I'll attempt to summarize information coming from many different sources to help people out and provide context. WJLX is a radio station in Jasper Alabama. It

I'll attempt to summarize information coming from many different sources to help people out and provide context. WJLX is a radio station in Jasper Alabama. It operates a standard music+talk radio station that they brand as "WJLX 101.5". They are licensed to operate on AM 1240 frequency. But most (seemingly all... as addressed later) of their audience listen on the FM 101.5 version of the channel which is a simulcast of the AM 1240 frequency. They don't have a dedicated FM license, but are able to legally use this 101.5 FM frequency due to a loophole for old AM stations that allows them to reach FM audiences by translating the AM station on an FM frequency. This means that if the AM broadcast stops, that they immediately lose rights to broadcast on FM 101.5, which is the frequency they brand their station under and most/all their audience is. All this information is important as will be apparent soon. The station owns an AM Radio tower for its "primary" frequency. The story goes that a brush cleaning crew was hired to clean up tall brush around the station, as is required. They showed up and found no tower there. They called the tower owner who then confirmed that the brush cleaners were at the right place. He then drove down to the site and when he got there, confirmed the tower was gone. So he then called the police who showed up and deemed that the tower must have been stolen. As soon as the FCC heard that the tower was gone, that means the AM station isn't broadcasting which means that WJLX is no longer allowed to broadcast on the FM frequency since they are only allowed to do it as a translation of the AM, which no longer exists. The station was ordered to go offline within 24 hours of the tower being reported stolen. The station has been operating at a loss for its entire existence and relied on public broadcasting government grants to break even. It can't afford to rebuild the tower. So it started a GoFundMe to rebuild the tower. Looking for $60k and currently has around $20k towards that goal. Since this news broke that a 200 foot tower (2/3 the length of a football field) dissapeared without a trace, it has started getting a lot of attention. The station owner is standing by the fact that it was "stolen". Internet sleuths are trying to figure out if this is plausible. OP's link is to various Google street view images that show that the last recorded image of this tower standing was in October 2022. It shows that another streetview image in March 2023 shows the tower missing. This means two things: 1. The tower went down between October 22 - March 23 2. The tower has been down for almost a year and was just reported stolen a few days ago So how did the station owner not notice for a year that his tower was missing? Some people are speculating that the stolen tower is a ruse to gain attention and sympathy to fund building a new tower. It came out recently that the owner had let the insurance on the tower lapse. So he has no way to rebuild it. He is unable to afford it and it was uninsured. Within a day of the tower being reported missing, some nearby software developers decided to go out on a saturday and investigate the tower site to see what they found. The video is here: https://youtu.be/78PvlGCqM84?si=5II7VeKY1tv41mXL https://youtu.be/78PvlGCqM84?si=5II7VeKY1tv41mXL . Namely they confirmed that its been down for a long time. The video might be interesting to see the state of disrepair of the location. So now the mystery is whether the tower was really stolen and if so, how did they do it with no one noticing? A lot of people are suggesting that the owner is manufacturing the theft story in order to gain sympathy for his GoFundMe.