On March 22, 2023, Jody Bert, 44, disappeared off the face of the earth. Bert and his family were driving back to Florida from Oklahoma and stopped in Baton Rouge for the night. At 12:45am the night he disappeared, he dropped his family members off at a nearby hotel and went to park the car. When he didn't come back, his family went looking for him. His vehicle and his personal belongings, including his wallet and phone, were found in a parking garage but there was no clue to what happened to Bert himself.
The police haven't said a word, aside from declaring the day after he went missing that they didn't believe there was any malicious intent behind his disappearance. Someone continues to post fresh missing flyers around the downtown area, which is where he vanished from. There is a reward offered for information.
Here is a news article from the immediate aftermath.
Personally what I find so strange about this is the timing. It was the middle of the night, he was only supposed to be gone for a minute, and he left everything behind. If he had a medical emergency, they would have found him. In a thread on r/BatonRouge, someone said a journalist told them they believed he had committed suicide by jumping in the Mississippi River, which would've been in walking distance, but that just makes no sense to me.
This also happened exactly a month after another man from out of town, Nathan Millard, disappeared from the same area. Nathan Millard was in town on a business trip on February 22. He was last seen exceedingly drunk in the downtown area late that night. A week later, his body was found behind a funeral home, wrapped in a rug. Police say they believe he overdosed while in the company of a known drug dealer and two other locals, and the three dumped his body rather than call for help. They have been apprehended.
Given that Bert was expected back to the hotel where his family was checking in within minutes after they last saw him, it doesn't seem credible that something like what happened to Millard happened here.
So what DID happen?