In 2018, 25-year-old Marshal Iwaasa left his hometown of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, and enrolled at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, which was about two hours away.
For the past six years, he had been working construction and manual labor jobs. He wanted to study computer programming and get a job that didn’t require so much physical exertion.
On November 17, 2019, he vanished while on his way to his storage unit. Later, his truck was found deep in the woods and had been set on fire. While his disappearance was suspicious, there was not enough evidence for the police to consider the case a criminal matter.
That day, Marshal traveled from school back to Lethbridge. At around 10:30 p.m., he stopped by his mom’s house. She urged him to stay the night instead of making the drive all the way back to school at night.
He told her that he had things he needed to take care of at school. Then, he went to his storage unit to pick up a few items. It was the last time anyone ever saw him.
On November 26, the authorities found Marshal’s truck at a remote trailhead in a forest outside Pemberton, British Columbia, which is a 14-hour drive from Lethbridge.
His belongings were scattered at the scene, and his truck had been severely burned. The tires had melted, and the paint had peeled off. There was no sign of Marshal in or around the vehicle.
After investigators discovered that Marshal had withdrawn from school, they ruled his case a suicide. However, Marshal’s family insisted that he would never harm himself or drive his truck nearly four miles into the forest. Since the police were no help, they took matters into their own hands and started searching for surveillance footage.
The storage center no longer had the surveillance tapes for November 17 and 18, but they confirmed that Marshal had entered the wrong code to gain access to the facility multiple times throughout the night.
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Just after 6 a.m. on November 18, he finally unlocked the unit and stayed there for about two hours. Nobody knows what happened after that.
Marshal’s family inspected his storage unit but found nothing unusual. They also checked in with gas stations and businesses along the most likely route from Lethbridge to Pemberton, but they lacked surveillance footage on those days.
Authorities called off their search for Marshal on December 4, 2019. The next summer, Marshal’s family, a team of searchers, and the private investigator they hired hiked to where his truck was discovered. The truck was still there, but the private investigator noticed an open Zippo lighter wedged in between the seat and the console of the truck.
The discovery made it clear that the fire had been set on purpose. A cadaver dog was used to search a three-mile area around Marshal’s truck, but nothing was found.
One strange clue cropped up when Marshal’s family sent occasional messages to Marshal’s Snapchat account as a way to express their grief. They realized that some of the messages were being opened.
If you have any information about Marshal’s disappearance, you can call the Lethbridge, British Columbia, Police Department at 403-328-4444.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
