Three years after a Victoria man vanished from his Fairfield-Gonzales home, a new podcast delves into his disappearance.
Ian Indridson was last seen in the early morning hours of Jan. 10, 2022, when he woke his wife as he tossed and turned in bed. Plagued with recent insomnia, he went to sleep in a spare bedroom.
Indridson, 54, always got up first to walk and feed their dog before he woke up his wife, Gloria Mendez, around 7:30 a.m.
But when Mendez woke up alone shortly before 8 a.m. and found the dog had been fed and a fresh pot of coffee on, she immediately knew something was wrong. Indridson had left behind his wallet, keys and phone.
Friday marks three years since Indridson’s disappearance and Mendez still doesn’t know what happened to her partner of 17 years.
Victoria police said it cannot provide an update on its investigation but the file remains active.
A seventh season of Laura Palmer’s Island Crime called looks into Indridson’s disappearance. The first of six episodes launches Jan. 24 and more episodes will be released weekly.
Palmer took up Indridson’s story after being contacted by a close friend of Indridson and then Mendez, who asked her to dig into his disappearance.
“My hope is it brings some answers and some healing,” Palmer said.
Listeners will hear from many of Indridson’s colleagues in 小蓝视频 government communications, where he worked for 25 years, much of that time in the Ministry of the Attorney General.
He was described by many as a “rock star” at the top of his game, and a gifted writer who knew his materials inside and out, Palmer said.
The podcast features interviews with Mendez, a friend from university, two private investigators hired by his family, a drone operator who may have had a sighting of Indridson, people involved in searching for him and experts on anxiety and drowning.
At the time of his disappearance, Indridson had started a new job and the change brought on anxiety Mendez had never seen in him. He began sleeping just an hour or two a night.
The new stress is very likely part of why Indridson walked away, Palmer said.
“But what that means and what happened afterwards, who knows?” she said.
His loved ones are aware it’s possible Indridson took his own life, but they say that would be completely out of character for him, she said.
A spokesperson for Anxiety Canada interviewed for the podcast explains how irrational one’s mind becomes during a state of high anxiety.
“So for people to say it would be so unlike Ian to die by suicide, it wouldn’t really be Ian’s brain running the show at that point, by the sounds of it, if he is as anxious as he appears to have been. That said, there’s no evidence of it,” Palmer said.
The other theory is that Indridson simply walked away from his life and is still alive.
He was fascinated with stories of people who started over in their lives. A shelf of his favourite books is filled with stories of people who went off grid to start fresh, including one called The Man Who Quit Money, which tells the story of a man who spent 10 years living in caves in Utah, Palmer said.
Indridson, who grew up in a fairly wealthy family, was extremely frugal and quite concerned about money. He became increasingly interested in the idea of quitting money, she said.
“Maybe he did just decide to go and try it, living out on his own,” Palmer said.
Ultimately, Palmer doesn’t come to a conclusion about what happened to Indridson, but leaves it to listeners to form their own opinions.
“It’s such a mystery,” she said.
Anyone with information on Indridson’s disappearance should call VicPD and reference file number 22-1017.
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