Disappeared: What Happened to Logan Schiendelman After His 'Epiphany'?
Thurston County Sheriff
Logan Schiendelman
TUMWATER, WA — In May 2016, 19-year-old Logan Schiendelman left his grandmother’s home in Tumwater, Washington. He never came home. The former high school football star, who seemed to have vanished without a trace, is the subject of a new episode of Investigation Discovery’s Disappeared, “Last Words.”
The next day, his black 1996 Chrysler Sebring convertible was found abandoned on Interstate 5 near mile marker 92 between Tumwater and Maytown.
His grandmother Ginnie Schiendelman described Logan as happy and popular, someone that everyone wanted to be around. But Logan’s home life also had complications. He grew up mixed race in Tumwater, an area that was predominately white.
Investigation Discovery
Logan’s Chrysler Sebring
His mother, Hannah, lived a few miles away in Olympia, but Logan was primarily raised by his grandparents. Logan never knew his father. According to his family, his father left for Saudi Arabia before Logan was born.
Ginnie said that Logan began to experience something of an identity crisis in high school.
After graduation, Logan began to separate himself from his former friends and decided to go to Washington State University, which had a more diverse student body. But his grades slipped, and he returned home to Tumwater after his freshman year. He began to work odd jobs around town, but kept largely to himself.
On the day he went missing, Ginnie remembers that Logan seemed anxious to talk to her. “He was just really nervous, which he isn’t usually, kind of on a mission,” she said. Ginnie said that Logan told her that he had had an “epiphany.” She told Logan to talk to her when she got home from work — but was never able to finish the conversation.
When he failed to come home the next morning, Ginnie was worried.
Investigation Discovery
Ginnie Schiendelman
When Ginnie reported Logan missing, she was surprised when police told her that his car had been impounded. Logan’s personal items including his license, wallet containing money, debit card, several bags of food, and his phone were found inside the car. Police towed the car but never processed the vehicle for evidence.
Investigators pored over 911 calls and found one that stuck out: A person reported seeing a vehicle traveling slowly and veering into other lanes before hitting the middle barrier and stopping on the shoulder.
According to the caller, the driver’s door opened and closed, and then the witness saw someone sprint into the woods, leaving the car behind. But the description of the man in the passenger car — a white male who was around six feet tall — did not match Logan. And because the vehicle was not forensically processed, proving who was in the car could be extremely difficult.
Police say they searched the area for several hours but were unable to locate Logan.
They examined the teen’s cell phone records, which showed that the phone was traveling south on I-5 on May 19 before traveling back toward Tumwater. But by the early morning hours of May 20, the phone was dead.
At approximately 3:00 a.m. on May 21, a 911 dispatcher received another bizarre call from a driver. The caller claimed to have seen a half-naked man walking through an area that, according to police, was known to be frequented by drug users.
When the caller was asked if the man could have been black, the person replied “possibly.” Again, police found nothing.
Around a week after Logan went missing, a detective saw that his Facebook account appeared to have checked in at Olympia airport. Ginnie wondered if he could have gone to look for his estranged father in Saudi Arabia.
But the lead turned out to be false when investigators revealed that the Facebook check-in had actually been an anniversary post from a year earlier.
So what happened to Logan? Family members had a few theories.
- Ginnie said that Logan had been smoking pot, and wondered if his drug use could have gotten him mixed up with the wrong people.
- Other family members said that Logan was experiencing conflict at home after his half-sister Chloe and her boyfriend Jake had moved in. Jake had a history of domestic violence, and pleaded guilty to felony assault in a previous relationship in 2013. But police later gave Jake a polygraph test, which he reportedly passed.
- Logan’s great aunt, Mary Ware, said that Ginnie cut Logan off from the African-American side of his family after she split with her daughter Hannah’s father. Could he have felt that starting over was his only option?
Thurston County Sheriff
sketch of man witness described
In June 2017, police got another call. This time, it was a woman who claimed that she saw Logan’s car the day he went missing. But she said that she saw a Black male standing at the rear of the vehicle on the shoulder of the road — with two white men. She described one man as tall with scraggly hair and said all she could see of the second man was that he had long blond hair. Police created a sketch of the mystery man, but so far, have been unable to identify him.
Despite the conflict, Logan’s family and friends are united in stating that whatever has happened, they just want him to come home.
They started the Facebook group Logan Schiendelman Missing and have posted constant photos and updates on the Tumwater High School graduate.
Logan Schiendelman is described as being six feet tall with black hair and brown eyes and weighing roughly 150 pounds. Police have asked anyone with information on Logan’s whereabouts to call Thurston County Sheriff Detective Frank Frawley at (360) 786-5599 or the Sheriff’s Office at (360) 704-2740.
Watch Investigation Discovery’s “Last Words,” the Disappeared episode about Logan Schiendelman, on ID GO now!
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