u/ClevelandSpigot

I thought I'd broach this subject here. If you don't know, there is currently a rash of top-level NASA and NASA-adjacent scientists that have been going missing, or have been found dead, over the past few months. Here is an image showing seven of them, and this is just from April 8th. Nine days later, we are now up to eleven missing or dead astrophysicist scientists.

Ideas? Theories? Conspiracies?

Personally, I have never thought of the US government as one living object that always agrees with itself. I think that it is probably a greater than 50 percent chance that we have had some contact with extraterrestrials, or at least their technology.

If that is the case, I feel that, among those who are aware of this information, there are probably two main contingents in the US government. Those who want transparency, and those who don't. I think that there is possibly a deep cold war going on within and between the very departments of the US government.

By the way, that Bob Lazar movie just came out during all of this, too. So, there's that.

So, this documentary apparently came out a few years ago. It was a five-part series, and done in the same style of "Making a Murderer", where it took several years to make, and they show that lapse in time throughout the episodes. This post is meant to be a critique of the documentary, but also a slight traipsing through the case itself.

It's about the 1992 disappearance of a college student from the University of Acadia, in the small town of Wolfville, in Nova Scotia, Canada. The name of the young man is Kenley Matheson. He was 20 years old at the time. He would be 56 years old today.

He was a freshman at the college, and was only there about three weeks before he disappeared. He entered college with his younger sister Kayrene together, because he took two gap years and worked in outdoor industrial jobs - like remote tree service - and had a Jack Kerouac type of road trip directly after high school.

He is described as a very quiet and pensive person. He seemed to struggle with existential thoughts. He was also lauded for his extreme intelligence. Despite this, he did not want to go to college, and did not seem to particularly like it there. Their family is outside of Vancouver, where he and his sister grew up, and he apparently dreaded even the airplane trip across Canada just to start college.

With Kenley's worldly experience at a young age, and his perceived aloofness, and the timing of a weekend, even though he lived in an enormous skyscraper of a dormitory on the campus, and his sister also being there, he was not detected to be missing until at least three days later - depending on whose timeline you believe. It was originally believed that he just decided to drop out of college, and clandestinely left - without telling anyone.

In my opinion, the documentary was done very well...from a technical standpoint. It is a total of five hours long, and the makers of the documentary really did their research, and obviously spent a lot of time and resources travelling and spending a lot of time with all of the people involved. This documentary is a true documentary, because it covers - in extreme depth and detail - all of the people involved, and it has those personalities relaying the evidence to you, via their own testimonials.

It is also quite cinematic in a lot of parts. There were sections of the documentary that directly reminded me of the first season of True Detective.

But, in my opinion, it is not a good documentary because it unbelievably runs off of the tracks the last two episodes. If you stopped watching this documentary after the first three episodes, you really do not miss anything. If anything, they could have spent those last two episodes exploring other options and avenues.

Here comes my main critique. The last two episodes center entirely on a separate family, named Saunders. The disappearance happened in 1992. Then, somewhere around 2006, a son in the Saunders family named Jason confessed to his mother that he killed Kenley back then - when they were both students at Acadia. This was supposedly over a girl.

The mother tells her brother - Jason's uncle - about this, and the uncle talks to Jason about it. Jason also gives a vaguely-worded response about it to the uncle. Then, the mother and uncle talk to their two sisters about it. Then, about ten years later, sometime around 2016 (I believe that the documentary was already being made by that point) the uncle confesses to a private investigator about what his nephew told him ten years ago. Then Jason gets a sex change, changes his name to Erin Smith, moves away, cuts off contact with the family, and moves in with a boyfriend.

I mention this last part only because the documentary seemed to try to make a huge deal out of the sexualities of the various people "involved". Was Kenly gay, or bisexual? Was Jason gay, bisexual, trans, or purposely did the transition just to hide? Was there some sort of love or sex triangle between Kenley, Jason, and this other girl?

If you are confused, that's because it is. They spend in inordinate amount of time asking these questions to the various people in the documentary, and just hypothetically. Most of the people say stuff like, "Maybe. Probably not. I never saw anything like that. But it's possible, I guess." But, even with these lukewarm responses, and absolutely no evidence (they don't even name this other girl that supposedly was the source of a fight between Kenley and Jason), they harp on it for the last two hours worth of episodes of the mini-series.

On top of that, yes, the RCMP is as worthless as you ever see them in any true crime setting in Canada. But, I walked away with actual sympathy for the RCMP, after seeing all of the personalities involved.

Come to find out, you realize, if you pay attention, that the mother of Jason, uncle, and other two aunts pretty much subconsciously fabricated the whole thing. The way it happened was that the mother said something to the uncle about something that Jason said off-handedly. The two of them speculate. The uncle then talked to Jason about it, and the uncle way over-thinks Jason's response. Then, the mother and uncle talk about it with the two aunts, and more speculation happens. All this speculation becomes "fact" that they get the RCMP and private investigators involved with.

By the end of all of the four of their stories, when these "confessions" had to be put to paper with the RCMP and the private investigators, there are several instances where they reiterate back to, say, the uncle about something he said in his statement. The uncle says that he never said that. That the mother told him that. So, they then go to the mother, and she says that she didn't say that either. That one of the aunts told her that. Then the aunts point back to the uncle.

It is so frustrating and confusing to watch. But, one solid thing that I got out of that whole fracas is that it demonstrated how easily an investigation like this fails when you get the more and more people involved. I got a real and true understanding of how investigators have to decide what to believe, and what to dismiss. Yes, that is an artform - not a science - and mistakes are made with these rash judgments. But, jeez, when you see how this family pretty much took over the whole case with their nonsense, you can see the type of shenanigans that investigators have to navigate.

The other thing that I did not like is that, obviously, the mother of the missing student, Kenley, is featured prominently throughout the documentary. Her name is Sarah MacDonald.

(Sidebar: This documentary features many people from broken families, so last names in this case are suggestions at best.)

Yes, she is a grieving mother who has been looking for her son for the past three decades. But, she is allowed to get away with so many shenanigans herself, only because of how the RCMP treated the case.

I'll specify. I hate it in general when law enforcement tells the parents of a victim that they "know" that they got their guy. They "know" that he did it. Then, after that suspect is arrested and goes on trial, if that suspect is found to be not-guilty, it is heart-wrenching to see all the anger from the family. But they were "promised" a conviction. They were "guaranteed" that this suspect murdered their child. And it makes the law enforcement look immature and stupid.

The same thing happened here. The RCMP was probably just trying to be very careful in dealing with an elderly mother who has been looking for her son for the past three decades, but there were obvious times where they needed to shut her down, but did not. She's taking it upon herself to confront members of this other Saunders family - because she chose to believe their wacky stories. She's trespassing on other peoples' private properties, looking for her son's body. She's calling the police and RCMP and demanding that the son Jason be arrested that day. Ugh.

Anyway, that's my whole critique. I'm pretty picky with these types of stories and documentaries. But, I don't think I'm being unreasonable with this critique here. But, I am sure that I am forgetting something, or missed something. I would love to hear what other people have to say about it.

What do I think happened to Kenley? Kenley had a motorcycle. There were also credible encounters with Kenley after he went missing. I don't remember it being mentioned what happened to the motorcycle. So, I do think he dropped out of college. Stayed in the area for a bit, then just took off on his motorcycle. But, Canada is a huge place. If he didn't assume a new identity, cut ties with his family, and move to Costa Rica, then I think he probably died somewhere out on the prairies of Canada due to some accident or poor planning.