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If you were to have a discussion with Salatic, he's one of the kindest, sweetest people you will ever meet in your life.

But you will understand by having a conversation with him that there are gaps or things that he's missing in terms of social cues and interactions with people that shouldn't escape somebody at his age.

He was with me in January of 2020. I helped him get a job. He was cleaning hospital rooms during the pandemic, during the height of the pandemic.

And that kid was holding down a hospital in a lot of ways. He was there to clean rooms, but he was giving nurses support.

You know, he would stay long if somebody just couldn't handle it and needed to go home.

It was probably one of the best times I've seen him shine.

In November of 2021, 22-year-old Brian Vladik Hassel vanished from Orlando, Florida, while his family was out of town celebrating his sister's birthday.

One exactly Brian, who went by his birth name Vladik, disappeared is one of the biggest mysteries in this case.

But there are so many questions in this story. It took us months of research to dig out what most likely happened to Vladik.

And along the way we uncovered everything in between the scandalous and the mundane. And all of it could lead to finding Vladik.

I'm Marissa and from Wondery, this is Episode 353 of The Vanished. Brian Vladik Hassel's story.

Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's podcast business wars. In our latest series, two visionary automakers each believe they can beat Detroit

and build America's favorite cars, listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every story we tell on this show is unique in its own way. Vladik's story is no different and there are many components to his case, all of which could have contributed to his disappearance.

It's impossible to know what happened to him at this point. However, we worked to peel away the layers of his life and story to find as many clues as possible that could point us to answers.

We spoke to three of Vladik's sisters. First we spoke with Jody and asked her for some background information on the Hassel family.

My parents, they had a lot of kids. So I am the first child they had after they got married, but when they got married, they each had one daughter.

My mom had Carrie, who's three years older than me and my dad had Amy, who's six years older than me.

Three years after me was Jonathan, three years after that is Bethany and then maybe a year and a half after that's Kristen. And we grew up in a really conservative Christian house going to a Baptist church and my parents homeschooled us.

We were in the clear water Florida area until I was around nine, I guess, and then we moved to Inverness, Florida. And that's where we lived all the way up through till I graduated and then after I graduated, they still lived there.

I was in another 10 years, I guess. I actually did things a little different than some of my other siblings. I ended up going to public school when I was in middle school and been seeing my parents to let me go to public school.

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