In 1994 Little Josh Disappeared From Forsyth, Missouri — And I Finally Know What Really Happened To Him

I was shocked I didn’t hear from Krista during my entire drive home. It was all I could think about as I wound the near hour on the highway and fought back the urge to snag her wallet out of her clutch and do some investigating.

I battled that urge until I got home, but once I was placed back into the half-buzzed monotony of my little house on the edge of town, I couldn’t fight it anymore. I dove into Krista’s clutch, splayed out her wallet and started to dissect its contents. I’m not proud, but at least I’m honest.

The first thing which jumped out at me was the name and picture on Krista’s Oklahoma state driver’s license. Her first name was exact, but her last name was listed as Gunderson and her picture looked much different than what she looked like in the flesh back at the church. In her driver’s license photo, she had one of those god-awful haircuts where everything is long except one buzzed side and her hair was a deep red, almost maroon.

This was all excusable. It was very possibly Krista had been married and divorced a time or two and every lady is entitled to a new look. I added the Oklahoma license into that category as well. Krista had only talked about being from Kansas and recently moving to Missouri, but maybe there was something in her past she didn’t want to talk about. The amount of times I thought about completely changing my life and taking my cousin Desi’s offers to join her as a truck stop stripper down in Arkansas haunted me in my sleep. Who was I to judge?

I am no angel. The suspicions sparked by the inconsistencies in on Krista’s license were enough to send me to my laptop to do a little Googling about her, and her story of her murdered son, Christian.

My temperature and heart rate started to rise when “Christian Hansen murder,” “Christian Hansen Kansas murder,” “Christian Gunderson murder,” “Christian Gunderson Kansas murder,” and pretty much every other combination of search I tried came up with nothing. Anything in general for Krista Hansen and Krista Gunderson and a murder and a child murder in Kansas City produced absolutely nothing.

My initial thought was Krista was a fraud. Someone who for some reasons decides pretending to have a child who was murdered was a good thing for them to do. She wouldn’t be the first. Our group had already been infiltrated by a couple of them. It was so common we actually came up with the name “widiots” for them. We didn’t like them, but they were pretty much harmless and went always away as soon as we called them out on it.

I dove further into my research of Krista. I found a Facebook profile for a Krista Gunderson in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but it was private and her only visible picture was of a cat. Fuck, I hated those ultra-private on Facebook people. Just don’t have a profile at all if you don’t want anyone to stalk you online. I tried everything I could to see if I could find a picture, or more info on that Krista Gunderson profile – stalking everyone with the last name Gunderson on her friend’s list. Stalking the seven people who liked her profile picture, but it was all for not. I was out of options.

Then my phone rang and jarred me back into the non-digital world and sent me at least an inch off of my computer chair seat.

I checked my phone. It was Krista calling.

Jack has written professionally as a journalist, fiction writer, and ghost writer. For more information, visit his website.

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