Transcript of "It's Not A Cold Case" — Father's 2,000-Mile Journey To Find Missing Son New

Criminally Obsessed
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00:00:00

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Cribsly Obsessed. I'm Ann Emerson. A father is pushing for change in the way we search for missing persons when every single second counts. We're seeing the search for Nancy Guthrie unfold, and we know there are so many missing persons cases in the United States. In fact, as many as 600,000 are reported annually, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Person System, or NAMUS. So what do we do? According to David Robinson, laws need to change now, right now. He's the father of Daniel Robinson, a 23-year-old geologist who went missing in the desert of Buckeye, Arizona, back in 2021. Let's get into it. David, it is so good to have you on this show. Thank you so much for joining us.

00:00:54

Thank you so much for having me.

00:00:55

David, your search for your son has led you to really helping other families and pushing for big changes. Do you believe this will bring more missing persons home, the work you're doing right now?

00:01:10

Yes. Every area, everything that we can do collectively, when I say collectively, everyone plays a part in finding our missing loved ones. And what I'm trying to do here is another part of that to increase the opportunities for families and the awareness of what's happening in our country.

00:01:30

Yeah. And David, tell me, let's start with today, what you're working on right now. Tell us about the Help Find Missing Americans Act or the Daniel Robinson law, right?

00:01:40

Yeah. I wrote this legislation when I was in Arizona searching for Daniel, speaking with a lot of families who have missing loved ones, the pain that they're going through, what we're going through as a family, trying to find solutions to one of the problems that still remaining in my son's case is getting a cell phone ping data. And also we already know that things like that is crucial when it's done really quickly. And some of the hindrance when it comes to law enforcement as well as families are getting that data is the issue if it's not a criminal case. For instance, law enforcement's hands are tied a lot of times for a judge to give a warrant. And also we have telecommunication companies that have their privacy policies to other policies and retention times that allow us to use technology that's available here in 2026. Between time of searching for Daniel, try to learn how to write legislation, how to write a bill. And I was able to accomplish that, write a bill for our federal government and That's the birth of Daniel Robinson law.

00:02:48

That's amazing. I mean, this work is so important and could make an impact for so many people. What has been the... So So far, what has been the feedback that you're getting?

00:03:03

Well, I get a lot of feedback from families, more so than anyone. I have a family that I'm working with now. Their daughter went missing in California. And that Dane Russell law would have been very important in this case as well. Parents are on news channels crying out for that very exact thing. Hey, law force will tell us that we have to have a warrant just to go to get that data. And they're crying out like, Look, we need something different. We need something to change for that. That shouldn't be a hindrance. Families will come out to me and express their need for this bill.

00:03:42

Well, and this is such a personal journey for you, isn't it? Can you take us back to 2021 and tell us about your son, Daniel's case?

00:03:52

Yes. It was the most devastating day, of course, right here in my home when I received that phone call in my spot that Daniel, even though everyone know that I like to sit outside. It changed our life as a family. It changed our life. My daughter called and someone was looking to see if Daniel was at her apartment and see if he was home, those type of things. Just the pain of not knowing what's going on at that day and at the same time not getting the answers I really needed from law enforcement when I called. It was really rough. It was really rough just even trying to navigate that, what to first, how to do it, and things like that. So I can say, yes, back in 2021, when it first happened, when Danny first went missing, was the biggest and the most devastating day of my life.

00:04:40

How did you find out that your son was missing?

00:04:43

Yes, I had received a phone call from my daughter. She was very disturbed about someone coming to her apartment looking for Daniel. He expressed that he was one of Daniel's co-worker. He'd been with Daniel before to her place. She probably didn't remember. And that he She told her that Daniel was last seen at his work site. He just took off and no one saw him again. And so, of course, she was devastated by that. And she called me. And, of course, being a father, the first thing I had to do was try to get her calm. We all know that we have to do our diligence first. I mean, go check, see if he's home, make sure he's okay, call all his friends. His mother and I are divorced, but I was able to call her and her husband to see if they heard from them. Things like So we did those first. And, of course, no one heard from Daniel. That was the first indication that something was wrong when we got to that point. I sent his daughter, his sister, my daughter, over to his apartment to see if he was there. And when she got there, she said, Hey, his vehicle is gone.

00:05:48

She saw a little light on inside. She could look through the blinds of his patio and see a light on the living room. But his door is locked, for instance, and she was knocking it. She was trying to see if he was in there, but no answer. Those indications was really hard for us, especially with friends and family. No one have heard from Daniel that day. But then when I look at the time difference, a three-hour time difference from Arizona to South Carolina, And it was over six hours. And I know Daniel. I'm a single parent raising Daniel, his brother, his sisters. And I know the way he thinks and what he does in the day. For instance, he talked to his siblings almost every day. He talked to me at least two or three times a week. We talk for over two hours. Daniel always tell us where he's going. He always tell us his plans, if he have any travel plans, things like that. So without all of that, we knew something was wrong, and that was the first indication to at least start off with a welfare check and then also ended up putting in a missing person report.

00:06:52

David, you're thousands of miles away. I mean, it strikes terror in me as a parent. I just had my 20-year-old over in California for a week, and you're constantly wanting to know that they're okay.

00:07:07

That's right. That's right, yes. That 2,000 miles away. When I had to go search for Daniel, I heard that language of law enforcement, and I started driving. My mind just went away, and I just did what's natural to me being a former truck driver. I just threw everything in my vehicle and just started driving. And that's when that 2,000 miles became so real. I wasn't getting there fast enough. And just being that far away, you'd be proud. Before, Daniel, we're missing, of course, as a parent, I'm proud that my children had decided to spread their wings while I tell them when they were younger and see what the world is all about, see what the country is all about, be able to be independent. But like you said, as a parent, it's really hard to be away from your children that distance apart, especially in a situation like what happened with Daniel.

00:07:58

When you were driving across 2,000 miles and you're trying to get to Arizona, I'm sure you're having plenty of conversations. Are you talking to the police about where they're investigating and what they're looking for?

00:08:08

Yes. One of the things is trying to get information myself, but trying to provide all the information that we can to law enforcement. You can imagine, yes, driving and speaking to law enforcement, talking to Daniel's job, his coworker, his supervisor, trying to even get contact with the owner of the company, just getting details of Their safety mechanism, the things they do, what they are doing, those type things, what could be done. And so, yes, trying to handle all of that and drive at the same time, it made that journey rougher to even navigate.

00:08:45

And what were the roadblocks that you were facing? Besides the time difference, and then you're in the car, and then you're just trying to get there, what were the roadblocks that you were not getting information, or you felt like you were getting stymied?

00:08:59

This initial thing that caused me to jump in my car in the first place, coming from South Carolina, I smile about that because I was a kid. I knew how things were before. There was cell phone, so I could tell you how old I am, that we had to deal with law enforcement as a child. Just hearing that language that was given to me about Daniel, I didn't see no urgency. They said, Hey, we put them in the NCISC database, and they explained to me that, Hey, look, if you get pulled over, it's a law enforcement that can see his tag, and it all may come on their dash that someone's looking for him, basically. And it wasn't the urgency to say, Hey, he's an endangered person. Even under the circumstances, we need to send that helicopter out there, because I did ask for that night when Daniel went missing, And they denied that, said they were going to do it in the morning. But then after that, they denied it again, said to higher up, said he's a grown man. He could disappear if you want to. That language is what caused me to get in the car.

00:09:56

Also, as I was driving, trying to still I wish for law enforcement to get a bird in the air to go search for him. It wasn't happening. To get some things done, maybe to the news cycles, the local news, those things weren't being done. Trying to get information that I can from his coworkers and his job, I've got some of that, and that was some of the blessing from his job. They gave me some ideas about where he went missing. It wasn't else a snoring desert. So that's when I first heard. But it was really hard. It was really hard trying to get do anything from law enforcement at that point.

00:10:32

Because your son was a geologist. I mean, he was where he was supposed to be. He was at the job site. He's in the desert. He's working on what he needs to be working on. And nobody knows like a parent does when that radar goes off. It's urgent immediately. You know that people aren't where they're supposed to be, and we got to move.

00:10:51

Yeah, and it is. One thing is just hearing what his coworkers, what his boss told me. Ken Elliott is the guy that Daniel was going out there to meet. He was telling me this story at the time when I was driving what was told to him. Just hearing some of that language, like you said, as a parent, knowing your child, those things didn't match with his personality who he is as a person. Those things stood out to me on that journey to Arizona. So the only thing I can think of in my head at the time, I needed to go speak with Ken, and we had to look eye to eye, father to father, if he's a father. He had to tell me exactly the same thing what law enforcement said that he told them is because I couldn't get that language. It didn't sound like Daniel to me.

00:11:40

So the language that you heard that he was expressing to his coworkers was not things that you expected to hear from Daniel. You knew something was off. In a nefarious way or in a mental health way, do you mind telling me what was off What about that?

00:12:00

Well, it was a little bit of both, a little bit of everything. The couple of things that stood out to me was the fact that Ken said that he said he was so tired, I guess, and he wanted to go back to Phoenix to rest. I could tell you at that time, it didn't dawn on me that when he said Phoenix, my son didn't even live in Phoenix at the time. He lived in TMP. But that didn't dawn on me. The part that dawn on me was that he said he wanted to go back to rest. One of the things about my son, he was responsible for that well site, being He's the chief person. He didn't work for a web of waterworks, and that's the secondary company that come in. Danny could have just shut down the site, basically, for that day. If he was that tired, he definitely wouldn't have gone to the first well site. Nevertheless, He's not going to even go to a second well site if he's that tired. He know what it is about being safe. If you're tired, you're working with equipment, you're not going to go out there sleepy.

00:12:54

So that stood out to me. I wanted to hear Ken tell me that. The other part is, he said he was saying things that didn't make sense, and to the fact that he was looking in Daniel's eyes. He said he looked in his eyes, I guess, to see if his eyes were dollied or something to that effect. And I know Daniel, he's not going to let another man just look there and look in his eyes and stuff like that. So that was unbelievable to me, certain things that were said. So, of course, that just drove me to say, Hey, me and Ken, we have to have a talk. And that's what I did when I first got to Arizona. First thing I wanted to do is make sure I talk to law enforcement, but also to talk to Kenan. Okay.

00:13:33

Now, you've done searches for years now looking for Daniel. I know that with the Nancy Guthrie case that's going on right now, I'm sure you're following it. I mean, it's just extraordinary. No. That's in Arizona as well. What is searching like in that landscape? What are the specific challenges you're going to have in a landscape like the Arizona desert terrain?

00:14:00

Well, I'll tell you what, you have to do your homework first. I did a lot of that learning about that desert out there. It's very challenging. You have the washes and the ravines. You also have mines, that's vertical mines and also horizontal mines out there in the desert. We all know it's a desert, so you have wildlife. So it's a lot of things and challenges that you have to face. But the biggest part was how wide and how broad the desert is. It's very intimidating. So a person can be standing in one spot and then go north, south, east, west, and then way between and start heading in a straight line. And your search efforts have to be each of those. Just because you don't know which direction that person had off on. So it causes you to have to search a dispanse of area just to make sure your loved one is not out there. Like I said, you have a lot of shrubberies things that can hide a person. It is so much. So yes, it's very hard. Then you have to deal with the elements of the heat in the day. Sometimes it's cold in the mornings, really early in the morning.

00:15:10

Those type things, searching in deserts, really tough.

00:15:15

How many searches have you done now for Daniel?

00:15:19

Yes. As of April, the 12th of last year, it's been 50 weeks of desert searching. I realized the time went by really quick, but it was 50 weeks of desert searching out there, 35,000 acres of land covered out there in that desert.

00:15:32

Un unbelievably, tragically, you haven't been able to locate your son, but you have located other missing persons. Is that correct? What was it like to share that information with those families?

00:15:46

I remember the first human remains we found. Of course, any time that happened, especially that first time as well, it was really hard. During the time, I had my children who would come out to the search of Sometimes. But to find other human remains out there, it's a bittersweet thought in your mind that comes in your mind because you know you're helping someone in the family. At the same time, you know that family don't their loved one found in that manner. So it's one of those things that was really tough. Then also, of course, I'm still looking for Daniel, and I'm hoping that we don't find Daniel in that position as well. But Yes, just bring those closures for families. I know one family, specifically out of Florida, who's very grateful to finally locate her brother. You probably remember the human skull that was found. And so they were very grateful for those remains to get them some type of closure. It feels great to be able to give someone some type of healing. It's not the healing that they want, but they get some type of healing.

00:16:55

Yeah, 100 %. I've been out there in the South Carolina area talking to people, searchers, trackers, organizations. That is often the case, isn't it? That you do come upon remains that are not the one that you're looking for.

00:17:13

That's right.

00:17:14

Which is tough. So many people have been moved by the work that you're doing for Daniel and hearing his story and how the perseverance alone has been extraordinary. Can you tell me what the latest is with your son's case and and where it stands five years later?

00:17:32

Well, one thing for sure, despite of what law force me or anybody would want to classify Daniel's case, it's not a cold case. It's not a cold case by any stretch. It's this mishandling of Daniel's case is the issue that I have been having from day one. I was able to have a custody transfer of things with law enforcement on April the 10th of 2025. Really? Yeah. So that's where we're at right now. I was able to get that custody exchange with promises of doing the things that should have been done initially, what I like to call the crime scene, where the vehicle showed up, and also some of the things that was found in Daniel's apartment. Those things we did a custody exchange. I'm using body cam footage, you name it, everything. But I can report that law enforcement still haven't moved. And one of the things that bothers me with that is the promise that the Buckeye Police Department have given myself and my family to conduct those, for instance, on their bags and all the other things that I was able to give to them to have tested. They haven't moved on it just yet.

00:18:42

And so what we're doing right now is constantly still putting pressure on law enforcement to do so. I have a four-year request to find out exactly what have been done and what haven't been done. So they have a little more leeway right now to have that completed. But right now, as it stands, I'm still pushing What I'm planning to do in the meantime of running for office right now, so that's keeping me from a lot of movement, but to get back into Arizona, where I can put a little more pressure because I noticed that any time you're there in law enforcement's face and given that pressure, they actually start doing things and moving.

00:19:17

Yeah, they see you there, and they know that they're going to have to answer some questions, right? I mean, did they ever give you their scenario of what they think happened to your son? Did they ever give you anything to work off of?

00:19:31

Yeah, and that's what caused me to... When that vehicle showed up, they gave me a lot of theories, and that's what caused me to get a primary investigator. The initial thing that Detective Biffin told me after you're telling me the car rolling, flipped, and he believed that he had a severe head injury that's made him shred his clothes off, is that he felt that Daniel, because he shred his clothes off, head injury make you high. This is what he's saying. And he walked off somewhere and hit on a bush to cool off, and a wild animal ate him or something to that fact. The second thing he was saying to me that he maybe Daniel joined the Monastery to become a monk, to be away from his family. Those ideas of law enforcement, as well as the fact that there was Basin A during the time A, that the vehicles there was for 30 days, despite of what the rancher said who found the vehicle, say it wasn't there two day prior, they wanted to base things on this 30 day thing for whatever reason that the vehicle is there since June 23rd, 2021.

00:20:27

Just to remind you of the timeline here, Daniel went missing on June 23, 2021, and was last seen in his Jeep renegade heading toward the desert. We know Daniel's Jeep was found crashed, rolled over in a ravine on July 19, 2021. A rancher found the Jeep on his own property with the airbags deployed, along with Daniel's cell phone, wallet, keys, and clothes. The issue and the disparity here is that law enforcement says the vehicle was there for 30 days, but the rancher says he went searching for cattle on July 17th 2021, and the vehicle was not there. This rancher always maintained that that Jeep was not in the ravine until he returned on July 19th.

00:21:10

The evidence and the information didn't match what they were saying. So Those things caused me to get a private investigator and could still continue to do my own independent investigation of my own. So that's pretty much what law enforcement stands on that point.

00:21:27

Okay. Well, that's hard to hear.

00:21:29

Oh, It is very hard. That's not helpful. No, not helpful at all. So it's not helpful at all when you have a law enforcement agency, in my opinion, doing the opposite of what you think they could be doing. My investigator, for instance, found a lot of information. We found the four to six initial cycles, found 11 additional miles on a vehicle. He found the red transfer paint. He found the two impressions on the windshield, someone beating the windshield in. He found what happened near the first initial crash happened near one o'clock that evening. So it's a couple of things like that was actually found hard evidence. The damage didn't match terrain, for instance. And instead of law enforcement embracing those things and working with those and finding out the credibility of it, for one thing. The second thing is to find out some answers. They hired their own private investigator of their own, which I thought was weird because they have a detective, but they hired a private investigator to rebut anything my investigator found is the way I take it, because the only reason I could take it that way is because their private investigator have not even examined the vehicle.

00:22:39

He never physically touched it. I like to say taste it or smell it. He haven't even been there, but use third-party pictures to make a full report about something you have never seen in his life. Those type things was very problematic for my case that I'm continuing to have right now. My investigation, I I say, into my son case, and as well as my private investigator at the time, his investigation was a hindrance to getting the answers that we're looking for.

00:23:08

Yeah. I mean, that would make me angry. That would absolutely make me angry. I mean, you've worked with other families I understand in this space as well, like the potatoes. Can you tell me what some of these struggles and frustrations are like that maybe the public doesn't know about?

00:23:25

Well, it's always been about the urgency. I think with every family I talk to, it's a shared common thing about this urgency. When we see something that's very urgent, then we feel that lawfuls drag their feet or they find reasons for none actions or a lot of assumptions, for instance, and things like that. So you hear the same things that happen across the board, or a lot of times it's law enforcement not being able to handle a caseload like a missing loved one case. So it's a combination of those things that I hear a lot from families.

00:24:03

Yeah, you can't move fast enough, right? You can't move fast enough when you're looking for a missing person. That's what I always think about, is that no one can ever touch your sense of urgency of what's going on.

00:24:15

That's right.

00:24:17

We saw it with Gatti Petita. We are seeing it still with Nancy Guthrie. Unbelievable amount of coverage, unbelievable about a media attention for certain cases, for some cases, not for all cases. We don't see that for all. What are the challenges for families to get in front of the media? How hard is it for families like yourself to get in front of the media?

00:24:41

It's really hard. I remember when Dane went missing, it took two weeks for him to see get local channels to even take his story. I spoke to law enforcement, Buckeye Police Department to say, Hey, it's your responsibility to do that. So I found a way to reach out to the news news organizations, the radio stations. No one wanted to take the story. But I can tell you that it's two reporters, Josh Sanders and Nico Griggs, is their names. For some reason, I ran into them coming out of my hotel Pretty much. And they reach out to me and say, Hey, you know what? We'd like to hear about your son's story. And that gave a break for Daniel's case. It gave a break for his story because it's very important to get that story out really quickly. And that's the same thing I'm hearing a lot of families. Of course, with families, no one prepares for what to do when you have a missing loved one. You just have a missing loved one. So you don't know who to call and how to call people, who to talk to, and those type of things. So that slows it down as well.

00:25:45

Trying to get your loved one's story out there. Some people don't know to turn to social media. And for instance, like I was able to do is open up a page to humanize your loved one. I know with persons of color, like my son and myself, it was important, for instance, to humanize Daniel, to show who he is. He's a brilliant scientist, for instance. He have a family, he have siblings. So open up those pages and things are very important. But like I said, talking to families is one of the things that urgent. I can't give you a little bit more. Mr. Petito, Joseph Petito, a friend of mine, very good friend of mine, he and I was having a conversation, and another young lady who happened to miss her sister was on a Zoom together discussing some things. And we talk about our loved ones' cases, for instance, and the difference. And she and I was talking about the difficulties of getting law force them to move, the difficulties of getting our loved ones' story on local news and things like that. And then Mr. Petito said, All I had to do is make a phone call.

00:26:49

And so that still rings in my head to this day. He said, All I had to do is make a phone call. And the story went national. That's the thing that we look at as a family, families that I talk to is we'll see cases like the Galtry case, or we'll see the Petito case. We'll see some of these other cases where those stories just hit, go really fast. And we have loved ones who's crying out, Hey, here I am right here. My loved one is missing. It's very difficult.

00:27:23

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that just as a member of the media, that we can't have more balance in the coverage. I know I understand, like Savannah is a celebrity, Savannah Guthrie. I know she's just given money, $500,000 to nick Mc, because she also recognizes that it's not just her missing mom. We have hundreds of thousands of missing people. God, that breaks my heart. There is a disparity, and I think that the community needs to face up to it. What can we do in the community, not just not just the media, but in the community to fight that?

00:28:03

That's right. Just call it out. Just call it out and speak about it. One thing that encourages me, though, is people like yourself who have a lot of podcasters and also have a lot of true crime community to help families who have missing loved ones. Because if it wasn't for communities like that, a lot of stories wouldn't be told. Of course, we already know media can only do so much as well because they are 600,000 Americans that go missing every year, 3,000 a day, over 2,000 children a day. And to cover all those simultaneously will be hard. But like I said, the disparities and the way things are handled is the problem. It's a big problem. I can use a prime example. Even speaking of the Galtree case, I really first like to say I reach out and try to give anything I can as a father who been out there in the desert, who's been searching, like you were saying earlier, what can I do to help them find, locate their mother, which we all want to see her come back home. We really need to. One of the things that bother me as a father, though, is that Daniel is still missing as well.

00:29:13

And some of the scenarios that we saw in the Galtry case, for instance, it's happening in the Daniel case. He had a ransom. I had a ransom. They wanted thousands of dollars from me for Daniel, for the exchange of Daniel. I had to go through that. That was death threats on me just because I was searching for my son, they had Daniel tied up with broken layers of what they told me, and they're coming through my emails. And to this day, I still don't have the FBI to even want to take that part of the case and find out who these people are trying to harm me or who possibly could have had Daniel. So I see that in the initial part of Daniel's case, where there's no movement with law enforcement. There's no movement with FBI. I've been to the field office of the same one that's working the Galtry case. And instead of getting an invite or hospitality, when I received that, they wouldn't let me in the building. They put me in the security room with two on guard. I thought I was going to get shot that day, just coming in, asking questions to how they can help the FBI.

00:30:16

Those type things. So it's a disparities when it comes to, like you said, who it is, where they're from, their name, their title, and things like that matters when you get full participation. I even see the Sheriff of that county, Pina County, crying in this case. Chief Hall of Maricoba County, Buckeye Police Department, Stoneface, for instance. I'm out there finding remains for other families members, seven other families out there. And not one time, it has a city manager or the mayor come to me and say, Thank you, Mr. Robinson, for coming to our state and our city and help us locate missing loved ones who's been missing, obviously, for years. So it's those things when I When I look at the totality of things, that is really, really dense. It hurtful, especially when I'm still searching for Daniel. But at the same time, I try to have such a big or hard to... Because that's the type of family we are, to help as many people as we can along that hard journey to carry with us.

00:31:19

Yeah. I mean, I don't think anybody could ever overestimate the relentlessness of a parent. Your relentlessness this case has been extraordinary. I mean, to hear that you spent 50 weeks searching in those deserts in Arizona is really remarkable. I hope that we can do more to help you I think about your son, and I think that Daniel would be 29 now? Yes. 28, 29?

00:31:52

Yes, he will be gone on 29. Yes, that time was going by fast. We just had a birthday on the 14th of January, so Every year, his birthday has come up, and the Christmas, and they had the Thanksgiving. It was always around that time of year, it was even a lot worse because they all ball up together. New Year. Families, we get together. The family dynamics just change. So of course, those are constant reminders that he's still missing. For some, I can say may feel that, Hey, it's almost five years. You should be all aware of it right now. I talk to families all the time. They're just like I am, the ones that was in the desert with me. They talk about their missing loved one who've been missing probably for 20, some 20 years, some 15 years. But they'll talk about that person as if it happened yesterday or it happened today. And that's the same feeling that you get because you don't have any answers. You're always in limbo. You just don't have those answers. Your loved ones alive or they're not. You always have hope, and then sometimes you feel despair.

00:32:58

So you're always all over the We have a missing loved one. So that's one of the things that just don't go away until you get those answers.

00:33:05

What do you think he would be saying to you right now? What would he be saying to dad right now about what you've done?

00:33:11

Well, I hope that he can know that I kept my promise. I told him, not directly in those ways, but I'm going to be there as a father. I'm always going to be there for all my children. I'm going to be there for them, be the father that they should have. I'm going to be the father that I didn't have. Growing up. So he could see that part, and I really believe he appreciate that, that, Hey, my dad, you haven't got given up on me. He's still out there searching for me. And if that can show my love to him, that's all I really need, him to know that part. I'm not going to where.

00:33:48

You think you're going to find him?

00:33:50

I have to keep that faith. I'm a man of faith. My mind is always there that, Hey, my son is alive. I'm going to find him. It's just a matter of time. Today is the day closer to me finding Daniel. I will say that to myself, and I really believe I am going to find Daniel. I'm not giving that idea up.

00:34:07

Well, I believe you will, too. We'll certainly include for our viewers and our listeners out there, his story is alive and well with you. Whatever we can do to spread the word, just one more person heard it today. It's just one more person heard it. There's one more big chance out there that something might click, and we can go ahead and bring Danielle home. So thank you so much for talking to us today. Your story is inspiring, and you are running for Congress in my home state of South Carolina.

00:34:45

That's right.

00:34:45

You ready to take it on? You're ready to take on the program in here?

00:34:50

Yes, I ran in 2024. Good luck. I ran in 2024, but it's rough. It is. It's a hard. It takes a lot of time.

00:34:57

That's the reason I'm doing true crime and not I've been doing politics for years, too. That's a whole different mystery, right?

00:35:07

It is. I didn't know it was going to be that rough and things that you unespect the stuff. But yes, it's a lot different than what I'm doing for search for Daniel, for sure. I can tell you that part.

00:35:17

Well, hopefully, you'll be able to bring change where change needs to come. Yes, that's the goal. So drop a comment below. Tell me what missing persons cases you'd like to see us cover. And do you think that there is a problem with disparity between these missing persons cases. I want to hear your thoughts. Be sure to like and subscribe to Cribsly Obsessed. If you're listening to this on podcast, please drop us a five-star review so that others can find our podcast as well. If you want to hear more about the Daniel Robinson case, you can go to the website, pleasehelpfinddaniel. Com. We are also going to link all of the social profiles, and be sure to keep sharing Daniel Daniel's story so we can bring him home.

Episode description

David Robinson wants everyone to know his son's case is anything but cold.

Daniel Robinson went missing in the desert of Buckeye, Arizona in June 2021. The 23-year-old geologist’s jeep was found overturned in a ravine, but he remains missing. What started with a devoted father jumping in his car and driving  2,000 miles from South Carolina to Arizona to search for Daniel, has turned into years of perseverance that has inspired us all here at Criminally Obsessed.

From 50 weeks of desert searches for his son, to creating new laws for reform in missing persons investigations, David’s work on Daniel's case - and to help other families - is alive and well.  

Senior Investigative Reporter Anne Emerson speaks with David Robinson as he pushes for the passing of the "Please Help Find Missing Americans Act" or the Daniel Robinson Law, the latest updates in Daniel’s case, and his work with other families like Gabby Petito’s father, Joseph. As we continue the search for Nancy Guthrie out of Tucson, Arizona, David explains the unique difficulties of searching extreme desert terrain, and how the community can combat disparity in media coverage of missing person cases. While he hasn't found his own son yet, he has even helped solve other missing person cases by finding others’ remains during his searches for Daniel.   

Please support the search for Daniel by sharing his story, and if you have information, submit tips to the family's dedicated tipline at 844-602-0660.  

You can also contact the Buckeye Police tipline at 623-349-6411. 

Subscribe, like, and follow Criminally Obsessed for ongoing coverage and expert insight into the cases everyone is talking about. 

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Learn more about Daniel’s case, and print or share his missing person flyer here.

Learn more about the National Missing and Unidentified Person System (NAMUS)