The Body in the Recycling Yard

On April 28, 2013, workers at a recycling transfer facility in Wilmington, California were sorting through household recyclables—milk containers, toilet paper rolls—when they found the decomposed body of a young man. The discovery was so unexpected that the Los Angeles Police Department initially treated it as a local case. But documents found in the victim's pocket pointed to Ogden, Utah, and the investigation took a sharp turn. The dead man was Ryan Bush, a 20-year-old who had been living in Ogden and had gone missing thirteen days earlier. Twelve years later, his mother still has no answers about how her son ended up in a trash compactor two states away.

A Life Interrupted

Ryan Bush had only just turned twenty when he disappeared. His mother Tina Ross describes him as kind-hearted, someone who loved his siblings and played football. But at the time of his disappearance, he was struggling. According to Ogden Deputy Police Chief Tyler Ziegler, who was a detective on the case, Ryan had been staying at a local motel until his paid time expired, then became homeless. "He was just using the library to have internet access and communicate with those that he knew," Ziegler said. "He would occasionally stay with them in their homes for a night or two, but he didn't have a permanent home."