Late one night an outdoorsman’s friend decided to stop by his campsite to surprise him. They were hoping to have a few drinks and catch up with a friend but what they found when they arrived was unnerving and totally unexplainable. what follows is the story of one of the most mysterious disappearances in the last 40 years. Even to this day, almost no clues have been discovered and no arrests have been made. However, numerous theories and plenty of suspicion are made and it all started with a simple camping trip.

Michael Madden

Michael Larry Madden known to most as Mike was by all accounts a kind and gentle soul. He was born in a small town called Modesto in the Sonora area of California and he grew up spending time with both of his divorced parents Larry and Ardell. Family and friends were very important to Mike and he was described by all as a sweet and goofy personality who liked to keep to himself. He had a tight-knit group of buddies and he kept a great relationship with his mother and his half-brother Randy Powell.

But for the most part, Mike was known as a loner who loved the outdoors. In fact the outdoors were sort of Mike’s whole thing. He was a wildlife biology major at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California where everyone knew him to be an experienced outdoorsman who loved to hike camp fish climb, and explore. He even aspired to have a career in nature. He grew up telling everyone that he hoped to one day become a U.S. Forest Service ranger.

The Camping

So when Mike told his friends and family that he was going camping alone in August of 1996, nobody batted an eye especially because he was going to sandbar flat campground, an area he had gone to with his father Larry many times. It was a campground off of the Stanislaus River, Southeast of Sacramento and Mike seemed to think of it as more of a backyard than an actual wilderness. So at about 5 am on the morning of August 10, 1996, Mike packed up his Chevrolet cavalier grabbed his dog Mathilda, and left his mother a note on the kitchen counter telling her where he was going and then for the last time he drove out into the wilderness.

The Strange Disappearance

Mike was 20 years old at the time and his missing person's report lists him as, "A 6-1 Caucasian male with hazel eyes, brown hair, and a 3-inch surgical scar on his collarbone." It also listed that he was wearing a t-shirt shorts a San Francisco Giants hat and a watch. Authorities know that he arrived at sandbar flats and set up his camp but anything other than that is completely unknown. Perhaps he went fishing or hiking and took a nasty fall or perhaps something much much worse happened even to this day.

Friends Sudden Visit

Nobody can prove anything what we do know is that late in the night of August 12th at about 2 am some of Mike’s friends pulled into camp earlier that evening Mike’s best friend Josh, his friend Manuel, Josh’s girlfriend Shannon, and their mutual friend Ramona decided to take an impromptu trip to watch a meteor shower in a nearby town. But while they were on the road they decided to stop by Mike’s campsite to say hello as they knew where he would always go but when they arrived they found a confusing scene Mike and Matilda were nowhere in sight.

Despite the fact that their things were neatly arranged and the fire had fresh wood in it. Mike’s friends searched the nearby forest but it was late and very dark when they couldn’t find any trace of their friend they returned to the fire to wait for him. That’s when things got truly creepy a man suddenly stepped out of the darkness carrying a 45 automatic pistol his name was Joseph Tine and his appearance made all of Mike’s friends incredibly nervous. He popped out of the trees asking the group if they were here for Mikey, a nickname Michael had never gone by before but that wasn’t the truly unnerving part.

The stranger

According to Manuel, Joseph stepped out speaking a mile a minute he said he was startled because Mikey didn’t say anyone was coming and that he had left and was long gone. Manuel also said that Joseph seemed under the influence of something as he was talking about shooting a creature with three eyes and that he spent the entire night whispering to a bush and repeatedly cocking his pistol and so Michael’s friends waited all night next to a man they didn’t know sitting in the pitch black accompanied by the sound of a gun cocking.

The Search

The next day it became clear that Mike wasn’t coming back so he was reported missing and a search and rescue swept the entire area but they wouldn’t find anything at all. That is until Mike’s dog Matilda returned to the campsite four days later she came back dehydrated and tired but she hadn’t lost any weight and her feet weren’t damaged.

This was surprising given that she was lost in the California hills for close to four days. The police were hoping that she would provide some help in leading investigators to Mike’s whereabouts but unfortunately, the trail went cold and that is the last factual update.

The Accusations

In the disappearance of Mike Madden for some unknown reason, the cops called off the search in sandbar flats the same day Matilda turned up. Michael’s case began to fade into memory but as the legal proceedings surrounding the disappearance slowed the speculations from Michael’s family and friends only began to escalate the first loudest and most obvious accusations came from Michael’s friends Manuel and Josh and they pointed towards Joseph Tine.

Manuel recounts that Joseph was acting incredibly erratically and Josh reports that Joseph was eating Michael’s food and burning his firewood as if he knew he wasn’t coming back. The friends even reported that they believed Joseph was wearing Mike’s boots when they arrived. Manuel went as far as saying that he believed Joseph was in the woods cooking drugs and Mike stumbled across him at the wrong time. Joseph was questioned by the police and he even passed a polygraph test regarding what happened at the camp and while the suspicions of him definitely seem well-founded the police never made an arrest but Joseph Tine isn’t the only person who’s had the finger pointed at them.

The Theories

Randy Powell, Michael’s much older half brother has this much to say about Mike’s so-called “friends”, “Michael’s so-called “friends” never once offered to help us search not once did they come over after Mike’s disappearance to talk with us about what had happened. Not one single freaking time did his so-called “friends” offer to help come by the house or call to see how things were going and these friends who had shown up at 2 30 a.m, two guys, two girls to watch a meteor shower while under influence of substance are the ones who gave the information to cops about what had transpired but not until a week later. After having time to get their stories straight they reported Mike missing the next morning at 11 am to a park ranger and then left the area but they returned at night after search and rescue left and searched through Mike’s car broke into the trunk then left before daylight I think his friends are full of it. “

So Joseph Tine and Mike’s friends have both received some side eye but the buck doesn’t stop there a family friend of Michael’s mom named Helen Purvis believes Mike’s father Larry had something to do with it. Despite the fact that his alibi puts him in Oregon at the time she cites the apparently volatile relationship they had where Larry would cause turmoil and steel and that he might have arranged something bad.

There is even another theory where the possessive boyfriend of a girl Michael loved might have had Joseph Tine kill Mike as the two men grew up in the same neighbourhood. This one however is admittedly a little more fringe. But despite all of these ideas, there isn’t any conclusive evidence to back anything up the only thing everyone can agree on is that the police horribly mishandled the investigation.

The Negligence

After all, they did call off the search the same day they found Matilda, their most significant piece of evidence and everyone involved said that investigators missed several ways they could have looked further into Mike’s disappearance. They apparently never checked Matilda’s stomach to see what she had been eating to maintain her weight and they didn’t even bring in hounds to retrace Matilda’s trail after she returned to the campsite. So while Mike’s disappearance seems like it may never be explained. Do you think Joseph Tine killed Michael Madden? or are his friends hiding something after all?

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