# 2 Hours of Unsolved Cold Cases Detectives Can't Crack | True Crime Compilation | 193

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 23 Mar 2026, 1 h 51 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO6463466274.mp3

Join me for a true crime marathon covering mysterious disappearances, unsolved murders, heists and robberies, and more. Also don't forget to hit that follow button and turn on all notifications. This is episode 193 of the true crime podcast btw. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 unsolved mysteries, true crime, cold cases, unsolved mysteries, missing persons, murder investigation, forensic evidence, serial killers, crime scene analysis, dark history, criminal psychology, real life horror, police investigations, DNA breakthroughs, forensic genealogy, crime documentaries, criminal profiling, mysterious disappearances, solved cases, justice system, law enforcement stories, cold case files, creepy mysteries, true crime storytelling, crime reconstruction, chilling cases, investigative reporting, modern forensics, victim advocacy, unidentified remains, crime scene forensics, disturbing cases, true crime analysis, hidden clues, infamous crimes, real crime stories, forensic evidence, california true crime, california cold cases, nyc cold cases, english cold cases, british cold cases, canadian cold cases, heists and robberies, unsolved heists, biggest heists in history, historical true crime, history crime

## Transcript

[0:01] If you'd walked through the streets of Key West, FL in the
[0:04] late 1970s, you would have noticed something strange.
[0:08] Tourists and locals alike were wearing novelty T-shirts printed
[0:12] with a single baffling question. Where is Bum Farto?
[0:17] To visitors, it probably looked like a joke.
[0:20] To the people who actually lived on the island, the name Bum
[0:24] Farto carried a weight that went far deeper than novelty
[0:27] merchandise. It was a name tied to power,
[0:30] corruption, and one of the most chilling vanishing acts in
[0:34] Florida's criminal history. Nearly 50 years later, nobody's
[0:39] been able to answer the question on those shirts so many years
[0:42] ago. Joseph Anthony Fardo was born on
[0:47] July 3rd, 1919 in Key West. He grew up across the street
[0:51] from Fire station #1 on Green Street, and as a kid, he was
[0:55] constantly hanging around the place fetching coffee for the
[0:58] firefighters and shining their shoes.
[1:01] The men at the station started calling him the Little Bum
[1:05] because of his habit of always doing odd jobs and then asking
[1:08] for small favors in return. Perhaps because of the comedic
[1:12] association with his highly unusual last name, that nickname
[1:16] stuck for life. When his father died in 1937,
[1:21] Fardo dropped out of school and went to work at a local Funeral
[1:25] Home. But the fire station was always
[1:28] where his heart was. He became a fireman in 1942,
[1:33] worked his way up through the ranks and was finally promoted
[1:36] to Fire Chief in 1964. He was now taking over A4 Truck
[1:42] 40 man department that had fascinated him his entire life.
[1:48] Fardo didn't waste time once he had the top job.
[1:51] He modernized the department, outfitting his men with improved
[1:55] bunker coats, the latest gas masks and self-contained
[1:59] breathing tanks. He introduced fire prevention
[2:02] education, implemented training incentives and created service
[2:07] award pins for his firefighters. He was universally seen as a
[2:11] competent chief who was able to manage the department well.
[2:15] A profile in the Miami Herald described him as a restless,
[2:18] excessively alert man who didn't seem natural sitting behind a
[2:22] desk. By all accounts, he was a
[2:25] beloved community figure on an island where earning genuine
[2:29] respect wasn't easy. But Farto was also a showman.
[2:35] He was frequently seen cruising around Key West in a lime green
[2:38] Ford Galaxy 500 with mirrored tint and Chrome hubcaps.
[2:44] The words El HEFE were also displayed on the vehicle in what
[2:48] was believed to be a nod to his Spanish ancestry.
[2:51] However, given the business he would eventually get himself
[2:54] tied up in, this was one of the facts the media and prosecutors
[2:58] trotted out to make him out to be a kingpin.
[3:02] Also, just as a quick aside, as I was editing, I realized that I
[3:06] didn't mention what this name means in English.
[3:09] It's the chief, perhaps like a Fire Chief, perhaps like
[3:13] something a bit more. Notably, Fardo's car wasn't the
[3:18] only thing that set him apart from the other residents of Key
[3:21] West. His style was quite unique, to
[3:23] say the least. He favoured bright red leisure
[3:27] suits, rose tinted glasses, gold jewelry and large cigars, and
[3:33] his office at the station was decorated with pictures of his
[3:36] hero, John F Kennedy. He was in every sense a larger
[3:41] than life character, and that flamboyance would eventually
[3:44] become part of the mythology that followed his downfall.
[3:49] By the late 1960s and early 70s, Key West had developed a
[3:53] remarkably casual attitude toward the drug trade.
[3:57] Coke and weed flowed through the island with little interference.
[4:01] Dealers operated more or less openly.
[4:04] The general feeling among many residents was that the illicit
[4:07] business was simply another part of the local economy.
[4:10] One detective was quoted at the time as saying coke was about as
[4:14] common as Key Lime Pie, but Florida Governor Ruben Askew
[4:18] wasn't as relaxed about it. When reports of Key West's
[4:22] freewheeling drug culture reached him, he ordered an
[4:25] investigation. The result was Operation Conch,
[4:29] a joint undercover sting involving multiple federal and
[4:32] state agencies. At the center of the operation
[4:36] was an informant named Titus Walters, a local who knew Farto
[4:40] personally. Walters introduced Farto to an
[4:43] undercover agent named Larry Dollar, claiming Dollar was his
[4:47] cousin. Dollar offered Farto a gold
[4:50] diamond ring in exchange for an ounce of Colombian confetti.
[4:55] Farto agreed but struggled to source the product, at one point
[4:58] handing over a bag of weed as a gesture of goodwill.
[5:02] This, of course, should perhaps have been the first sign that El
[5:05] Hefe wasn't quite the major player some thought he was.
[5:09] He eventually came through delivering Coke to Dollar at a
[5:12] Key West fire station, where another agent secretly
[5:16] photographed the exchange. The situation took a grim turn
[5:21] before the arrests even came. Titus Walters was found dead in
[5:26] his bathtub, shot twice in the head.
[5:29] Disturbingly, he had also been injected with a hot shot heavily
[5:33] laced with drain cleaner, a poison that may not have
[5:36] finished him off quick enough. Despite this, the operation
[5:41] moved forward. On September 9th, 197528 agents
[5:47] descended on Key West posing as karate enthusiasts in town for a
[5:53] tournament. Also right here.
[5:55] I have to question why there hasn't been a Netflix series on
[5:58] this operation yet, since this is just pure cinema.
[6:04] They fanned out in unmarked cars and began making arrests.
[6:08] Fardo was the first one taken into custody, grabbed outside
[6:11] his home. Among those also arrested were
[6:14] Manny James, the city attorney and son of the police chief, and
[6:19] several other prominent figures. A crowd of roughly 200 people
[6:23] gathered outside the Monroe County Courthouse to watch
[6:27] suspects being brought in. Some onlookers reportedly
[6:30] applauded the agents, though others believed that the cheers
[6:34] were actually for the arrested men and not law enforcement.
[6:39] Farto was released on $25,000 bail posted by a fellow
[6:44] defendant. His trial came in early February
[6:47] 1976 and it didn't go well for him.
[6:51] A jury convicted him of 1 count of selling weed and two counts
[6:55] of selling coke after just 30 minutes of deliberation.
[7:00] He was looking at a prison sentence of up to 31 years for a
[7:04] 56 year old man who'd spent his entire adult life on the small
[7:08] island that was essentially the end of his life as he knew it.
[7:13] Notably, while the media made Bum Fardo out to be a kingpin at
[7:17] the time, there's very little evidence that he was anything
[7:21] more than a minor player. It's worth noting that Farto had
[7:25] difficulty even obtaining coke for the undercover agent during
[7:29] the sting, which doesn't exactly paint the picture of a major
[7:32] swinger in the industry. Days after his conviction, Farto
[7:38] told his wife that he needed to take care of some business in
[7:41] Miami. His city vehicle had been
[7:43] confiscated, so he rented a Pontiac sedan and drove N on US
[7:48] Route One, the only Rd. connecting Key West to the
[7:51] mainland. That was February 16th, 1976.
[7:57] A few weeks later, the rental car was found abandoned in
[8:00] Miami. There was no sign of Bum Farto.
[8:04] He jumped his bail and vanished. The disappearance immediately
[8:08] became the talk of the island, and the T-shirts appeared almost
[8:12] right away, and one shop reportedly sold over 800 of
[8:16] them. The theories about what happened
[8:19] to Bum Farto have ranged from the plausible to the
[8:22] conspiratorial. The most widely discussed
[8:25] possibility is that he fled the country and settled in Central
[8:29] or South America. This theory gained some traction
[8:33] in 1980 when reports surfaced that Farto had been spotted at
[8:38] the US Embassy in Costa Rica. 6 residents of the town of Golfito
[8:43] claimed they recognized him, and authorities believed he may have
[8:47] lived there until around 1979, when American fugitives began
[8:52] being expelled. However, none of these accounts
[8:56] were confirmed, and the trail went cold, if there was ever a
[9:00] meaningful trail to begin with. Notably, others have suggested
[9:05] that he'd fled to Spain, given that he was fluent in the
[9:09] language and his parents were from the country.
[9:12] That said, there's no evidence to support this, but if he did,
[9:17] in 1976, Spain was in a period of political turmoil and he may
[9:22] have been able to simply blend in.
[9:26] Others believed Farto met a grimmer end.
[9:29] Some locals were convinced that dealers had eliminated him to
[9:32] keep him quiet, possibly dumping his body in the ocean.
[9:37] He was functionally facing spending the rest of his life in
[9:40] prison, a big step down from being one of the most respected
[9:44] people in Key West. Ultimately, there's no proof
[9:48] that he ever cooperated with the authorities or sought out a
[9:52] deal. However, as with other cases
[9:55] like this, it's important to remember that there doesn't
[9:58] actually have to be any deal in place.
[10:01] He may have simply been seen as someone who could be a liability
[10:04] in the future, especially given his connections to law
[10:07] enforcement. In 1986, a decade after the
[10:12] disappearance, Bum Farto was declared legally dead so that
[10:17] his wife could collect his pension and settle his estate.
[10:21] Notably, his wife received less than $10,000 from his estate,
[10:25] which again suggests that he likely wasn't a heavy hitter in
[10:28] the trafficking game. That said, it's of course
[10:32] possible that he was able to get his money out of the country,
[10:35] perhaps to Costa Rica or Spain, where he lived out the remainder
[10:39] of his life quietly. Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here
[10:46] with a quick reminder to subscribe to my channel if
[10:48] you're enjoying this video. Also, don't forget to check out
[10:52] the Patreon or the YouTube membership to take your support
[10:56] for my channel to the next level.
[11:02] Sometimes the most consequential moments in history begin with
[11:05] something absurdly small. For Bogdan Stashinski, the event
[11:09] that would reshape his entire life was getting caught riding a
[11:13] train without a ticket. Born on November 4th, 1931 in
[11:18] the village of Borchovici, near Levive in western Ukraine,
[11:23] Stashinsky grew up in a family with deep ties to the Ukrainian
[11:27] nationalist movement. His three sisters were active
[11:30] members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, an organization
[11:34] fiercely opposed to Soviet rule. The region itself was a hotbed
[11:38] of resistance, having been absorbed into the Soviet Union
[11:42] against the will of much of the local population.
[11:46] In 1950, the 19 year old Stashinski was arrested by
[11:50] Soviet authorities for the minor infraction of traveling without
[11:54] a valid transit ticket. It should have been a
[11:57] forgettable moment. Instead, the secret police
[12:01] recognized an opportunity. They knew about his family's
[12:05] nationalist connections, and they leveraged that knowledge
[12:09] ruthlessly, threatening to arrest his relatives unless he
[12:13] agreed to cooperate as an informant.
[12:16] Faced with the potential destruction of his family,
[12:19] Stashinski agreed. Through his sisters, he began
[12:23] infiltrating Ukrainian nationalist networks.
[12:26] His work proved effective enough that by 1952, he was formally
[12:31] recruited into Soviet intelligence and sent to Kiev
[12:35] for espionage training. The quiet student from a small
[12:39] Ukrainian village was being transformed into something far
[12:42] more dangerous. By 1954, Stashinski had been
[12:48] deployed to East Germany under the alias Joseph Lehman, where
[12:52] he perfected his German and began operating within this
[12:55] volatile theater. His aptitude for languages and
[12:59] his ability to blend into foreign environments made him an
[13:03] ideal candidate for the kind of work Moscow had in mind.
[13:07] From 1956 onward, he travelled frequently to Munich in West
[13:12] Germany, a city that had become a hub for Ukrainian nationalist
[13:16] exiles and a thorn in the Kremlin side.
[13:20] In 1957, the KGB trained Stashinski in the use of a
[13:25] highly specialized weapon. It was a compact spray device,
[13:30] roughly the size of a small tube that crushed a glass ampule
[13:34] containing liquid hydrogen cyanide and expelled the poison
[13:38] as a fine aerosol mist. When sprayed directly into a
[13:42] target's face, the cyanide vapor caused almost immediate cardiac
[13:47] arrest. The beauty of the weapon, from
[13:51] the perspective of intelligence at least, was that it left
[13:54] virtually no trace. Deaths would appear natural, and
[14:00] autopsies would reveal nothing suspicious.
[14:03] And with instructions from Moscow, he tested the weapon on
[14:07] shelter dogs he acquired. This weapon proved highly
[14:11] effective, and the supposedly rescued dogs were dead almost
[14:14] instantly. With this field testing having
[14:18] proved successful, he received word that he was to seek out
[14:22] human targets. His first target was Lev Rabet,
[14:26] an intellectual leader within the Ukrainian exile community
[14:30] and the editor of several nationalist publications in
[14:33] Munich. On October 12th, 1957, Bogdan
[14:38] intercepted Robette on a staircase in the office building
[14:41] where the exile worked. He raised the device, sprayed
[14:45] the mist into Robette's face, and walked away.
[14:49] Robette collapsed and died almost instantly.
[14:52] An autopsy concluded he had suffered a heart attack, and
[14:55] nobody suspected foul play. Emboldened by this success,
[15:01] Moscow turned Stachinski's attention to a far bigger
[15:05] target, Stepan Bandera. Bandera was the most prominent
[15:10] figure in the Ukrainian nationalist movement in exile, a
[15:14] man who remained A polarizing symbol of resistance to Soviet
[15:17] authority. Unlike Robet, Bandera lived
[15:21] under a false identity and took significant precautions for his
[15:25] safety. Reaching him would require
[15:28] patience. On October 15th, 1959,
[15:32] Stashinski followed Bandera to his apartment building in
[15:35] Munich. As Bandera struggled with his
[15:38] door lock, Stashinski approached and casually asked if the key
[15:42] was giving him trouble. When Bandera looked up to
[15:45] respond, Stashinski fired an improved version of the poison
[15:49] spray weapon directly into his face.
[15:52] Bandera collapsed in the stairwell and died shortly
[15:55] afterward. Once again, the initial
[15:58] investigation failed to identify the true cause of death.
[16:03] For this operation, Stachinski was summoned to Moscow and
[16:07] personally awarded the Order of the Red Banner by the KGB
[16:11] chairman, one of the Soviet Union's highest state honors.
[16:15] The acts had been approved at the very top, with Soviet
[16:19] Premier Nikita Khrushchev directly authorizing the
[16:21] attacks. Stashinski was then given 1/3
[16:25] assignment, the elimination of Yaroslav Stetsko, another
[16:30] leading anti Soviet Ukrainian figure living in Munich.
[16:34] That operation was planned for 1960, but for reasons that have
[16:38] never been fully clarified, it was never carried out.
[16:43] The unraveling of Bogdan Stachinski's career as a Soviet
[16:47] assassin didn't begin with a crisis of ideology.
[16:51] It began with a woman. In 1957, while stationed in East
[16:56] Germany, he met and fell in love with Inga Pohl, an East German
[17:00] woman who, in A twist of deep irony, held strongly anti
[17:05] communist views. His handlers were alarmed and
[17:08] attempted to discourage the relationship, but Bogdan said
[17:12] that if he couldn't be with her, he'd have no reason to live
[17:15] anymore. At first this didn't work, but
[17:19] Stashinski persisted. They reluctantly allowed the
[17:22] marriage on the condition that Pol would become a Soviet
[17:25] citizen and cooperate with intelligence.
[17:30] The couple settled in Moscow, where their apartment was
[17:33] promptly bugged. The KGB overheard them
[17:37] expressing anti Soviet sentiments, deepening the
[17:40] agency's suspicion that Stashinski had become a
[17:43] liability. When Stashinski confided in his
[17:47] wife about the true nature of his work, Pole was horrified.
[17:52] She of course knew that he was an intelligence agent, but she
[17:55] didn't realize what exactly he was doing.
[17:58] In the course of his work, she helped Stashinski see what he
[18:01] did wasn't as acts of service to the state, but as the
[18:05] elimination of real human beings with families and lives of their
[18:09] own. For the Soviets, this was their
[18:12] worst fear come true, as she was undoing all of his training and
[18:16] conditioning that made it easy for him to commit these horrific
[18:19] acts. The KGB refused to let the
[18:23] couple travel abroad together, fearing exactly the kind of
[18:27] defection that was now taking shape in Stashinski's mind.
[18:31] Then tragedy struck. In early 1961, Inga returned to
[18:37] East Germany to give birth to their son.
[18:39] Peter Stashinski was forced to remain in Moscow.
[18:43] At just four months old, Peter suddenly developed a fever and
[18:48] died in a German hospital. The KGB, perhaps calculating
[18:53] that grief would make Stashinski easier to control, allowed him
[18:57] to travel to East Berlin for the funeral.
[18:59] It was the last mistake they'd make with him.
[19:04] On August 12th, 1961, one day before their son's funeral and
[19:09] literal hours before the Berlin Wall began to go up, Stashinski
[19:13] and his wife slipped away from their handlers.
[19:16] They took a long route intentionally designed to throw
[19:18] off anyone who may have been tailing them.
[19:21] Ultimately, they arrived at a small town on the outskirts of
[19:24] Berlin and took a taxi to East Berlin, where they subsequently
[19:29] crossed the border. Stashinski then walked into a
[19:32] local police station, announced that he was a K GB agent,
[19:37] confessed to two political assassinations, and asked to be
[19:40] arrested. The local cops were clearly in
[19:44] over their heads, and through a series of handovers, he
[19:47] eventually found his way into the hands of the Central
[19:50] Intelligence Agency. The CIA was initially skeptical
[19:55] of Stachinski's claims, and it took extensive interrogation
[19:59] before his story was accepted as credible.
[20:02] He was turned over to West German authorities and put on
[20:04] trial in October 1962 at the Federal Court in Karlsruhe.
[20:10] The proceedings became one of the most sensational espionage
[20:13] cases of the era, drawing global media attention.
[20:17] Stachinski's detailed testimony exposed the program and directly
[20:21] implicated Khrushchev in ordering the slayings.
[20:25] The court determined that while Stachinski had physically
[20:28] committed the acts against the two men, the primary guilt lay
[20:32] with the Soviet leadership that had directed them.
[20:36] He was sentenced to 8 years in prison, but with credit for good
[20:40] behavior, served approximately 4 years before his release in
[20:45] 1966. Notably, it's widely believed
[20:49] that he was given a much lighter sentence due to the sensitive
[20:52] intelligence information he handed over.
[20:55] While there's no direct evidence that this occurred, I'm going to
[20:58] go ahead and say that given what he knew, especially about the
[21:02] weapon he used, I feel extremely confident this was the case.
[21:08] Inga Pole divorced Stashinski in 1964 while he was still
[21:12] incarcerated. Having difficulty accepting the
[21:15] evil acts he had committed, she either changed her name or was
[21:19] granted an entirely new identity and ended up completely
[21:23] disappearing from the historical record.
[21:26] After his release, Stashinski himself vanished just as
[21:30] thoroughly, and the details of what happened next remain murky
[21:35] and contested. According to one account, he was
[21:39] flown out of Germany on AUS Air Force plane and taken to America
[21:44] under official government protection.
[21:47] Given his ability to adopt new identities and mimic the accents
[21:51] and mannerisms of the people around him, it's likely he could
[21:55] have stayed undetected. Notably, he already had the
[21:59] ability to pass himself off as a German so convincingly that he
[22:03] lived Incognito in Germany. If he turned up in Michigan or
[22:07] California and claimed to be an immigrant from Germany, it's
[22:10] highly unlikely he would have raised any red flags.
[22:15] As of today, nobody can say with certainty where Bogdan
[22:19] Stashinski ended up, or whether the man who once carried the
[22:22] KGB's most secretive weapon is still alive.
[22:26] Born in 1931, he would be in his 90s if he survived.
[22:30] And bizarrely, there's a real possibility that this Soviet
[22:34] hitman is currently living in a retirement community in Florida.
[22:42] On the afternoon of July 8th, 1997, a 16 year old girl named
[22:47] Natasha Jennings was found dead on the floor of a bedroom in her
[22:50] aunt's apartment in Carson City, NV.
[22:53] She'd been visiting from Southern California, spending
[22:56] part of her summer with her father, Clarence Jennings, and
[23:00] her aunt Sandra. By all accounts, Natasha was a
[23:04] bright, sociable teenager who cared deeply about her family
[23:09] and wasn't mixed up in trouble. She was supposed to meet her
[23:12] father that afternoon. She never showed up.
[23:16] When Clarence couldn't reach her, he called Sandra and asked
[23:20] her to check on his daughter. Sandra went upstairs and found
[23:23] Natasha lying motionless on the guest room floor.
[23:27] An electric fan was resting on top of her body, and her hair
[23:31] was damp as though she'd recently bathed.
[23:35] Paramedics arrived quickly, but there was nothing they could do.
[23:40] Natasha was already dead. She was just 16 years old, and
[23:45] what happened to her in that room remains one of Nevada's
[23:48] most confounding unsolved cases nearly 3 decades later.
[23:54] From the moment investigators arrived at the apartment,
[23:58] nothing about the scene made straightforward sense.
[24:01] There were no obvious signs of trauma on Natasha's body.
[24:05] No bruises, no wounds, nothing that pointed immediately to an
[24:10] attack. The damp hair suggested she
[24:13] might have showered or bathed shortly before she died, and the
[24:16] overturned electric fan on her body was peculiar.
[24:21] The Carson City Sheriff's Department launched an
[24:23] investigation, and Natasha's body was sent for an autopsy.
[24:29] The results only deepened the mystery.
[24:32] The medical examiner couldn't determine a definitive cause of
[24:35] death. There was no evidence of
[24:37] strangulation, blunt force trauma, or any of the typical
[24:41] indicators you'd expect. However, investigators did find
[24:46] something troubling near the bedroom, a small piece of
[24:50] plastic that tested positive for traces of meth and coke.
[24:54] An examination of Natasha's body also revealed a minute amount of
[24:58] drug residue inside her nostrils.
[25:01] This detail became a focal point of the investigation, but it
[25:05] came with a significant caveat. When toxicology screens were run
[25:10] on Natasha's blood, no drugs were detected in her system.
[25:15] The residue was on her, but apparently not inside her, a
[25:19] very odd situation that has never been meaningfully
[25:23] explained. It was almost as if someone had
[25:26] staged the scene to imply that something had happened and hoped
[25:30] that investigators wouldn't dig any further.
[25:35] Over the weeks and months that followed, 3 primary theories
[25:39] emerged about what might have happened to Natasha.
[25:42] The first involved a young Carson City man known publicly
[25:45] only as Chris. During her visit, Natasha had
[25:49] attended a party where alcohol was being consumed.
[25:53] In the days after that gathering, Natasha reportedly
[25:56] told her best friend back in California that she blacked out
[26:00] during the party and that Chris had indecently assaulted her.
[26:05] Police interrogated Chris, but they didn't believe the
[26:08] allegation, and the autopsy concluded there was no physical
[26:11] evidence of assault. Chris denied any involvement in
[26:15] Natasha's death, and investigators ultimately didn't
[26:18] pursue him as a suspect. Still, the timing of these
[26:22] allegations, coming just days before Natasha died, has struck
[26:27] many observers as deeply unsettling.
[26:31] The second theory centered on Natasha's father and his alleged
[26:35] ties to law enforcement. After Natasha's death, her
[26:39] mother, Tammy Stelton, travelled to Carson City and began her own
[26:43] investigation. She distributed Flyers around
[26:47] the city seeking information. During this effort, a woman
[26:52] approached Tammy at a shopping center and made a claim.
[26:56] She said that Clarence Jennings had been working as a
[26:58] confidential informant for local police and had been involved in
[27:02] shutting down some dealers. According to this woman, these
[27:07] local dealers had discovered Clarence's role and slain
[27:10] Natasha as an act of retaliation.
[27:14] While this was presented to Tammy as a factual scenario, it
[27:18] remained unclear if this was just grist from the rumor mill
[27:22] or whether there was something substantial behind these claims.
[27:27] The Nevada Division of Investigators stated that
[27:30] Clarence was never a documented informant, and Clarence himself
[27:34] expressed shock at the accusation.
[27:37] However, Tammy later claimed that an investigator privately
[27:40] confirmed to her that Clarence had indeed been an informant,
[27:44] creating a contradiction that's never been resolved.
[27:48] Whether or not this theory holds water, the conflicting
[27:51] statements from official channels and back channels
[27:53] didn't do much to build trust with Natasha's family.
[27:59] The third theory came from renowned forensic pathologist
[28:02] Dr. Cyril Wecht, who reviewed the case independently.
[28:06] Dr. Wecht proposed that Natasha may have ingested drugs at some
[28:10] point during her visit and subsequently developed
[28:13] hyperthermia, a dangerous overheating of the body.
[28:17] In this scenario, Natasha would have taken a bath to try to cool
[28:21] herself down and then suffered A fatal spasm or seizure while
[28:26] drying off. This could potentially explain
[28:29] the damp hair and the fan found on her body.
[28:32] It's a theory that accounts for the physical evidence at the
[28:35] scene, but it relies on the assumption that Natasha used
[28:39] substances. Her mother has consistently and
[28:43] firmly maintained that her daughter didn't use drugs.
[28:47] While I don't put great stock in her mom not knowing this, her
[28:51] friends also appear to have confirmed to investigators that
[28:54] she never touched the stuff further.
[28:57] Yet the absence of any substances in her bloodstream
[29:01] makes the overdose angle difficult to support with
[29:04] confidence, at least in my view. What followed Natasha's death
[29:10] was years of frustration for her family, particularly for Tammy
[29:13] Stelton. Tammy felt that the
[29:16] investigation had been mishandled from the start and
[29:19] that Carson City officials were either incompetent or
[29:23] deliberately withholding information.
[29:26] She complained that the District Attorney spoke with her directly
[29:29] only once, shortly after Natasha's death, and then failed
[29:33] to respond to multiple written inquiries.
[29:37] In 1999, her attorney filed a petition in Carson District
[29:41] Court on Tammy's behalf, seeking to convene a grand jury to
[29:46] investigate her daughter's death.
[29:48] The petition was denied. Tammy appealed to the Nevada
[29:52] Supreme Court, but the court rejected the effort as well,
[29:56] siding with authorities who maintained that the
[29:58] investigation had been fair and thorough.
[30:02] However, eventually, after further protests, the Nevada
[30:06] Division of Investigation reviewed the case at the
[30:08] district attorney's request and concluded that nothing more
[30:12] could be found. The District Attorney
[30:15] acknowledged that the death was mysterious, but maintained there
[30:19] was no indication that formal proceedings would uncover new
[30:23] information. In August 2008, Clarence
[30:28] Jennings died after what's been described as the brutal
[30:31] aftermath of an attempt to voluntarily pull the curtains on
[30:34] his life. He reportedly left a note, was
[30:38] found and placed on life support, and ultimately passed
[30:42] away, preventing any more investigation about what he
[30:46] knew. Whether his death was connected
[30:49] to a sense of guilt or grief or unrelated personal struggles is
[30:53] unknown, but it removed a central figure from the case.
[30:58] Notably, Natasha's case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries
[31:02] in an episode that first aired on August 15th, 2001, bringing
[31:07] national attention to the mystery.
[31:10] While the show was well past its cultural zenith at that point,
[31:14] this led to millions of people being exposed to the mystery
[31:17] surrounding her passing. Despite this, no new material
[31:21] leads were generated, and as of now, Natasha's case is no closer
[31:27] to being solved than it was on the day she was found.
[31:31] Ultimately, something happened to Natasha Jennings in that
[31:35] apartment, and whatever it was, the truth has proven stubbornly
[31:39] resistant to discovery. November 11th 1995 started as a
[31:49] fairly ordinary Saturday for Carolyn Killaby, a woman who had
[31:53] a long history of marital troubles.
[31:56] The 34 year old medical technician from Vancouver, WA
[32:00] had been in a 2 day argument with her husband Dan over his
[32:03] drinking, putting a serious strain on their marriage.
[32:07] By that morning though, they'd patched things up and made plans
[32:10] for a romantic dinner together, the kind of gesture couples used
[32:14] to reset after a rough patch. Dan went off to work, but when
[32:19] his brother called him as he was finishing his shift and invited
[32:23] him for drinks, he made a choice that would haunt him for the
[32:26] rest of his life. He and his brother drank late
[32:30] into the night, and at around one that morning he called home
[32:34] and left a message saying he wasn't coming back.
[32:36] That evening, Carolyn, left alone with a cancelled dinner
[32:40] and a husband who'd chosen a bar over their reconciliation, did
[32:44] what a lot of people might do and left the house.
[32:50] She drove to Omar's Steakhouse and Lounge on NE 4th Plain Rd.
[32:54] in the Orchards area. But despite being a steakhouse,
[32:57] Omar's wasn't exactly upscale. The place had earned itself the
[33:01] local nickname of Snow Mars due to its reputation for Coke.
[33:06] It was in spite of or because of this a popular spot busy on
[33:11] weekends, and Carolyn sat alone at a table, visibly upset.
[33:17] Multiple witnesses observed her crying at points, dancing
[33:20] occasionally, and drinking heavily over the course of the
[33:24] evening. By the time the night was
[33:26] ending, witnesses noted that she was extremely intoxicated.
[33:31] What happened next has been the subject to significant debate,
[33:35] but what is clear is that she never made it home.
[33:39] Among the people in Omar's that night was a man named Dennis
[33:42] Smith. He'd been watching Carolyn
[33:44] throughout the evening. At some point before the bar
[33:48] closed, he reportedly commented to the bouncer that she was
[33:52] going to find herself in trouble before the night was out.
[33:56] It was a remark that would later take on a deeply sinister
[33:59] meaning. Around 11:30 that night, Smith
[34:04] approached Carolyn. A witness described him
[34:07] essentially steering her toward the exit, with her apparently
[34:10] too intoxicated to fully understand what was happening.
[34:14] The two left the bar together, and that was the last time
[34:17] anyone ever saw her. What happened next is murky, and
[34:21] Smith's account never quite added up.
[34:26] He told investigators he'd been helping a very drunk Carolyn to
[34:29] her car when an unknown man appeared, confronted them
[34:33] aggressively and then left with her.
[34:36] Smith claimed he drove away and had nothing more to do with it.
[34:39] And nobody ever identified this mystery stranger.
[34:43] Nobody ever corroborated the story.
[34:46] And just before midnight, 2 separate individuals called 911
[34:51] to report hearing a woman screaming for help near the
[34:53] area. The calls were logged, but given
[34:57] that this was a rough area and this wasn't unusual, nothing was
[35:01] done about them that night. When Dan Killaby came home the
[35:06] next morning and found Carolyn absent, he didn't immediately
[35:09] panic. He assumed at first that she was
[35:12] punishing him for not coming home, staying somewhere else to
[35:15] make a point. But when she failed to show up
[35:19] for her job the following morning, something completely
[35:22] out of character, the alarm bells started ringing.
[35:27] He and his brother began driving around Vancouver looking for
[35:30] her. On November 13th, Dan found her
[35:34] 1991 Toyota Camry sitting in the parking lot at Omar's.
[35:39] Inside, there was a handwritten note about wanting to fly from
[35:43] Portland to Los Angeles. Investigators in the family
[35:47] couldn't fully explain this note, but didn't treat it as
[35:50] evidence she'd simply left on her own.
[35:53] Dan stated unequivocally that it wasn't like Carolyn to vanish
[35:57] without telling anyone. Her family backed him up,
[36:01] friends confirmed she didn't have a habit of heavy drinking,
[36:04] and the circumstances felt wrong.
[36:08] But it wasn't until the investigation took shape that
[36:11] the full picture of who Dennis Smith really was began to
[36:15] emerge. And it was deeply alarming, to
[36:18] say the least. Smith's criminal history
[36:22] stretched back into his youth, and these weren't your typical
[36:25] crimes associated with wayward young adults.
[36:28] And trust me, I'm putting it mildly.
[36:31] His most serious conviction involved the 1982 slaying of his
[36:35] own sister, Patricia Johnson. He'd served roughly 10 years of
[36:40] a life sentence before being paroled in 1993, and the parole
[36:44] board itself had documented concerns.
[36:48] In 1992, the board wrote that it was evident Smith absolutely
[36:53] couldn't consume alcohol or drugs without posing a clear
[36:57] risk to public safety. And yet, by the time of
[37:01] Carolyn's disappearance, he'd been discharged from drug
[37:04] monitoring after six months of clean tests.
[37:07] He was, on paper, supervised. However, records later revealed
[37:13] he'd committed at least 25 parole violations that
[37:17] authorities had failed to properly act on.
[37:20] His wife had even sent a letter to the Department of Corrections
[37:23] warning that he was a dangerous psychopath, but it went
[37:27] unheeded. As it turns out, it was
[37:31] Carolyn's case that brought Smith to public attention in a
[37:34] new way, and the public became acutely aware of the monster in
[37:38] their midsts. Patricia's son Dustin, who was
[37:42] five years old when his mother was slain by his own uncle, had
[37:46] been living with his grandparents in the same
[37:48] household as Smith. When Dustin read about Carolyn's
[37:53] disappearance in the newspaper and saw that a man named Dennis
[37:56] had been seen with her, he put it together immediately.
[38:00] He called Dan Killaby and shared his suspicion.
[38:04] Dan passed the information to detectives, and investigators
[38:07] confirmed that the Dennis in question was indeed Dennis
[38:11] Smith. And no, you don't have to replay
[38:14] that to make sure you heard that correctly.
[38:17] Dustin was forced to live with the man who had killed his own
[38:20] mother. Smith maintained his story about
[38:24] the mysterious stranger in the parking lot and later claimed
[38:28] he'd had consensual contact with Carolyn earlier that evening.
[38:32] He claimed that would explain any biological evidence linking
[38:35] them, but detectives didn't buy it.
[38:39] When they searched his truck, they found the passenger seats
[38:42] cover had been removed, along with the upholstery and
[38:45] carpeting. A large burned hole had been
[38:48] made in the seat, which Smith attributed to a cigarette.
[38:53] While nothing was adding up at that stage, they didn't have
[38:56] enough to hold him, so they released him and kept
[38:59] investigating. Within two weeks of Carolyn's
[39:03] disappearance, Smith vanished. He fled the state and remained A
[39:07] fugitive for over a year. In the meantime, forensic work
[39:12] continued and DNA analysis of blood traces found in Smith's
[39:15] truck matched Carolyn's profile. That evidence, combined with the
[39:20] broader investigation, was finely enough to clap this sick
[39:24] puppy in cuffs. In July 1996, Smith was charged
[39:29] with her slaying, yet he was still nowhere to be found.
[39:35] Then, on January 31st, 1997, a fugitive segment about Smith
[39:40] aired on Unsolved Mysteries. Astonishingly, Smith reportedly
[39:45] watched the episode with friends.
[39:48] Days later, on February 4th, 1997, he was pulled over by
[39:54] police in Florida while driving a stolen vehicle.
[39:58] When he went for the officer's gun during the stop, he was shot
[40:01] and critically wounded. He survived, recovered, and was
[40:05] extradited back to Washington to stand trial.
[40:10] The trial was contentious, and Smith's defense team pushed back
[40:13] hard on the DNA evidence, arguing the blood was consistent
[40:17] with a consensual encounter rather than violence.
[40:21] They also attempted to point the jury toward Dan Killaby as an
[40:24] alternative suspect, citing the couple's marital tensions.
[40:29] They pointed out that the couple were routinely fighting about
[40:32] Dan's drinking habits, and on the night in question, he went
[40:36] out boozing. The jury wasn't convinced and
[40:40] convicted Smith, accepting the prosecution's claim that he had
[40:44] slain Carolyn after abducting her that night.
[40:48] Since he was on probation, any serious offense such as this was
[40:52] the equivalent of a life sentence regardless, so this
[40:56] monster simply eliminated her. Combined with a 99 year sentence
[41:01] that was reinstated for the crime against his sister, he was
[41:05] sentenced to life with no possibility of parole.
[41:10] In 2002, the state of Washington settled A wrongful death lawsuit
[41:15] brought by Carolyn's family for $2.8 million.
[41:19] The state acknowledged that Smith had been inadequately
[41:22] supervised while on parole, despite documented red flags.
[41:27] The settlement was a form of accountability, but it wasn't
[41:30] the closure the family was searching for, and Carolyn's
[41:33] body had never been found. Perhaps since he had exhausted
[41:38] all his appeals, Smith eventually admitted to the
[41:41] crimes against Carolyn. In June 2004, he attempted to
[41:46] lead authorities to her remains, claiming she was buried out on
[41:50] Large Mountain, but a search was conducted and nothing was found.
[41:56] And then just a few months later, Dennis Smith decided to
[41:59] pull the curtains on his life of violence.
[42:02] He was found dead in his prison cell in November 2004, taking
[42:06] whatever he knew about Carolyn's final resting place to the grave
[42:10] with him. So probably much like you, I
[42:14] can't get past the infuriating reality of this case and why
[42:18] this man was ever released in the 1st place.
[42:20] We're not talking about some petty offender who made a bad
[42:23] decision in his younger years. Dennis Smith strangled his own
[42:27] sister. This may come as a shock to the
[42:30] parole board that released him, but that's not a Gray area
[42:34] crime. They documented that he couldn't
[42:37] drink or use drugs without posing a clear threat to public
[42:40] safety, and yet he was paroled anyway.
[42:44] Then he racks up at least 25 violations and nothing
[42:47] meaningful happens. Regardless of this, his own wife
[42:51] even warns authorities that he's a dangerous psychopath, and it's
[42:55] ignored. The warning signs were
[42:58] everywhere, flashing red, and still the system failed to act
[43:03] Carolyn Killaby didn't just disappear because of one
[43:06] disturbed predator that no one could have predicted would
[43:08] strike. She vanished because the system
[43:11] signed off on him, looked at his history, saw the risk, and chose
[43:16] to gamble on the release of an ultra high risk offender.
[43:23] Hood River, OR, sits about 60 miles east of Portland in the
[43:28] Columbia River Gorge. It's the kind of place where
[43:32] everyone knows everyone, where orchard families have worked the
[43:35] same land for generations, and where serious crime is almost
[43:40] unheard of. But in the summer of 2001, this
[43:44] quiet community was shaken by an event that would expose bizarre
[43:48] investigative decisions and tangled personal relationships.
[43:53] The victim was Eric Tamiasu, a 41 year old third generation
[43:57] fruit farmer whose family roots in the area stretched back
[44:01] nearly a century. His death wasn't just a tragedy
[44:04] for the people who knew him, it was the beginning of a mystery
[44:08] that Hood River has never been able to solve.
[44:13] The Tamiyasu family story in America began in 19 O 6 when
[44:18] Eric's grandfather, Gunichi, left his farming family in Japan
[44:22] and boarded a ship bound for San Francisco.
[44:25] He eventually made his way to Oregon, laying railroad track
[44:29] before falling in love with the Hood River Valley.
[44:32] He leased land and started growing fruit, and within a few
[44:36] years he had a successful farming operation.
[44:39] Then came 1942 and the Tamiyasu family, like so many Japanese
[44:45] American families on the West Coast, was forcibly relocated to
[44:50] an internment camp. When they returned after the
[44:53] conflict was over, they found their orchards overgrown, their
[44:57] equipment stolen, and every window in their home smashed.
[45:02] Despite all of that, the family rebuilt and persevered.
[45:07] By the time Eric took over operations decades later, the
[45:10] Tamiyasu orchard was again a well established fruit growing
[45:14] business. Eric had recently built a new
[45:16] home right next to the orchard, a place he'd constructed with
[45:20] his own hands. He was single, well liked, and
[45:25] by all accounts, living a peaceful life with no known
[45:27] enemies. On the evening of June 25th,
[45:31] 2001, Eric invited his longtime friend Diana Anderson over to
[45:36] his house. The two had been close for
[45:39] years, but had recently developed romantic feelings for
[45:42] each other, and this was essentially their first official
[45:46] date. According to Diana's later
[45:49] recollections, the evening took an unsettling turn.
[45:53] While they were together at the house, they heard someone
[45:56] tapping on the windows. The doorbell rang twice, and
[46:01] both times when Eric went to check, no one was there.
[46:06] He reportedly heard footsteps running down the driveway but
[46:09] couldn't see anyone in the darkness.
[46:12] A single shoe print was found in the dirt near the front door.
[46:16] Diana left a few hours later, shaken but safe.
[46:20] It was the last time anyone is known to have seen Eric Tamiyasu
[46:23] alive. Over the following days, Eric
[46:27] went completely silent. He didn't answer his phone or
[46:31] show up to handle business. Friends began reaching out to
[46:35] one another, asking if anyone had heard from him.
[46:38] After roughly 5 days of silence, Don Dixon, a man who described
[46:43] himself as one of Eric's closest friends, and his business
[46:46] consultant, drove out to the remote property.
[46:50] Using a spare key he said Eric had given him, Dixon entered the
[46:54] house and the smell, the deep stench of decay, hit him
[46:58] immediately. Upstairs, he found Eric's badly
[47:02] decomposed body lying on the bed, and he immediately called
[47:06] the police. When Hood River County sheriff's
[47:11] deputies arrived, they found no signs of forced entry, no
[47:15] indication of robbery and no obvious evidence of violence on
[47:19] the body. The advanced decomposition had
[47:22] obscured any visible wounds, and investigators initially believed
[47:26] Eric had died of natural causes, perhaps a sudden cardiac arrest.
[47:32] Then came a truly bizarre decision that would haunt this
[47:35] case for decades. After Eric's body was removed,
[47:39] County Sheriff Joe Wampler asked Dixon to help burn the soiled
[47:43] mattress and bedding. Wampler's stated reasoning was
[47:47] that he wanted to spare the Tamiasu family the grief of
[47:50] encountering the aftermath of decomposition.
[47:53] Dixon complied, and nothing remained of the mattress but the
[47:57] steel frame. That same day, the Oregon State
[48:01] Medical Examiner completed the autopsy and made a shocking
[48:04] discovery, determining that Eric hadn't died of natural causes at
[48:08] all. He'd been shot three times in
[48:11] the back of the head while he slept.
[48:14] The bullets had been lodged inside his skull and the
[48:16] decomposition had completely hidden the entry wounds.
[48:20] This strange and chilling decision to burn the mattress
[48:24] cast a long shadow over the entire investigation and over
[48:28] Sheriff Wampler himself. The investigation identified 3
[48:33] persons of interest, with the first of course being Sheriff
[48:37] Wampler, who had ordered key evidence destroyed.
[48:41] Beyond the questionable decision to destroy the bed, rumors
[48:45] circulated that Eric had been involved with Wampler's wife.
[48:49] Don Dixon claimed that shortly before his death, Eric told him
[48:53] he was dating a Polynesian woman, a description matching
[48:57] the sheriff's wife. However, he didn't know any
[49:00] further details about this woman beyond her ethnic background.
[49:04] If true, this would have given Wampler a personal motive.
[49:08] Wampler denied the affair, denied any involvement, and
[49:11] passed a polygraph administered by his own department.
[49:16] The second suspect was Eric Smith, one of Tamiyasu's closest
[49:20] friends and a business partner. Dixon claimed he'd overheard A
[49:25] heated argument between the two men in the days before the
[49:27] attack, alleging Tamiyasu accused Smith of theft from the
[49:31] business. Dixon made the claim that Smith
[49:34] had taken over $50,000, a number that would prove to be highly
[49:39] suspect. Smith, for his part, denied the
[49:42] argument ever happened and said neither man owed the other
[49:46] money. Investigators found that each
[49:48] had invested only around $10,000, calling into question
[49:52] the $50,000 figure. The 3rd and most controversial
[49:58] suspect was Dixon himself. Several things raised red flags.
[50:03] Eric Smith and others disputed Dixon's claim of being a close
[50:06] friend, with Smith saying Eric had described Dixon as merely
[50:10] someone he bought farm supplies from.
[50:13] More troubling was a phone call Dixon made to Eric's sister,
[50:16] Ramona, shortly after finding the body.
[50:19] Dixon reportedly told her he hadn't found any exit wounds, A
[50:23] deeply strange remark given that the wounds hadn't been
[50:26] discovered yet. Dixon explained he'd assumed
[50:30] that Eric did it to himself, but no weapon was found at the
[50:33] scene, and he would have known that.
[50:36] When it came time for polygraph tests, Dixon initially refused.
[50:41] He later agreed, but Examiner's couldn't establish a reliable
[50:45] baseline and the test couldn't proceed.
[50:49] Despite national exposure and a private investigation funded by
[50:53] the Tamiyasu family, the case has never been resolved.
[50:57] The authorities eventually considered Diana Anderson's
[51:00] former boyfriend and examine theories tied to the suspicious
[51:04] activity reported the night Eric was slain.
[51:07] However, since all the critical evidence was lost early on,
[51:11] detectives had little ability to fully examine this line of
[51:15] thought. Unfortunately, given that
[51:18] destruction of evidence, it appears likely to me that
[51:21] getting a conviction in Eric's death will likely be virtually
[51:24] impossible regardless. Hey everyone, it's Jimmy
[51:31] dropping in quickly with my usual reminder to hit the
[51:34] notification bell and share this video with your friends and
[51:37] family members. Also, don't forget to check out
[51:41] the Patreon or the YouTube membership if you want to
[51:44] support my channel. Further.
[51:49] Bermudez waters have claimed hundreds of ships over the
[51:51] centuries, so much so that the popular myth of the Bermuda
[51:55] Triangle still surrounds the region.
[51:58] The island sits in the Atlantic, surrounded by shallow coral
[52:01] reefs that have torn apart vessels since the earliest days
[52:04] of European exploration. It's a graveyard, and the
[52:09] remains of those ships have sat on the ocean floor for hundreds
[52:12] of years, waiting for someone curious enough to go looking.
[52:18] In 1955, that someone was a 30 year old Bermudan diver named
[52:22] Edward Tucker, known to everyone as Teddy Tucker wasn't some
[52:28] weekend hobbyist. He'd been obsessed with the
[52:31] ocean since childhood, growing up close to Hamilton Harbor.
[52:36] He'd worked at the Bermuda Aquarium as a boy, served as an
[52:39] underwater demolitions expert for the Royal Navy, and returned
[52:43] home to build a life around the sea.
[52:46] He was one of the most experienced divers on the
[52:48] island, regularly exploring the wrecks that littered the reef
[52:52] platform on a September day in 19. 55.
[52:57] Tucker was diving at a site he believed to be the wreck of the
[53:00] San Pedro, a Spanish galleon thought to have gone down in the
[53:04] 1590s. He'd already pulled up coins,
[53:08] gold bars and various other treasures over several dives.
[53:12] Then, roughly 30 feet below the surface, Tucker lifted a heavy
[53:18] plank of wood and found something extraordinary lying
[53:21] face down in the sand. It was a cross, and when he
[53:27] turned it over, 7 large green emeralds caught the light.
[53:32] The piece was made of 22 karat gold, measured about 3 inches by
[53:36] 1 1/2 inches. It featured tiny gold nails
[53:40] hanging from rings on its arms, likely representing the nails of
[53:44] the Crucifixion. The emeralds were cut in a style
[53:48] dating back to the Middle Ages, and the craftsmanship, while
[53:52] beautiful, appeared to be the work of New World artisans
[53:56] rather than Jewelers from Spain. The cross also had a removable
[54:00] back, concealing a small empty cavity.
[54:04] Presumably once used to house a sacred relic, it was at the time
[54:09] considered one of the most valuable single objects ever
[54:13] recovered from a shipwreck. Tucker's.
[54:17] Discovery didn't just make him a world.
[54:19] Famous treasure hunter It also created an ownership dispute
[54:23] with the Bermudan government, which argued that the
[54:26] territorial seabed belonged to the British Crown.
[54:29] Tucker reportedly told them that if that was the case, he'd take
[54:33] everything back to the reef and let them search for it
[54:36] themselves. The government relented.
[54:39] And Tucker retained. Ownership.
[54:42] Despite this, Tucker wasn't interested in selling to the
[54:45] highest bidder. Numerous individuals and
[54:48] institutions put in unsolicited bids, and at one point the
[54:52] American ambassador to Italy sent a representative to
[54:55] Bermuda. That agent had simple
[54:58] instructions that few people could turn down acquire the
[55:01] Cross at any cost. Despite being told to name his
[55:05] price, Tucker refused to consider the offer, believing
[55:09] that the Cross was the equivalent of the Crown Jewels
[55:12] of Bermuda. He.
[55:15] Eventually agreed to sell the entire hall from.
[55:18] The San Pedro site to the Bermudan government for roughly
[55:21] 35,000 lbs. This was a fraction of the
[55:25] value. Of the cross.
[55:26] Alone and Tucker simply wanted the money to fund further
[55:30] searches. The government placed the cross
[55:33] on public display in an aquarium of all places, where it remained
[55:38] safely stored for years in February. 1975.
[55:44] Queen Elizabeth was scheduled to visit Bermuda to survey the
[55:47] island. As part of the royal visit, the
[55:51] San Pedro Treasure Collection was to be transferred from the
[55:54] aquarium to the newly established Bermuda Maritime
[55:58] Museum. There it would be displayed for
[56:01] the Queen's inspection, and Tucker was invited to serve as a
[56:05] guide for the presentation. The treasures were packed up and
[56:09] transported to the new location, and several people handled the
[56:12] items as the display was arranged.
[56:15] Everything seemed to be in order then, just moments.
[56:19] Before the Queen arrived. Tucker took one last look at the
[56:23] display. Something about the cross
[56:26] bothered him. It didn't have the same weight
[56:29] or the same presence he so clearly remembered.
[56:32] So he reached out and touched it and gold colored paint came off
[56:36] on his hand. The Tucker cross had been
[56:39] replaced with a cheap replica and the paint wasn't even dry.
[56:44] Tucker was stunned, but there was no time to raise an alarm.
[56:48] He quickly removed the fake and rearranged the remaining
[56:51] treasures. He composed himself just in time
[56:54] to present the collection to the Queen as though nothing had
[56:58] happened. The visit went smoothly, but
[57:01] behind the scenes a crisis was unfolding.
[57:06] The police. Investigation that followed
[57:08] revealed just. How vulnerable the cross had
[57:10] been The key to the safe housing.
[57:13] The cross at the aquarium had been kept in an unlocked
[57:15] cabinet. The fact that the paint on the
[57:18] replica was still wet when Tucker discovered the switch
[57:21] suggested the swap had occurred in the preceding couple of days.
[57:25] Detectives believed it likely. Occurred during.
[57:28] Transit between the aquarium and the Maritime Museum.
[57:32] The window of opportunity was narrow, but apparently
[57:34] sufficient. Bermuda's police force wasn't
[57:38] used to this sort of crime, and they called in reinforcements.
[57:43] The FBI. Scotland.
[57:44] Yard and Interpol. All became involved in the
[57:47] investigation. Despite this international
[57:51] cooperation, there was almost nothing to go on.
[57:55] Multiple people had access to the cross during the transfer,
[57:59] and nobody involved admitted to knowing that a replica had been
[58:02] substituted. The investigation produced no
[58:05] arrests, no reliable leads and no recovery of the original
[58:10] Cross Several. Theories emerged over the years
[58:15] with. Most suspecting an inside job,
[58:18] though no evidence supported that claim.
[58:21] Others believed that the sophistication of the crime
[58:23] pointed to something more international, specifically, the
[58:27] creation and use of a convincing replica rather than simply
[58:31] stealing the cross outright suggested to many that the thief
[58:35] was likely a professional. Tucker himself believed that
[58:39] someone. Had been hired to take.
[58:40] The cross given the planning involved in fabricating A decoy,
[58:44] though he never named who he thought was responsible
[58:47] publicly. The Tucker Cross.
[58:50] Has never been recovered. And the case remains officially
[58:54] unsolved more than 50 years later.
[58:57] What makes it even more painful is that the cross wasn't the
[59:00] only treasure to go missing from Bermuda's museums.
[59:04] In 2005, visitors to the Bermuda Maritime Museum noticed that
[59:09] several other items from Tucker's collection were missing
[59:12] from their display cases, including a gold bar and a gold
[59:16] chain. As with the cross, these items
[59:19] were never recovered either, pointing to ongoing systemic
[59:23] security failures on the island. On the morning of December 10th,
[59:30] 1960. 8 On the western outskirts of Tokyo, in Fuchu, a single
[59:36] individual pulled off what many consider to be the most
[59:38] audacious robbery in Japanese history.
[59:41] Without firing a shot, without injuring a soul, and without
[59:45] ever being identified, one person managed to steal nearly
[59:49] ¥300,000,000 from 4 bank employees.
[59:53] Adjusted for inflation, that hall would be worth somewhere in
[59:57] the range of nine to $10 million today.
[1:00:01] It's the kind of crime that sounds.
[1:00:02] Like it belongs in a. Movie, and in fact, it's been
[1:00:05] turned into several. However, despite the apparently
[1:00:09] nonviolent nature of this crime, it would, as I'll explain,
[1:00:14] eventually claim the lives of four people.
[1:00:17] But before the decades of obsession came the crime itself.
[1:00:21] And to understand how it happened, you need to understand
[1:00:24] the Japan of the late 1960s. Japan was in the.
[1:00:29] Thick of its economic miracle. Companies were booming,
[1:00:33] factories were running at full capacity, and workers were being
[1:00:37] rewarded handsomely for their efforts.
[1:00:39] Twice a year, Japanese companies.
[1:00:41] Distributed. Bonuses to their employees, a
[1:00:44] tradition stretching back to the Edo period.
[1:00:47] The winter bonus, typically paid in December, was an especially
[1:00:51] significant one for Toshiba's factory workers.
[1:00:55] In Fuchu, that bonus amounted to roughly ¥294,000,000.
[1:01:01] On this particular December morning, 4 employees of the
[1:01:04] Nippon Trust Bank were tasked with delivering that cash by car
[1:01:09] to the Toshiba plant. The money sat in three metal
[1:01:12] cases in the trunk of a black Nissan sedan.
[1:01:16] It was a routine delivery in a cash heavy economy where bank
[1:01:20] transfers weren't yet the norm for large corporate payroll
[1:01:23] distributions. What made this robbery?
[1:01:27] Possible wasn't just the. Thief's Nerve.
[1:01:30] It was the groundwork that had been laid in the days and months
[1:01:33] before. Between April and August of
[1:01:36] 1968, someone had sent 9 threatening letters and
[1:01:40] extortion demands to the Tama Agricultural Co-op in the same
[1:01:44] general area. These letters demanded money and
[1:01:48] threatened bombings and arson. Then on December 6th, just four
[1:01:52] days before the robbery, a branch manager received an
[1:01:56] ominous piece of mail. The letter demanded ¥3 million
[1:02:00] be delivered by a female teller to a specified location by the
[1:02:03] following afternoon, or the sender would bomb the bank in
[1:02:07] the manager's home. The bank didn't comply and
[1:02:11] instead contacted police, who dispatched around 50 undercover
[1:02:15] officers to stake out the drop off point.
[1:02:18] The extortionist never showed, but the damage in terms of
[1:02:22] psychological preparation was done.
[1:02:26] The bank's employees were now primed to believe that a genuine
[1:02:29] threat existed. When the Nissan sedan set out on
[1:02:33] the morning of December 10th, carrying the Toshiba bonuses,
[1:02:37] the staff inside were already on edge.
[1:02:40] Normally, only two employees would have accompanied such a
[1:02:43] delivery, but the recent threats had prompted the bank to double
[1:02:47] the Escort. Importantly, handwriting
[1:02:50] analysis later confirmed that the threatening letters sent to
[1:02:54] the Tama Co-op and the letter sent to the bank manager were
[1:02:57] written by the same person. The Nissan was only.
[1:03:02] A few 100 feet from its. Destination when something very
[1:03:06] unusual happened. A young man on a white police
[1:03:09] motorcycle, dressed in the uniform of a Tokyo Metropolitan
[1:03:13] Police officer, pulled alongside and signalled the car to stop.
[1:03:19] The location was a quiet. Stretch of road near the.
[1:03:22] Walls of Tokyo Fuchu prison, a comparatively desolate location
[1:03:27] in the metropolis. The fake officer approached the.
[1:03:30] Vehicle and delivered a. Stunning piece of news that
[1:03:33] would have normally seemed unbelievable.
[1:03:35] He told the four bank employees that their branch managers house
[1:03:39] had just been blown up and that police believed a bomb had been
[1:03:42] planted beneath their car as well.
[1:03:47] The employees already anxious because of the recent.
[1:03:49] Threats didn't question him, and they got out of the vehicle as
[1:03:53] fast as they could. The imposter then crawled
[1:03:56] beneath the vehicle, ostensibly to check for explosives.
[1:04:01] Moments later, smoke and flames erupted from under the car and
[1:04:05] the employees, terrified, ran for cover.
[1:04:10] What they didn't realize was. That the smoke came from.
[1:04:12] A simple Rd. flare the thief had ignited to sell the illusion.
[1:04:17] While they scrambled to safety, the fake officer calmly climbed
[1:04:20] into the driver's seat of the car and drove away with nearly
[1:04:24] ¥300,000,000 in the trunk. The entire operation, from the
[1:04:29] moment the car was flagged down to the moment it vanished down
[1:04:32] the rain slicked Rd. took roughly 3 minutes with the
[1:04:37] proper groundwork. That's all it took to pull off
[1:04:40] the biggest robbery in Japanese history by the time.
[1:04:46] The bewildered employees gathered their.
[1:04:48] Wits and contacted the bank, only to learn that the manager's
[1:04:51] house was perfectly fine. The thief had already vanished.
[1:04:55] He'd driven the bank car to a secondary location, where he
[1:04:58] transferred the metal cases to a stolen vehicle, then switched
[1:05:02] cars again. Multiple getaway vehicles had
[1:05:05] been arranged in advance, each one stolen beforehand and staged
[1:05:10] along the escape route, the Tokyo Metropolitan.
[1:05:14] Police Department declared. A state of emergency across the
[1:05:17] city. Within minutes, checkpoints were
[1:05:20] established at intersections throughout Tokyo and officers
[1:05:24] searched every vehicle passing through.
[1:05:27] Despite this massive and immediate.
[1:05:29] Response. The thief slipped through the
[1:05:31] net entirely. By the end of the day, police
[1:05:35] had to concede that their dragnet had failed.
[1:05:38] What followed was the largest criminal investigation Japan had
[1:05:42] ever seen at that point, with 10s of thousands of police
[1:05:45] officers from Tokyo and across the country participating in the
[1:05:49] search. Roughly 100,000 forensic
[1:05:53] sketches were printed and distributed across the country,
[1:05:56] with the image achieving the cultural equivalence of the
[1:05:59] Unabomber sketch, the Suspect. List eventually ballooned to an.
[1:06:05] Astonishing 110,000 names, fingerprints collected from the
[1:06:10] crime scene, the abandoned vehicles and other evidence were
[1:06:13] painstakingly compared against 6,000,000 prints on file, but
[1:06:17] not a single match was found. The serial numbers of every
[1:06:21] stolen banknote had been recorded, and authorities
[1:06:24] monitored banks and businesses across the nation for any sign
[1:06:28] of the money entering circulation.
[1:06:31] Despite this massive effort, curiously, none of the money
[1:06:35] ever ended up surfacing the investigation.
[1:06:40] Also produced over 100. 20 individual pieces of physical
[1:06:43] evidence recovered from the various crime scenes.
[1:06:47] This included the motorcycle that had been painted white to
[1:06:50] resemble a police vehicle, a hat, the road flare, and a
[1:06:55] magnet. Most of these items were common,
[1:06:59] simply everyday objects, and it's widely believed the thief
[1:07:03] scattered them deliberately to muddy the investigative waters.
[1:07:07] The weather that morning had also been rainy, which further
[1:07:10] Hanford evidence collection and limited the reliability of
[1:07:14] witness accounts. The investigation.
[1:07:18] Produced several prominent. Suspects, though none was ever
[1:07:21] charged. The 1st and seemingly most
[1:07:24] compelling was a 19 year old man known publicly only as Boy S He
[1:07:30] was the son of a motorcycle police officer and a member of
[1:07:34] the Tachikawa group, a local youth motorcycle gang.
[1:07:38] His familiarity with police uniforms, motorcycles, and the
[1:07:42] local area made him an obvious person of interest.
[1:07:46] He had no alibi for the morning of December 10th.
[1:07:50] Despite A publication ban on his name, Both him and his father
[1:07:54] became temporarily notorious in police circles.
[1:07:58] Unfortunately, just five days after the robbery, on December
[1:08:02] 15th, he was found dead of potassium cyanide poisoning.
[1:08:07] Authorities ruled that he did it himself, but in A twist, they
[1:08:11] declared that he was innocent with absolutely no evidence to
[1:08:15] connect him to the crime. Tragically, it appears that the
[1:08:19] significant attention that was placed upon him and his father
[1:08:22] had driven him to commit this act.
[1:08:26] Sadly, though, this wouldn't be the only tragedy connected to a
[1:08:29] false accusation, in this case a year later.
[1:08:34] In December 1960. 9 The Menichi Shimbun newspaper publicly
[1:08:39] identified a 26 year old man as a suspect.
[1:08:43] Police arrested him on an unrelated charge as a pretext to
[1:08:47] interrogate him about the robbery.
[1:08:49] It turned out he had an airtight alibi since he'd been sitting a
[1:08:53] proctored examination at the time of the heist.
[1:08:56] The arresting officer was subsequently charged in relation
[1:08:59] to this bad faith arrest, accused of putting closing the
[1:09:03] case above getting to the truth. Disturbingly, the suspect's life
[1:09:08] was destroyed. His reputation was shattered,
[1:09:12] his family went bankrupt defending him, and he eventually
[1:09:15] chose to end it all over the accusation, notably 2 police.
[1:09:20] Officers involved. In the investigation took the
[1:09:23] same route during the course of the investigation, also having
[1:09:27] their reputations ruined for failing to solve the case then.
[1:09:33] In November 1975. Just weeks before the criminal
[1:09:36] statute of limitations was set to expire, a friend of the
[1:09:40] original teenage suspect was arrested on an unrelated charge.
[1:09:44] He was found carrying a large sum of money.
[1:09:47] He'd been 18 at the time of the robbery.
[1:09:50] Police pressed him for an explanation of where the cash
[1:09:53] had come from, but he refused to speak without proof, tying his
[1:09:58] money to the. Stolen.
[1:09:59] Funds and since it didn't match the serial numbers, they
[1:10:04] couldn't charge him and had to let him go.
[1:10:07] Some believe that this individual.
[1:10:09] Was in some. Way involved in the original
[1:10:12] heist and that he may have been the fake cop himself in.
[1:10:18] December 1975 exactly. Seven years after the crime, the
[1:10:23] statute of limitations for criminal prosecution expired.
[1:10:27] The police officially acknowledged that no charges
[1:10:30] would ever be brought. In a bizarre twist, the
[1:10:33] investigation had cost an estimated ¥900 million, roughly
[1:10:38] 3 times the amount that had been stolen in the 1st place, then in
[1:10:43] 19. 88. The civil statute of limitations
[1:10:47] also lapsed, meaning that the perpetrator could now come
[1:10:51] forward and tell the entire story without facing any legal
[1:10:56] consequences whatsoever. The fact that the thief has
[1:11:00] remained silent even after all legal risk evaporated has fueled
[1:11:05] endless speculation, some theorists.
[1:11:09] Believe the perpetrator died before he.
[1:11:11] Could enjoy the money and that he was perhaps even Boy S
[1:11:14] himself, despite the police ruling him out.
[1:11:18] Others have suggested the robbery was the work of a small
[1:11:21] organized group, possibly connected to the leftist student
[1:11:25] movements of the 1960s. Still others believe the
[1:11:30] sophistication of the operation means that it may have been the
[1:11:33] work of one of the Yakuza organized crime families under
[1:11:38] this theory. The money?
[1:11:39] Never. Resurfaced because the heat
[1:11:42] associated with the crime was much greater than expected.
[1:11:46] Some have even theorized that the individual responsible may
[1:11:49] have been silenced permanently by this organization to prevent
[1:11:53] the details of the crime from ever coming out.
[1:11:57] Potentially more far fetched. Ideas claim.
[1:11:59] That it may have been an intelligence operation by North
[1:12:02] Korean agents eager to get their hands on Japanese currency for
[1:12:07] foreign operations. Under this theory, North Korean
[1:12:12] agents may have used this money while abroad, posing as Japanese
[1:12:16] citizens. However, given that none of the
[1:12:19] stolen money ever re entered Japan despite over half a
[1:12:22] century passing, this seems increasingly unlikely.
[1:12:28] There's a. Critical detail about this case
[1:12:30] that often. Gets overlooked.
[1:12:33] The robbery was, in a practical sense, victimless, even if the
[1:12:37] investigation itself wasn't. Nobody was physically harmed
[1:12:42] during the. Heist.
[1:12:44] And the Toshiba employees received their bonuses on time
[1:12:47] because the money was fully insured.
[1:12:50] The insurance company's own losses were covered through
[1:12:52] international reinsurance, meaning the financial impact
[1:12:55] barely registered domestically. But that hasn't stopped the case
[1:12:59] from becoming one of the most famous crimes in Japanese
[1:13:02] history. The robbery has inspired novels,
[1:13:06] manga, films, and television specials, with the earliest film
[1:13:10] version coming out in 1975. Notably, the crime has become
[1:13:16] embedded in Japanese popular culture in much the same way
[1:13:19] that the DB Cooper hijacking has captivated the American
[1:13:23] imagination. And it makes sense, because the
[1:13:26] parallels between the two cases are striking in many ways.
[1:13:31] Both involved lone perpetrators conducting extremely daring
[1:13:34] crimes for significant amounts of money, as well as a total
[1:13:37] absence of any meaningful resolution.
[1:13:45] On the afternoon of February 9th, 1980. 9 A 20 year old
[1:13:49] University of Florida junior named Tiffany Sessions told her
[1:13:52] roommate she was heading out for a power walk.
[1:13:55] It was something she'd been doing regularly since returning
[1:13:58] from Christmas break, a daily routine along a familiar route
[1:14:02] near her off campus apartment in Gainesville.
[1:14:05] She left sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon,
[1:14:09] wearing red sweatpants, a white pullover sweatshirt with Aspen
[1:14:13] printed on the collar, and tennis shoes.
[1:14:17] She had a black Sony Walkman. And a distinctive. 2 Tone Rolex
[1:14:20] watch on her wrist. She didn't take her wallet, her
[1:14:24] keys or her identification. She expected to return within
[1:14:29] the hour, but she never came back.
[1:14:32] And by around 7 that evening, Tiffany's roommate, Kathleen
[1:14:36] Freza, knew something was wrong. She drove along Tiffany's usual
[1:14:41] walking route, searching for any sign of her.
[1:14:45] When she found nothing, she called the Alachua County
[1:14:48] Sheriff's Office and then Tiffany's parents, Patrick and
[1:14:52] Hilary Sessions. It was the beginning of one of
[1:14:56] the largest missing person searches in the history of
[1:14:58] Florida and a case that more than three decades later, still
[1:15:03] hasn't been fully resolved. Tiffany.
[1:15:07] Sessions was born on October 20. 9th, 1968 and her mom, who was
[1:15:12] in the Air Force, largely raised her on her own as they moved
[1:15:16] around the country. By the time she reached college,
[1:15:20] Tiffany had grown into an independent and driven young
[1:15:23] woman. She was studying finance at the
[1:15:26] University of Florida, with ambitions of one day running her
[1:15:29] own company. Her father, Patrick, was a
[1:15:33] prominent South Florida real estate developer who oversaw
[1:15:37] some of the largest building projects in the state, and she
[1:15:40] hoped to work with him one day. She lived in the Casablanca
[1:15:44] East. Condominiums.
[1:15:45] On Southwest 35th Place, about 5 miles from the main campus in
[1:15:51] what would later be seen as a. Potential vector of.
[1:15:53] Attack Her walking route took her along a wooded stretch of
[1:15:57] road near clusters of student apartment buildings in 19. 89
[1:16:04] There was no. Standardized protocol for
[1:16:06] missing persons cases in Florida.
[1:16:09] Hillary later recalled that investigators initially
[1:16:11] suggested Tiffany might simply be out with friends, a response
[1:16:16] she found frustrating because it didn't match her daughter's
[1:16:18] character. There was no evidence of a
[1:16:21] struggle at Tiffany's apartment and no indication she'd left the
[1:16:25] parking lot area voluntarily for any extended trip, some
[1:16:30] witnesses reported seeing. A woman matching.
[1:16:32] Tiffany's description speaking to individuals inside a vehicle
[1:16:36] near her walking route, and the woman may have gotten into the
[1:16:39] car. However, the witnesses weren't
[1:16:42] certain, and authorities never confirmed whether the person was
[1:16:46] actually Tiffany. What was clear from the start
[1:16:49] was that despite what the cops initially said, this wasn't a
[1:16:53] voluntary disappearance. Her personal belongings were
[1:16:57] still in her apartment, her car was still parked outside.
[1:17:01] Everything pointed to someone taking her against her will if
[1:17:06] the initial law. Enforcement response was slow.
[1:17:09] To gain traction, Tiffany's father more than compensated.
[1:17:13] Patrick Sessions threw every resource and connection he had
[1:17:16] into finding his daughter. Within a week of Tiffany's
[1:17:20] disappearance, he organized a massive search that even
[1:17:23] included members of the Miami Dolphins.
[1:17:27] Volunteers wore white T-shirts emblazoned with Tiffany's name
[1:17:30] and a toll free hotline number. And at the peak of the campaign,
[1:17:34] that hotline was receiving up to 600 calls a day.
[1:17:39] Patrick didn't stop there. Retaining the services of a team
[1:17:42] of private investigators that specialized in missing persons
[1:17:46] cases. He got Tiffany's picture printed
[1:17:49] inside every pizza delivery box in Alachua County.
[1:17:52] So that everyone would be familiar with her appearance, he
[1:17:56] organized a press conference. Featuring dolphins.
[1:17:59] Quarterback Dan Marino, John Walsh and future Florida
[1:18:03] Governor Jeb Bush launching the case into the national spotlight
[1:18:08] when the local Sheriff's Office. Advised that people.
[1:18:11] Were trying to contact them by fax but that they didn't have a
[1:18:15] fax machine. Patrick bought one for their
[1:18:18] office. Her case appeared on national
[1:18:21] television and Patrick offered a hefty quarter $1,000,000 reward
[1:18:25] for information on his daughter. Despite this massive private
[1:18:29] investigation, along with the public investigation, the effort
[1:18:33] tragically turned up nothing for years.
[1:18:37] A convicted criminal named. Michael Christopher
[1:18:40] Knickerbocker drew attention as a possible suspect.
[1:18:44] Knickerbocker was serving 5 consecutive life sentences for a
[1:18:48] series of brutal crimes against women and girls.
[1:18:51] While in prison, he reportedly told fellow inmates that he'd
[1:18:56] slain Tiffany, claiming he'd chained her to a tree near
[1:19:00] Gainesville. He claimed that he later
[1:19:03] disposed of her body in the Caloosahatchee River near Fort
[1:19:06] Myers. He also claimed her sweatshirt
[1:19:09] was buried outside of Gainesville, and in 2002, a
[1:19:12] blood soaked garment was found in the area.
[1:19:16] The results of forensic testing on that piece of clothing was
[1:19:19] never released, and there's nothing to indicate that it was
[1:19:22] related to the case at this point.
[1:19:26] Patrick Sessions himself went public in 1994 with his belief
[1:19:30] that Knickerbocker was involved, but upon further investigation,
[1:19:34] there was a significant problem when it turned out Knickerbocker
[1:19:37] wasn't living in Gainesville at the time of Tiffany's
[1:19:39] disappearance. His known crimes were all
[1:19:43] committed near victims who lived proximate to him, and
[1:19:46] investigators began to have doubts.
[1:19:49] I assume they also had some other.
[1:19:51] Reasons to. Suspect he wasn't involved, but
[1:19:54] given that this is an active and ongoing investigation, we may
[1:19:58] never know when directly. Confronted by detectives.
[1:20:04] Knickerbocker never confessed to the crime, but he did provide
[1:20:07] some information. He admitted to writing an
[1:20:10] anonymous letter claiming responsibility, though he
[1:20:14] wouldn't speak on his motives for this, in my view, I suspect.
[1:20:19] That this guy was just a. Sicko, who, having been locked
[1:20:22] up for life, wanted a way to further victimize innocent
[1:20:25] people. Also, I say this with the
[1:20:28] benefit of hindsight, since the other prime suspect seems to fit
[1:20:31] the facts scenario of her case much better than Knickerbocker,
[1:20:37] the real breakthrough. Came decades later, driven.
[1:20:40] In part by a woman who'd never forgotten the case.
[1:20:43] Sadie Darnell had been an employee of the Alachua County
[1:20:46] Sheriff's Office when Tiffany disappeared in 1989.
[1:20:51] Though she was never assigned to the case, she stayed in touch
[1:20:55] with Patrick Sessions over the years, sending him letters of
[1:20:58] encouragement when Darnell was elected sheriff in. 2000.
[1:21:03] Six, She established the county's first cold case unit,
[1:21:06] with Tiffany's case being marked as high priority.
[1:21:10] The key development began in two. 1012.
[1:21:13] When advancing forensic technology allowed investigators
[1:21:16] to link DNA evidence to a man named Paul Rawls, but this
[1:21:21] wasn't in connection to. Tiffany's case.
[1:21:24] But rather in connection to the slaying of Elizabeth Foster.
[1:21:28] Foster was a 21 year old Santa Fe Community College student
[1:21:32] whose body was found in a shallow grave in 1992.
[1:21:37] She was found roughly a mile from where Tiffany had
[1:21:39] disappeared three years earlier. Interestingly, Hilary Sessions
[1:21:44] had always believed the two cases were connected, and it
[1:21:47] turned out she may have been right.
[1:21:51] Paul Rolls. Had a deeply troubled history.
[1:21:54] Born in 1948 in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, he grew up in a
[1:21:59] severely dysfunctional household.
[1:22:01] His father, a veteran, was extremely violent and his mother
[1:22:06] suffered from serious mental illness and was in and out of
[1:22:10] institutions. In 1972, Rolls entered Linda
[1:22:15] Feta's Miami apartment and strangled her.
[1:22:19] He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but under the
[1:22:23] light sentencing laws of the era, he was paroled in 1985.
[1:22:28] After his release, he moved to the Gainesville area, where he
[1:22:31] worked for a company that delivered construction
[1:22:34] equipment. That job placed him directly
[1:22:37] along the route Tiffany Sessions walked every afternoon.
[1:22:40] And chillingly, records showed that Rolls didn't report to work
[1:22:44] the day Tiffany vanished. If he was the perpetrator, given
[1:22:48] that Tiffany had a fairly set schedule for her power walks, he
[1:22:52] could have lurked in the woods waiting for her to come by in
[1:22:56] 1990. 4 rolls kidnapped. A 15 year old girl from her
[1:23:01] family's apartment in Clearwater binding her with duct tape.
[1:23:04] After forcing her into his car at knifepoint, he drove her 200
[1:23:08] miles away to Jacksonville, where it became apparent that he
[1:23:12] wasn't going to let her live. But in a moment of remarkable
[1:23:16] courage, the teenager managed to escape by unlocking the front
[1:23:20] door and moving a tire he'd use to barricade it while he wasn't
[1:23:23] looking. She remains the only.
[1:23:26] Known survivor among. Roles as victims and for this
[1:23:30] crime he was convicted of kidnapping and indecent assault
[1:23:34] and sentenced to 19 years in prison.
[1:23:37] Now I just have to jump in here with my personal commentary.
[1:23:41] Since at this point he was already convicted in relation to
[1:23:44] the Linda Fida case, I really have to question how someone.
[1:23:48] Like this was only. Given 19 years, meaning that he
[1:23:51] could have very likely been out prowling the streets once again,
[1:23:57] thankfully. Though rolls reign of terror
[1:23:59] was. Effectively over since he died
[1:24:01] of lung cancer in prison in February 2013.
[1:24:05] After his death, investigators gained access to items from his
[1:24:08] cell, including a calendar and address book that catalogued his
[1:24:12] victims. The book listed Linda Fida as
[1:24:15] his first crime and also contained what appeared to be a
[1:24:18] reference to Elizabeth Foster. It also contained the notation
[1:24:23] #2 February 9th, 1989, which investigators believe referred
[1:24:29] to the date of Tiffany Sessions disappearance and identified her
[1:24:33] as Rolls as second victim. I'll come back to this in a
[1:24:36] second though, since I don't think this necessarily is a
[1:24:40] strong circumstantial evidence as the cops believe it is in
[1:24:46] February. 2014. Exactly 25 years after Tiffany
[1:24:50] disappeared, Sheriff Darnell held a press conference
[1:24:54] announcing Roles as the prime suspect.
[1:24:57] She described the circumstantial evidence as overwhelming, though
[1:25:01] she acknowledged that a direct connection between Roles and
[1:25:03] Tiffany didn't exist. Investigators conducted
[1:25:07] extensive searches in areas associated with Roles as other
[1:25:10] crimes, including a two week dig near the site where Foster's
[1:25:15] body had been found. At one point, sniffer dogs gave
[1:25:19] strong alerts at several spots, but further excavation revealed
[1:25:23] the dogs had been reacting to buried septic tanks from an old
[1:25:27] trailer park. Additional searches in 2020 on a
[1:25:31] tract of commercial timberland prompted by tips matching the
[1:25:34] descriptions of Tiffany and Rolls also yielded no new
[1:25:38] evidence. Notably, Tiffany's Rolex watch
[1:25:42] has been flagged by the manufacturer so that any attempt
[1:25:46] to sell or pawn it will trigger a notification, but it's never
[1:25:50] surfaced. Her body has never been found,
[1:25:54] and she's been excluded from over 150 Jane Doe cases across
[1:25:58] the United States. Personally, I think the.
[1:26:02] Big break may come from that flagged.
[1:26:04] Rolex, which may still be owned by an entirely innocent party.
[1:26:09] This is speculation on my part, but I suspect he may have sold
[1:26:12] it for pennies on the dollar immediately after the crime,
[1:26:16] perhaps one day the owner. Of that watch.
[1:26:19] Or their relative might attempt to sell it, which could trigger
[1:26:23] a break that confirms rolls as the culprit.
[1:26:28] As for that diary? Connection.
[1:26:30] I think it's. Possible that Rolls may have
[1:26:32] sought to claim an additional victim without actually being
[1:26:35] involved. We know that he was the sort of
[1:26:37] person who took pride in his sick acts, and he may have
[1:26:41] sought to inflate his victim count, as many individuals like
[1:26:44] this tend to do. That said, this has to be
[1:26:48] balanced against the fact that he was absent from work on the
[1:26:51] day she disappeared, as well as his prior and subsequent crimes.
[1:27:00] There's a gap in one of the most important paintings in.
[1:27:02] The history of Western art, and it's been there for over 90
[1:27:05] years. The Ghent Altarpiece, also known
[1:27:09] as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, was completed in 1432 by
[1:27:14] the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Ike.
[1:27:18] It's widely considered the first major oil painting in European
[1:27:22] art, a groundbreaking work that changed how artists thought
[1:27:25] about color, light and realism. It sits today in Saint.
[1:27:31] Bavo's Cathedral. In Ghent, Belgium.
[1:27:34] But if you visit and look at the lower left panel, what you're
[1:27:37] seeing isn't a Van Ike original, it's actually a copy.
[1:27:42] And more interestingly perhaps, it's a copy by a man that some
[1:27:46] believe was in on the heist. The real panel, known as the
[1:27:50] Just Judges, was stolen on the night of April 10th, 1934, and
[1:27:56] it hasn't been seen since. The panel depicted mounted
[1:27:59] horsemen riding toward the Altarpieces central scene where
[1:28:03] a lamb stands on an altar as a symbol of Christ's sacrifice.
[1:28:09] The figures are believed to include.
[1:28:10] Duke Philip the Good. Of Burgundy and possibly the Van
[1:28:14] Eyck brothers themselves, what happened to it is one of the
[1:28:18] most. Tantalizing.
[1:28:19] Mysteries in art, crime history, and despite decades of
[1:28:22] investigation, nobody's been able to solve it on the morning
[1:28:28] of. April 11th, 1930. 4A Bell Ringer
[1:28:31] arrived at Saint Bavo's Cathedral to begin his daily
[1:28:34] rounds. After a few hours he noticed the
[1:28:38] lock on the door to the Chapel had been forced open.
[1:28:42] When he entered, 2 panels were missing from the altarpiece, the
[1:28:46] just Judges from the interior side and the painting of Saint
[1:28:50] John the Baptist from the exterior.
[1:28:53] The panels had been set back to. Back in an oak.
[1:28:56] Frame braced with iron bars and the entire double sided unit was
[1:29:01] gone. It was roughly 5 feet.
[1:29:04] Tall and a foot and 1/2. Wide, making it no small feat
[1:29:07] for anyone to remove in the dark.
[1:29:10] What followed was a disastrously bungled response, a master class
[1:29:15] and what not to do following a major art heist.
[1:29:19] News of the theft leaked immediately and an estimated
[1:29:22] 1500 members of the public flooded into the Chapel,
[1:29:26] trampling through the scene and obliterating any forensic
[1:29:29] evidence. Hilariously, the Ghent.
[1:29:32] Police Commissioner showed. Up briefly before leaving to
[1:29:35] take lead on an investigation at a separate robbery at a nearby
[1:29:39] cheese shop. No fingerprints were collected,
[1:29:43] no photographs were taken. A note left on the altarpieces
[1:29:47] frame read in French that the panels had been taken by Germany
[1:29:53] due to the Treaty of Versailles. It was a red herring designed
[1:29:57] to. Suggest the.
[1:29:58] Theft was German political revenge, referencing the return
[1:30:02] of several altarpiece panels to Belgium under the treaty's
[1:30:05] reparation terms 19. Days after the theft, the
[1:30:11] Bishop. Of Ghent received a ransom
[1:30:13] demand for 1,000,000 Belgian francs.
[1:30:16] If the church didn't pay, the panels would be destroyed.
[1:30:20] The letter was signed with the cryptic initials Dua.
[1:30:25] The Bishop was willing to negotiate, but the Belgian
[1:30:28] public prosecutor and the Minister of Justice refused to
[1:30:31] authorize payment. Higher ups in the Catholic
[1:30:34] Church were willing to put forward the money, but the
[1:30:37] Belgian authorities frowned upon this as setting a dangerous
[1:30:40] precedent. Nevertheless, the Bishop
[1:30:43] cooperated outwardly and continue to delicate back and
[1:30:47] forth with the anonymous extortionist as a gesture of
[1:30:51] supposed. Good faith.
[1:30:53] The thief returned the Saint John the Baptist panel, leaving
[1:30:57] it in the checked luggage department of the Ghent train
[1:31:00] station. This revealed that the original
[1:31:03] double. Sided panel had.
[1:31:05] Been sliced vertically in half, separating the two painted
[1:31:08] surfaces. This good faith effort by the
[1:31:11] criminal brought the authorities back on board with some money
[1:31:15] being set aside for the ransom. A total of 12.
[1:31:20] Letters were exchanged. Each containing strange
[1:31:23] instructions and coded language. At one point, a priest of Saint
[1:31:28] Laurentius parish in Antwerp was designated to hand over the
[1:31:32] money. The police gave him a parcel
[1:31:34] containing only 25,000 francs instead of the demanded million.
[1:31:39] A taxi driver later arrived at the rectory with a torn
[1:31:43] newspaper page matching one previously sent by the thief as
[1:31:46] identification. Despite this, due to the massive
[1:31:50] disparity in the amounts offered, the negotiation stalled
[1:31:54] and no exchange was completed on November. 25th, 1934.
[1:32:01] Just seven months after the theft, a stockbroker named
[1:32:05] Arsene Godertier collapsed from cardiac arrest while delivering
[1:32:09] a political speech. He was rushed to his brother in
[1:32:13] law's house where he summoned his lawyer for a private
[1:32:16] meeting, according to the lawyer.
[1:32:20] Godertier. Whispered that he alone knew
[1:32:22] where the Mystic Lamb was hidden.
[1:32:24] He directed his lawyer to a specific drawer in his writing
[1:32:27] desk at home, marked with the word mutuality.
[1:32:32] And then he died before being able to say more.
[1:32:36] The lawyer and his widow. Eventually searched his.
[1:32:38] Study and inside the desk, they found carbon copies of all 12
[1:32:42] ransom letters sent to the Bishop.
[1:32:45] There was also a 13th letter that had never been mailed, and
[1:32:49] it contained A haunting clue. The panel rested in a place
[1:32:53] where neither Gaudertier nor anyone else could remove it.
[1:32:56] Without drawing public attention.
[1:32:58] Police concluded that Gaudertier had been the thief, or at least
[1:33:02] the mastermind behind the ransom scheme, but the investigation
[1:33:06] was disastrous. Suspiciously, his lawyer.
[1:33:10] Waited over a month to. Report the findings to the
[1:33:12] police and in the meantime, Gaudertier's widow had ransacked
[1:33:17] his study and burnt all his papers.
[1:33:22] The case. Didn't end with Gaudertier's
[1:33:24] death. And if anything, it only grew
[1:33:27] stranger. One of the biggest questions is
[1:33:30] whether Gaudertier could have acted alone.
[1:33:33] He was an overweight man and suffered from poor eyesight,
[1:33:36] which would have made it extremely difficult to remove a
[1:33:39] large panel from a high position on the altarpiece in total
[1:33:42] darkness. The physical demands, almost
[1:33:45] certainly. Required at.
[1:33:46] Least one accomplice, yet none was ever identified.
[1:33:51] Some investigators have pointed to two men named as possible
[1:33:54] accomplices. And here it gets weird again.
[1:33:58] Both of them died within weeks of Godertier and police never
[1:34:02] conducted any investigation into their deaths.
[1:34:05] This suggests that someone may have put a hit out on the Co
[1:34:08] conspirators, with some believing that it may have been
[1:34:12] someone from within the police force itself.
[1:34:16] Then there's the question. Of motive since Godertier.
[1:34:18] Was incredibly wealthy. He was worth more than 3,000,000
[1:34:22] Belgian francs in his accounts at the time of his death, so he
[1:34:27] clearly didn't need the money. He was one of the wealthiest
[1:34:31] men. In Belgium.
[1:34:32] And therefore was one of its most trusted citizens.
[1:34:36] Also, as I was editing this, I. Realized this.
[1:34:39] Simpsons reference is now probably quite obscure, so I
[1:34:43] feel the need to clarify that the line was actually a joke and
[1:34:48] funny enough as. I was finishing this video.
[1:34:50] Up. I realized that my explanation
[1:34:53] was yet another Simpsons reference, but let's rally and
[1:34:56] get back on track. One hypothesis.
[1:35:01] Holds that he harbored a grudge. Against the Catholic Church
[1:35:04] because his father was ousted from a high-ranking civilian
[1:35:07] role in the church when he was young.
[1:35:10] According to this theory, the theft was an elaborate act of
[1:35:13] revenge against the specific Bishop.
[1:35:16] But others believe this doesn't quite hold up, given that
[1:35:19] Gotertier was himself deeply involved in Catholic life and
[1:35:23] church related charities. A more dramatic.
[1:35:27] Theory ties the theft to the rise.
[1:35:29] Of the regime in Germany The Austrian painter came to power
[1:35:33] in Germany just one year before the panel disappeared, and he
[1:35:37] had a serious fascination with the Ghent altarpiece.
[1:35:41] Some researchers believe Gaudertier.
[1:35:43] And his. Associates were working on
[1:35:44] behalf of a German agent and that the theft was commissioned
[1:35:48] to secure the panel for the Fuhrer himself.
[1:35:52] While this theory was popular. At the time.
[1:35:54] After the fall of the Third Reich, it was discovered that
[1:35:58] the Germans had sent a detective to Belgium specifically to solve
[1:36:02] the case. The purpose of locating the
[1:36:05] panel was to give it as a birthday gift for the leader
[1:36:08] himself, sometime after 1940 when Belgium was occupied by
[1:36:12] Germany. Personally, I don't think it
[1:36:16] makes a lot of sense that they would go through these efforts
[1:36:18] if they already had the painting.
[1:36:22] Still another. Theory implicates the diocese
[1:36:24] itself. And this theory relies on
[1:36:26] Godartier being a good Catholic who wanted to help out even in
[1:36:30] an underhanded way. According to this line of
[1:36:34] thinking, local clergy had lost money through a failed
[1:36:37] investment and orchestrated the theft to recoup losses through
[1:36:41] ransom. Under this theory, they
[1:36:44] expected. The costs of the art.
[1:36:45] To be recouped through the Vatican or through the Belgian
[1:36:48] state during the ransom. At any rate, since the
[1:36:52] investigation was so poor and forensic accounting wasn't what
[1:36:56] it is today, we will never know for sure.
[1:37:00] One of the strangest. Chapters in the saga involves.
[1:37:03] Yef van der Veken, the Belgian art restorer who created the
[1:37:06] replacement copy that hangs in the cathedral today.
[1:37:10] He was brilliant at his craft but had a documented history of
[1:37:14] moonlighting as an art forger. His game was simple.
[1:37:18] He would offer to restore an aging piece of art, but he would
[1:37:22] actually create a virtually identical copy, returning the
[1:37:26] fraudulent art to the owner and keeping the original.
[1:37:30] Notably, he began working on his replacement in 1939, entirely of
[1:37:36] his own accord and without any Commission from the church or
[1:37:39] the state. He based his reproduction on a
[1:37:43] 16th century copy that had been made for Philip the Second, the
[1:37:48] Habsburg king of Spain, who was then the ruler of what is now
[1:37:52] Belgium. The Belgian government
[1:37:54] eventually purchased his finished work in 1957.
[1:37:58] What makes von der Veycken suspicious, aside from his other
[1:38:02] art thefts, is a cryptic poem he inscribed on the back of his
[1:38:06] replica. Written in Flemish, it
[1:38:10] translates roughly to a declaration of having acted out
[1:38:13] of love and duty, and of having borrowed from the quote UN quote
[1:38:17] dark side. Nobody has satisfactorily
[1:38:21] explained what this means, and some theorists have speculated
[1:38:25] that van der Vaiken actually had access to the original panel.
[1:38:31] Notably, the Ghent Police Department still.
[1:38:33] Assigns a detective to the case, and the bishopric continues to
[1:38:37] receive tips every year. This isn't an entirely cold
[1:38:41] investigation either, and there has been some fairly recent
[1:38:44] activity in the case. For instance, in 2019, the
[1:38:49] authorities actually excavated a square in central Ghent after a
[1:38:53] theory emerged that the panel might be buried beneath it, but
[1:38:57] they found absolutely nothing. Over 90 years later, the Just
[1:39:02] Judges remains one of the most sought after missing artworks in
[1:39:06] the world. And there's a good reason for
[1:39:08] this, the speculative value of the panel.
[1:39:12] Is presently. Thought to be around $100
[1:39:14] million, which makes this simple operation one of the biggest art
[1:39:19] heists in history. Long before scientists arrived
[1:39:26] at a quiet hillside. Southwest of Beijing, locals
[1:39:29] already knew something strange was buried in the earth.
[1:39:33] They called the place Dragon Bone Hill, named for the
[1:39:36] peculiar bones that kept turning up in the limestone, which
[1:39:40] villagers sold to apothecaries as traditional medicine.
[1:39:44] What they didn't realize was that those bones belong to
[1:39:47] creatures far more significant than any mythical dragon.
[1:39:53] In 1918, Swedish geologist Johann Gunner Anderson was
[1:39:58] directed to a fossil rich cave system near the town of
[1:40:01] Djokudian, roughly 50 kilometers from Beijing.
[1:40:06] By 1921, Anderson and Austrian paleontologist Otto Zadanski had
[1:40:11] begun formal excavations, and Zadanski quietly discovered a
[1:40:16] human tooth at the site. When he finally reported the
[1:40:19] find in 1926, the scientific community took notice.
[1:40:25] Canadian anatomist Davidson. Black.
[1:40:28] Working at the Peking Union Medical College secured
[1:40:31] Rockefeller Foundation funding to launch a systematic
[1:40:34] excavation based on isolated teeth.
[1:40:38] Black classified the specimens as a new genus and species in
[1:40:41] 1927, calling it Synanthropus piconensis.
[1:40:47] It was a gutsy move based on very little physical evidence,
[1:40:50] but Black was convinced something monumental lay waiting
[1:40:53] in the caves. He wasn't wrong, and on December
[1:40:57] 2nd, 1929, Chinese geologist Pei Wenjong made the breakthrough,
[1:41:05] working deep. Inside a frigid 40m crevasse.
[1:41:08] With nothing but a hammer and a candle, PEI extracted a nearly
[1:41:11] complete skullcap from the red sandy clay.
[1:41:15] It was the first substantial cranial evidence of what we now
[1:41:18] classify as Homo erectus ever found in China.
[1:41:22] The discovery electrified the. Paleontological.
[1:41:25] World and reshaped conversations about human evolution over the
[1:41:30] following years. Excavations at Jokudian yielded
[1:41:34] an extraordinary haul. By 1937, scientists had
[1:41:38] recovered over 200 fossils from more than 40 individuals,
[1:41:42] including five nearly complete skull caps, numerous teeth,
[1:41:47] jawbones and limb fragments. They also found thousands of
[1:41:51] stone. Tools.
[1:41:53] And evidence of controlled fire use painting a rich picture of
[1:41:56] early hominids who had inhabited these caves around 500,000 years
[1:42:01] ago. Davidson Black.
[1:42:04] Didn't live to see his life's work.
[1:42:06] Threatened, he died of a heart attack at his desk in 1934,
[1:42:11] reportedly with one of the skullcaps sitting right in front
[1:42:13] of him. German anatomist Franz
[1:42:16] Weidenreich, who had fled Germany, was appointed to
[1:42:20] continue the research. Weidenreich proved meticulous,
[1:42:24] overseeing the creation of detailed plaster casts,
[1:42:28] photographs and scientific illustrations of every specimen.
[1:42:33] This painstaking documentation would later prove to be an act
[1:42:36] of extraordinary foresight, given the uncertainty and
[1:42:39] conflict that was on the horizon in 19. 37 Japan invaded.
[1:42:46] China proper After having previously invaded Manchuria
[1:42:50] about 1/2 decade earlier and excavations at Djokudian ground
[1:42:54] to a halt, reports emerged of brutal treatment of workers at
[1:42:58] the site, including the slaying of at least three laborers by
[1:43:02] Japanese soldiers. As the conflict intensified, the
[1:43:06] safety of the fossils became urgent.
[1:43:09] Weidenreich transferred the collection to a safe at the
[1:43:11] Peking Union Medical College, hoping an American run
[1:43:15] institution would offer protection.
[1:43:18] He figured that the Japanese wouldn't be silly enough to
[1:43:21] attack an American College in China and bring down the full
[1:43:24] force of the United States on the island.
[1:43:28] But despite believing. In his plan.
[1:43:30] Weidenreich repeatedly urged college head Henry Houghton to
[1:43:34] authorize shipping the fossils to the United States just in
[1:43:38] case. Houghton initially refused, and
[1:43:41] it wasn't until September 1941 that the US Embassy finally
[1:43:46] authorized the transfer. Weidenreich departed China.
[1:43:50] That year. Taking his casts and research
[1:43:53] notes to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
[1:43:58] What happened? Next remains one of the most.
[1:44:00] Agonizing mysteries in the history of science.
[1:44:04] In late November 1941, the fossils were carefully wrapped
[1:44:08] in cotton tissue paper and gauze, then packed into two
[1:44:13] wooden military foot lockers. The plan was straightforward.
[1:44:18] U.S. Marines would transport the
[1:44:19] crates from the Peking Union Medical College to the port city
[1:44:23] of Chin Huangdao. There they'd be loaded onto the
[1:44:26] s s President Harrison and shipped to the American Museum
[1:44:30] of Natural History. The fossils left the college on
[1:44:33] December 4th, 1941, and three days later was December 7th,
[1:44:38] which, to quote Roosevelt, was a day that would live in infamy.
[1:44:44] Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the s s President Harrison was
[1:44:48] intercepted by Japanese ships and ran aground before it could
[1:44:52] reach port. The Marines who were supposed
[1:44:55] to. Oversee the fossil safe.
[1:44:57] Passage were taken prisoner and the 2 foot lockers containing
[1:45:01] the. Remains of at.
[1:45:02] Least 40 Homo erectus simply vanished.
[1:45:07] No one has ever definitively. Established what?
[1:45:09] Happened to them after they left the Medical College that
[1:45:12] December morning. Japanese scientists.
[1:45:16] Who had coveted the? Collection raided the laboratory
[1:45:19] shortly after and were reportedly furious to find the
[1:45:22] fossils gone. They had planned on using these
[1:45:26] fossils to prove that humans came from Asia, with the intent
[1:45:30] being to prove that the Japanese were the most superior of all.
[1:45:35] An American lab associate was held and interrogated for five
[1:45:38] days about their whereabouts, but he couldn't provide answers
[1:45:42] because he genuinely didn't know where they'd ended up in the.
[1:45:47] Decades since then, theories about the.
[1:45:50] Fossils fate have multiplied. Some researchers believe the
[1:45:53] crates made it as far as Camp Holcomb, the marine base near
[1:45:57] Chin Huangdao, but were never loaded onto a ship due to the
[1:46:01] chaos of the Pearl Harbor attack.
[1:46:04] If that's the case, an officer may have buried them near 1 of
[1:46:07] the camps permanent structures, intending to retrieve them later
[1:46:11] but never surviving to do so. Others have speculated that
[1:46:15] Japanese soldiers intercepted the crates during transport and
[1:46:19] either confiscated the contents or, not recognizing their value,
[1:46:24] discarded them. One persistent rumor suggests
[1:46:28] the fossils ended up aboard the Japanese vessel Awa Maru, which
[1:46:33] was sunk by an American submarine in 1945.
[1:46:37] Another disturbing theory holds that the bones were ground up
[1:46:41] and sold as traditional medicine, their scientific
[1:46:44] significance completely unknown to whoever possessed them.
[1:46:50] The. Search efforts over the years
[1:46:51] have been colorful to say. The least and oddly various
[1:46:54] federal agencies have investigated leads at various
[1:46:57] points. A mysterious woman claiming to
[1:47:00] be the widow of one of the Marines guarding the fossils
[1:47:04] once met a Chicago businessman at the top of the Empire State
[1:47:07] Building. She showed him photographs she
[1:47:10] said depicted the missing bones and then vanished forever.
[1:47:15] Other verified con artists. Periodically surfaced.
[1:47:17] Claiming to possess the fossils demanding $1,000,000 ransoms,
[1:47:23] one desperate researcher even enlisted a professional psychic
[1:47:26] who had previously attempted to locate Bigfoot using a dowsing
[1:47:30] rod. Unsurprisingly, though, none of
[1:47:33] these less conventional efforts produced results.
[1:47:38] The most? Credible lead emerged in 2010.
[1:47:41] When paleo anthropologist Lee Berger at the University of the
[1:47:45] Witwaters Rand in South Africa received an e-mail out of the
[1:47:49] blue, it was from Paul Bowen, son of former marine corporal
[1:47:54] Richard Bowen. The elder Bowen hadn't been at
[1:47:57] Camp Holcomb when the fossils first went missing in 1941.
[1:48:02] He'd been stationed there in 1947 during the Chinese Civil
[1:48:05] War, when the camp was caught between Nationalist and
[1:48:09] Communist forces, according to his account.
[1:48:12] While digging foxholes one night as the base came under attack
[1:48:17] from 10s of thousands of communist soldiers, he unearthed
[1:48:20] a wooden crate filled with bones.
[1:48:23] Under fire. He reburied the box and used it
[1:48:26] as a makeshift machine gun nest, after which he was captured
[1:48:30] shortly afterward and never returned.
[1:48:34] Berger. Verified Bowen's identity and
[1:48:36] military. Records then travelled to Chin
[1:48:39] Huangdao, where he linked up with Chinese scholars, a local
[1:48:43] historian. Who actually remembered?
[1:48:45] The American Marines helped them locate the former site of Camp
[1:48:49] Holcomb, and what they found was disheartening.
[1:48:53] The area had been completely industrialized, covered in
[1:48:57] warehouses, roads and asphalt. The most probable location of
[1:49:03] the buried crate now sits beneath a parking lot.
[1:49:06] The team couldn't excavate, but noted the area was slated for
[1:49:11] redevelopment, which could allow for future investigation.
[1:49:16] Local cultural heritage authorities committed to
[1:49:19] monitoring any construction for signs of the foot lockers.
[1:49:24] However, many people have questioned whether a developer
[1:49:27] who came upon these priceless cultural artifacts would turn
[1:49:31] them over to the authorities. After all, this would be the
[1:49:35] permanent end to any development on the site, with no guarantee
[1:49:39] of any sort of recourse against the government.
[1:49:43] The loss of the. Peking man fossils is often.
[1:49:46] Called one of the greatest tragedies in science history,
[1:49:50] they represented the largest collection of Homo erectus
[1:49:53] remains ever found at a single site.
[1:49:56] No chemical analysis or advanced testing was ever performed on
[1:50:00] the originals before they disappeared, meaning entire
[1:50:03] categories of scientific inquiry were closed Modern techniques
[1:50:08] like DNA. Extraction.
[1:50:10] And isotopic analysis could reveal extraordinary information
[1:50:14] about these early humans that simply can't be obtained from
[1:50:17] plaster casts. Yet there's a small consolation
[1:50:23] in Videnreich's. Extreme thoroughness and
[1:50:25] dedication to the project, his casts, photographs, and detailed
[1:50:30] illustrations preserved enough information that the loss didn't
[1:50:35] entirely halt scientific progress further.
[1:50:39] Yet there's a common misconception that all the bones
[1:50:41] from the site were permanently lost, which isn't true even if
[1:50:46] the vast majority were. Excavations at Djokudian resumed
[1:50:51] after order had been restored to China and continued through
[1:50:55] subsequent decades, yielding additional specimens.
[1:50:59] But like I said, these are a small fraction of what was
[1:51:02] available, and whether the full trove will ever be recovered is
[1:51:05] anyone's guess.

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