- Donald Messier was an avid NASCAR fan and a Vermont native. He loved spending time
with family and friends, but 15 years ago, he vanished and no one's seen or heard from him since. (soft music begins) Amy Currier remembers saying goodbye to her brother, Donald Messier when she was walking out the
door of her Waterbury home. It was Saturday, October 14th, 2006. Currier had no idea this
would be the last time she would ever see or hear from him. (soft music continues) And Currier says it was a
tough time for her brother, as he was going through a divorce. (soft music continues) Donald Messier was last seen driving away in his red F150 from a
party on October 15th, 2006. He hasn't been seen since. (soft music continues) (soft upbeat music begins) (soft upbeat music continues) - [Jared] Donnie Messier, 34 years old went missing approximately 15 years ago. We're in the town of Waterbury, Vermont. Right in front of Green Mountain Roasters, where he used to work. Donnie was last seen in
Waitsfield, just south of here, about 15 minutes at a party. Nobody saw him after that. It is believed that he may have
been going back to the north where he lived with his
sister and brother-in-law. In fact, his brother-in-law Stephen, we're gonna be meeting
with in just a few minutes. Before we meet with Stephen
we just wanna say thank you for being here if you have
never seen one of our episodes. 'Adventures with Purpose' is an underwater sonar search recovery dive team. We travel the US working cold cases where families have pretty much lost hope. We're coming in free of
charge to help them out. And the only thing we ask of you is please take a moment to subscribe. It really helps us out. Well hi Erinn. - [Erinn] Hello this is Stephen. - [Stephen] Hi. - Hello. - Hi how are you? - [Erinn] Nice to meet you.
- Yes. I am so sorry about the
short notice on everything. - No problem. - He was my brother-in-law. He was living at my house
when he came up missing. Other than that, I don't know what- (Stephen chuckling) - So my big thing is you
know, my understanding, he went to the party, 2:00 am, depressed. Now was there a fight at
the party over a girl? - [Stephen] I didn't go
to the party or anything. I don't know much about
what went on at the party. - Okay. - I just know he was at the party. He came up, he never came home. Never, no one ever heard from him. - [Erinn] He didn't show up for work. - He didn't show up for work right. And his truck's missing and everything. Never could find that. - And my understanding is
he like never left the area. - [Stephen] No. - So it's not like he's leaving the area to start a new life somewhere. - No, not that we would
know of or anything. He used to always go at two
in the morning to Denny's and get breakfast and come
back and stuff like that. He was always, he worked nights. He came in at around seven in the morning. And we were leaving for work and school for the kids
and that's about it. I mean he was- If he got in an argument with someone he'd be there the next day
to make up and apologize, you know. (Indistinct) what it was, you know. He was never- He was just Donnie, you
know, never kept himself. He worked hard. He worked all the time. Just, I don't know. I mean it's just strange that he'd come up missing like this you know. - Right. So a lot of people thought, hey, you know the hunters are gonna find, you know, eventually come across him. He might be in the mountains, but you know with so much time passing, it's like the vehicle's still missing. - With Hurricane Irene,
with all the roads and stuff that washed out and everything, you know you'd think you'd find something when they had to repair all the roads and stuff in the state. - [Erinn] (Indistinct) the rivers. - Yep. All that stuff. - This town was wiped
out in Hurricane Irene. - Okay. - Not completely, but a lot. - Yeah, four feet of water. - So then that brings us
back to Waterbury Reservoir. - Could be. I mean supposedly they did search that when they mapped the
bottom of the reservoir and they did find things
that were in there that weren't supposed to be. That were supposed to be
removed a long time ago, like boats and stuff like
that, that sunk to the bottom. There were people supposed to remove them, they got in trouble when they
found them still down there. - Right. - There's been theory that he's been, you know, got in a fight supposedly and who knows if that's true or not. There's been a lot other
rumors going around and a lot of what do you call it? - [Erinn] Conspiracies. - Yeah. People saying things
that could have happened and it could have, it
could not have you know. People said that he's been, him and his truck have
been buried underground. I don't have a clue what
could have come about it. - So let's come back to
like what is most logical. Accident or suicide? - It definitely wouldn't be suicide. - Now everything online seems
to be pointing that way. But family like- - He was getting a divorce at
the time, he was depressed. He checked himself in up to the hospital and had an evaluation
and stuff for a while. I mean, Donnie wasn't the
type that would commit suicide as far as I know, as
long as I've known him. - Right. - Accident, probably
could have been, you know, but you think you would find a vehicle where it would've gone
off the road, you know, you'd find, someone would
see something, you know. Where he would always
go and stuff, you know. The roads he used to travel. - So tell me about the
location of the party. - The party was- - And then the travel distance
back here is where he lived. - Yep. - And any type of waterways
along it, like what- tell me about the Mad River
and speculation on that. - Not deep enough, in
there it's not close enough to only in two or three
places that close enough to the road, so you could get to it. - [Jared] Okay. - Unless you went out through
someone's farmer's field or something. - [Jared] Right. - 'Cause there's no place there. - So then take the river out of it. So then that brings us
back to the reservoir. Okay well we're gonna
break this information down and see what we can do
to bring some new answers to this today. If anything we'll give you answers as to where Donnie is not, and this will remain a mystery or we're gonna solve this one today. - [Jared] Like I came into this thinking I knew where I wanted to go. Like boom we'll go on the reservoir. We're gonna knock this out. But then we bring in, we have the location of
where the party was at, down in Waits, - Waitsfield. - Waitsfield. And then we have the new information as to he's checked himself
into the hospital before. So I looked at all that
route between Waitsfield and Montpelier. - [Doug] Yeah. - Just in case, you know, like
two o'clock in the morning. I'm depressed. I'm gonna go check myself back in. Mad River all the way along there. Guardrail and you can see the
bottom through all of that. Then that takes us over to Denny's. That Denny's information was like, oh, I love that information
when it came across and now we go from you know Waitsfield. - Waitsfield. - Waitsfield over on 17
up 116 up to Denny's, his normal route. - Yeah. - No water. - Yeah.
- Same thing on that one. Then we take Waitsfield and we bring that up
to his brother's house where he was living. Same thing, you got Mad River, two spots, guardrail next to it. You can see the bottom. And then you have the Winooski as well. And then, well there's
only two crossings there. You can't even get into the
river at those two crossings here in town. So then that takes us
back to the reservoir and holy frick that information
that she had on that one. - Yeah and the reservoir,
clearly you can see it's been, this is an article from 2018, discussing the dam basically
has been drained twice since this has happened. And I mean, you can see that
it's drained down so far. Oops where's that. That it's about 700 yards away from the shore. - Yeah. And the farthest the vehicle is gonna be is 150 feet east max, not 700 yards. - Right. - And it's also drained
down 30 or 40 feet. I don't have any other bodies of water to bring us into on this one. I don't. All I can say is that we
gotta go to the reservoir no matter what. It's the only thing that
made sense coming into that. Everything, since we've
been here has been like the reservoir's out of the question, but it's still the only
place we can search. (soft music begins) (soft music continues) (rain drops plopping) - So draining the lake in 2002 to 2006, that's when it was like
you could walk across. - Yes. - But I'm coming back to
like with the two week period of when he went missing to
when it was normal pool, we're only talking maybe a
five foot difference in height during that two weeks. - That's my understanding yeah. - Okay. Okay. (soft music begins) (pump huffing) (soft music continues) - My guess is right there
where that last low peak is those smooth water, see it? - Right. I see it. - I say right there. I mean, honestly depending on
it, this is all little rock. You can go in and ride the
shelf all the way down. Whereas though this is not
like the normal murky lake soft bottom, a vehicle's
just gonna continue to go. (soft music continues) - Let's find them. Let's make this a anniversary to remember. (soft music continues) (boat motor revving) So normally when we start scanning, we start scanning about
35 feet out from shore. Then we start moving our way over. Currently we're casting
75 feet to the left, 75 feet to the right. All right so see the distance here. This is too far for a
vehicle that's just floating into the river or into lake, too far. If we were in a river with
a little bit of a current, we would be this far down, but because we're in a lake, we definitely want to make sure that we cover a little
bit further, regardless, because if the water levels
down another five feet, how far out is that gonna
bring him right now. This depth right here is 20 feet. So we're heading further out now Carson, and it gets down to 50 feet
because it gets a lot deeper. We actually end up changing from 75 for (indistinct) right? We're going over to 95. That way we're losing 50
feet of scanning capability, but we're still keeping it 50. So when we do our route
back we're not gonna cover you know, 150-200 feet. What we're gonna do is we're
just going to cross over about 40 feet and take that path back. That way we're not missing
anything down here, just in case the water
level happened to be lower just in case you happen to float it out here to the deeper part. And what we're also doing
is we're scanning it now to and out away from the bank. That way if we catch any drop offs like what we have right here, we're able to pick up sonar differently than if we were running this
direction along the bank. It reached, kinda funny that
it picks up better here, but doesn't pick up as good here. So I just wanna make
sure that we're covering all angles on this. Easy scanning though, when you have a nice,
smooth bottom like that. If anything's down there, it's gonna stick out like a sore thumb. - The water levels and where they are and where they were and
et cetera, you know, right now we're searching
where if this was drained none of this water was here. Right about, I don't know 800 yards that way is where the
shoreline would've been. So we're gonna take this
search all the way out. - [Jared] Take a look on here. We actually have boat ramps over here. And then over in this arm, we've got some access points as well. This is gonna be closer to Waterbury and over where his brother's
house was at over in this area. So far, we just have like
the one stick right here. It was off to our left. So we're gonna be heading
over it in just a moment over here. I think this one is more
of a canoe boat ramp for small boats, and we have a bigger boat
ramp back behind here as well. We then have and I saw
on the map, but look at, you also have like a
little side service road that comes right into the water there. So we wanna check that. We actually have something back here. It's kind of weird I
don't know if it's a boat, if it's the way the rocks are laying, almost looks like a boat. So I'll scan back to it right here. But right there you have, I think it's a boat the
way that's laying, but, and then you also have, that's
just an old tree right there. This is what we're
interested in right there. Yeah, possibly just a ledge, like a rock ledge with all those rocks that were right there. Just the way that comes down. Just gives like a weird reading, but we're gonna hit it at
several different angles is what we're gonna do. Just to make sure that we rule it out. So we're gonna come back
up kinda take the route that we did the first time. Identify where we're at on the wall and we're gonna come in and out to it is what we're gonna do. We'll just hit straight into that tree and grab a reading on it. Appears to just be smooth
rocks is what it is. Which is consistent with these
other smooth rocks coming in. Come back over it backwards a little bit. So you see no windows,
no wheels, no doors. We just wanted continuous rock ledge is what it is right there. Which is very consistent
with the mountain side here that you have all the rock coming into the water right there. - [Doug] What I'm doing right now is, so we have a drastic like
60 foot drop off here along this entire shore. So what happens is if
you're doing a search away from shore and
something's sitting right here and scanning in, you're gonna miss it. It is not gonna come up correctly. Whereas though I'm coming in and out with my grid searches. That way if anything is
sitting on this shelf on this entire bank. All the way around, I'm not gonna miss it. And it's really easy to
miss if you don't do that. So that's what I'm doing right now, just to make sure that our T's are crossed and our I's are dotted. All right location one knocked out. Location two with the
cove is now knocked out. You can see our red line here. We're now gonna head up
into this wing up here. And there's two or three
additional locations up here that we wanna check out here, before we start heading
north into this wing up here. (boat motor revving) - [Josh] 80 feet deep. - [Doug] 80? - [Josh] Yeah. - Oh oh it so looks like a car man. - [Josh] Really? - It really looks like a car. Why a car would be right
here I have no clue. 'Cause on the side scan just now kinda looked like it could be a boat, but then again that means nothing. It kinda looks like a truck upside down because it's slanted. Whereas though it's sitting
on the cab in the bed. Off of that one scan, it's a car. But the way I've been taught by Jared and using all three of these systems, just because it comes up
and it looks like a car on one system. I mean you gotta reference
it on live scan, side scan, from different angles
to get a true account for what exactly it is that we just saw. Right now I'm not being able to do that. Do I think it's a car? I think it's the truck. It looks like a truck. It looks like the wheels are up. It looks slanted like
it's sitting on the cab and the bed is down further and it has the look of a truck. And it's in an area of this
reservoir where it's just clean, no other objects, Not a lot of boulders
out here in the middle, but I gotta find it. When I find it again
here in a few minutes, I'll be able to run a different
scan in different ways to get a true account of
what exactly it really is. I can't relocate that again. So I'm gonna go get Jared. Have Jared come back
over and hit that area. I dropped the way point in the system. So we'll get him back over here to see what he thinks of that target. (upbeat music begins) (boat motor revving) - Put it there. - [Jared] Yeah put it there. - Check this out. I've found what I believe
to be a pickup truck. - [Jared] Seriously? - Yes. However, I can't, I know the area it's in, 80 feet deep. I have no clue how it got to where it is. I have not been able to rescan
it to verify what it is. I set a way point and that's what I found. - Holy frick, are you kidding me? - I'm not kidding you. - [Jared] Where the frick was that? - [Josh] By the beginning. - [Doug] I have a general area. - [Jared] Yeah. - And that's on (indistinct). My thing was I tried for like
15 minutes to recapture it, to get it on a different scan. I was unsuccessful. So I was like all right
we gotta go get Jared. I mean from this scan,
that looks like a truck. You see how it's sitting
on the cab and the bed. So here's where we started. - [Jared] Right. - [Doug] And like I told you I
was taking into consideration like say this was drained. - [Jared] Right. - [Doug] And he drove
down the gravel hill. - [Jared] Yeah.
- [Doug] And then in. And that's what I came
up with in running that. - I don't know why the
truck would be there, but- - It makes no sense. As soon as it popped up I was like, whoa. like, well this makes no sense. - Well, but here's the other thing too. So let's not say that this is Donnie, but you know, people in the wintertime. - Drive out on the ice. - Drive out on the ice. - [Jared] Okay. Well, yeah take me to the way point. - When I found that target, I dropped the way point and the way point is over here. And this is where we
first did our launch today and that's right there
where I found the target. So that's where we're gonna go back and we'll know here in about 30 minutes what that target is or not. (boat motor revving) - Put me right over the top
of it with your way point. I'll just follow you in. Right there all right I'm
gonna stop right here. I'm gonna adjust my settings. All right there it is right there. Yeah you definitely have a
vehicle down there or a tank. One of the two. I think it's a boat. No I think you're right. I think it does have wheels. So we've been going this way. Now we're gonna try to hit it this way and see if we can nail it. - This is the point where,
you know, we're adamant that it even is a vehicle. The magnet's going in and then Jared's going in in that order. - [Jared] Yeah it's upside down. It's got wheels. - [Doug] Got it, upside down. Right here. Got it right there as well. - [Jared] Yeah that does look
like a pickup upside down, doesn't it? - I was at about 25% being as though I couldn't scan it again. - [Jared] Yeah. - But to me it looked
like it was like this, sitting on the cab and then the bed giving
it a little bit of tilt. - Yeah no I agree with you. Like I just went over it just now. - And if that's a
vehicle, it's our vehicle. So there's no other sense
why any other vehicle would be in here. - Right. Well you and I will mark it and then I'll get suited up. Get the magnet out. I want the magnet and the
(indistinct) right now. All right so I had it on
live scope, it was beautiful. - Did it look like a vehicle? - [Jared] Yep. - Holy moly. - Okay so I need both ropes 'cause this is only a 60 foot rope and we're going down 80 feet. Yeah I mean we're within 5-10 feet of it. Okay so I'm 10 feet off of it. Let me see if I can drag just
a little bit more towards it. Still a few feet off of it. Here we go (indistinct). I think I'm touching it right there. Yeah I can feel it rubbing the side of it. Yeah it is touching it. I can feel it rubbing the side of it. I'm confident enough that
we need to dive on it. We're not sticking to it though. Like I can feel it
rubbing up the side of it. So now I'm not confident. I mean I can see it bouncing on it. So I mean I'm confident that I'm on it. Just not confident as to what we have now. 'Cause I feel like it should be sticking. All right I'm gonna try something. I mean I don't wanna come off of it 'cause I'm right on it right now. All right so now I'm off of it. So now I'm eight feet
away, coming back up to it. I mean I'm all over it there. The length of it is 15 feet. All right well let's mark it with this. Let's grab monster magnet as well. Let's see if we can mark it with that. Well I mean I can suit up now too. I'll just suit up and just go down. I mean there's no reason
to mark it anymore. I'm right on it. I mean it is quite a ways out from shores. I mean that causes me some concern. (Indistinct) We got it marked there so
we know right where it's at. Let's scan it with some side scan, some different angles real quick and just see what else we pick up. It's a boat or truck. One of the two. I mean so what I'm looking at is like, I'm looking for two sets of wheels or is that a boat with a windshield? But I feel like that's
another set of wheels there. So then we wanna look at it here. Is that a truck upside down? I'm putting my money on it, it's a boat. But what's throwing me off though is what looks like the windshield but then I have something
at the back as well. - [Doug] Let me see
what you're looking at. - Yeah, no I'll bring it to you right now. He's like all right, this
is the front of this. A windshield here and then
something's just sticking up at the back or is it indeed
a vehicle that's upside down? And that this front here is the wheels at the back. This is (indistinct). See, same thing. I feel like if those are wheels, they should be farther forward. Either way we have a line on it right now within a few feet and go put eyes on it. - I mean that's the only thing we found in this entire thing. - [Jared] Right. - And it it's gonna take us, It'll take you 10 minutes
to dive down there? - [Jared] Yeah. - So I mean we'll dive on it and confirm. I mean it definitely could be a boat. - [Jared] But if you look at
it also as far as being a boat, then like how come I have
some funky weird stuff over here as well, underneath
of it on this side. That part's not making sense to me either. All right, well let's
quit talking about it. Let's go scan it or get on it. (suspenseful music begins) (team chatting indistinctly) - The valves you turn them all the way up then turn them back. (suspenseful music continues) (water splashing) (water bubbling) - [Jared] (indistinct) is being closed. (indistinct) I'm on 18 feet. 22. Visibility is still about 8 feet. - Ten four. I read you loud and clear. You are directly above the target. - [Jared] (Indistinct) were 45 feet. 50 feet (indistinct) 50. - He's at about 60 feet right now. - [Jared] About 60 feet. Visibility is dropping. We're about three and half (indistinct). - 10, four. It looks like you are right
at the rear of the target. - [Jared] Right we're at 78 feet. - He's at the bottom. - [Jared] The (indistinct)
is about 10 feet. Looking for my target. It has a windshield of
what I believe is a boat. Now confirming. We have a boat. - It's a boat. It's a boat. - [Jared] It's alright Doug. - Definitely a boat. - [Jared] It's been down
here probably 10 to 15 years. So I think we have a seat
coming up (indistinct). Tell me if it hits the surface. - [Doug] We are waiting
for a seat to come up. Possibly. - [Jared] Now visibility
is down to zero down here. - [Doug] Something is coming up. It should be coming to the
surface right now I believe. There it is. See it? - [Jared] I have the back line. (indistinct) start making my
way out to take a (indistinct) I'm at 79 feet right now. My (indistinct) is at
2,400 looking really good. - I'm reading you at about 48 feet. - [Jared] Right we're at 45
feet coming up nice and clean. 40 feet. (indistinct) time is eight
minutes and 57 seconds. (water bubbling) (rain drops plopping) (Jared and Doug chatting indistinctly) Today definitely had a lot of plot twists. It took us down routes
that we didn't even think that we're gonna go down. It started with the, we thought we were coming to the reservoir because the reservoir's
just always been here. It's always been full. - Right. - But then we ended up talking to Stephen. Now it's like, "oh no,
the reservoir was empty. I could walk, you know
all the way across there several hundred feet." We did some investigation work. We saw the same pictures, but we saw the wrong pictures
from way back in the day instead of what we thought was 2018, after Donnie had gone missing in 06. Then we had the additional plot twist of, "Hey by the way this might be foul play" Had we had that information to begin with. You know we probably wouldn't even come however, we were already here. We didn't focus on any of that. We're like we're not pulling out GPR, Ground Penetrating Radar. We're not looking for a field in ponds. We're just simply looking
for the, the where. And we're looking, is this a suicide? Is this an accident? That's the only thing that
we were focused on today. With the new information
from Chris that came in, was like, "Oh well the pond, not the pond but the reservoir was
actually full at the time." But then we had another report that said, "Oh well maybe it wasn't full until 2010." Which then brought us into, as we were doing our scanning, Doug. - Yeah so- - Why did you put me on it? - It looked like a car. - It did. It really did.
- A truck. It looked like, I mean we've scanned a lot. We know what we see. And for all purposes, it
looked like a vehicle. - Yeah. - Definitely looked like a vehicle. You know, when we put
the magnet line on it, where we ride on it we don't know. But at 80 feet things change. - Oh I had the magnet right on it. Like in order to, I'm impressed with the microscope. I mean we dropped the
magnet right on the boat from 80 feet all the way down. - [Doug] Yeah I mean I'm
still right above it. - [Jared] Oh yeah.
- [Doug] Yeah You can see it. - [Jared] Yep.
- [Doug] Clear as day. I mean it looked just like a vehicle when me and Josh came over it. It looked like two wheels sticking up and we searched this
whole reservoir today. And that was the only thing we- We found the only thing that was in here. - Yeah. So leave us a comment down below. Like what do you think about this case? Are we dealing with foul play? Are we dealing with an accident? Are we dealing with the
you know, on purpose? Where could Donnie be? Like where- If you were in charge of
this investigation right now, where would you send us in the area? Like now I'm out of places
'cause we checked those rivers. We check the reservoir. - Yeah. - We've got nowhere else for us to go. - The disappearance of Bubba is definitely gonna
remain a mystery for now. - And have we touched on who Bubba is? Like his sister called him Bubba. - Yeah so Donnie's nickname is Bubba. - Yeah. - Like I said, man this is
definitely still a mystery. - Yeah. AWP and our ability to travel the US working these cold cases would not be possible without you. So if you have not done so already, please be sure to subscribe. And in the description down below, we also have links for
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