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Guide to National Geographic Channel's MISSING DIAL: WHAT HAPPENED TO CODY DIAL?

Maj Canton - May 22, 2016

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“You don’t know how bad agony can be until your son has gone missing and no one can tell you what’s happened. It’s a pain that keeps me awake every night, and it’s the same pain that drives me on my search for answers.” — Roman Dial, father and National Geographic explorer.

 

 

 

 

 


On Sunday May 22, 2016 at 10pm ET/PT, National Geographic Channel premieres the six-part series MISSING DIAL. In July 2014, 27-year-old experienced outdoorsman Cody Dial, the son of esteemed National Geographic Explorer Roman Dial, embarked on an expedition through the Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica — a dense rain forest in a region known for illegal gold-mining and illicit activity. He never emerged. Did he get lost? Did he get hurt? Or, did something far more sinister happen? Cody’s parents, Roman and Peggy Dial, have repeatedly contacted the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica, begging for help, and they have spent months searching the region on their own with few results. Now they’ve returned to Costa Rica, and this time, with a team of highly trained independent investigators and a camera crew in tow. “I hoped private investigators and the presence of a film crew would add urgency and create new momentum in the search,” explained Roman Dial. “I was right — within a week, we received a significant break in the case.”

 


No stone is left unturned in the search for Cody. Roman, along with a former DEA special agent and a retired United States Air Force pararescue jumper/wilderness expert spent nearly eight months in Costa Rica. There, they interviewed every witness, interrogated every suspect and trekked deep into the jungle in pursuit of new leads. This series pushes further and digs deeper into the mystery, retracing Cody’s last-known whereabouts and using hidden cameras and fake identities to uncover a web of lies, surprising clues and a shocking plot twist that rivals that of a blockbuster movie.

 


This is more than just a true-crime series where filmmakers look back at past cases,” explained Tim Pastore, president, original programming & production for National Geographic Channel. “National Geographic not only captured the sensitive and personal journey of the Dials, but also exposed in real time the nuances of this intricate and delicate missing person investigation as clues and leads were being unearthed.”

 


This riveting true-crime series takes viewers inside the deeply personal and truly captivating investigation into Cody’s mysterious disappearance. Don’t miss it!

 

Added 11:09am PT on Sunday, May 22: National Geographic recently reported a sad development in the Cody case. On Friday, May 20, 2016 the Dial family learned a body had been found. No official word yet if an ID was made, but Roman released this statement: "It is with profound sadness and incredibly mixed emotions that I can say my son's remains have likely been found.  I am on my way to Costa Rica, where Peggy will join me shortly to identify what appears to be Cody's body.  The FBI and the OIJ are continuing their investigation, though no arrest has been made at this point."


 

The Investigative Team

 
 

Roman Dial

 

 

Roman Dial’s Blog

Roman Dial, a professor of mathematics and biology at Alaska Pacific University, made a name for himself as an Alaskan adventurer from the 1980s to the present through a string of novelwilderness traverses. These included the longest, wildest mountain ranges in Alaska and the world’s tallest forest canopies in Borneo, Australia and California. He is best known for his National Geographic sponsored traverse of the Alaska Range by mountain bike and packraft in 1996. Ten years before that, in 1986, he was the first to traverse Alaska’s Brooks Range by ski, foot, packraft and kayak. In 2006 he walked 625 miles, unsupported, through America’s most remote wilderness. In addition, he pioneered the modern sports of adventure racing, packrafting, long-distance wilderness ice skating and canopy trekking as well as making first ascents of mountains, frozen waterfalls and rock faces, and first descents of rivers and creeks. Besides these adventures Roman and his wife, Peggy, traveled around the world with their two children, Cody and Jazz. Roman and Cody made annual wilderness trips that included Alaska, Borneo, Bhutan, Mexico, Costa Rica and Australia. These annual journeys began in 1993, when Cody was 6 years old and father and son traversed 60 miles across Umnak Island in the Aleutians. They ended in 2014 when the two joined friends for a whitewater trip to Veracruz, Mexico, six months before the 27-year-old Cody disappeared on a jungle trek in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.

 
 

Kenneth Fornier

 

A retired USAF pararescue jumper, Ken is a highly skilled wilderness expert in search, rescue and recovery. He is known for infiltrating into dangerous environments, dealing with local populations and building networks of information to achieve results.

 
 

Carson Ulrich

 

A former DEA special agent, Carson has worked in Central America for the past two decades. He knows all the players on the ground, as this is his area of operation. Just back from two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Carson is highly skilled at getting results in hostile situations and is fluent in Spanish, which helped him get information from locals while investigating.


Q&A WITH ROMAN DIAL

 

Question: When Cody first went missing in 2014 the local authorities searched the area, and you even launched several search parties in the hopes of finding him. Now that it's been nearly two years since his disappearance, what do you think happened to him?

Answer: I kinda feel that something criminal happened, you know, cause I looked in the jungle for weeks. Looked hard, and we searched. And then I just felt like, he wasn’t in the jungle and if he was, he was hidden by somebody. And I just had no way to do any criminal investigation.

 
 

Question: How has this ordeal made you feel about your life?

Answer: To be honest with you, we don’t really do anything important in our lives except have children. That’s the only thing that we do that’s important. All the rest of it is just window dressing.

 
 

Question: What was your motivation for launching this independent investigation and hiring a retired DEA investigator and military expert to take the lead?

Answer: The Embassy has been very, you know, sympathetic, but they¹ve been treating it as a missing person¹s case. And so, they couldn¹t move forward and I had no idea like how to question people other than did you see him and what was he wearing and how did he behave and once I left the jungle I just felt like a fish out of water. And the government of Costa Rica and the American government couldn’t do anything because it wasn’t really apparently a crime.


Episode Guide

Episode 1: "Vanished"
Debut: Sunday, May 22 at 10pm
When Roman Dial learned his son was missing in Costa Rica, he searched hundreds of square miles of the Corcovado National Rainforest hoping to find him ­ but Roman's son Cody Dial had disappeared without a trace. Believing his son is the victim of foul play, Roman begins a new search with American investigators Carson and Ken. Together, the team will return to Costa Rica to retrace Cody's steps and uncover the truth about his disappearance.

Episode 2: "Prime Suspect"
Debut: Sunday, May 29 at 10pm
Cody Dial's backpack turns up at the U.S. embassy, confirming that he made it out of the jungle alive. This break in the case means one thing, someone must have seen Cody back in town before he disappeared. As Roman and Peggy hand out flyers and Carson and Ken bang on doors, they learn Cody was last seen with a local referred to as "Pata de Lora" ­ who proves to be a very hard man to find.

Episode 3: "Into the Jungle"
Debut: Sunday, June 5 at 10pm
In order to find out what happened to Cody Dial, Ken follows Pata de Lora,the last person to see Cody alive, into the jungle to retrace his steps. Along the way, they encounter a local illegal gold miner, Guicho, who raises Ken's suspicions. While Ken treks through the jungle, Carson enlists the help of two locals to wiretap and record a conversation with Pata de Lora, leading to a new suspect.

Episode 4: "The Interrogation"
Debut: Sunday, June 12 at 10pm
In order to find out what happened to Cody Dial, Ken follows Pata de Lora, the last person to see Cody alive, into the jungle to retrace his steps. Along the way, they encounter a local illegal gold miner, Guicho, who raises Ken's suspicions. While Ken treks through the jungle, Carson enlists the help of two locals to wiretap and record a conversation with Pata de Lora, leading to a new suspect.


To get ready for the premiere of MISSING DIAL, check out the official trailer: