- [Host] What is up, EWU crew? Have you ever thought about what it would take to disappear? To really disappear? To leave all of your friends
and family members behind? To never talk to them
again or see them again? You would need a plan. You would need money, a lot of money. You would probably need help. 16 year old Mekayla Bali
had none of these things. But in the spring of 2016, she disappeared from her small
town in Saskatchewan, Canada. After a string of events
that seemed to indicate that she was planning to leave. But where would a 16 year old go? That is a question Mekayla's parents are still asking themselves. Memory is a funny thing. What otherwise would
have been a normal day is etched into the minds
of Mekayla's family. They've studied the events
of April 16th, 2016, over and over, trying to find meaning in what
their daughter did that day. On April 16th, 2016, Mekayla
got up and ready for school. Her father recalls that they
got ready for the day together, as they often did. Nothing seemed abnormal. But early that morning, she
had texted one of her friends, asking for a ride to a local bank. Her friend, Oksana, later
reported that Mekayla told her she had $5,000 in the bank
that she wanted to withdraw. But Oksana was already
on her way to school and didn't want to be late. So she told Mekayla she
couldn't take her to the bank. Investigators would later
confirm through bank statements that Mekayla's actual balance
was nowhere near $5,000. By 8:20 a.m., Mekayla's grandmother dropped her off at school. There is CCTV footage of her entering Sacred Heart High School and heading towards her locker, where she stood for about six minutes, before leaving the school
from its back door. Cell phone tower data was
also very useful in this case, allowing police to pinpoint who Mekayla was texting, and when. But because this
information doesn't include the actual content of the text message, police had to track down the recipients, and senders of those texts, to find out what was
actually said that day. But even though these
texts could be traced, Mekayla, whether intentionally or not, had made her calls from social media apps, meaning the police could
see her talking on the phone in the security footage, but there was no way for them
to track down those calls. Around this time, as she
left the school grounds, she received a text message
from her ex-boyfriend, asking why she wasn't in school. Her response was that she was
on the other side of town. Much of what we know about
Mekayla's movements on April 16th is due to Saskatchewan's
widespread use of security cameras. They show us that after walking out of the back of the school,
she got on the phone. She's caught on a camera
outside of a convenience store, and following the train tracks
as she talks on the phone. It's impossible to tell if she
placed or received the call from the footage. But we know that she was on the phone when she got to the bank at 8:55 a.m. The teller opened his shutters to find a teenager standing there. As soon as the teller saw her, she ended the phone
call and stepped forward to ask him to withdraw
$55 out of her account. By 9:00 a.m., she had left the
bank and was caught on camera entering a pawn shop. Like the teller, the pawn shop
owner was slightly surprised to see a teenager, especially
this early in the day. And when she offered him a silver ring, asking how much he would give her for it, he declined to buy it. Later, he told the police, "Silver value's really low. So it just wasn't enough value in the ring to even bother making an offer on it. She was quiet and didn't seem to be in distress or anything." After she left the pawn shop, Mekayla was on the move again. By 9:15 a.m., she was seated at a table of a combined Tim Horton's and Wendy's, buying only a drink. One of the restaurant's
cameras later showed that she did not look
particularly distressed, but did have periods
where she began to fidget. Over the next 13 minutes, she fiddled with the large backpack sitting on the seat beside her. She watched the entrance of the restaurant between getting on and off her phone, possibly sending texts or playing a game. At one point, she actually
took her phone apart, popping off the back and
taking out the battery. Then she snapped everything back together, and continued fiddling with it. At 9:23 a.m., she got up and
walked out of the restaurant. She disappeared from
the footage for a moment before reappearing
through a different door, but she didn't sit down again. She walked through once,
scanned the restaurant, and left once again. Her next appearance on
a camera revealed her walking back and forth in
front of a home hardware store. Then she went into the Tim
Horton's and Wendy's restaurant for a third time, whose footage shows her
on the phone once again. When the police later
checked her call logs, there weren't any incoming or
outgoing calls at the time. They suspect that she used
an app to place the calls. At 9:49 a.m., she was sitting down again, but this time positioned so that she had a better vantage point
of the door and front window. When her call was over, she sat and continued to
busy herself on the phone. She kept glancing out the window as if she was looking for someone. 14 minutes after returning
to the restaurant, she sent one of her friends,
Shelby, a text message. All it says is, "Hey, I need help." 20 minutes later, she
followed up that message with, "Never mind, I figured it out." Shelby's phone was at home. So she didn't see the messages
until later that afternoon. This time, Mekayla
stayed at the restaurant for nearly an hour. The entire time she made calls, sent messages and peered around. Of course, we can only guess what she was thinking and doing. But these are the
tell-tale signs of a girl who thinks she's meeting up with someone, and whoever she is meeting
with, hasn't shown up yet. At 10:40 a.m., Mekayla
got up from her booth, and began talking to a woman sitting at one of the neighboring tables. After their conversation, she left and never came back to the restaurant. The woman she talked to
later told the police that Mekayla asked her
to rent her a hotel room at the nearby Ramada, but
that she politely refused. Next, she is seen walking west, crossing a street and then
turning around and walking back the way she originally came. During this movement, she passes the front of that Ramada hotel twice. And then for over an hour, she
disappears from the cameras. No one knows where she was
between 10:45 and 11:55 a.m. But we do know that she was alive. Because just before noon, Mekayla returned to Sacred Heart High School, having sent another
text to Shelby at 11:35, which simply read,
"I'll see you at lunch." She was only there for a few
minutes, but in that time, two of her friends saw her
and asked what she was doing. Mekayla said she was about to catch a bus before leaving school once again. She apparently claimed she was going on a vacation to Regina. And in fact, when investigators dug deeper into Mekayla's last
conversations with her friends, they found the topic of Regina
coming up again and again. Shelby says nobody really
took Mekayla seriously when she brought up her
fantasies of leaving town. Sure, the two had discussed their hopes for moving to a bigger and
better city like Regina one day, to escape their small hometown. But Shelby had seen it as no
more than wishful thinking. On the day directly
proceeding her disappearance, Mekayla had brought it up yet again, while eating fast food
with some close friends saying she had an upcoming
family vacation there. Later that same night, she
had texted an ex boyfriend about feeling sad. And yet again, wanting to
take a short trip to Regina. Whether or not Mekayla's two
friends knew something was off, they never could have guessed that this would be the last time they ever spoke with their friend. Mekayla's mysterious return to school was brief and ambiguous. In some of the footage from her visit, it appears that she may have
been holding two phones. This is the last time
she appears on camera, but not the last time she was seen. Mekayla headed to the bus depot. So it seems like she was
telling her friends the truth about catching a bus. At the depot, she asked an employee when the next bus to Regina was, and the employee informed her, it would arrive in about five hours. Since it appeared to be a long wait, Mekayla went into the depot's restaurant, the Trail Stop. We know that she ordered something to eat and hung around for 45
minutes before leaving, but she did not return to school, home, or even the combined Tim
Horton's and Wendy's, where she'd been sitting. It's at 1:00 p.m., when she
walks out of the UFC bus depot and completely disappears. When Mekayla was not waiting at school to be picked up that afternoon, her family started to get concerned. She was a teenager though, and sometimes teenagers are irresponsible. They go to a friend's house and forget to text their parents, or get detention, and the school
fails to alert the family. But once it became clear that she wasn't at a
friend's house or school, her parents began to panic. They went to the school and
began searching for her, all while calling and
texting Mekayla's phone. By that evening, when they
still couldn't find her, they reported her missing. There was no trace of Mekayla. Her phone was still on, but it either ran out of battery or was turned off the next morning. The police worked quickly, obtaining CCTV footage from the school, and then the surrounding businesses, once it became clear that
she never made it to class. The glimpses of her on different
cameras were encouraging. They scanned the videos for any sign that she recognized
someone in the restaurant, or of someone following her on the street, or that she even seemed distressed, but they found nothing. When her friends were
shown the footage of her sitting in the restaurant, they commented that she
never carried a backpack. Mekayla preferred a purse for school. This only made investigators more certain that she had been planning to leave town. But if she'd gotten on a bus, she would have returned to the bus depot. She would have bought a bus ticket. There would have been some
shred of evidence to indicate that she had boarded that bus to Regina. Her friends also reluctantly
told the investigators that she had been talking
to men on Instagram, Snapchat and Kik. Mekayla had talked about
a boy named Christopher, who lived in Yorkton, and was supposed to be
coming to meet her in person. The police tracked him down pretty quickly and searched his home, but there wasn't even a hint that Mekayla had once been there. They chased down a few more leads from her social media activity. But each thread they pulled unraveled. The best they could do
was issue a public warning for people not to meet up with strangers they talked to on social media. Because she communicated
either through Snapchat or Kik, no one can retrieve the messages and calls that she sent or received that day. Not even her friends
have a good guess as to who she was talking to. Even more frightening,
there is the possibility that the person she was
looking for around town, was not the person who made her disappear. Maybe she was planning on meeting someone or simply skipping town, but there is also the possibility that someone grabbed her before she could do
either of those things. Her family still hasn't
given up hope though. They remember Mekayla
as a sweet, smart girl, who loved her family and friends. But most teenagers, even those on good terms
with their parents, will hide things from them. Mekayla was hiding an
extensive online presence. She chatted with people
she knew and strangers. Some of them anonymous. Police believe it's a possibility, if not a likelihood, that one of these people
convinced Mekayla to meet. Did she leave with them willingly? It's impossible to know. It's deeply disturbing to find
out that as recently as 2016, people like Mekayla can still
go missing without a trace. And even our modern
technology isn't always enough to solve these cold cases. A few key details that
have arisen over the years, continue to spur on new theories as to what really caused Mekayla
to vanish that strange day, four years ago. In February of 2016,
Mekayla's theater classmates had been mystified when someone
delivered a bouquet to her in the middle of the school day. The flowers themselves
weren't that strange. It was Valentine's Day after all, but what intrigued Mekayla's friends was her reluctance to
say who they were from. However, there's reason to believe that the anonymous secret admirer may have lived out of town. A professional florist said that the cardboard box the
roses were packaged in was indicative of an online order. Since local florists would
not have used that method. Police have allegedly found the sender and dropped them as a suspect. Although they strangely won't reveal that person's identity to the public. Some online theorists
have raised the question. Did Mekayla send the roses to herself? These days, all sorts of
people have been latching on to this case and criticizing
the various investigation on various social media apps. A Twitter account representing a behavioral forensics company, rebuked a statement from
Sergeant Donna Zawislak. She had allegedly said,
there was no evidence to indicate Bali was feeling
like taking her own life, when she went missing. This Twitter account went on to list off a series of contradictions
to that very claim. Mekayla had emptied her
bank account, left town, sold personal possessions, expressed that she felt
alone and friendless, and most importantly, asked for help. So the denial that Mekayla may have taken her own life
intentionally back in 2016, seems like a dangerous assumption, coming from a law enforcement figure. But Zawislak also said
that nothing suggests this was a homicide either. So if Mekayla wasn't murdered, and she didn't take her own life, where could she possibly be? We can only hope that the young girl who would be about 20
years old now is alive. Another crucial detail that suggests Mekayla's
disappearance wasn't intentional, was her mother's cash supply. After searching the school
high and low for her daughter, the first thing Mekayla's
mom did when she got home, was to check the spot where she had stored
a huge amount of cash, a location that Mekayla had
known about for some time. By her logic, if Mekayla meant to run away or start a new life somewhere, she surely would have taken
some of the stashed money to supplement her journey, but not a single cent was missing. There was something else
that Mekayla had left behind. Her accutane medication. And this acne treatment plays
two big roles in a theory surrounding the case. First, friends and
family knew that Mekayla was extremely insecure about her acne, and wouldn't have purposely
left behind her medication, which she took religiously
in a million years. Second, accutane is known to
have negative side effects on users' mental health. And many of Mekayla's loved ones wonder if this could be the cause
for her bizarre behavior. Countless acne patients, including famous actress, Bella Thorne, have expressed their downward
spiral into depression caused by this strong but harsh treatment. Isotretinoin, which is used in accutane, has been associated with
psychiatric disorders, including depression and
psychosis in some individuals. Many proposed that accutane
had a severe detrimental effect on Mekayla's mental well-being, driving her to act so
recklessly and out of character. And then there's the
social media theories. The first stems from an Instagram account under Mekayla's name. The page's bio features
only one eerie word. Goodbye. Mekayla was also active on Snapchat. She had shared her account info in an Instagram post one day, captioning it, "Looking
for Snapchat friends, because I have none in real life." But interestingly, one of her
real life friends, Shelby, did send her a snap on the
exact day she disappeared. And three months later, something happened that nobody can explain. Somebody using Mekayla's
account opened the message. - I have got Snapchat on my phone. She had Snapchat too. And I've sent her
messages through Snapchat, and she's opened them. I don't know if it's her or not. - [Host] Excited that this
could be a possible lead, Shelby tried again, but this time she wasn't so lucky. That snap message has never been opened. Law enforcement has received no shortage of questionable tips as
to Mekayla's location. No doubt, some sent by people just hoping to claim the $50,000
reward promised to anyone who can provide vital information. Somebody said they saw
her on a cruise ship. Another said she was in Scotland. None of these leads ever panned out. Mekayla's mother has considered the horrific possibility
of human trafficking. But once again, she
and investigators alike are completely in the
dark as to the truth. One witness claims to have seen Mekayla, when she visited the Trail
Stop restaurant at the depot. The woman was interviewed and said only that she observed Mekayla
walking with some big guy, carrying white bags. She described the large
man as best she could. And investigators worked with her to create a sketch of a
prominent tattoo she'd observed. The mysterious person of
interest had fonted a cross, surrounded by red flames on his left arm. In the end, that lead only led authorities to another dead end. As once the sketch was publicized, a man fitting that
description came forward and it was determined
that he had only been opening the door for Mekayla. This case has gained attention from the R slash unsolved
mysteries community on Reddit. Here's a few theories that
have been presented there. Maybe Mekayla was trying
to book the hotel room as a private place to end her own life. Perhaps, then the reason she
had texted her friend for help was because she knew she was too young to reserve the room by herself. But then got cold feet and
sent the never mind text. It is also possible that
Mekayla really did mean to meet up with somebody. And that person had mastermind
how to avoid being seen by security cameras, when they actually
picked up the young girl. All of these theories are
just that, mere speculation. But a particularly intriguing detail that has been discussed on the Internet, is that Mekayla allegedly
had a long list of aliases that she used instead of her real name. The validity of these aliases is unknown, but they include Nancy Nieb and Miki Golf. Whether these were just
quirky social media handles, or real attempts to shield her identity, we're not sure. Law enforcement have solved
cold cases as old as 52 years. With the technological
advances we have now, in terms of surveillance and DNA analysis, we can only hope that
it's only a matter of time before the truth reveals itself. But in the meantime, we cannot forget the tragedy of Mekayla's disappearance. Her best friends tried to
leave an empty seat for her at their high school graduation ceremony, but say they were not allowed. It was apparently too crowded. Mekayla was a sweet girl who
always went above and beyond to make others happy. She even learned how
to play the accordion, just so she could perform Happy Birthday for her aunt one year. But she, like many teenage girls her age, kept secrets and dealt with struggles, not even her closest friends
and family knew about. Above all else, Mekayla's loved
ones want to bring her home, safe and sound. If you have any knowledge
or theories about this case, please share them with
us in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to hit the like
button and subscribe. A playlist is going to pop up right now with more videos you'll love. See you guys next time.
