Mediterranean Sea, and no services were held for her.

However, a few of Mindy’s close friends and colleagues gathered together to celebrate her life and the joy she brought to them. Despite Joshua’s best efforts to keep his ex-girlfriend Lisa from testifying, she finally revealed his confession. According to Lisa, Joshua had told her that he killed Mindy Schllo back in 2007 when he had recently been released from prison on probation.

 Joshua moved to Anchorage, Alaska, and into a house next door to Mindy’s. Joshua was having a hard time with his life after prison. He was unable to pay the bills, and the fact that he was broke kept bothering him. Sometime in early August, Joshua had had a rough day at work. He returned home in a bad mood and broke into Mindy’s house to rob her.

 Mindy was in her bathroom at the time. She couldn’t process what was happening, but still tried to cooperate as much as she could. Joshua then tied her up with zip ties, took her ATM card, and PIN information from her, and then shoved her in the car while she was still alive. After traveling more than an hour north of Anchorage, Joshua drove the car to a rural culde-sac in a wooded area in Wasilla pulled Mindy out of the car and shot her in the back of the head with a 45 caliber Glock.

 Once he made sure that Mindy was dead, he set her body on fire. Later on, he withdrew $1,000 from her bank account. Joshua was only 26 at that time. In 2010, during a dramatic trial, 29-year-old Joshua Wade entered a guilty plea in the 2007 killing of Mindy Schllo. Within a few hours, when the jury in Alaska Superior Court was about to hand him a sentence, Joshua made a confession which shocked the entire courtroom.

Friends, I’m kind of glad I got caught. And did you murder Dela Brown, Mr. Wade? I am admitting to the murder and the murder alone in Dela Brown, your honor. Joshua confessed that he also murdered the 33-year-old Dela Brown in 2000 when he was only 19 years old. This resulted in a lengthy discussion by the jury.

Both Mindy and Dela were murdered years apart. And while Mindy had only been shot to death, Dela had been beaten to death with a rock. She was very outgoing person, a very likable. I mean, uh, she could strike up small talk with just about anybody. That’s just the type of person she was.

 Joshua was traveling through Spanard with his friends when he first saw Dela and returned later to rob her. She was just real outgoing. And if you looked at her direction, she always smiled back. She had a forever smile. He stated that he found Dela unconscious and in an intoxicated state. Joshua bashed her head with a rock before assaulting and murdering her.

 Later, he dumped her half-naked body in a filthy shed. Adam Bartlett, one of Joshua’s defense attorneys, asked the state court to approve the plea deal reached with prosecutors, stating that Joshua had great remorse about his actions and had entered the plea deal sincerely. He added that to save his humanity, Joshua wanted the families of his victims to have closure.

Who killed Dela? I always knew in my heart who killed Ella, but he was going to admit it. I mean, I could have almost walked on air that day. He added that to save his humanity, Joshua wanted the families of his victims to have closure. Although Joshua’s defense lawyers claimed that their client had committed unforgivable sins in the horrific killings, they had come to see another side of him.

 According to them, Joshua was not the monster that people believed him to be. Joshua’s attorneys provided a detailed description of his difficult life, highlighting how he endured trauma as a child. They even brought up an incident when Joshua had attempted to take his own life by drowning himself in a bathtub at the age of just 10.

 Because of the difficulties Joshua went through in his early life, he developed a drug addiction and soon followed his visits to psychiatric hospitals. Everything was now in front of the jury to look at. After a lengthy discussion, the jury announced the verdict. In addition to murdering Mindy and Dela, the jury also found Joshua guilty on a federal charge of murder during the carjacking.

 Given that he stole Mindy’s car, he was handed a sentence of 99 years. Although We did manage to evade the death penalty, he would only be eligible to get out on parole after he was 95 years old. Four years later, in 2014, Joshua attempted to make a deal with prosecutors in exchange for being moved to a federal facility by confessing to three additional murders.

 In exchange for a transfer to a federal prison where he could finish out his federal sentence, Joshua told the detectives that apart from Mindy and Dela, he had also killed three other men. Although Joshua provided only vague details about those crimes, detectives suspected that he was hinting at the killings of John Martin in 1994, Henry Antawasuk in 1999, and another unidentified man in 2000.

Their suspicions were confirmed once Joshua himself confessed to murdering the three men. When Joshua was in his teens, he murdered the 30-year-old Henry Antoaskcarok in 1999 and 38-year-old John Michael Martin in 1994, both of whom were mentally ill. Joshua claimed that he murdered his third victim, who was never identified on the same night he murdered Dela in 2000.

 Detectives reopened all those cold cases and took another look at them. John Michael Martin died from a single gunshot wound shortly after leaving a local village in restaurant. He was discovered by police in May 1994 near a cycling track that followed Northern Lights Boulevard. Martin had been frequently visiting the Village Inn for at least 5 years.

 He regularly came in during the day and night to meet his friends for coffee. But one tragic night, Jon left to walk home sometime around 2:30 a.m. and just 30 minutes later, he was found dead. John’s sister claimed that he was jobless and suffered from schizophrenia. John’s case remained cold for years after detectives exhausted all leads.

 In December 1999, Henry Anttoaskcaruk’s body was discovered in room number 221 of the Alaska Budget Motel in Fairview by a maintenance worker. The medical examination of Henry’s body revealed that he had been killed 2 days before his body was discovered. Henry was staying at the motel of East 4th Avenue in Gamble Street for a while at the time of the murder and was paying a weekly rent of $194.

 Henry too had a mental health issue. Joshua admitted that he killed his fourth victim, an unidentified man, on the same night he murdered Dela in 2000. He claimed that the man was present when he killed Dela in the Spanard shed. Joshua knocked him unconscious, shoved him in the trunk of his car, and drove out to a spot in a valley where he took his clothes off and shot him in the head two times with a shotgun.

 Joshua further added that killing that man didn’t really bother him. After making his confessions, 34year-old Joshua was transferred to a federal penitentiary in Teroot, Indiana after serving the initial years of his lengthy sentence in Spring Creek Correctional Facility in Seward. Joshua’s sentence provided some closure for his victim’s families.

 Even though they were long gone, their loved ones were here to witness justice. Mindy’s best friend, Jerry Yette, said that Mindy’s life was tragically cut short, and she would be greatly missed and remembered as a person who was compassionate, kind, and always supportive. Joshua Wade, who is currently in his mid-40s, is serving his lengthy sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Tero, Indiana, USA.

There have been no updates on the case of those three men that Joshua murdered before killing Mindy and Dela. However, authorities stated that the investigation into the cases is still open. Do you think there are any more murders that Joshua committed and is hiding as there are still many unsolved cold cases of mysterious victims from Alaska? Do you think that the unknown man Joshua killed back in 2000 will ever be identified? Let us know your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

 If there’s a case you’d like us to cover, don’t hesitate to drop your recommendation in the comment section below. For more captivating true crime stories, like, share, and subscribe to our channel.