Last Seen in the Twilight Zone

1 year, 2 best friends, 36 episodes, 40 different countries and nearly 6,000 listens. We can’t wait for another year with you!
Thanks for tuning in. We obviously couldn’t have don’t this without you! 

Close your eyes for a moment. Picture yourself standing along the banks of the Susquehanna River just after sunrise. The air is cool. Mist hangs over the water. You hear birds waking up. The occasional splash of a fish. Traffic hums quietly across nearby bridges. It feels peaceful. Safe. Beautiful. Now imagine taking one step closer to the edge. The river barely seems to move. There are no crashing rapids. No roaring waterfall. Nothing about this place tells you that it has taken lives. If you didn't know its history… you would never suspect that beneath the surface is one of the most dangerous currents in New York. One that has claimed fishermen… boaters...swimmers...and even the firefighters who came to rescue them.
This...is Rock Bottom Dam. And for generations, first responders have called places like this something unforgettable. Drowning machines.

Scott Wright Jr. was only nineteen years old when he was shot and killed on July 4, 2015.
Nineteen.
It's an age that almost exists in its own category of life. You're old enough that people begin asking what you're going to do with your future, but young enough that the future still feels almost limitless. Graduation has just happened. College is on the horizon. Careers exist mostly as ideas rather than realities. You begin imagining where you'll live, who you'll become, and what your life might look like five or ten years down the road.
Scott was standing at exactly that point.

There are some cases where investigators know exactly how a person died—but have no idea who was responsible.
This is one of those cases.
On February 17, 2024, 29-year-old Tyler Beschorner was struck and killed on Route 363 in Binghamton, New York. Someone driving that night knows exactly what happened. They drove away. And more than two years later, Tyler's family is still waiting for the person responsible to come forward. But this case carries another unimaginable tragedy.
Today, we're telling Tyler's story

If you've spent any time in Central New York, there's a good chance you've passed through Cortland.
Maybe you were headed north toward the Adirondacks for a weekend on the lake. Maybe you were driving Route 81 on your way to Syracuse. Maybe you stopped for coffee, filled the gas tank, and continued on without giving the city much thought. Like many other small communities across the Southern Tier and Central New York, it's easy to appreciate Cortland for what it is today without realizing just how many remarkable stories unfolded there throughout history.
One of those stories changed American literature forever, more in particular, American crime literature.
Raise your hand if you ever read An American Tragedy or seen A Place in the Sun, from 1951 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. It's widely regarded as one of the greatest American films ever made, winning six Academy Awards and cementing itself as a classic of twentieth-century cinema. Both of those works tell essentially the same story.
A young factory worker falls in love with a woman of modest means. She becomes pregnant. Faced with the prospect of scandal and the loss of social ambition, he convinces her to accompany him on a boating trip into the Adirondacks. Only one of them comes home.
Millions of people know that story. Very few know the young woman who inspired it.
Her name was Grace Brown.

It was a Sunday evening in March of 1964 when 12-year-old Mary Theresa Simpson disappeared from the streets of Elmira, New York. Mary had spent the evening visiting family. Nothing about the night seemed unusual. She was a quiet young girl described as friendly and responsible, and at some point that evening, she left to walk home alone — something that, in a small city like Elmira in the 1960s, probably didn’t seem especially dangerous.

32 year old Brandon Williams was last seen on March 5th 2019. It’s always been said that his last sighting was at the Speedway gas station on Route 26N in the town of Maine, NY. He was dropped off in the town of Maine by his parents where he was picked up at that Speedway by a female acquaintance. And while that story has always been widely reported, anyone local who speaks about this case hears that the last place people saw Brandon Williams alive was a party that evening. A party he attended with the female acquaintance that picked him up at the Speedway and other “friends” . It was on March 22nd that Brandon’s parents requested assistance from the police to find their son who they hadn’t or heard from since theyleft him in Maine on March 5th–17 days earlier.

In July of 1991, 48-year-old Diane L. Hoppert left her home in Owego, New York, planning to
travel east on Interstate 88 toward Albany. She was headed to New York’s capital city to attend
a work-related seminar. The route would take her through quiet rural stretches of upstate New
York—past towns like Oneonta, Cobleskill, and areas near Howes Cavern and Schenectady.
At the time, Interstate 88 was a relatively quiet highway. Long distances separated exits, and in
the early 1990s there were no cell phones to quickly call for help if something went wrong.
Unfortunately, something did.

I lost Robert in 2003, but I never really lost him. I’m sharing my story because I know so many others out there are grieving someone they love. I also that someone out there has been feeling crazy because they can still sense their loved ones with them, long after they’ve passed. 
To this day, my guardian angels still find a way to have my jaw dropping to the floor. I know others out there have stories similar to mine—I’d love to hear yours! Email us at lastseen607@gmail.com to share it with us!
 
Hope you enjoy.

Welcome to Season 2 of Last Seen In The Twilight Zone. We’re starting off this season with an incredible and very clarifying conversation we got to have with Bethanie Dougherty’s brother, John. 
We’re deeply appreciative of John and the story he shared with us about his sister who’s been missing from Killawog, NY since April 2nd 2008.