By Pepper Fisher
CLALLAM COUNTY – The ongoing search for 41-year-old Joshua Simiskey, missing since October of 2019, recently yielded new information by way of a hand drawn map that claimed he was buried on a property on Kacee Way in Port Angeles. Despite a massive dig by law enforcement using an excavator, no body was found.
The Sheriff’s Chief Criminal Deputy Brian King describes the creator of the map as homeless and his whereabouts unknown, though a search is ongoing. Simiskey’s former wife, Wendy Lamb, told us the family got the map via social media from a friend who knows the man that drew it. That man told them Joshua was shot and buried in that location.
The twists and turns in the case have been baffling for investigators and maddening for Simiskey’s family. He traveled to the area sometime in 2019, in a vehicle he owned, after being kicked out of his father’s house. His mother, Janey Marvin, says he was homeless and addicted to drugs at the time of his disappearance.
On October 7 that year, an Olympic National Park Ranger gave him a courtesy ride and dropped him off in the Shadow Mountain area of the Park. He reportedly was barefoot and not outfitted for camping but refused any further assistance from the Ranger.
During this time, Marvin traveled to Port Angeles from her home in Utah hoping to find her son after learning he’d called his father and said he’d given everything he owned to a woman and her friends, who “wanted him gone.” He told his father he “needed a getaway car quick”.
Marvin says she found the woman driving her son’s car and using his debit card. Investigators have made no arrests.
About a month later, police say a citizen reported that she had spoken with Simiskey at the Burger King restaurant in Sequim and asked him if he was the missing person on flyers she’d seen. The woman told police that he confirmed his identity but said that he did not want contact with anyone. Other employees of the restaurant corroborated the story.
Since that time, Marvin has created a Facebook page called Finding Joshua and is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to his whereabouts.
Deputy King says the map of the purported burial site pointed to a well-known homeless camp on private property that had been cleared out earlier this year. He says they got the map from Janey Marvin, executed a search warrant, and “excavated a very large area, much larger than where the map indicated he may have been buried, and did not discover a body or any additional evidence.”
Lamb says the family has reason to believe investigators dug in the wrong spot on the property.
“With the landowner going out there in the property, what it looks to her is they dug 20 feet too far towards the street, from where the layout of the…all the stuff that was on the property was. And there was cadaver dogs and they signaled down in that area, but water runs down. And like, I talked to a dog handler and then an echo-search program, and all these different things that said if there’s water, and the dog signals, gravity runs water down. So we’re kind of thinking of going out and digging some more.”
Deputy King disagrees, and told us they left the digging area exposed for the family to observe if they’d like and to avoid digging in the same area should they need to return.
“Yeah, we’ll work on continuing to find the author of the map that came in to the Sheriff’s Office possession from Josh’s family. And detectives will continue to follow up on that case. And if there becomes a point in our investigation where we need to return to the property, we most certainly will.”
Investigators are releasing no other details on the case at this time.
(Photos of Joshua submitted by family. Excavation photo from CCSO)