# 10: What Happened to Russell Bohling?

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 18 May 2023, 39 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880323/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851597-44100-2-b1fa62e6c7369735.mp3

Today's episode is on the unsolved disappearance of missing Russell Bohling from Yorkshire Trigger Warning: disappearance, suicide, child pornography Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:38] So today we're going to be talking about the unsolved
[0:41] disappearance of Russell Balling.
[0:43] So quickly before I get into this video, I just want to give
[0:45] my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[0:48] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[0:50] This video is for educational purposes and everything that I'm
[0:53] about to say is just information that I have found on the
[0:56] Internet and I'm compiling into one video.
[0:58] S Russell Balling is an 18 year old boy born on December 29th,
[1:02] 1991 in Hull in East Yorkshire in England.
[1:06] At the time of his disappearance, Russell was
[1:08] enrolled in a bricklaying course at Bishop Burton College, and he
[1:12] lived at home with both of his parents.
[1:14] On March 2nd, 2010, Russell set off for college at 8:00 AM, as
[1:19] he normally did every single day.
[1:21] But once he left the house that day, Russell was never seen
[1:24] again. When he failed to return home
[1:26] from college that day, his parents began ringing him,
[1:28] texting him, trying to see where he was, seeing if he'd gone
[1:31] somewhere after college. But this wasn't like him at all,
[1:34] to not let them know where he was, and his family just knew
[1:38] that something was wrong. And so they got in contact with
[1:41] police and reported Russell as missing.
[1:43] So police came to the bowling house and they began like,
[1:46] asking them if they noticed anything different about him
[1:49] that morning, like if anything was off.
[1:52] And when they really thought about it, the parents noticed a
[1:55] couple of things. When Russell left for college
[1:58] that morning, he seemed to be dressed a little bit smarter
[2:01] than he normally would dress for college.
[2:03] He was wearing a black bench Sherman jacket, blue jeans, and
[2:06] black work boots, which was obviously different to what he
[2:10] normally wore. And on a search of Russell's
[2:12] bedroom, his parents found that a pair of his brown steel toe
[2:16] cap boots were also missing, so he'd probably taken them with
[2:19] him that day as well. So he'd taken 2 pairs of shoes
[2:22] with him, and he was dressed smarter than normal.
[2:26] So anyway, his parents went to bed that night, and when they
[2:28] woke up again the next morning, there was still no sign of
[2:31] Russell. He hadn't text or called or come
[2:33] back home at all. So police contacted Russell's
[2:36] college to see if he'd turned up at all over the past two days,
[2:39] if he had been attending, maybe he was just staying somewhere
[2:42] else. But this college at the time, in
[2:46] his course at least, didn't have a register system, so there was
[2:50] no way to tell if he was there at all.
[2:52] And despite how easy you would think it would be to find out if
[2:55] he was there or not, you can ask teachers, you can ask students,
[2:58] you can look at CCTV, you could just ask the people on his
[3:02] course if he was there and they'd be able to say yes or no.
[3:05] I didn't see him. But police didn't do that.
[3:07] And I think by that fact alone, we can tell that he maybe wasn't
[3:11] there because if he had been there, then students would have
[3:13] probably come forward to police and been like, oh, no, I spoke
[3:16] to him that day. But the fact that no one said
[3:19] anything tells me that he probably wasn't there.
[3:21] And later that day, police were called to an abandoned car that
[3:25] matched the description of Russell Berlin's car.
[3:28] And this was 45 miles away in Bridlington.
[3:31] It was parked at an area right on the East Coast named Benton
[3:35] Cliffs. And it had actually been there
[3:37] since the previous morning, the morning that Russell left the
[3:41] house and never came back. The warden had seen it that
[3:43] morning when it appeared there. And then he went about his day
[3:47] and then he saw the car again at 5:30 that evening.
[3:50] So he looked in the window and it had an all day parking pass,
[3:54] so it was allowed to be there all day.
[3:56] But then when he came back the next morning, it was still
[4:00] there. And so he knew that something
[4:01] must have been wrong. It was either abandoned or it
[4:04] was parked illegally and it needed to be towed.
[4:06] So we got in contact with police and it seemed to be Russells
[4:11] abandoned car. Like I said, it had a parking
[4:14] pass in the window for all day parking, which was bought at
[4:17] 11:30 AM that day, so almost 3 1/2 hours after Russell went
[4:23] missing. And then the parking pass was
[4:25] never renewed for the second day.
[4:27] So anyway, this car was confirmed to be Russell
[4:30] Bowling's car, which also kind of in turn confirms that he
[4:33] never went to college that day if he was 45 miles away in
[4:37] Bridlington during class time. So searches took place in that
[4:40] area where his car was found, because obviously unless he'd
[4:43] gotten a taxi or a train or something, he was probably still
[4:47] in that area, maybe staying somewhere.
[4:49] And police particularly focused on this bunker nearby.
[4:53] It was an abandoned Royal Air Force RAF bunker.
[4:56] And so they looked at it thinking that maybe Russell was
[4:59] staying in there. But one immediate mistake that
[5:02] police made in this case was that they checked the RAF
[5:06] bunker, but they never went inside.
[5:08] This bunker was actually concreted shut so that no one
[5:12] could go in there. So it was unlikely that Russell
[5:14] was in there anyway, but it was still worth checking.
[5:18] So police, instead of going inside the this bunker, they
[5:21] searched it from the outside using heat sensing equipment.
[5:25] And if for whatever reason Russell was dead in that bunker,
[5:29] then the heat sensing equipment wouldn't work because he'd be
[5:32] cold and he wouldn't show up on them.
[5:34] So he could have still been in there.
[5:36] And I don't know exactly how long after his disappearance
[5:39] these searches took place with this heat sensing equipment.
[5:42] Sources point to it being like at least a week after his
[5:45] disappearance. So at that point, it's more than
[5:48] likely that he was dead if he was in that bunker.
[5:51] And maybe say he was alive, but he'd just kind of moved on from
[5:54] this bunker. He'd been in there at some point
[5:56] and just left. Or maybe say he was dead
[5:58] somewhere else. His belongings might still have
[6:01] been in that bunker. So it would have been worth
[6:04] going in there to look. Obviously none of his belongings
[6:07] like a bag or a wallet or a phone or whatever.
[6:10] They wouldn't show up on the heat sensing equipment either.
[6:13] So that could have been a massive lead that they missed.
[6:16] And Russell's family did voice their concerns on this.
[6:19] They didn't like that police weren't putting 100% effort into
[6:22] this. They felt that if that bunker
[6:24] was searched properly, then they might have found something.
[6:28] But I mean, the area around the bunker was searched quite
[6:31] thoroughly, including like, air searches and water searches,
[6:35] because this was right on the end of a Cliff.
[6:37] And Benton Cliffs is unfortunately, quite a notorious
[6:41] suicide spot. And so that was one of the big
[6:43] theories right from the beginning that maybe Russell had
[6:46] driven there and done exactly that.
[6:49] But in the whole 8 years that Russell Ballin has been missing,
[6:53] his body has never once washed up at all.
[6:56] Like no sign of him, none of his clothes, none of his belongings,
[6:59] like no part of his body has ever washed up, which is
[7:03] normally the case. Of course, it's possible that he
[7:06] might have jumped just at the right time and at just the right
[7:09] spot, that maybe he was taken out rather than brought back in.
[7:13] But that is is quite unlikely. But I mean, it is possible.
[7:16] So police spoke to the bowling family a little bit more and
[7:20] tried to establish his movements and his activities in the couple
[7:23] of days before he went missing. Because, say, if he was still
[7:26] alive somewhere, if he was staying in this bunker, then the
[7:29] days before his disappearance might tell him something about
[7:32] that. And his parents said that they
[7:34] did notice some weird behavior just three days before Russell
[7:38] went missing. He got up in the morning, got in
[7:41] his car and he was gone until quite late in the evening.
[7:45] He never told anyone where he'd been.
[7:47] He never told anyone what he was doing.
[7:49] He just never really spoke about that day with his parents and
[7:52] they kind of respected his privacy.
[7:54] Russell was an 18 year old boy. He is allowed to go off for the
[7:57] day if he wants to. And so they never asked too many
[8:00] questions and they didn't really know what happened.
[8:03] So police looked into Russell Bowling's debit card history to
[8:07] see like where he'd been spending money on that day.
[8:09] And they found that he'd been to three different places all
[8:13] around the kind of Yorkshire ish area.
[8:16] So he'd been to Bradford, which is in West Yorkshire.
[8:19] He went to York and then he went to Bridlington, which is East
[8:22] Yorkshire. And Bridlington is obviously the
[8:25] place where his car was eventually found a couple of
[8:28] days later when he went missing. It's just too much of A
[8:31] coincidence for him to go and visit a place 45 miles away and
[8:35] then his car be found there a couple of days later when he
[8:38] disappears, you know. So police kept looking at
[8:41] Russell's debit card records and they actually found that it was
[8:44] wasn't used on the day that he went missing and it's never been
[8:47] used since. Which to a lot of people does
[8:50] point towards Russell probably being dead because where else is
[8:54] he getting money from to live, to buy food, shelter, whatever.
[8:57] His parents have their own theory that maybe someone is
[9:01] giving him money or something like that, but we'll get into
[9:04] that theory in a second. But a lot of people do think
[9:07] that that is a big indicator that he is not still alive
[9:11] somewhere. As part of their investigation,
[9:13] police went and recovered any and all kind of electronics from
[9:17] the Bowling household that Russell might have used.
[9:19] So phones, laptops, whatever, thinking that maybe his online
[9:23] activity might kind of hint towards what he was doing, maybe
[9:27] where he could be right now. And just a side note, while they
[9:30] were looking through these electronics, they looked through
[9:32] Russell's father Roger Bowling's laptop and found indecent images
[9:37] of children, 415 images of children, and three of those 415
[9:44] included bestiality as well. And all of these images he'd
[9:49] actually gotten from another unnamed relative.
[9:52] Roger was put on the sex offenders register but faced no
[9:56] other consequences, no prison time, no nothing really.
[10:00] He's just a sex offender now, which is a complete other case,
[10:05] but that to me is disgusting. But back to Russell.
[10:08] As police were looking through his laptop and whatever, they
[10:11] found that at 7:30 on the morning that he went missing,
[10:15] Russell had searched for the RAF Benton website.
[10:18] So that bunker that was right near where his car was parked,
[10:22] that police kind of half searched.
[10:25] And I feel like this really kind of consolidated that police were
[10:28] on the right track, whereas before there was always the
[10:31] possibility that maybe Russell kind of dumped his car there or
[10:34] someone else did something to Russell and dumped his car
[10:37] there. But now it looks like Russell
[10:39] drove there intentionally and left his own car there.
[10:42] After he searched for that RAF Benton website, they then found
[10:46] that he searched for Raven Scar in North Yorkshire.
[10:49] And I don't know if I'm saying that right, Raven's car, Raven
[10:52] Scar. And this is especially
[10:53] interesting when you learn that the bowling family actually have
[10:57] a holiday home in Raven Scar in North Yorkshire.
[11:00] So immediately a theory arose that maybe Russell was there at
[11:04] the holiday home, maybe he was stressed out, he needed some
[11:07] space and he thought I'm going to go to my family's holiday
[11:10] home. And so his parents, as soon as
[11:12] they heard this news, they got straight in the car and raced
[11:15] straight to Ravenscar. Although sadly, there was no
[11:18] sign of Russell in the holiday home around the holiday home,
[11:21] absolutely nothing. And extensive searches were done
[11:24] there. But it doesn't seem as though he
[11:26] even went there at all. So obviously Russell's
[11:29] connections to Ravenscar can be explained.
[11:31] His family has a holiday home there.
[11:33] Maybe that was why he was Googling it, who knows.
[11:36] But what connection does Russell have to the RAF bunker?
[11:39] Like why was he Googling that? And police asked his family that
[11:42] they were like, what is his connection to this bunker?
[11:45] And that was when his father told them that Russell actually
[11:48] had a fascination with this bunker.
[11:51] He was really interested in the bunker and its history.
[11:54] In the 1970s, this abandoned bunker, it had been abandoned
[11:58] for a long, long time, way before the 1970s.
[12:01] And then in the 70s, a satanic cult moved in there and kind of
[12:06] set that up as their base in there.
[12:09] They would pin all kinds of things on the walls, do their
[12:12] rituals, Whatever a cult does. I don't know.
[12:15] I'm not in one. And Russell was fascinated by
[12:18] what people would tell him about this bunker.
[12:20] And so in his free time, he would research it a little bit
[12:24] more, look at the artwork and things.
[12:26] And Russell's family even told police that Russell had a USB
[12:30] stick that he kept all of this artwork on.
[12:32] He'd found it all on the Internet, saved it, and then put
[12:35] it on this USB, which immediately you might think is
[12:38] pretty suspicious, pretty creepy.
[12:40] And I'm not going to lie, that is a big theory in this case.
[12:43] We are going to talk about that a lot more later.
[12:45] But 90% of this artwork that the cult would draw and that Russell
[12:50] saved to Ausb stick was not typical like cult artwork.
[12:55] It wasn't all pentagrams and whatever horns.
[12:58] I don't, I don't know what cult artwork is.
[13:00] Like 90% of this artwork in the bunker, like on the walls and
[13:05] things was straight up porn. Like it was all pornographic.
[13:09] It was women and men and they just had horns.
[13:13] That's the only kind of satanic thing that I see looking at
[13:15] these pictures. Maybe to the cult they had a lot
[13:18] more satanic behind them and I'm not making any assumptions of
[13:22] Russell's character nor am I trying to be disrespectful at
[13:24] all. But he was a teenage boy.
[13:27] Maybe that played a hand in why I was so interested in this
[13:30] artwork. When you first hear that that he
[13:33] was interested in this satanic cults artwork, it sounds like
[13:37] something huge and scary. But maybe this was a story of a
[13:41] teenage boy that found some pornographic artwork and saved
[13:44] it to a USB. You know, I personally think
[13:47] that his interest lied more in the artwork rather than the cult
[13:51] itself. I don't think he really cared
[13:52] much about the cult. That's like an interesting back
[13:55] story to the artwork, but I think most of his research lied
[13:59] in the artwork. But what makes this all the more
[14:02] creepy is that when Russell went missing, so did that USB, and
[14:07] it's never been found since. So it's unclear exactly what his
[14:11] intentions were when he went missing on that day.
[14:14] But a lot of people assume that because of his interest in the
[14:17] cult that maybe his disappearance has something to
[14:21] do with the bunker. And so almost three years into
[14:25] the investigation, three years without Russell Ball and police
[14:28] decided to finally open up that bunker and have a real look
[14:33] inside, but only at an expense to the Berlin's.
[14:36] The Berlin family were made to pay £1200 to open up this bunker
[14:41] because like I said, it was all concreted shut due to people
[14:45] like using it illegally like the cult did in the 70s, which I can
[14:49] understand because it will be expensive to open up that
[14:52] bunker. But they should have done that
[14:53] in the 1st place when there was a chance that Russell was still
[14:56] alive. They should have opened that
[14:58] bunker. That should have been part of
[14:59] the investigation. So they opened up this bunker.
[15:02] They made his family pay 1200 pounds to open up this bunker,
[15:06] but they didn't even properly search it.
[15:08] Still, instead of conducting like a proper police search, a
[15:12] proper forensic search of this bunker to find any like DNA of
[15:16] Russell's, they sent in some trainee firefighters to do a
[15:21] kind of training exercise in the bunker, which is something that
[15:25] rubs me the wrong way a little bit.
[15:27] Like I'm not saying that these firefighters weren't like
[15:30] capable of doing the job. I'm sure they did a good job,
[15:32] but it If the family is paying money for you to open up this
[15:37] bunker, why use a serious sensitive real life situation of
[15:42] a family whose young son went missing and as a training
[15:46] exercise? But either way, absolutely
[15:48] nothing was found. No sign of Russell, no sign of
[15:51] the USB, none of his belongings. There was like there was
[15:55] absolutely no sign of Russell in there, which is one thing that I
[15:58] thought when I was researching this case.
[16:00] If this bunker was concreted shut, how could he have got in
[16:04] there anyway? Like, was there even a chance
[16:07] that he could have gotten in there?
[16:08] I'm just saying like if it cost 1200 lbs using real like big
[16:13] industrial equipment to break open this bunker, could Russell
[16:17] have done it by himself? Like, or was there like a little
[16:20] gap that it could have gotten in through?
[16:22] And if so, why couldn't a police officer have gotten through that
[16:25] gap and gone and searched it right in the beginning?
[16:28] I don't think the firefighters found any kind of sign of entry
[16:31] anywhere on this bunker. So how could Russell have ever
[16:34] gotten in there? So now we're going to get into
[16:43] some theories about what might have happened to Russell when he
[16:46] left the house that day. And we're going to start with
[16:49] the most widely believed theory, the one that police believe, the
[16:52] one that I personally believe, and that is that Russell Bowling
[16:56] committed suicide. One of the biggest factors that
[16:59] makes me believe this theory over any of the other theories
[17:02] that we're going to talk about is the inactivity on his debit
[17:05] card. He hasn't spent any of his money
[17:08] since he left and he completely cut himself off from all of his
[17:13] social contacts. Like there was number more
[17:15] activity on his social medias. And I mean if he had other kind
[17:19] of social medias then surely police would have been able to
[17:21] find them when they searched his computer.
[17:23] Like I don't think he's been talking to anyone and I don't
[17:27] think he ran away. Like if he did he wouldn't have
[17:30] any money on him to buy anything, food, shelter,
[17:33] whatever. He didn't get out a large sum of
[17:35] money before he left or anything.
[17:37] His parents actually believed that he only left the house that
[17:40] day with £10 in cash. So for him to go somewhere with
[17:44] only £10 on him, leave his car somewhere and never speak to
[17:48] anyone in his life ever again. Something tells me that
[17:51] something happened to Russell not long after he left the house
[17:54] that morning. But the reason I think it's
[17:55] suicide rather than murder, which is a theory that we'll get
[17:59] on to in a minute. Well, there's a few reasons
[18:01] actually. The first being the location
[18:03] that his car was left. Like I said, Benton Cliffs is a
[18:07] very notorious area for people wanting to end their lives.
[18:11] So for him to drive there, a place well away from his house,
[18:15] and leave his car there and not move, it again proves to me that
[18:18] maybe he went there and died there.
[18:21] But also, in a search of Russell's things, when police
[18:24] kind of went through his whole room to see if anything was
[18:26] missing, they found a home movie.
[18:29] And on this home movie, it showed Russell imitating
[18:32] committing suicide. Now, this was quite an old video
[18:36] at the time. He was 15 when he filmed the
[18:38] video, and he was 18 when he went missing.
[18:40] So there's a three-year gap in there.
[18:42] However, this did seem like a really emotional video, like it
[18:47] didn't seem like he was putting on an act or it was a joke or
[18:49] whatever. It looked like it had real
[18:51] emotion in it. And I've never seen this video,
[18:53] so I can't vouch for that myself.
[18:55] But from what other people say that have seen this video, they
[18:58] say that it looked like real emotion.
[19:01] And his parents confirmed that at age 15 when he made that
[19:04] tape, he was going through a really hard time.
[19:07] His exams were really stressing him out.
[19:09] He was feeling really low. And that was when he made that
[19:12] tape. But when he went missing, he was
[19:14] 18. That was three years later.
[19:16] He was doing much better then, so maybe that wasn't the case
[19:20] and I don't want to sit here and discredit the bowling family as
[19:23] like witnesses as Russells own family, but maybe the depression
[19:28] came back or maybe Russell just got really good at hiding it.
[19:32] A lot of teenage boys tend to hide their emotions, which is
[19:35] really, really bad and please don't do that.
[19:37] But maybe that is what happened. Maybe he shared it all when he
[19:41] was 15 and then decided that was a bad idea and then began hiding
[19:45] it. And based on all of those facts,
[19:47] the tape where his car was found, the fact that he hasn't
[19:50] spent any money or spoken to any of his friends since he left,
[19:54] police believe that this was a suicide.
[19:57] Maybe Russell went to the Cliff and jumped just at the right
[20:00] time at the right. Position on the Cliff and was
[20:03] taken out to sea and so his body has never been recovered.
[20:06] In August of 2010, so 5 months after Russell went missing, 2
[20:12] human feet washed up on the shore by Benton Cliffs.
[20:16] One of the feet was bare and the other foot was in a brown steel
[20:20] toe cap boot. And if you remember, when
[20:23] Russell went missing, his parents went and searched his
[20:25] room and said that a pair of his brown steel toe cap boots was
[20:29] missing. However, both of the feet were
[20:31] tested in 2010 and neither of them belonged to Russell.
[20:35] But it's up to you what you think about that.
[20:36] Do you think they tested the feet thoroughly enough or do you
[20:39] think maybe they should retest them?
[20:41] I mean, we've already seen that the police work in this case is
[20:44] pretty rubbish, so it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't put
[20:48] 100% effort into testing these feet.
[20:50] So let's go back to the runaway theory, which is our second
[20:54] theory. And I've already told you all
[20:56] the reasons why I don't believe this.
[20:58] He had barely any money, his debit card wasn't used.
[21:01] He abandoned his car somewhere. He's cut off all social contact.
[21:05] But let's fight the other side of that for a minute.
[21:08] So Russell's family are 100% sure.
[21:10] They keep saying that they know that he only had 10 lbs on him
[21:15] in cash that day. But how do they know that?
[21:17] Russell could have been saving up money secretly for ages.
[21:20] He might have had a couple of quid in his car, he might have
[21:22] had a couple of quid in his pocket.
[21:24] How? Like how do they know that when
[21:27] I was 18 years old, my parents didn't know how much money was
[21:30] in my purse at any given time? Like, that's just very strange.
[21:34] Maybe it's because they gave Russell all his money.
[21:36] Maybe he didn't have a job. First of all, it might have had
[21:39] a secret job that they didn't know about.
[21:41] I don't know how much of A secretive person Russell was,
[21:44] but say he didn't have a job and they always gave him money so
[21:47] they always knew how much he had on him.
[21:49] What's to say that he doesn't have a couple of quid in his car
[21:52] or a couple of quid here or there?
[21:53] Like just a bit of change. You know, some people have said
[21:56] that maybe that weird trip that he took a couple of days earlier
[21:59] to all those three different places, maybe that was a job to
[22:03] get some money to run away. Maybe his parents are so sure
[22:06] that he only has £10 because maybe Russell told them that.
[22:10] However, someone that is looking for money to run away might tell
[22:15] their parents that they only have a small amount of money,
[22:17] hoping that their parents might give them more money to help
[22:20] them run away. Again, I'm not trying to make
[22:22] any judgments on anyones characters, I'm not trying to
[22:24] assume anything about Russell. But someone that's looking to
[22:28] run away might lie about how much money they have.
[22:30] So say that he did somehow have the money to run away.
[22:33] Say he had like a secret job or say you've been saving up money.
[22:37] What's his motive to run away? And that takes us back to the
[22:40] first theory that maybe his depression came back, maybe he
[22:44] had exam stress and maybe his home situation wasn't the best,
[22:48] and maybe he just wanted to get away from it all and just run
[22:51] away. And there is potential evidence
[22:54] to support this, whether you believe this or not.
[22:57] So like I said, when he left the house that day, his parents were
[23:00] sure that he was wearing a pair of black boots.
[23:03] And if you remember, his parents have that holiday home in Raven
[23:06] Sky that he Googled on the morning before he disappeared.
[23:10] Well, two years after Russell disappeared, his parents were at
[23:13] the holiday home, just, you know, on holiday or whatever,
[23:17] and they found the pair of black boots that Russell was wearing
[23:20] that day. And this could mean two things,
[23:23] well, more than two things. But we're going to talk about
[23:25] two things. Maybe Russell had run away and
[23:27] then at some point while he was missing, maybe he went back to
[23:31] the holiday home. Maybe that's where he was
[23:32] staying for a while until he got his money up.
[23:34] And maybe there in that house in Ravensgar, he might have changed
[23:38] his shoes into his brown ones and left his black boots there.
[23:42] Or another possibility is that maybe Russell wasn't wearing
[23:45] those black shoes on the day that he went missing.
[23:48] Maybe they'd just been at the holiday home that whole time.
[23:51] Maybe he did leave that day wearing his brown shoes.
[23:54] And honestly, that would make a lot of sense because why would
[23:58] he go missing and take an extra pair of shoes with him?
[24:01] Like he didn't take any other bits of an outfit, just a spare
[24:05] pair of shoes. To me, it makes more sense that
[24:07] he was wearing brown boots that morning when he went missing and
[24:10] his parents just remember it wrong.
[24:13] And maybe those black shoes have been in the holiday home this
[24:16] whole time. And then we have our third
[24:18] theory. And this is the theory that
[24:20] Russell's own family personally believe.
[24:22] And this is that a third party was involved in his
[24:26] disappearance somehow, be it that someone killed him or
[24:29] someone kidnapped him, whatever it is, his parents just believe
[24:32] that someone else had something to do with this.
[24:35] We'll get on to who or what in a second, but first I want to give
[24:38] you a little bit of evidence as to why a third party might have
[24:43] been involved. Russell's family believed that
[24:45] at the time of his disappearance, he was a very
[24:48] happy, normal, mentally stable person.
[24:51] And they find it very hard to believe that he wanted to die or
[24:55] that he wanted to run away. And one of their reasons for
[24:58] thinking that he wouldn't run away or wouldn't commit suicide
[25:01] is because he was actually really excited for the future.
[25:04] His father had just promised him to lend him 300,000 lbs so that
[25:09] he could start up his own business.
[25:11] And I don't know what kind of business Russell was going to
[25:14] start up with this money, but to be able to have such an
[25:17] investment at such a young age, you'd be set for life.
[25:20] He would have a career for the rest of his life, a good income
[25:23] for the rest of his life. His parents just don't believe
[25:26] that he would have wanted to lose that in any way, you know.
[25:29] So it must have been down to someone else because he would
[25:32] never end his life himself. He would never run away himself.
[25:35] So someone else must have done this to Russell.
[25:37] And when you think about it, why would Russell go to Benton
[25:42] Cliffs and pay for a full day of parking on his car if he just
[25:47] went there with the intention of committing suicide?
[25:49] Like I could understand like if there's a traffic ward and just
[25:52] paying for a couple of hours or whatever just to put a ticket in
[25:55] your car, just to avoid confrontation.
[25:57] I suppose. Like money doesn't matter when
[26:00] you die. So like he could spend the last
[26:02] bit of his money on a full day of parking.
[26:04] But but why are you full there? Could that potentially have been
[26:08] this third party involvement, possibly dumping Russell's car
[26:11] there, paying for a full day of parking so that this car doesn't
[26:15] look suspicious there abandoned by itself, and that gives the
[26:19] person that abandoned the car there a full 24 hours, a full
[26:23] day of parking to cover up what they could have possibly done to
[26:28] Russell. So the main reason that the
[26:30] Bolin family believed that someone else was involved or
[26:33] someone else was at least with him that morning is due to
[26:37] Russell's lack of money. As I said earlier, his parents
[26:40] are so sure that Russell only had £10 in cash on him that day,
[26:45] and somehow they are equally as sure that Russell only had 3.8
[26:50] liters of petrol in his tank, which is so incredibly specific.
[26:55] I have no idea how they know that because they're driving
[26:59] Russell's car as well. How do they know exactly how
[27:03] much petrol he had in his car? Exactly how much cash he had in
[27:08] his wallet? Like that's strange to me.
[27:10] But anyway, say he did only have 3.8 litres in his car.
[27:14] Benton Cliffs was 45 miles away. And with Russell's car, his kind
[27:20] of model of car, 3.8 litres would only get him like 30
[27:25] miles, not before 45. So he would have had to refuel
[27:29] on his way to Benton Cliffs. But his parents are saying, oh
[27:33] but he only had 10 lbs on him, so he wouldn't have been able to
[27:36] refuel, he wouldn't have been able to have enough petrol to
[27:39] get that whole way. So someone else must have paid
[27:42] for him to refuel the car. And his parents actually believe
[27:45] this so much that they tested out this theory themselves.
[27:49] They got in Russell's car with 3.8 liters of petrol in it it
[27:54] and they drove from their home in West Ella all the way to
[27:57] Venting Cliffs and they actually ran out of petrol at around the
[28:01] 30 mile mark. But to keep this video as
[28:04] unbiased as possible, I personally think that he would
[28:08] have been able to do that journey on the petrol and on the
[28:11] money that he had. Say, if he really did only have
[28:14] £10 on him, he could have gone like as far as 3.8 liters of
[28:18] petrol could get him 30 miles. And then he could have gone and
[28:22] filled up his tank about four or £5 worth of petrol, which
[28:26] probably would have got him the rest of the way to Benton
[28:30] Cliffs. And then he would have also had
[28:32] money leftover for parking after that.
[28:34] But like I said, how do they know that he only had 3.8 liters
[28:38] in his tank? How do they know that he only
[28:40] had £10 on him? Maybe he had a couple of pound
[28:43] in his car. Maybe he had a couple of pound
[28:45] in his pocket, Like how? How do they know that?
[28:49] And not to discredit his parents at all, but they were so sure
[28:53] that he was wearing black shoes as well.
[28:56] But then they turned up at the holiday home two years later.
[28:59] I mean, I'm just being as realistic and unbiased in this
[29:02] video as I possibly can. I'm never going to be biased in
[29:05] these videos, no matter how people want cases to be
[29:08] portrayed. I'm always going to fight both
[29:11] sides of a theory. OK, but say his parents are
[29:14] exactly right and he couldn't have done this journey.
[29:17] Say someone was there to provide him with a little bit of money.
[29:20] Who could that person have been? The first theory is that maybe
[29:24] Russell had told someone that he was about to inherit 300,000
[29:28] lbs, and maybe that person wanted that money.
[29:32] Now, Russell hadn't actually inherited that money yet.
[29:35] He was gonna, but he didn't actually have the money in his
[29:38] accounts or anything yet. But this person might not have
[29:41] known that. They might have thought that
[29:42] Russell already had that money, and they might have thought that
[29:45] if they get rid of Russell, they can get that money.
[29:48] Maybe Russell just told the wrong person.
[29:50] Maybe he told someone at school that he thought was a friend,
[29:54] but this person just wanted the money.
[29:56] Maybe this friend asked to meet with Russell that morning.
[30:00] Maybe they planned to go to town or whatever.
[30:02] Maybe they planned to go to Benton Cliffs for the day.
[30:05] But maybe this friend had a different plan all along, you
[30:09] know? And the balding family said that
[30:10] Russell would have been particularly vulnerable to
[30:14] manipulation like this because Russell actually had a speech
[30:18] disorder. I don't know how prevalent this
[30:21] disorder was in Russell. I don't know how serious it was
[30:24] and I don't actually know what the this dishonor is called, but
[30:27] he would supposedly say yes to most questions.
[30:31] Even when he meant no, the word yes would just come out.
[30:34] And so his parents think that this made him a lot more
[30:36] vulnerable when this person that might have wanted his money and
[30:41] asks him to take the day off college to go and pick him up,
[30:43] to then go somewhere with this friend like Russell just kind of
[30:48] had to comply. And while I don't think that's
[30:50] an actual recognized police theory, I think that's just the
[30:54] Bowling family's theory. I still find it very strange
[30:57] that it took police three months to question any of Russell's
[31:02] friends. This 18 year old young boy was
[31:04] missing for three months before police even bothered to ask his
[31:08] friends where he might be. And I don't know if police ever
[31:11] checked with the college to see if another student was maybe
[31:13] absent on the same day that Russell was on the day that
[31:16] Russell went missing. But the Bolins very strongly
[31:19] believe that theory, which can potentially be supported by the
[31:23] timeline as well. Like I said, Russell left the
[31:25] house that morning at 8:00 AM and arrived at Benton Cliffs and
[31:29] bought that parking ticket at 11:30 AM.
[31:32] So that's 3 1/2 hours in the morning.
[31:35] But the drive from Hull to Bridlington is only an hour, so
[31:40] that leaves 2 1/2 hours where Russell was doing something that
[31:45] we don't know. Could he potentially in that two
[31:47] hours have gone and picked up a friend?
[31:49] Maybe they just hung out for a little bit and then they drove
[31:51] to Benton Cliffs. Maybe they did something else
[31:54] that morning. Who knows.
[31:55] Or maybe this was enough time for someone, anyone, maybe not
[31:59] even just a friend, to kill Russell, clean up for two hours
[32:04] and then drive his car an hour away, park it and then dump it.
[32:08] I just can't think what Russell might have been doing for two
[32:11] hours that morning before he arrived at Benton.
[32:13] Like, what else could he have been doing other than meeting
[32:16] someone potentially working? Who knows?
[32:19] And then we have the final theory, in this case, probably
[32:22] the one that you've all been waiting for me to talk about his
[32:24] potential involvement with that cult.
[32:27] And one of the biggest reasons why this theory is believed
[32:30] among some people is obviously when Russell went missing so did
[32:35] that USB full of the cult artwork.
[32:37] It could be very possible that this cult somehow found out
[32:41] about Russells interest and his archives of all this artwork,
[32:45] and maybe they wanted to silence him or get rid of that artwork
[32:50] or something. Or there is the possibility that
[32:52] maybe Russell tried to join this cult, maybe he was successful,
[32:57] maybe he's with them right now, or maybe he tried to join them
[33:00] and maybe they killed him for knowing too much.
[33:04] This does seem plausible when you team together his deep
[33:08] interest in the cult and his collection of their artwork.
[33:11] And then where his car was found by the cult's old meeting point.
[33:16] Some people have said that maybe that trip a couple of days
[33:18] before to those three different places was maybe Russell
[33:22] preparing to join this cult. Or maybe it was like an
[33:25] initiation. Maybe they sent him to three
[33:27] different places to get something.
[33:30] And of course, the fact that the USB went missing, maybe he took
[33:33] it with him when he went to join the cult.
[33:35] Maybe that was part of joining the cult that you had to collect
[33:39] all this stuff. Who knows?
[33:41] However, with the state of the police work on this case, we
[33:45] don't know if that USB truly is missing or if it just hasn't
[33:50] been found. It could still be in Russell's
[33:53] bedroom or in Russell's car or bag or anything.
[33:58] Police have just proved themselves to not really be very
[34:01] good on this case. Or maybe he's gotten rid of it
[34:04] months prior to his disappearance.
[34:07] He might just not have been interested in it anymore and
[34:09] just got rid of this USB. Who knows?
[34:12] But circling back to the suicide theory, a lot of people believe
[34:17] that this USB went missing when Russell did, possibly because he
[34:22] took it with him or jumped off this Cliff with it.
[34:25] A lot of people think that maybe Russell was embarrassed of
[34:28] having this USB stick because like I said, this satanic
[34:32] artwork was just straight up pornographic artwork.
[34:37] Like maybe he didn't want people to be looking through his things
[34:40] once he'd gone and find that and then that be like their lasting
[34:45] memory of him. You know what I mean?
[34:46] Maybe it really wasn't that deep.
[34:48] Maybe he just didn't want people to find it once he died.
[34:50] And so he just somehow got rid of it himself.
[34:54] So that might explain why the USB is missing.
[34:57] But another thing that really like to me disproves this theory
[35:01] completely is that this cult hadn't been active since the
[35:06] 1970s, since 40 years before Russell went missing.
[35:10] OK, but say this cult did still exist, but they just weren't in
[35:15] the RAF bunker anymore? Because they certainly weren't.
[35:17] It was all concreted shut. If Russell really was trying to
[35:20] join this cult, why would he park his car there at the old
[35:24] location rather than wherever they're operating from now?
[35:28] To me, it just seems very, very unlikely that he did join this
[35:32] cult or that this cult even had anything to do with it.
[35:35] I don't think they were active at the time.
[35:37] I don't think they'd been active for a long, long time.
[35:39] And it does confuse me why so many people believe that theory.
[35:43] But, you know, to each their own.
[35:45] I personally think that obviously he was quite
[35:48] interested in this cult. He looked them up a little bit
[35:50] and found that they operated from a bunker that was on a
[35:54] cliffside. Maybe he then Googled this
[35:56] cliffside, found that it was a notorious suicide spot, and then
[36:01] years later he became depressed and then decided that he was
[36:05] going to do it there. And one final theory that I have
[36:09] been seeing floating around the Internet, which I don't think
[36:12] has much evidence at all, but, you know, the Internet likes to
[36:15] think of anything. And that is that Russell
[36:18] Bowling's own family was involved in his disappearance.
[36:22] Some people think that their behaviour all the way throughout
[36:25] this case was just very, very suspicious.
[36:28] How can they be so sure as they are that Russell only had £10 in
[36:34] cash on him and that his car only had 3.8 liters of petrol in
[36:39] it? Those are two very specific
[36:41] numbers and two things that you wouldn't really know about your
[36:45] son. You know, they're just so sure
[36:48] that someone else was involved that they shut down every single
[36:51] other theory like that he ran away or that it was a suicide.
[36:55] No matter how much solid evidence there is that they this
[36:58] was a suicide to them, it's not. And like, I'm not accusing
[37:02] anybody. I personally don't believe this
[37:04] theory. You know which theory I believe?
[37:06] I believe that he committed suicide.
[37:08] But a lot of people do just think that they are pushing this
[37:13] third party involvement a lot to the point where they are now
[37:18] behaving suspiciously like it's their theory or no theory.
[37:22] Like to the point where they actually filed A lawsuit against
[37:26] the police that were working on this case.
[37:28] The police, like I said, believe that this is a suicide.
[37:31] There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that this is a
[37:34] suicide. However, the Bowling family felt
[37:37] that they came to this theory too quickly and then that
[37:41] influenced them looking into other theories.
[37:43] Like they believed it was a suicide so much that they didn't
[37:46] really want to look into other theories.
[37:48] They just kind of decided that and that was it.
[37:50] But that lawsuit was thrown out pretty much immediately with the
[37:54] judge saying that it's not really up to the court to decide
[37:57] if police were thorough enough and technique played.
[38:00] Police did touch all bases on this case.
[38:03] I know they didn't do it very well, but they did.
[38:06] They kind of checked every single opportunity, and there's
[38:09] a lot of different theories to choose from there, but which one
[38:12] do you personally believe? Do you think he ran away?
[38:15] Do you think he was killed? Do you think it was a suicide?
[38:17] Do you think it was the cult? I just think that all the other
[38:20] theories are quite easy to poke holes in and the suicide theory
[38:26] is, I don't know, pretty solid. Thank you so much for listening
[38:33] to Usual Disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[38:36] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[38:38] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[38:41] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[38:45] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
[38:48] podcast app so that you get notifications when we post new
[38:51] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[38:53] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[38:57] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[39:00] production. See you next time.

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