# 4 Mysterious Disappearances With Disturbing Twists | 202

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 11 Apr 2026, 44 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1266365572.mp3

Join me for 4 cold cases involving mysterious disappearances, all of which have their own disturbing twists. Episode 202 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, heists, art theft

## Transcript

[0:00] In December 2013, in a world where almost nobody uses
[0:04] payphones anymore, a 37 year old married man drove to a Kangaroo
[0:10] gas station on Joe White Ave. in Myrtle Beach.
[0:15] He stepped out of his truck and called a 20 year old woman from
[0:18] a payphone at 1:35 in the morning.
[0:21] Within three hours of that call, the young woman on the other end
[0:25] would disappear without a trace. This is the story of Heather
[0:30] Elvis, and this is a case that, more than a decade later, still
[0:35] hasn't given up its most important secret.
[0:39] Heather Elvis was born on June 30th, 1993 and grew up in the
[0:44] Carolina Forest area of Horry County, South Carolina, not far
[0:48] from the tourist sprawl of Myrtle Beach.
[0:51] By the fall of 2013, she was 20 years old, studying cosmetology
[0:57] and working 2 jobs to pay her way.
[1:00] She was a Hostess at the Tilted Kilt, a bar and restaurant chain
[1:03] in Myrtle Beach, and also picked up shifts at the House of Blues
[1:07] in North Myrtle Beach. People who knew her described
[1:11] her as outgoing, warm, and trusting, perhaps to a fault.
[1:17] Sometime around June or July of 2013, Heather started a
[1:22] relationship with a man named Sydney Moorer.
[1:25] He was 37, married with children, and he'd been doing
[1:29] kitchen equipment repairs at the Tilted Kilt.
[1:33] Heather was young, and Sydney reportedly presented himself as
[1:36] something other than what he was.
[1:39] The affair continued through the summer and into the fall,
[1:43] lasting roughly 4 months before Sydney's wife, Tammy Moorer
[1:47] discovered what was going on. That discovery, and what Tammy
[1:51] did about it, is where this story turns extremely dark.
[1:56] When Tammy Moorer found out about the affair in early
[1:59] November 2013, she didn't quietly cope and seethe.
[2:04] According to testimony later presented in court, Tammy called
[2:08] the Tilted Kilt repeatedly trying to get Heather fired.
[2:13] She threatened that Sydney would stop repairing their equipment
[2:15] as long as Heather worked there. She called Heather directly,
[2:20] sometimes for hours on end, and she reportedly sent Heather
[2:23] explicit photos and videos of herself and Sydney together.
[2:28] On November 1st, 2013, Tammy sent Heather a message that
[2:34] would later become a central piece of evidence.
[2:37] The message threatened violence in graphic terms, warning
[2:41] Heather she was about to take her last breath.
[2:44] Heather's roommate later told the court that Heather was
[2:47] scared of Tammy and that the affair was over.
[2:50] By that point, Sydney and Heather had stopped seeing each
[2:54] other. But Tammy wasn't finished.
[2:57] The harassment continued through November and into December, a
[3:02] sustained campaign against a young woman who, for all
[3:05] practical purposes, had already walked away from the situation.
[3:11] On the evening of December 17th, Heather went out on a first date
[3:15] with a different man, someone she'd known from high school.
[3:19] At one point during the evening, Heather texted her father a
[3:22] photo of herself driving her date stick shift car, a
[3:26] perfectly normal moment, suggesting nothing was amiss.
[3:30] Her date dropped her off at her apartment around 1:15 on
[3:33] December 18th. And here's where it gets
[3:36] complicated. At 1:12 on December 18th,
[3:40] slightly before Heather even got home, surveillance footage from
[3:44] a Myrtle Beach Walmart captured Sydney entering the store.
[3:49] He purchased cigars and a pregnancy test, then left after
[3:53] about 7 minutes. And the pregnancy test would
[3:56] become a point of contention. During trial proceedings,
[4:00] prosecutors suggested it wasn't for his wife, but for Heather.
[4:04] 23 minutes later, at 1:35 AM, a surveillance camera at the
[4:09] Kangaroo gas station on Joe White Ave. recorded Sydney
[4:13] making a call from the pay phone across the street.
[4:17] Phone records confirm the call went to Heather's cell, a call
[4:20] lasting just three minutes after it ended.
[4:24] Heather called Sydney back nine times within the next 35
[4:27] minutes. What was said during those
[4:30] calls? Nobody outside the two of them
[4:32] knows. But whatever it was, it pulled
[4:36] Heather out of her apartment and toward Peachtree Landing, a boat
[4:40] ramp on the Waccamaw River in Socastee, about 8 miles from
[4:44] where she lived. Phone records and surveillance
[4:47] footage pieced together a grim sequence.
[4:50] Around 3:37 AM, Heather's phone arrived at Peachtree Landing and
[4:55] starting at 338, three calls were placed from her phone to
[4:59] Sydney's cell, all unanswered within the space of two minutes.
[5:05] At 3:40, one another call went through and this one connected.
[5:10] Meanwhile, private security cameras along the roughly 3 mile
[5:13] stretch between the Moorer's home and Peachtree Landing
[5:17] captured a dark Ford F-150 heading towards there.
[5:22] Two data points were gathered from the surveillance camera,
[5:25] with the last being at 339. At 3:45, the same vehicle was
[5:31] recorded heading back in the opposite direction.
[5:34] The FBI and the South Carolina Highway Patrol's Accident
[5:37] Investigation Unit later analyzed and enhanced the
[5:41] footage, and they determined the truck belonged to Sydney Moorer.
[5:45] A minute and 1/2 after that final call at 341, all data
[5:50] records for Heather's phone went dead.
[5:53] Her last recorded location placed her somewhere in the
[5:56] Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge, and she hasn't been
[5:59] heard from since. That's a 6 minute window.
[6:04] The truck arrives heading toward the landing around 339, and it's
[6:08] heading back home by 3:45. On the evening of December 19th,
[6:14] a patrol officer discovered Heather's green 2001 Dodge
[6:18] Intrepid parked at the Peachtree Landing boat ramp.
[6:22] The car was locked and it was parked perpendicular to the
[6:24] marked spaces as if it had been left in a hurry or by someone
[6:28] unfamiliar with the lot. When officers opened it, there
[6:32] was no purse, no phone, no keys, and no sign of Heather Terry
[6:38] Elvis reported his daughter missing and the full search
[6:42] began on December 20th. Dive teams, helicopters and
[6:46] boats combed the Waccamaw River and the local Bay, and sniffer
[6:50] dogs were also extensively employed in the operation.
[6:54] To this day, despite extensive searches of the surrounding area
[6:58] and the Wildlife Refuge, Heather's body has never been
[7:01] recovered. Despite everything, there was no
[7:05] forensic evidence whatsoever of what specifically happened to
[7:08] her or any direct evidence that a crime even occurred.
[7:13] When investigators sat Sydney Moorer down to talk, he
[7:17] initially denied calling Heather on the night she disappeared.
[7:21] He maintained that denial right up until a detective told him
[7:24] they had surveillance footage of someone using the pay phone.
[7:28] Only then did Sydney change his story, and he claimed he'd
[7:32] called Heather to tell her to leave him alone, saying she'd
[7:35] been putting notes on his car at work.
[7:38] Given that the affair had ended weeks earlier and that it was
[7:41] Tammy, not Heather, who'd been doing the ongoing harassing,
[7:47] this explanation struck investigators as thin.
[7:51] Both Sydney and Tammy Moorer were arrested in 2014 and
[7:55] charged with a variety of offenses, including the slaying
[7:59] of Heather, but the most serious charges were eventually dropped
[8:03] in 2016 because without a body, proving the crime beyond a
[8:08] reasonable doubt was a steep climb.
[8:12] In the end, the charges that remained against the couple were
[8:15] related to the kidnapping of Heather Elvis and nothing more.
[8:21] Tammy Moorer went to trial 1st and in October 2018 she was
[8:25] convicted of kidnapping Heather and sentenced to 30 years in
[8:28] prison. Sydney's first trial ended in a
[8:31] hung jury, but he was retried in September 2019 and found guilty.
[8:37] He also received a 30 year sentence for kidnapping and was
[8:41] separately convicted of obstruction of justice, carrying
[8:44] an additional 10 year term. Both appealed their convictions,
[8:49] but in June 2023, the South Carolina Court of Appeals upheld
[8:54] the convictions, finding sufficient evidence to support
[8:57] the jury's verdicts. The convictions brought some
[9:02] justice, but they didn't answer the question that hangs over
[9:05] this entire case. Without a body, without a
[9:09] confession, and without any physical evidence tying the
[9:13] Moors to a specific act of violence, the details of her
[9:17] final moments remain unknown. The prosecution argued she was
[9:22] lured to Peachtree Landing and taken against her will.
[9:25] But what exactly the Moors did and where they took her remains
[9:29] a blank spot in the record. The Waccamaw River runs dark and
[9:33] slow, and the Wildlife Refuge covers thousands of acres of
[9:38] swamp and bottomland forest. It's the kind of terrain that
[9:42] swallows bodies whole and doesn't give them back easily.
[9:46] But Despite that, Heather's family believes the truth will
[9:49] one day come to light. The daughter of Italy's most
[9:56] famous couple vanished in New Orleans. 30 years later, her
[10:00] parents still can't agree on whether she's dead.
[10:04] Elenia Carici was born on November 29th, 1970 in Rome to a
[10:09] family that was the equivalent of celebrity royalty on both
[10:13] sides of the Atlantic. Her parents were Albano Carici
[10:17] and Romina Power, one of Italy's most beloved musical duos, often
[10:22] compared to Sonny and Cher. Her maternal grandfather was
[10:26] Tyrone Power, the Hollywood actor who'd ruled the box office
[10:30] in the 1940s. Her maternal grandmother, Linda
[10:34] Christian, originally from Mexico, was also an actress who
[10:39] had found some degree of stardom in Hollywood.
[10:42] Elenia grew up in the kind of family where everyone in the
[10:45] country knew her name, but she yearned for a life outside the
[10:49] spotlight. She appeared alongside her
[10:52] parents in a 1984 film and briefly served as the Vanna
[10:56] White equivalent on Italy's version of Wheel of Fortune in
[10:59] 1989. But the spotlight wasn't for
[11:03] her. Elenia was bookish, A scholarly
[11:06] young woman who was serious about writing and literature.
[11:10] She enrolled at King's College London to study literature and
[11:15] reportedly earned the highest marks in her class.
[11:19] During her studies, Elenia began dreaming of something bigger
[11:23] than a degree. She wanted to travel the world
[11:26] with a backpack and a journal, collecting material for the book
[11:30] she planned to write. She returned to Italy, sold her
[11:33] belongings to fund the trip, and set off solo through Central and
[11:37] South America. She spent time in Belize
[11:41] painting, taking notes, and falling in with the kind of
[11:46] people who don't show up in society columns.
[11:49] They were St. musicians, Drifters, and people who were
[11:53] trying to get away from the world.
[11:56] In short, they were the transient population of small
[12:00] tropical coastal towns. It was during this period that
[12:04] she first visited New Orleans and met the man who some claim
[12:08] is at the center of everything that came next.
[12:12] His name was Alexander Masekela and he was a 54 year old St.
[12:16] musician more than twice Elenia's age.
[12:20] By multiple accounts, he was an unsettling figure.
[12:23] He had a reputation in the French Quarter as a self styled
[12:27] guru who participated in some seriously questionable
[12:30] activities. There were rumors of substance
[12:33] use, accusations of the most disturbing forms of violence in
[12:38] his past, and a persona that mixed street corner mysticism
[12:42] with personal magnetism. Yet despite all the red flags,
[12:46] Elenia was captivated, and she reportedly referred to Masekela
[12:51] as her Master. Her mother grew alarmed,
[12:55] expressing concern about Masekela's influence, but Elenia
[12:59] was now 23 and very stubborn about doing things her own way.
[13:05] After months traveling through Belize and Mexico, Elenia headed
[13:09] back to New Orleans in late December 1993.
[13:13] Her brother Yari flew to Belize to find her, arriving in the
[13:17] village of Hopkins on December 27th, only to learn she'd
[13:21] boarded a bus for Louisiana the day before.
[13:25] By New Year's Eve, Elenia had checked into the Lee Dale Hotel
[13:28] on Saint Charles Ave. sharing a room with Masakila.
[13:32] Her parents spoke with her by phone on New Year's Day.
[13:35] It was the last time they'd hear her voice.
[13:39] According to the hotel, Elenia left around noon on January 6th,
[13:44] 1994, and never came back. She didn't take her passport.
[13:49] She didn't take her backpack, her camera, her notebooks, or
[13:53] her clothing. Everything she'd carried across
[13:56] 2 continents stayed behind. In that hotel room, Elenia was
[14:02] effectively alone and nobody raised an alarm.
[14:05] She was completely isolated from everyone who cared about her.
[14:10] Meanwhile, Masekela stayed at the hotel until January 14th and
[14:14] reportedly tried to use traveler's checks made out to
[14:17] Elenia to cover the bill. Her parents didn't report her
[14:21] missing until January 18th, 12 days after she'd last been seen.
[14:26] Then on January 30th, a security guard came forward with a story
[14:32] that would define the case for the next 3 decades.
[14:36] The guards name was Albert Cordova and he worked at the
[14:39] Audubon Aquarium of the Americas.
[14:42] He told investigators that on the night of January 6th, around
[14:46] 11:30 PM, he'd been patrolling Wuldenburg Park along the
[14:50] Mississippi. He spotted a blonde woman
[14:53] sitting alone on the pier, looking dejected and defeated.
[14:59] When he told her she couldn't be there after hours, she
[15:02] reportedly said something to the effect that it didn't matter
[15:06] that she belonged to the water. She jumped into the river and
[15:10] swam toward the center, making it roughly 100 yards before she
[15:14] started struggling. A passing boat's wake hit her
[15:17] and she went under, but he didn't see her come back up.
[15:21] Cordova called it in, and boats and a police helicopter searched
[15:25] for hours and found nothing. No body was recovered that
[15:30] night, and none of the remains pulled from the Mississippi in
[15:33] the following months were ever identified as Elenia.
[15:37] Here's the thing about this account.
[15:39] Cordova tentatively identified photos of Elenia as the woman
[15:43] he'd seen, but a tentative identification isn't a confirmed
[15:47] one. The physical description was
[15:49] similar but not identical, though this may be because
[15:53] Elenia no longer cared about her appearance.
[15:56] Add to this the fact that the Mississippi is one of the most
[15:59] powerful waterways on the continent.
[16:02] A body entering that current at night could be swept into the
[16:05] Gulf of Mexico rapidly, and there would likely simply be
[16:09] nothing left to find. It was never confirmed that this
[16:13] woman was Elenia, and notably, he didn't recall her speaking
[16:17] with a noticeable accent of any kind.
[16:21] Masekela was arrested on January 31st, 1994, but not in
[16:26] connection with Elenia's disappearance.
[16:29] An ex-girlfriend accused him of assault, but he was released
[16:32] after less than two weeks due to insufficient evidence.
[16:36] No charges related to Elenia were ever filed against him, and
[16:40] investigators couldn't tie him to whatever happened to her.
[16:44] Elenia's disappearance didn't just end her story, it
[16:48] effectively ended her parents marriage.
[16:51] Albano and Romina separated in 1999 and finalized their divorce
[16:56] in 2012. The central dispute was the
[16:59] thing. They couldn't agree on whether
[17:02] their daughter was alive or not. Albano came around slowly, and
[17:07] for years he held out hope. But in November 2006, he
[17:11] publicly stated for the first time that he believed Albert
[17:15] Cordova's account. He accepted, as best he could,
[17:20] that his daughter had gone into the Mississippi River that night
[17:23] and hadn't come out. In January 2013, he filed a
[17:29] legal petition to have Elenia declared presumed dead, and the
[17:32] Italian courts granted the request in December 2014, twenty
[17:37] years after she'd vanished. Romina, for her part, never
[17:41] accepted it, and she's spoken publicly about her belief that
[17:45] Elenia is still alive. She claimed that as a mother,
[17:49] she carries an invisible connection with her daughter,
[17:53] and if Elenia had died, she would have felt it.
[17:56] Over the decades, scattered alleged sightings across the
[18:00] United States and Europe have surfaced, but none have been
[18:03] confirmed. In 2008, a German magazine
[18:07] reported Elenia was living in a cult like environment in
[18:10] Arizona, though Albano dismissed the claim.
[18:15] There are essentially 3 possibilities of what happened
[18:18] and none of them are fully satisfying by any stretch of the
[18:20] imagination. The 1st is that Cordova's
[18:24] account is accurate and the woman he watched enter the
[18:27] Mississippi on that fateful January night was Elenia.
[18:33] If so, her remains were likely carried to the Gulf and there
[18:37] will never be a recovery. This is the explanation her
[18:41] father accepted and the Italian courts adopted.
[18:45] It rests on a tentative identification and a single
[18:49] witness, but it's the simplest reading of what evidence exists.
[18:54] The second possibility is that something happened to Elenia
[18:57] involving Masekela. His behavior after her
[19:01] disappearance, his history, and the power dynamic in their
[19:04] relationship all raise serious questions.
[19:09] However, it's important to remember that questions aren't
[19:11] evidence, and no prosecutor ever found enough to bring charges.
[19:17] There's essentially no evidence to suggest that he was involved,
[19:21] other than the fact that he was generally A suspicious character
[19:25] and he was one of the last people seen with her.
[19:28] The third is the one Romina Power clings to, that Elenia
[19:32] walked away deliberately and is living somewhere under a
[19:35] different name. She'd already shown a
[19:38] willingness to shed her old identity and vanish into
[19:41] unfamiliar places. That said, walking away without
[19:45] a passport, without money, without a single possession, is
[19:50] a different thing entirely. It's the theory that requires
[19:54] the most faith and has the least evidence by far, but it could
[19:58] indeed be true. There's also the potential that
[20:01] none of these situations actually describe what happened
[20:04] to her. Since there's very little in the
[20:07] way of actual confirmed evidence.
[20:10] It's entirely possible that she met up with someone else
[20:13] dangerous somewhere in the United States and met her end
[20:17] somewhere else entirely. Hey everyone.
[20:23] It's Jimmy here with my usual reminder to hit the subscribe
[20:26] button and the notification bell and turn on all notifications.
[20:30] Also, don't forget to consider checking out the membership or
[20:34] the Patreon if you feel like taking your support for my show
[20:37] to the next level. Imagine a man who robs a train,
[20:45] rides back into town before dawn, and slips through the
[20:48] window of a saloon. All the while, he had one of his
[20:52] crew telling the regulars that the constable was deep in a
[20:55] poker game and didn't want to be disturbed.
[20:58] That outlaw was the constable himself, a man named Burt
[21:02] Alvord, and in the final years of the 19th century, he pulled
[21:07] off one of the most audacious double lives on the American
[21:10] frontier. When the law finally caught up
[21:13] with him, he vanished so thoroughly that nobody can say
[21:16] for certain where or when he died.
[21:21] Bert Alvord was born in September 1867 in Plumas County,
[21:25] California. His father, Charles, was a
[21:29] prospector and mechanic who chased mining work across the
[21:32] West. He dragged the family to
[21:34] Tombstone, Arizona, around 1880, not long before the Irps and the
[21:39] Clanton shot it out near the OK Corral.
[21:43] Young Bert took any work he could get his hands on and grew
[21:46] up surrounded by a mixture of Cowboys, outlaws, gamblers and
[21:51] lawmen. In 1886, Cochise County Sheriff
[21:56] John Horton Slaughter, one of the toughest lawmen in the
[21:59] territory, recruited Alvard as a deputy.
[22:03] Slaughter reportedly called him fearless, and for three years,
[22:07] Bert helped track down rustlers and outlaws across southeastern
[22:11] Arizona, earning A reputation as a capable enforcer.
[22:16] He also developed a serious drinking problem during this
[22:19] time, and when Slaughter confronted him about it, Burt
[22:22] quit cold Turkey. And I'm not talking about
[22:25] putting down the bottle by any means.
[22:28] I mean, he quit working for the Cochise County sheriff.
[22:32] He drifted through a string of smaller law enforcement jobs
[22:35] during the 1890s, working in Fairbank and Pierce before
[22:39] landing the position of Constable and Wilcox.
[22:42] Around 1897. He married Lola Ochoa, bought a
[22:46] ranch, and seemed to settle down into something approaching a
[22:49] normal Old West lifestyle. His father died in 1898, and
[22:55] something shifted after that. Whatever it was, Bert Alvord
[22:59] started thinking a lot about trains.
[23:03] On the night of September 9th, 1899, a westbound Southern
[23:07] Pacific Express pulled into the small station at Cochise,
[23:11] Arizona. Armed men confronted the express
[23:14] messenger, lined up the crew at gunpoint, detached the express
[23:18] car and ran it a couple of miles down the track.
[23:22] They then blew the safe with dynamite.
[23:25] The take was reportedly somewhere between 10,000 and
[23:29] $30,000 in gold, a fairly huge sum at the time, though the
[23:34] exact figure has never been settled.
[23:37] When the news reached Wilcox, Constable Burt Alvord was among
[23:41] the loudest voices calling for a manhunt.
[23:43] He'd been in Schwertner's saloon all evening, after all, playing
[23:47] poker with his friends Billy Styles, Matt Burt's and Bill
[23:51] Downing. The bartender could confirm it.
[23:55] The drinks had been flowing all night and he delivered them
[23:58] right outside the door so as not to interrupt this intense high
[24:02] stakes game. There was just one problem with
[24:06] this alibi. The poker game was a fiction.
[24:10] Bert and his gang had slipped out a side window, ridden to
[24:14] Cauchy's station, robbed the train and ridden back before
[24:18] anyone in the salons front room noticed a thing.
[24:22] The constable had organized the robbery, set up the cover story,
[24:26] and then joined the posse looking for himself and his
[24:29] crew. It was brazen and it worked, and
[24:32] for months, with nobody suspecting that Bert could
[24:35] possibly be involved. Emboldened, Bert planned a
[24:41] second job, and on February 15th, 1900, members of his gang
[24:45] hit another Southern Pacific train at Fairbank.
[24:49] This time, things went wrong. The express messenger on duty
[24:53] was Jeff Milton, a former Texas Ranger working as a substitute.
[24:57] That night. When the robbers ordered him to
[25:00] put his hands up, Milton said no way and grabbed A sawed off
[25:05] shotgun. He took a bullet in the left
[25:07] shoulder but still managed to fire back, severely injuring one
[25:11] of the men. The robbers fled with their
[25:14] wounded man and according to legend, a grand hall of a total
[25:19] of 17 crisp Mexican pesos. The injured robber?
[25:24] A man named Dunlop was left 6 miles from Tombstone and
[25:29] eventually perished in a hospital there.
[25:32] Before he went, though, he decided it was time to sing like
[25:35] a Canary. And sing he did.
[25:38] He told investigators that Burt Alvord, the constable of Wilcox,
[25:42] had organized the whole operation, both the Fairbank job
[25:46] and the Cochise robbery. Alvord was arrested and held at
[25:51] the Cochise County Jail in Tombstone.
[25:54] And that should have been the end of it.
[25:56] Instead, on April 7th, 1900, Billy Styles, a fellow gang
[26:02] member, walked into the jail, held up a deputy, and demanded
[26:07] the release of every prisoner in the building.
[26:10] When the deputy hesitated, Styles shot him in the foot,
[26:14] blowing off two of his toes. Ironically, this put a certain
[26:18] haste in the deputy's step and he proceeded to free all the
[26:21] prisoners, including Burt himself.
[26:25] For the next several years, Albert and Stiles lived as
[26:29] fugitives along the Mexican border.
[26:32] In 19 O2, Albert cut a deal with the Arizona Rangers to help
[26:36] capture the notorious bandit Augustine Chacon in exchange for
[26:40] reward money and a reduced sentence.
[26:44] When the outlaw was caught, old Burt decided that he'd just take
[26:48] the reward money and pass up on the surrendering element.
[26:52] Bert was recaptured in December 19 O 3, but escaped again almost
[26:56] immediately. Then came the strangest chapter.
[27:00] Bert attempted to fake his own death and that of Styles by
[27:04] sending the bodies of two unidentified Mexican men to
[27:07] Tombstone. His friend claimed they were the
[27:10] bodies of the two wanted outlaws, but authorities opened
[27:14] the coffins, took one look at the decomposing remains and knew
[27:18] it wasn't them. Disturbingly, it's believed that
[27:23] the two outlaws may have eliminated 2 innocent men.
[27:28] The Arizona Rangers finally ran Alvord and Styles to ground near
[27:32] Naco on the Mexican border in February 19 O 4.
[27:37] When the two men went for their weapons, the Rangers opened
[27:40] fire. Alvord was hit twice in the leg.
[27:45] Styles caught a round in the arm but somehow managed to escape
[27:48] yet again. Alvord, wounded and unable to
[27:51] run, surrendered. He was sentenced to two years in
[27:55] the Yuma Territorial Prison, a brutal facility where summer
[28:00] temperatures inside the stone cells could exceed 100°.
[28:05] Alvord served his time without incident, and when he walked out
[28:09] of Yuma around late 19 O five, he was 38 years old.
[28:14] He was a former lawman with a criminal record that stretched
[28:17] across the territory. According to old timers and
[28:20] Wilcox, he stopped back in town briefly to say hello to friends
[28:24] before he announced he was leaving for Central America by
[28:27] ship. And that's where the story
[28:31] fractures. After nineteen O 5, Burt Alvord
[28:35] effectively ceased to exist as a verifiable person.
[28:39] There are stories, but they don't agree with one another.
[28:43] One account has him working as a laborer on a railroad
[28:46] construction project along the Amazon River in Brazil.
[28:51] According to this version, he contracted yellow fever and was
[28:55] sent to the island of Barbados, where he reportedly died on July
[29:00] 24th, 1910. A local Arizona newspaper ran a
[29:04] short item claiming, based on information from an alleged
[29:08] friend, that Alvord had recently died of fever.
[29:13] This appears to have been based entirely on the rumor that he
[29:15] perished in Barbados, rather than an independent story with
[29:20] no corroborating evidence whatsoever.
[29:24] Another version puts him in Panama, working as an employee
[29:28] on the canal construction project, which at the time
[29:31] attracted thousands of laborers from across the Americas.
[29:35] He was reportedly spotted there around 1910, but again, the
[29:40] sourcing on this is thin. A third story, which was popular
[29:45] among old timers around Wilcox, holds that Alvord used his share
[29:50] of the hidden robbery loot to buy a cattle ranch somewhere in
[29:53] Central America. Under this version of events, he
[29:57] lived out the rest of his days under an assumed name.
[30:02] If this was true, the lawman turned outlaw reverted to the
[30:06] ranching life he'd briefly tried in Arizona, just in a country
[30:10] where nobody knew his name. That, of course, brings us to
[30:15] the question of what happened to the gold from that first
[30:18] successful train heist. The loot from the Cochise
[30:22] Station robbery was reportedly buried along the old trail
[30:25] between Wilcox and Cochise, near a cabin about half a mile
[30:29] outside town. Burt and his gang had agreed to
[30:33] retrieve it once things cooled down, but arrests and escapes
[30:37] kept getting in the way. Wells Fargo agents searched the
[30:41] area thoroughly and came up empty.
[30:44] The gold has never been recovered, and some believe
[30:47] Alverd dug it up after Yuma, using it to fund his new life
[30:51] abroad. Whether Burt Alverd died of
[30:54] fever on a Caribbean island, worked himself to death on the
[30:58] Panama Canal, or grew old on a Central American ranch is
[31:02] something we'll likely never know.
[31:05] His story doesn't end with a final showdown or a hanging, or
[31:08] even a confirmed grave. It ends with a man walking out
[31:12] of prison, saying goodbye to old friends, boarding a ship, and
[31:16] sailing into a void that has lasted over a century.
[31:23] A maroon 1975 Mercury Marquis sat in the parking lot of the
[31:28] Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, MI, its
[31:32] doors unlocked, its owner nowhere to be found.
[31:36] It was the afternoon of July 30th, 1975, and the most
[31:41] powerful Union Leader in American history had just walked
[31:45] off the face of the earth. Jimmy Hoffa was 62 years old, 5
[31:50] foot 5, and built like a compressed spring with a
[31:53] personality to match. On that Wednesday afternoon,
[31:58] whatever luck or cunning had kept him alive through decades
[32:01] of mob deals, federal investigations and prison
[32:05] finally ran out. 50 years later, we still don't know exactly what
[32:11] happened in the hours after he climbed into that mercury, but
[32:15] we know enough to piece together why it happened and who almost
[32:18] certainly made the call. Jimmy Hoffa was born on February
[32:22] 14th, 1913 in Brazil IN a small, economically downtrodden coal
[32:28] mining town where nobody had the time to focus on much other than
[32:32] survival. His father, a coal drill
[32:35] operator, died when Jimmy was 7 and the family relocated to
[32:40] Detroit shortly after. By 14, Hoffa had dropped out of
[32:45] school to work, as was the style at the time for someone of his
[32:49] socio economic background. He unloaded freight cars at a
[32:53] Kroger warehouse for $0.32 an hour, and it was there on a
[32:58] sweltering loading dock that his education and organized labor
[33:02] truly began. While still a teenager, Hoffa
[33:07] organized his first strike, legitimately fighting for the
[33:10] rights of working people. Workers at the Kroger warehouse
[33:14] refused to unload a massive shipment of strawberries until
[33:17] management agreed to better conditions.
[33:20] Hoffa timed the action perfectly so that a significant amount of
[33:24] these perishable goods would rot.
[33:27] If the bosses didn't cave, they caved, and it taught Hoffa
[33:31] something he'd carry for the rest of his life.
[33:34] Leverage is everything, and timing is how you use it.
[33:39] He joined the Teamsters in 1933 and rose fast.
[33:43] By 1936, he was effectively running Local 299 in Detroit.
[33:48] By 1942, he'd organized the Michigan Conference of Teamsters
[33:53] and began centralizing bargaining power across the
[33:56] state. In 1952, he became the union's
[33:59] national vice president, and by 1957 he'd become its general
[34:04] president. Under Hoffa, the Teamsters
[34:08] became the largest single union in the United States, with
[34:12] membership eventually surpassing 2 million.
[34:15] In 1964, he negotiated the National Master Freight
[34:19] Agreement, the first nationwide contract for trucking industry
[34:23] workers. For the rank and file, Hoffa was
[34:27] a hero. He got them better wages, better
[34:30] benefits, and he fought like hell to do it.
[34:33] But the methods he used to build that power were exactly the
[34:37] thing that would destroy him. The Teamsters Central State's
[34:42] pension fund, established in 1955 under Hoffa's direction,
[34:47] was supposed to secure retirement income for working
[34:50] truck drivers. In practice, it became a private
[34:54] bank for organized crime, with Hoffa himself enriching himself
[34:59] substantially off these deals. The fund eventually swelled to
[35:03] over $2 billion and Hoffa treated it less like a fiduciary
[35:08] responsibility and more like a tool for building alliances.
[35:13] Low interest loans flowed freely to mob connected developers in
[35:17] Las Vegas and Southern California.
[35:19] Between 1958 and 1977, nearly $250 million in pension fund
[35:26] money was loaned to casino operators with ties to organized
[35:31] crime families. Kickbacks, usually 10% of the
[35:35] loan amount disguised as finder's fees, cycled back
[35:38] through intermediaries. The pension fund effectively
[35:42] financed the construction of Las Vegas as we know it today.
[35:47] This made Hoffa indispensable to the mob, but also a target for
[35:51] law enforcement. Robert F Kennedy, as attorney
[35:54] general, pursued Hoffa with something bordering on
[35:57] obsession. The two men despised each other,
[36:01] and their feud became intensely personal on both sides.
[36:05] Kennedy's investigations laid bare the corruption of the
[36:07] Teamsters leadership, and after years of failed prosecutions,
[36:12] the government finally got Hoffa.
[36:14] In 1964, he was convicted of jury tampering in Chattanooga,
[36:19] TN, based largely on the testimony of a Teamsters insider
[36:24] who, figuratively speaking, knew where all the bodies were
[36:27] buried. Four months later, a separate
[36:31] trial in Chicago produced convictions on fraud charges
[36:34] related to the pension fund. The combined sentences totaled
[36:38] 13 years, and Hoffa entered Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary
[36:42] in Pennsylvania on March 7th, 1967.
[36:47] Hoffa served less than five years, and on December 23rd,
[36:51] 1971, President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to time
[36:56] served. It wasn't a pardon, and it came
[36:59] with a condition that would become the central grievance of
[37:02] Hoffa's remaining years. He was barred from engaging in
[37:06] any direct or indirect management of a labor
[37:08] organization until at least March of 1980.
[37:13] Hoffa always insisted he'd never agreed to that restriction, and
[37:17] he filed A lawsuit to have it overturned.
[37:20] The court sided with Nixon. The restriction stood, but Hoffa
[37:26] wasn't the kind of man who accepted being sidelined.
[37:29] He'd spent his entire life accumulating power, and prison
[37:33] hadn't diminished his appetite for it.
[37:36] By the mid 1970s, he was openly campaigning to retake the
[37:40] Teamsters presidency, despite the fact it was illegal for him
[37:44] to do so. He gave speeches, courted old
[37:48] allies, and told anyone who'd listen that he intended to take
[37:52] back what he considered his union.
[37:55] The problem was that during his years behind bars, the world had
[37:59] moved on, and the people who'd filled the vacuum had no
[38:03] interest in giving it back. Frank Fitzsimmons, Hoffa's hand
[38:09] picked successor, had settled comfortably into the presidency.
[38:14] More importantly, the organized crime figures who controlled
[38:18] much of the union's financial infrastructure preferred
[38:21] Fitzsimmons. He was compliant and
[38:24] predictable, and for all his ample corruption, Hoffa was
[38:28] neither of those things. If he regained power, there was
[38:32] no telling what he might do or who he might expose.
[38:36] For the mob, Hoffa's comeback campaign was a problem that
[38:40] needed solving. The day Hoffa vanished started
[38:44] like any other. He left his summer home in Lake
[38:47] Orion, MI, around 1:15 in the afternoon and drove to the
[38:51] Pontiac office of his close friend.
[38:54] He told PEOPLE he was heading to a 2:00 PM meeting at the Machus
[38:57] Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township with two men.
[39:01] One was Anthony Giacolone, a Detroit mob figure, and the
[39:05] other was Anthony Provenzano, a New Jersey Teamsters official
[39:09] and Genovese crime family captain.
[39:12] Hoffa arrived at the restaurant on time, but neither Giacalone
[39:15] nor Provenzano showed up. Sometime between 2:15 and 2:30,
[39:20] and increasingly agitated, Hoffa called his wife from a pay phone
[39:24] outside a hardware store behind the restaurant.
[39:27] He complained that the men hadn't appeared and said he'd be
[39:30] home by 4:00. It was the last known
[39:33] communication anyone had with him.
[39:36] The FBI later estimated that Hoffa left the parking lot
[39:39] around 2:45 to 2:50 that afternoon and that he didn't
[39:44] leave alone. The physical evidence in the
[39:48] case centered on that maroon 1975 Mercury Marquis.
[39:53] The car belonged to Joseph Giacalone, Anthony's son, and
[39:57] had been borrowed that day by Charles O'Brien, a man Hoffa had
[40:01] essentially raised as a foster son.
[40:05] O'Brien told investigators he'd use the car to deliver a 40 LB
[40:09] frozen salmon and that fish guts and fluids had leaked onto the
[40:13] back seat. And honestly, I just have to say
[40:16] here that the 40 LB frozen salmon excuse is the mob
[40:22] equivalent of the dog ate my homework.
[40:26] This fish fluid apparently prompted him to take the vehicle
[40:29] to a car wash later that afternoon.
[40:32] It was a fishy story, and it didn't hold up well.
[40:36] Trained police dogs, given clothing Hoffa had worn the day
[40:40] before his disappearance, identified his scent in the back
[40:43] of the Mercury. A strand of his hair was later
[40:47] recovered from the back seat, and the feds concluded that
[40:50] O'Brien had driven the Mercury with Hoffa seated in the right
[40:54] rear. O'Brien denied involvement for
[40:57] the rest of his life. He claimed he was at the
[41:00] Southfield Athletic Club with Anthony Giacolone during the
[41:03] relevant hours. Neither Giacolone nor Provenzano
[41:07] could be placed at the restaurant that afternoon, and
[41:10] both denied having any meetings scheduled with Hoffa.
[41:13] No one at the Athletic Club or the car wash could ever be found
[41:17] to corroborate O'Brien's timeline.
[41:21] In the five decades since Hoffa vanished, theories about who
[41:24] pulled the trigger have multiplied.
[41:27] The most publicly prominent came from Frank Sheeran, a Teamsters
[41:31] official and alleged mob hit man who claimed late in life that he
[41:35] personally shot Hoffa inside a house in Detroit.
[41:39] That account formed the basis of a best selling book and later a
[41:42] major motion picture, which I somehow haven't bothered to
[41:45] watch yet. But the claim has serious
[41:48] credibility problems. And when investigators tore up
[41:51] the floorboards of the house, Sheeran identified the genetic
[41:55] material recovered wasn't Hoffa's.
[41:58] The lead agent on the case in 2004 found Little and Sheeran's
[42:02] confession that could be substantiated, and journalists
[42:06] who investigated the claims in detail reached the same
[42:09] conclusion. A more widely supported theory
[42:13] among investigators and organized crime researchers
[42:16] points to Salvatore Briguglio, a New Jersey associate of
[42:20] Provenzano's, as the likely triggerman.
[42:23] Briguglio was a known enforcer within the Genovese crime
[42:27] family, and multiple investigators have independently
[42:30] identified him as the most probable candidate.
[42:34] He was himself slain outside a restaurant in New York's Little
[42:37] Italy in 1978, effectively closing that particular avenue
[42:42] of investigation. What isn't seriously disputed by
[42:47] anyone close to the case is the general framework.
[42:51] Hoffa was lured to the Machus Red Fox under the pretense of a
[42:54] sit down meeting. He was picked up by people he
[42:57] trusted, or at the very least recognized, and he was
[43:01] immediately eliminated, likely to keep him from taking over the
[43:05] union again. The search for Hoffa's remains
[43:08] has become something of a grim American tradition.
[43:12] Investigators have dug up a horse farm in Milford Township,
[43:15] Michigan. They've investigated rumors that
[43:18] he was buried beneath the end zone at Giants Stadium in East
[43:21] Rutherford, NJ In 2021, a tip from the son of a former New
[43:26] Jersey landfill operator led the FBI to conduct a survey beneath
[43:31] the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey City.
[43:34] This was following a claim that Hoffa's body had been placed in
[43:38] a steel drum and buried there in 1975.
[43:42] Agents spent weeks digging, but they found nothing, and a
[43:46] spokesperson confirmed in 2022 that the search had yielded no
[43:50] evidence of value. After 5 decades, the physical
[43:54] remains of Jimmy Hoffa will almost certainly never be found.
[43:58] Whatever was done with his body was effective enough to
[44:01] withstand 1/2 century of investigation by the FBI.
[44:05] In the end, he was declared legally dead in 1982.
[44:09] Seven years after he vanished and the case still remains
[44:12] officially open.

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