Travis Moore explores whether or not the FBI failed the missing child, Karlie Guse

Law enforcement’s role in Karlie’s disappearance has become the subject of much scrutiny. A common misconception is that Mono County Sheriff’s Office was insufficient in their response. In reality, Karlie was afforded considerable professional search and rescue resources. MCSO also formed and dispatched a twenty officer “hotshot” team with the objective of raiding homes and/or locations where Karlie could have been kept, either willingly or not. Even into early November, twenty-two days after Karlie had gone missing, Sheriff Braun arranged for Kern County to provide additional SAR services. Karlie’s case benefited from the assistance of many agencies due to, among other reasons, its particular location and notable geography. Despite its importance, the geography from where Karlie disappeared has been under reported or omitted completely by other media. It is this unique geography that needs to be explained in order to understand why there was a massive multi-agency effort to find Karlie. I will attach a link to my previous article that describes the area in depth.

A partial list of involved law enforcement agencies includes: Mono County, Bishop PD, Kern County, Lake Tahoe PD, Inyo County, and the FBI. It’s public knowledge that the FBI has been involved in forensic analysis of electronic devices, polygraphs, and determining whether there is evidence that Karlie has crossed state lines. While we don’t have access to the status and results of electronic device analysis or polygraphs, we do know that Mono County has maintained jurisdiction. With deductive reasoning, this leads one to believe that there is no evidence of Karlie traveling over 30 miles north and across the Nevada border which, in turn, dictates and greatly reduces possible search areas. 

Related: Riddle of the Roads: In Search of Karlie Guse, Part III

I was skeptical of Boone from the moment that he announced himself on social media as Lindsay Fairley’s PI. I took note of his unprofessional behavior and, in general, I wasn’t impressed with him. It wasn’t until early December that he really made it onto my radar and I became suspicious of his abilities and, even more so, of his intentions. 

The paradox between what was given the most public attention and what the evidence most pointed towards, is striking. While case followers focus on abduction, sex trafficking, and foul play; the most evidence, being Karlie’s scent and three confirmed witness sightings, points towards Karlie continuing, disoriented, into the desert. Karlie left without her phone, glasses, ID, purse/wallet, a car gifted to her by her parents, a job working with family, and $2000 in savings. At this time, there is no indication that Karlie was abducted, trafficked, nor a victim of foul play – yet three PIs were allocated into this, purely hypothetical, compartment of the investigation in which there exists no evidence. 

The effort (or lack thereof) that PI’s, Michael Boone and Lynda Bergh, have put towards finding Karlie, pales in comparison to the effort that they put into sabotaging searches. The number of searches, agencies, and volunteers that Michael Boone has halted, impeded, and/or discouraged from searching for Karlie, continues to grow. Setting aside Boone’s indulgence in spending much of his time on social media and discussing confidential case information with a variety of online profiles that have no connection to Karlie’s case, there remains a long list of erroneous and, often times, criminal behavior.

See Also: Virtual Lynch Mob: Open Letter to Lynda Bergh

In the Best Interest of a child?

The day that we located an area of soil, scat, and teen sized thong underwear that the human remains detection K9 alerted on, was the exact same day of Boone’s first attempt (with the help of Debra Petritsch) at doxxing myself, a volunteer searcher, and a search coordinator for Karlie Guse. To put it more simply, while we spent hours walking the desert and searching for Karlie, Boone was committing crimes on Facebook from the comfort of his home. Nothing captures the reality of Michael Boone’s conduct, quite like the incomparablity it has to the real work that the volunteers and the community do for Karlie.

Oddly enough, if it weren’t for Debra Petritsch harassing me on my personal cell number, we wouldn’t have been able to track and trace Boone’s criminal record. Because of shared PO Box addresses, all authenticated records on Boone are confirmed to be his – down to the last 4 of his social security number. 

Further telling, or troubling – depending on how one views it, was when Boone pulled the record of a different Travis Moore in Texas, assuming it was me. His complete ineptitude to function as a private investigator was beginning to show itself, and it wasn’t long before he established himself as an equally atrocious human. 

In the lulls between lab testing, volunteer’s own lives, budgets, and schedules – research was done into Boone’s history. We were attempting to, not only understand the psychology of a man who harasses search volunteers of a missing child’s case, but also to gauge his instability and threat level to Karlie searchers in general. Boone is nothing if not consistent. As it turned out, his tactics of smearing his adversaries are not a newly acquired ability, and his pattern of using threats, public shaming, and doxxing goes back many years and includes many victims.

Diary of Madman

We discovered, on Michael Boone’s lengthy record, a domestic violence report that involved two girlfriends, an argument over a cell phone, and legal documents describing Boone choking a female. His victim is quoted as follows: “He (Michael Boone) then proceeded to place both of his hands around my neck and choked me for approximately 5 seconds in which I could not breathe. I attempted to hold on to the cellphone and he finally released his hands from my neck… I walked to the bathroom mirror and witnessed red marks from where he had placed his hands to choke me. I told him that he had just committed an act of domestic violence against me.” 

Strangulation in California is defined as “intentionally stopping someone from breathing normally or ceasing someone’s normal breathing or blood flow by blocking the airways or by pressing on the throat…potentially resulting in death or serious injuries”. Boone’s female victim suffered this experience, and with the Republic of California’s most updated statutes under The Diana Gonzalez Strangulation Prevention Act of 2011, it is now considered a much more serious crime. Just the “act” of strangulation could be considered either a “traumatic condition” of another misdemeanor or felony crime enhancing it to be felony punishable up to six years in prison, or as it is an attempt by an abuser to end their victim’s life; which is attempted murder. It’s quite clear that those whom Boone feels threatened by, are at risk of a lethal response.

Further reading into the case revealed Boone’s strategy: oppression by any means necessary. He was successful in ultimately denying his victim justice, employing tactics that leaned towards the obscene, often called “slut shaming“. In a flagrant attempt to intimidate her from going forward and seeking the protection of the courts, Boone wore her down with nonstop degradation. He submitted dozens of filings to the court that contained embarrassing, sexual, or humiliating information about his victim. Boone is morally bankrupt, and he stopped at nothing to evade the justice that he was due.

The parallels of this strategy are unmistakably evident in Boone’s attempt to smear the reputations of volunteer searchers and to deter search efforts for Karlie. They need to be understood. Boone is not above harassment, slander, and creating fictions for no other purpose than to keep his actions clandestine from the law. Boone should not be permitted anywhere near Karlie’s case, or any other case for that matter.

The fact that local law enforcement refused to share information or work with Boone is a testament to his character and professionalism. His past is a jumble of lawsuits, sexual harassment claims, domestic violence, allegations of non-payment by adult film actresses & employees in security, decades of work in the porn industry; he has accrued upwards of one million dollars in debt, and has countless business failings. It’s hardly surprising that he couldn’t get his foot in the door with the department that is handling Karlie’s disappearance. He obviously posed a risk to the case and his client. We have laws in place to protect our children from pornographers, and I am of the opinion that pornographers have no place involving themselves in tracking the whereabouts of missing teenage girls.

The greatest gift that Michael Boone has given to the missing person’s advocacy and true crime communities, is that he serves as a benchmark example of the grief hustler that families, and loved ones of the missing, should be wary of approaching them in their vulnerable situation.

A question that we are frequently asked, here at ACJ, is “How does focusing on the PI’s help Karlie?” This article is our answer. Exposing frauds on a missing child’s case, leads to increasing the chance of solvency. Exposing lies told by those frauds, leads to a greater understanding of the raw truth of a case. We will continue to pursue the truth.

This is my final article regarding the PIs. They have no correlation to Karlie or her search efforts. Unquestionably, they never focused on finding Karlie, but instead obsessed with harassing volunteers who were actually doing real life work to find her. They made no positive contribution; they were just an obstacle for searchers to overcome because finding Karlie was more urgent. Future writings will highlight genuine heroes that are working for Karlie and towards a resolution. Those heroes are part of Karlie’s true story, the early case chasing PI’s, simply, are not.

“Damnatio memoriae”