Marshal Iwaasa, a 26-year-old Canadian man from Lethbridge, Alberta vanished on November 17, 2019, under strange and troubling circumstances. His disappearance grabbed national attention after his burned truck was discovered more than 1,000 kilometers away near Pemberton, British Columbia. Despite years of searching, no trace of him has ever been found.
Early Life and Background
Marshal Iwaasa was born on January 3, 1993. He grew up in Lethbridge and went to Winston Churchill High School, where friends described him as quiet, smart and kind. After graduation, he studied computer science at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary.
But after being placed on academic probation, he quietly dropped out, not even telling his family. Looking back, it seemed like he might have been going through more than anyone knew.
In the months before he went missing, Marshal seemed stressed, though no one knows exactly why. His family later found out he had stopped renewing his cellphone plan which made communication harder. These little details—his stress, his silence, his cut-off phone—would only make the mystery deeper once he disappeared.
The Day He Vanished
On November 17, 2019, Marshal visited his mother’s house in Lethbridge. He told her he was going to his storage unit to pick up computer gear, then planned to drive back to Calgary. Everything seemed normal. But that night didn’t unfold as expected.
Security footage later showed him trying multiple times to access the storage unit before finally getting inside around 6 a.m. on November 18. He spent more than two hours there, though no one knows what he was doing.
Around 8:30 a.m., his phone pinged near the storage area—then went silent. That was the last time anyone heard from him. No one saw him leave and no one knows if he met anyone.
Six days later, on November 23, hikers near the Brian Waddington Hut outside Pemberton stumbled upon something eerie. Deep in a rugged area at the end of a logging road, they found a burned-out truck. When police arrived, they identified it as Marshal’s dark blue 2009 GMC Sierra. The scene was baffling, the CTV News reports.
Scattered near the wreck were his personal belongings—his ID, clothes, laptop and three smashed cellphones. Even stranger, some of the items didn’t belong to him. The hikers couldn’t call for help right away because there was no signal, so they reported it the next day.
The truck’s location raised countless questions. The site was nearly a 14-hour drive from Lethbridge and Calgary. Marshal had no known reason to go there, no friends or family nearby and no known interest in the area. The discovery felt almost impossible to explain.
Disturbances at the Scene
When hikers first photographed the truck, their images didn’t match what police later released. Some items were missing or moved and certain details in the photos suggested the scene had been disturbed.
When Marshal’s family visited the area in 2020, they noticed even more inconsistencies. Truck parts that were there before were now gone.
Years later, in 2023, the family got heartbreaking news. The truck—one of the last physical links to Marshal—was removed from the trailhead. Authorities cut it into pieces and took it to a landfill. His family said they had hoped the vehicle could still hold clues or forensic evidence that might explain what happened.
Right after the truck was found, authorities launched search efforts around the area. Teams used drones, dogs and ground searches to look for signs of Marshal. But after a few weeks, the searches stopped. By early December 2019, official efforts were suspended due to lack of evidence.
Marshal’s family refused to give up. They created a Facebook group that quickly gathered thousands of members sharing tips and support. They also hired a private investigator to dig deeper. The investigator’s findings added a disturbing twist: the truck fire had been intentionally set—it was arson, according to CBC.
That discovery shifted the family’s belief that something criminal had happened but officially, the RCMP continued treating it as a missing person case, not a crime. This classification made gathering evidence harder. Without a criminal label, police didn’t process the truck for fingerprints or DNA.
Clues That Didn’t Add Up
Marshal’s family kept pushing investigators to take another look. They pointed out several red flags. His bank cards hadn’t been used after early November—no withdrawals, gas purchases, nothing. There was no record of him buying fuel for the 1,000-kilometer drive to British Columbia.
They also tried to get surveillance footage from gas stations along possible routes but were denied without police involvement. Because the case wasn’t classified as criminal, those requests went nowhere.
The family grew increasingly frustrated. “We still don’t have any answers, but we know Marshal wouldn’t just disappear like this,” a family member said.
The Lethbridge Police Service acknowledged how unusual the case was. Still, they released a statement saying, “there is no credible, corroborated or compelling evidence to suggest foul play or that the matter is criminal in nature.”
That statement didn’t sit well with the family. To them, the burned truck, missing parts and lack of financial activity didn’t look like someone who just wanted to vanish. Their calls for a criminal investigation continued but official responses stayed cautious and limited.
Media Attention and Similar Cases
As time passed, the case began to attract national and international media coverage. It was featured in the Paramount Plus documentary series Never Seen Again, as well as on CBS and Discovery Plus. Several podcasts also revisited the story, dissecting the timeline and strange details.
Interestingly, other young men have gone missing in nearby regions of British Columbia, some in similar remote areas. Two of those cases have since been confirmed as homicides. While investigators said there’s no proven connection to Iwaasa’s case, the similarities have fueled speculation online and among true-crime communities.
Still, nothing concrete links those disappearances to Marshal’s. His case remains uniquely puzzling, especially because of the evidence that was either lost, moved or destroyed.
The Family’s Fight for Answers
Five years later, Marshal Iwaasa’s family is still trying hard to find answers. Every year, they organize searches, talk to the news and ask the police to treat the case like a crime. Each time they get a new lead, they hope it will finally bring them closer to finding him but so far, there haven’t been any real clues about where he went.
For them, the burned truck remains the biggest question mark. If it was truly arson, who set it on fire—and why? And how did it end up in such a remote mountain area that Marshal had no known reason to visit?
Their private investigator remains convinced that someone tried to cover their tracks. But without physical evidence or witnesses, the investigation has hit a wall. “We still believe something happened to Marshal that night,” his family said. “He didn’t just walk away.”
As a local search officer said, “Each disappearance challenges us to look deeper, but without tangible leads, the path forward remains unclear.”
As of today, Marshal Iwaasa remains missing.
