by Travis Mateer

The image above is from an old TikTok post from April 17th because that would be 6 days after Joey went missing. He has since been found, deceased, in the Clark Fork river, 40 miles from where he was last seen and reported missing. I have written two posts about this case so far, one on May 5th and one on May 15th.

Today is May 20th and a memorial was held for Joey where many of his friends shared memories. There were stories that included Joey wearing a bear suit, coming to the aid of nephew in a nerf battle, and being a free spirit who sometimes showed up in security footage of a family friend who noticed him doing parkour on cars in her business’ parking lot.

I say WE are failing Joey’s friends because I am a part of this community and I know some of the people who may be involved. That’s why I called Detective Deibert over two weeks ago and left a message, but I still haven’t heard anything back.

What I DID hear from one of the young people I spoke to is a concerning degree of certainty about what she thinks happened, and some of her own trauma with a person who may be involved, the same person who has a mother that is well-known in the Homeless Industrial Complex, the same system that overlaps with the broken Criminal Justice System I’ve been investigating and exposing.

I hope some of the things I’m hearing are NOT true, but if they are, I hope we have competent investigators on the case.

Normally at the end of posts I provide links to donate money to my independent journalism. Not today. Today I’m just asking that you give a shit about the kids who are still alive, and the shit they are dealing with as us adults continue fucking things up for them.

Let’s do better.