At 8 am, on August 29, 2013, Christian, a delivery driver for Castro Tire and Gas in Buttonwillow, California, responded to a roadside assistance call from 19-year-old Bryce Laspisa on his way home. The teen had run out of gasoline on Interstate 5.
Christian delivered three gallons of fuel, charged it to Bryce’s mother’s credit card, and noted that he seemed quiet and cooperative. Hours after getting the gas, Bryce still hadn’t arrived home.
Using insurance tracking, his mother, Karen, determined the vehicle had not moved from the Buttonwillow area. She then called Castro Tire and Gas, and Christian drove back out to find Bryce parked in exactly the same position he was earlier.
When Christian walked up to the Toyota Highlander, Bryce appeared startled to see the mechanic return. He convinced Bryce to begin driving again and watched him pull onto the southbound I-5.
But Bryce only drove a few miles before pulling over again. By 6 pm that evening, Karen was worried as he wasn’t home yet and called the Kent County Sheriff’s Department. Two deputies responded to the call and found Bryce parked on the side of the road.
They interviewed him for 20 minutes, administering a field sobriety test and searching his vehicle. Both reported him as lucid and depicting no signs of being under the influence.
The deputies did encourage Bryce to call his mother, which he did. He then agreed to resume driving home.
At 9 pm, Christian drove past Bryce again and noticed he was still parked in the area. Christian then offered to lead the way on the highway.
Bryce followed the truck for several miles down the I-5. Christian pulled over, watched the Highlander continue south, and assumed he was finally ready to go home.
At 2 am, Bryce called his mother, telling her he was exhausted and pulling off the highway to sleep in the vehicle. Karen proposed to meet him at a nearby Starbucks in the morning, to which Bryce agreed, and he hung up.
A surveillance camera captured the Toyota at 2.25 am as it drove past the security gate at the main entrance of the Castaic Lake Recreational Area.
As the first light of dawn broke, the doorbell rang at the Laspisa home in Laguna Niguel, California. Karen told Dateline years later, “We honestly thought it was Bryce arriving at our home.”
Instead, it was a California Highway Patrol officer who asked if the family owned a 2003 Toyota Highlander. It had just been pulled from a ravine near Castaic Lake, and Bryce was not in it.
A Family Still Finding Its Footing
Bryce David Laspisa was born on April 30, 1994, in Naperville, Illinois, as the only child of Karen and Michael Laspisa. From an early age, he exhibited an interest in the arts.
He was the kind of child who filled notebooks with sketches and spent hours on an Xbox with friends. When his parents retired, they decided to plant roots in California, and they moved to Laguna Niguel.
It was an Orange County beach community, and they settled there around the time Bryce graduated from high school in 2012. He left for Sierra College in Rocklin that fall.
Sierra College was a seven-hour drive from his parents’ new home, where he studied graphics and industrial design. This would be Bryce’s first taste of real independence, and by his second year, he was well settled in with a girlfriend and close circle of friends.
The Personality Shift And a Strange Goodbye in Chico
Upon returning to Sierra College for his sophomore year in 2013, Bryce suddenly started acting strangely. Friends noted he was not his happy self and began drinking heavily.
He was also frequently taking Vyvanse, which is a central nervous system stimulant prescribed for ADHD patients. He used to stay up all night playing video games.
Mixed with alcohol, the combination significantly affected his behaviour. On August 27, Bryce suddenly gave his roommate his Xbox and a pair of diamond earrings that his mother had given him.
The next day, as his mental state continued to unravel, he got into his Toyota Highlander and made the 1.5-hour drive to his girlfriend, Kim Sly’s, apartment in Chico.
Out of nowhere, he also sent cryptic text messages to his best friend, Sean Dixon, saying, “I love you bro, seriously…You saved my soul.” That same day, he broke up with Kim over text, saying she would be “better off without me.”
Alarmed at his behaviour, Kim took his car keys and called his mother, Karen, to say she didn’t think Bryce was in any condition to drive. Bryce got on the phone with his mother to reiterate that he was fine and Kim was just upset about the breakup.
He told Karen he had something important to discuss with her, saying, “Don’t book the flight until I talk to you. I have a lot to talk to you about.”
Karen gave Kim permission to return the keys, and Bryce left the apartment at 11.30 pm on August 28.
He bypassed his college apartment, taking Interstate 5 south, aiming for his parents’ house in Orange County.
The Wreck Near Castaic Lake
Sometime between 4.20 and 5.15 am on August 30, Bryce’s Highlander went off Main Ramp Road near Castaic Lake and down an embankment estimated at fifteen to twenty-five feet, coming to rest on its side.
When the CHP officer told Michael and Karen what had happened that morning, he described the vehicle as flipped with the rear window broken out. Investigators determined Bryce had used the opening to climb out through the back hatch.
Everything else the teen had with him was still inside the vehicle, including his laptop, phone, and wallet. The only thing that was missing was Bryce.
Karen was informed there was some blood on the windshield, which investigators attributed to the impact of the crash. She reasoned that as an athletic 19-year-old, he was capable of freeing himself and that whatever sustained injuries he had were not severe enough to keep him from moving under his own strength.
Investigators also noted a drop of blood on the headrest and backseat, which were consistent with superficial cuts.
One detail that has fueled speculation for over a decade is the tyre tracks, which show the Highlander accelerated as it went down the embankment rather than braking. Investigators have never publicly confirmed what this meant, but it is part of the reason the case has never been closed as an accident.
Searchers, Dogs, And an Empty Lake
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department took over the investigation from the California Highway Patrol once it determined it was a missing person case rather than a traffic accident.
Michael drove to the scene that same morning and watched as search teams were assembled. There were officers on foot, ATVs, and others on horseback.
Boats, divers, and scent-tracking dogs were also brought in. Karen described the scene to media outlets as exhaustive, running through the day into the following days.
Bloodhounds also picked up Bryce’s scent along Lake Hughes Road, following it to a nearby gas station and truck stop where it simply ended. Divers searched the lake, which reached depths of 300 feet in some places, and found nothing.
There were no footprints leading away from the crash or torn clothes caught in the brush. No sign that Bryce had gone into the water or up the surrounding hills.
The fact that the scent trail ended at the truck stop, rather than fading out in open terrain, has been one of the more debated elements in the case. A dog losing the trail on foot in the wilderness is one thing, but a trail that suddenly stops in a place where vehicles regularly idle, and strangers pass through, suggests Bryce may have hitched a ride.
Investigators have never been able to confirm this, nor has the surveillance from the truck stop been made public. Karen told Dateline, “Unfortunately, there’s never been one sighting of Bryce, and there’s no closure.”
The Burned Body Near Castaic Lake
Five days after the accident on September 4, firefighters responded to reports of a fire near Castaic Lake. They found charred human remains at the scene, not far from where the Toyota Highlander had gone off the road.
Because the body was already burned beyond recognition, detectives were not able to immediately determine its gender or identity. The media, search volunteers, and Bryce’s family then feared the worst, assuming that he had been murdered or had committed self-harm.
The active search for Bryce Laspisa also temporarily stopped as the Castaic Lake area was closed off and classified as a crime scene.
The Los Angeles County coroner quickly did an autopsy, and they determined the body belonged to a 35-year-old Black man named Lamondre Deon Miles. The coroner illustrated that Miles had been shot multiple times in the torso and was already deceased before his body was taken to the lake.
Homicide detectives were able to quickly track down the killers and arrested three suspects who also promptly confessed. They had murdered Miles in South Central Los Angeles and drove up the freeway looking for a place to dump and burn the evidence, hence Castaic Lake.
While the discovery solved another case, it left the investigators back at square one with Bryce. Once the coroner ruled out a match, the Laspisa family resumed their search for the missing person.
Twelve Years of Searching
As the months turned into years, the Laspisas grew frustrated with the pace of the official investigation and hired a private investigator, Denise Savastano, who specialised in missing-person cases.
Her working theory was that Bryce may have suffered a head injury during the crash, which sent him into a disoriented and possibly amnesiac state. This explains why he may have wandered off rather than waiting for assistance at the crash site.
In 2015, the family paid a sonar specialist to perform an additional search of the Castaic Lake bed. This search also came up empty.
Since 2013, there has been no activity on Bryce’s bank accounts, credit cards, or Social Security number. His passport has also not been used.
Over time, tips have been called in. The first was Port Orford, Oregon, where an off-duty police officer reported that he had interacted with a young man matching Bryce’s description.
By the time the officer realised the man was a registered missing person, he had moved on. Multiple tips have also been submitted by people in California and Texas, who claim they spotted transient men matching the description.
Because Bryce may have suffered a head injury during the high-impact rollover, investigators considered the theory that he may be living on the streets under a different name.
Karen has never accepted the idea that her son chose to disappear. She stated, “He never ran away from home. There was never any problem big enough that would make Bryce literally want to walk away from his life. He loved us too much, and we love him too.”
Investigators were careful not to rule out Bryce’s erratic behaviour in his final days, including the giveaways, the sudden breakup, and the hours spent parked by the side of the freeway. These factors pointed to a mental health crisis severe enough that he wanted to disappear.
Detective Bob Martindale, one of the original investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Homicide Bureau told iHeartRadio, “Maybe not the Xbox, but the earrings and stuff like that you don’t give those possessions away just on a whim but it happens quite a bit, seeing a lot of suicides over the years, a lot of those things are telltale signs of people that are, you know, maybe going to take their own life because you’re taking them with a finality, you’re gonna give those to a good friend, he was a good roommate, whatever it might be.”
Multiple explanations have circulated among investigators over the last thirteen years. One is that Bryce, in a substance-altered state, walked away from the wreck and harmed himself or is still alive somewhere else under a new identity.
The other potential scenario is that the injury sustained from the crash left him so disoriented that he sought help, but died from exposure in the hills surrounding the lake. His remains would have been scattered across thousands of acres of bush and ravine.
The third explanation is that his disappearance was not an accident. Someone may have picked him up at the truck stop or in Buttonwillow, either causing him harm or helping him assume a different identity over the years.
Regardless, no arrests have been made, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has not named any suspects.
The Case Today
The disappearance of Bryce Laspisa was the subject of an episode of Investigation Discovery (ID)’s Disappeared. The episode was titled “Road to Nowhere”, and it introduced the case to a larger audience.
Karen continues to manage the Find Bryce Laspisa Facebook page, posting case updates and age-progressed images of her son.
Bryce turned 32 in April 2026, and Karen keeps a photo from before the crash next to an AI-generated image of what he would look like now. She told NBC’s Dateline, “We always had a good, close relationship. I live with that permanent hole in my heart.”
Karen and Michael are currently retired in California and continue to dedicate their lives to finding their missing son. Despite the passage of time and complete lack of verified sightings, Michael and Karen have consistently stated they refuse to stop looking.
The case remains active with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Anyone with information is asked to contact the department at 213-229-1700 or the Orange County tip line at 949-292-4400
For more stories on unsolved disappearances, explore our articles on Amy Wroe Bechtel and Brianna Maitland.
