# 3 Hours of the Strangest Unsolved Mysteries Nobody Can Solve | 213

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 25 Apr 2026, 3 h 06 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO2121602319.mp3

Join me for 3 hours of the strangest unsolved mysteries nobody can solve. Episode 213 of the true crime podcast btw, and a compilation of previous in the series. 👇 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] Thanksgiving 1963 was a somber holiday in America.
[0:04] One week earlier, President John F Kennedy had been brutally cut
[0:08] down in Dallas, plunging the nation into mourning.
[0:11] But in the early hours of that Thanksgiving, another tragedy
[0:15] was unfolding in Hollywood. Karen Kupkennet, a 22 year old
[0:20] aspiring actress and daughter of a famous Chicago columnist, was
[0:25] living out the final moments of her life.
[0:28] Days later, she would be found dead in her West Hollywood
[0:31] apartment. The shocking death of this young
[0:34] starlet not only devastated her family, but soon became
[0:38] entangled in the web of JFK conspiracy theories.
[0:44] Karen Kupkinet grew up in the glow of show business.
[0:47] Born in 1941 to Irv and Essie Kupkinet, she was nicknamed
[0:52] Cookie and groomed for a life in the spotlight.
[0:55] Her father was a well known Chicago newspaper columnist and
[0:59] TV personality, so Karen had connections that open doors and
[1:03] entertainment. By her late teens, she had
[1:07] trained at the Actors Studio in New York and moved to Hollywood
[1:10] to chase her acting dreams. With her good looks and
[1:14] smoldering charisma, Karen showed promise.
[1:18] She earned rave reviews for a stage role in The Miracle Worker
[1:22] and was touted as an actress to watch in 1962.
[1:27] She landed small parts on popular TV shows like Perry
[1:30] Mason and The Donna Reed Show, and even a regular role on a
[1:33] forgettable sitcom called Missus G Goes to College.
[1:38] By all accounts, she seemed poised for stardom, or at least
[1:42] some level of acclaim. Behind the scenes, however,
[1:47] Karen's life was more turbulent. She struggled with personal
[1:51] insecurities, including a long battle with weight and reliance
[1:55] on diet pills. Encouraged by her image
[1:58] conscious mother in Hollywood, Karen became involved with actor
[2:03] Andrew Prine, whom she met while guest starring on his TV series
[2:08] in late 1962. The romance was intense but
[2:12] rocky. Karen yearned for commitment,
[2:14] while Prine, recently divorced, wanted to keep things casual.
[2:19] This mismatch led to repeated heartbreak for Karen.
[2:24] In mid 1963, she became pregnant and, with help from friends,
[2:29] terminated the pregnancy, a traumatic event that only
[2:33] heightened the strain between her and Prine.
[2:36] Desperate to hold on to the relationship, Karen began
[2:39] exhibiting erratic behavior. She anonymously sent threatening
[2:43] cut and paste letters to Prine and even to herself, bizarre
[2:48] messages made of magazine letters in an attempt to scare
[2:51] her ex into paying attention. After her death, investigators
[2:56] discovered Karen's fingerprints on those notes, confirming she
[3:00] had crafted them herself. She also resorted to spying on
[3:04] Prine and his new girlfriend. At one point she noted in her
[3:08] diary that she was watching him from behind a hedge in anguish.
[3:13] The emotional toll was immense, and Karen's friends observed her
[3:16] increasing use of substances to cope.
[3:20] A shoplifting arrest in 1962 hinted at her distress, and by
[3:24] November 1963, she seemed to be teetering on the edge.
[3:30] On November 27th, 1963, the day before Thanksgiving, Karen's
[3:36] friends tried to keep her company, unaware it would be her
[3:39] last night alive. That evening, she joined actor
[3:43] Mark Goddard and his wife Marsha for dinner in Beverly Hills.
[3:47] Karen arrived nearly an hour late, appearing disoriented and
[3:52] acting strangely, her speech slurred, her head lolling as if
[3:57] she were on some kind of medication.
[4:00] After the uneasy dinner, Karen returned to her West Hollywood
[4:03] apartment. Around 9:30 PM, two more
[4:07] friends, writer Edward Rubin and actor Robert Hathaway, stopped
[4:12] by her place to watch television.
[4:13] Together, they noted nothing obviously amiss beyond Karen
[4:17] seeming extremely tired and worn out.
[4:21] By 11:15 PM, Karen said she was going to bed, so Ruben and
[4:25] Hathaway let themselves out, even locking the door behind
[4:28] them as they left her apartment that night.
[4:32] Nobody heard from Karen over the next two days.
[4:35] Given her emotional state, some friends initially assumed she
[4:38] might just be laying low. By Saturday, November 30th,
[4:43] concern grew and whispers began that she may have done something
[4:47] to herself. The Goddards, uneasy that Karen
[4:51] hadn't been in touch since their dinner, went to check on her at
[4:55] her small bungalow apartment near the Sunset Strip.
[4:59] What they found was every friend's nightmare.
[5:02] The door was unlocked and a foul odor hung in the air.
[5:08] Inside, the apartment looked ransacked.
[5:10] A lamp was knocked over, A bowl of cigarettes and a coffee pot
[5:14] lay spilled on the floor, and cushions were Askew.
[5:18] The television was still on, but muted.
[5:22] On the couch lay Karen's body, motionless.
[5:26] She had likely been dead for about two days, meaning she died
[5:30] sometime on Thanksgiving Day 1963.
[5:35] Detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
[5:38] arrived and noted a few flecks of blood on Karen's face and a
[5:41] pillow, hinting at a struggle. The puzzling scene left even her
[5:46] close friends in shock. Given Karen's history of
[5:50] depression and pill use, some wondered if this was an overdose
[5:54] or perhaps a tragic accident. However, the coroner's findings
[5:59] told a far more chilling story. During the autopsy, the medical
[6:04] examiner discovered Karen's hyoid bone, a small bone in the
[6:08] throat, was broken. This injury is a classic tell
[6:12] tale sign of strangulation. With that evidence, Karen
[6:16] Kupkennett's death was officially ruled A slaying by
[6:19] strangling. The hunt for Karen's killer
[6:23] began under the glare of media attention.
[6:27] Here was a beautiful young actress slain in Hollywood at
[6:30] the very moment the country was distracted by President
[6:33] Kennedy's assassination. Detectives initially pursued any
[6:37] lead they could find. There was no sign of forced
[6:41] entry at her apartment, raising the likelihood that Karen knew
[6:44] her attacker and had willingly let them in.
[6:48] The two friends who last saw her alive, Reuben and Hathaway, were
[6:53] questioned, and their timeline helped establish that Karen was
[6:56] alive late on the 27th. The focus then shifted to her
[7:00] tumultuous personal life for suspects.
[7:05] From the outset, police eyed Karen's ex-boyfriend, Andrew
[7:09] Prine, as a prime suspect. Prine had a clear motive.
[7:14] In the eyes of investigators, their relationship had ended
[7:17] badly. Karen had been reportedly
[7:19] harassing him and his new partner.
[7:22] Prine was in the Los Angeles area at the time, and Karen had
[7:26] been obsessed with him in the weeks leading up to her death.
[7:30] Not only that, but before her death, both Karen and Prine had
[7:34] reported receiving anonymous death threat letters.
[7:38] As mentioned earlier, the police later discovered they were
[7:41] fabricated by Karen herself. The revelation that she wrote
[7:46] those letters complicated the picture.
[7:49] It showed Karen's extreme desperation, but it also
[7:53] initially cast suspicion on Prine until the hoax was
[7:56] uncovered. Ultimately, though, Andrew Prine
[8:00] was never charged and investigators couldn't find
[8:03] solid evidence tying him to the crime.
[8:06] He maintained his innocence. And in fact, Karen's parents
[8:10] eventually came to believe Prine was not responsible.
[8:14] Years later, the Kupkennet's revealed that they harbored
[8:17] suspicions about another individual, though they never
[8:21] went public with this name. This indicates the family heard
[8:25] or deduced something pointing to a different culprit, but law
[8:28] enforcement never confirmed any alternate suspect publicly.
[8:34] As the investigation pressed on in 1963 and 1964, no arrest was
[8:40] made. Police looked into other
[8:42] possibilities, perhaps an enraged acquaintance, a jealous
[8:46] rival, or even a random intruder.
[8:49] The crime scene's disarray suggested a violent struggle,
[8:53] but some elements seemed strange.
[8:56] For instance, Karen's body was nude, which could imply a
[8:59] certain angle, yet there was little evidence reported of an
[9:03] indecent assault. Robbery didn't appear to be the
[9:06] motive either, as numerous valuable items in the apartment
[9:10] weren't taken. It was as if someone wanted to
[9:14] attack Karen personally. Her demise was the only goal.
[9:19] With scant physical evidence and many of Karen's closest friends
[9:22] cleared, the case grew cold. One reason the Karen Cupkinet
[9:28] case continues to fascinate is its curious timing.
[9:32] Karen died just six days after President Kennedy's
[9:35] assassination, leading some to wonder if there could be a
[9:38] connection. In the fevered atmosphere
[9:41] following JF KS slaying, a number of conspiracy theories
[9:45] sprouted, and Karen's name strangely found its way into
[9:49] that narrative. The most famous allegation comes
[9:53] from Penn Jones, a Texas newspaper editor and early JFK
[9:57] theorist. In his self published 1966 book
[10:02] Forgive My Grief, Jones claimed that Karen Kupkinet was the
[10:07] mysterious woman who tried to warn of Kennedy's assassination
[10:11] in advance. This claim centers on a real
[10:15] incident that occurred about 20 minutes before Kennedy was shot
[10:19] in Dallas. A telephone operator in Oxnard,
[10:22] CA reported that an unknown woman dialed her by mistake and
[10:27] whispered the president is going to be shot.
[10:31] According to the operator, the woman sounded disturbed or in a
[10:35] trance before the line went dead.
[10:38] This eerie phone call was noted by authorities but never fully
[10:41] explained. Jones leapt on it and without
[10:45] evidence, identified the woman on the phone as Karen Kupkenet.
[10:49] In his telling, Karen somehow knew of the assassination
[10:53] beforehand, perhaps through her Hollywood connections or via her
[10:57] father's network, and tried to alert authorities.
[11:01] Proponents of this idea argue that she was silenced by
[11:04] conspirators days later. It's a gripping story, but there
[11:09] is no concrete evidence to support it.
[11:12] Karen's friends and family have vehemently denied that she had
[11:15] any such foreknowledge or involvement.
[11:17] In fact, on November 22nd, 1963, Karen was reportedly not even in
[11:23] the Los Angeles area where the call originated.
[11:26] Additionally, Karen had no known connection to government or
[11:30] political insiders. The idea that she would be Privy
[11:34] to one of the biggest secrets in world history is highly
[11:38] implausible, to say the least. Nonetheless, once her name was
[11:43] associated with that ominous phone call, it entered the lore
[11:46] of JFK conspiracy literature. Well over 60 years later, the
[11:53] story of Karen remains A somber footnote in Hollywood history
[11:57] and, oddly, in Kennedy lore. A bright young Hollywood career
[12:05] came to an abrupt and unsettling halt when Joe Pitchler, a former
[12:09] child actor known for roles in the Beethoven films, vanished
[12:13] without a trace. Pitchler was only 18 years old
[12:17] when he disappeared in early 2006, leaving behind a close
[12:21] knit family, a promising future, and a cryptic note.
[12:28] Joseph David Wolfgang Pitchler was born on February 14th, 1987
[12:33] in Bremerton, WA and began acting as a toddler.
[12:37] He was an outgoing child with a big personality, traits that
[12:40] helped him shine in auditions. He landed his first commercial
[12:44] by age 6 and soon scored small TV roles in shows like Lois and
[12:49] Clark. His breakthrough came at age 12,
[12:52] when he appeared in the 1999 football drama Varsity Blues,
[12:57] playing the younger brother of the main character.
[13:00] The following year, he won the role of Brennan Newton in the
[13:03] family comedy Beethoven's Third, a character he reprised in
[13:07] Beethoven's 4th the year after. After several years of growing
[13:13] up in Hollywood, Pitchler's family became concerned about
[13:16] giving him a more normal life. In 2003, they brought Joe back
[13:21] home to Bremerton to finish high school and get out of the
[13:24] showbiz bubble. He wasn't thrilled about leaving
[13:27] Los Angeles. Acting was his passion, but he
[13:31] adjusted to ordinary teen life in Washington and stayed
[13:34] grounded. Joe attended Bremerton High
[13:38] School, graduating in 2005. He moved into his own apartment
[13:43] when he turned 18 and worked a regular job for a while, all
[13:47] while remaining close with his family and friends in town.
[13:52] During that time, he enjoyed normal hobbies like playing with
[13:55] Magic the Gathering and Pokémon cards and chilling out with his
[13:59] pet Guinea pig. Importantly, Joe saw his return
[14:03] to Bremerton as temporary. He planned to head back to Los
[14:07] Angeles to reboot his acting career once his braces were
[14:10] removed in 2006. He had saved the earnings from
[14:14] his child acting days and was poised to make his Hollywood
[14:17] comeback within a few months. By early 2006, Joe appeared
[14:24] ready to turn his plans into reality.
[14:28] On the night of January 4th, 2006, Pitchler invited some
[14:32] friends over to his apartment. They hung out, played cards and
[14:36] had some drinks. And by all accounts, Joe was in
[14:39] good spirits. None of his friends sensed
[14:42] anything amiss at the time. In the very early hours of
[14:46] January 5th, after the friends had left, Joe made a phone call
[14:51] to one of them. This was the last call ever made
[14:55] on his cell phone. During that brief 4:15 AM call,
[15:00] he sounded extremely upset or even tearful, though he didn't
[15:03] explain why. He told his friend he'd call
[15:07] back soon, but he never did. And that was the last time
[15:11] anyone heard from Joe. Four days later, on January 9th,
[15:17] Joe's silver 2005 Toyota Corolla was found abandoned near an
[15:22] intersection in East Bremerton, just half a mile from the Port
[15:25] Madison Narrows waterfront. Inside the car, police
[15:29] discovered a handwritten note that Joe had left.
[15:33] In it, he expressed self doubt and regret, writing that he
[15:37] wished to be a better brother to his younger sibling and that he
[15:40] wanted his brother to have his belongings.
[15:43] The note did not explicitly say Joe planned to harm himself or
[15:47] run away, but its tone was troubled.
[15:51] Investigators interpreted it as a possible exit plan note and
[15:55] found that Joe left no other explanation for his sudden
[15:58] disappearance. When Joe's family examined his
[16:01] apartment, they found more worrying clues.
[16:05] All of his personal items, clothes, wallet, and even his
[16:10] asthma inhaler had been left behind, and the apartment door
[16:14] was unlocked with the lights still on.
[16:17] To his loved ones, this was completely out of character and
[16:21] suggested that Joe had only intended to step out briefly.
[16:27] From the outset, Bremerton police leaned toward the theory
[16:30] that Joe Pitchler did this voluntarily.
[16:33] His car's location near a bridge LED officers to suspect he might
[16:37] have jumped into the water that night.
[16:40] However, search dogs brought to the bridge didn't pick up Joe's
[16:43] scent there, adding to the uncertainty of what happened.
[16:48] One detective even told Joe's mother that he feared her son
[16:51] was dead in the Bay and might not be found for months.
[16:55] Divers were sent to search the water below, but no remains or
[17:00] evidence were recovered. Investigators reported finding
[17:04] no evidence of foul play at the scene, and Joe's sorrowful note
[17:08] in recent emotional state seemed to point toward the obvious
[17:11] explanation. Joe's family vehemently
[17:14] disagreed. They didn't believe Joe was in
[17:17] that state of mind and felt the authorities were too quick to
[17:20] label the case self-inflicted. According to his family and
[17:24] friends, Joe had been looking forward to the future, planning
[17:28] his return to acting, and had shown no signs of severe
[17:32] depression. They viewed his note as the
[17:35] reflective writings of an artistic teenager, not a
[17:38] definitive goodbye. In their eyes, something else
[17:42] must have happened to Joe that night, and the family insists
[17:46] that the note was simply saying that he wants to start a new
[17:49] endeavor. His mother urged the authorities
[17:53] to continue investigating, believing that Joe may have been
[17:56] abducted or met with some other form of foul play.
[18:02] Despite extensive searches, no trace of Joe was ever found.
[18:06] There were no sightings, no physical evidence beyond the car
[18:09] and note, and no definitive answers.
[18:12] As the years went by, Joe Pitchler's case went cold.
[18:16] Authorities maintain that the case remains open, and Bremerton
[18:20] police say they will still investigate any new leads that
[18:23] emerge. To this day, he remains listed
[18:26] as a missing person and his disappearance remains unsolved.
[18:32] That said, detectives have made it very clear where they stand
[18:35] on this case, and personally, I have to agree with detectives
[18:40] here. I think his family just can't
[18:42] accept reality. Unfortunately, it doesn't look
[18:45] like Joe had a very realistic outlook on how his return to
[18:48] Hollywood was going to go. He'd been out of the acting game
[18:52] for years, and he was by no means a household name.
[18:56] I suspect he may have become depressed at the thought of
[18:59] never reaching those acting heights he had achieved ever
[19:01] again. In August 1962, Hollywood's
[19:09] brightest star was extinguished under mysterious circumstances.
[19:13] Marilyn Monroe was found lifeless in her Los Angeles
[19:16] home, lying face down on her bed with a telephone receiver still
[19:20] clutched in one hand and empty pill bottles scattered around.
[19:25] The world was shocked by the sudden loss of the 36 year old
[19:29] icon. While police quickly concluded
[19:32] she had overdosed on sedatives, potentially intentionally, that
[19:37] tragic night soon spiraled into one of Hollywood's most enduring
[19:41] mysteries. On the evening of August 4th,
[19:45] 1962, Marilyn Monroe retreated to her bedroom in her Brentwood
[19:50] home after a day spent with close acquaintances.
[19:54] Earlier that Saturday, she had met with a photographer about
[19:57] publishing some photos and even signed for deliveries and
[20:01] chatted with friends. Despite recent career turmoil,
[20:05] she had been fired from her latest film just two months
[20:08] prior. Things were looking up.
[20:11] In fact, days before her death, Monroe had negotiated a new $1
[20:15] million, two picture deal and was set to resume filming
[20:20] Something's got to Give the following Monday.
[20:25] Friends later noted that Monroe appeared to be in better spirits
[20:28] and looking forward to the future.
[20:30] As night fell, Monroe spoke on the phone with Joe DiMaggio
[20:34] Junior, the son of her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio, around
[20:38] 7:00 PM and he sensed nothing alarming in her mood.
[20:43] Shortly after, she received a call from actor Peter Lawford,
[20:47] President John F Kennedy's brother-in-law, inviting her to
[20:51] a party. Hours later, at about 3:30 AM on
[20:55] August 5th, Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray,
[20:59] noticed the light still on in Marilyn's room and sensed
[21:03] something was wrong. The door was locked and Monroe
[21:07] didn't respond. Panicked, Murray called Monroe's
[21:12] psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who rushed over.
[21:16] Greenson had to break a window to access the bedroom, where he
[21:19] found Monroe unresponsive, lying unclothed under a sheet with the
[21:24] telephone receiver in hand. He summoned Monroe's personal
[21:28] physician, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, who arrived and officially
[21:33] confirmed Maryland's death at about 3:50 AM.
[21:38] Police were notified by 4:25 AM, and news of the tragedy began to
[21:43] spread before dawn. The Los Angeles County Coroner's
[21:48] Office immediately launched an investigation into Marilyn
[21:51] Monroe's death. An autopsy was performed the
[21:55] same day by Deputy Coroner Thomas Noguchi with a team of
[21:59] psychiatrists consulting. Due to Monroe's history of
[22:02] mental health struggles, the forensic findings were grim and
[22:06] seemingly conclusive. Toxicological analysis showed
[22:10] lethal quantities of barbiturates in Monroe's system.
[22:14] Several empty medicine bottles, prescriptions for these
[22:18] sedatives were found at her bedside.
[22:21] There were no signs of external injury or foul play on her body.
[22:26] Investigators also noted that rigor mortis indicated she had
[22:29] likely died between approximately 8:30 and 10:30 on
[22:36] August 17th, 1962. The coroner's report officially
[22:40] classified Marilyn Monroe's death as caused by
[22:44] self-inflicted acute barbiturate poisoning.
[22:47] The report concluded that the dosage of sedatives in her body
[22:51] was several times the lethal limit, far too high to be
[22:54] accidental, and likely ingested all at once or over a very short
[22:59] period. Monroe had a known history of
[23:02] depression, severe mood swings and prior overdose attempts,
[23:07] including incidents where she had been saved at the last
[23:10] minute. Despite the official ruling,
[23:14] Monroe's death didn't put speculation to rest.
[23:18] In fact, it only marked the beginning of decades of
[23:20] questions and speculation. Maryland's unexpected demise at
[23:25] the height of her fame fueled disbelief.
[23:29] As gossip swirled, the Los Angeles County District
[23:32] Attorney's Office took the unusual step of revisiting the
[23:35] case 20 years later in 1982. Prompted by persistent rumors of
[23:41] a slaying, the District Attorney ordered a threshold
[23:44] investigation to determine if there was any credible evidence
[23:48] of something more. After a three month inquiry
[23:52] reviewing old and new information, the DA's office
[23:55] announced it found no evidence of a conspiracy to eliminate
[23:58] Monroe. The official conclusion remained
[24:01] that Marilyn Monroe died from an overdose, However, they were
[24:05] unable to say whether it was intentional or a tragic
[24:08] accident. They noted that she had a
[24:11] significant history of taking large quantities of substances,
[24:15] which suggested that she may have believed she could tolerate
[24:18] what she took. They also suggested that she
[24:21] could have been in such an altered state that she forgot
[24:24] what she had previously taken. Almost as soon as Marilyn was
[24:30] laid to rest, speculation about more sinister scenarios began to
[24:34] take flight. In the first couple of years
[24:37] after her death, however, these ideas were largely confined to
[24:41] whispers. The shift came in 1964 when a
[24:45] writer named Frank Capel self published A sensational pamphlet
[24:50] titled The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe.
[24:55] This is widely cited as the genesis of the Monroe
[24:58] conspiracies. Capel insinuated that Marilyn
[25:02] had been knocked off on the orders of Robert F Kennedy, the
[25:05] US Attorney General. According to Capel, this was
[25:09] because she allegedly had an affair with him and threatened
[25:13] to expose it. In Capel's telling, Monroe was
[25:17] surrounded by Communist sympathizers and had become a
[25:20] liability to the Kennedys. He claimed Robert Kennedy
[25:24] enlisted Maryland's own doctor to administer a fatal injection
[25:28] and silence her. Importantly, Capell's motive in
[25:32] 1964 may not have been truth seeking.
[25:35] His pamphlet came out while Bobby Kennedy was running for
[25:38] Senate, suggesting it was a political smear potentially
[25:43] orchestrated by opponents. Nonetheless, the lurid idea of
[25:48] the Kennedy clan being involved in Maryland's demise took root
[25:52] in the public imagination throughout the 1970s and beyond.
[25:59] New conspiracy theories bloomed, each adding twist to the core
[26:03] notion that Marilyn Monroe's death wasn't the simple overdose
[26:06] it appeared. Many of these theories still
[26:10] cast the Kennedy brothers as central figures.
[26:13] One version posited that Marilyn kept a secret diary full of
[26:17] sensitive information about the Kennedys and that this made her
[26:21] dangerous to powerful people. One variant suggested that
[26:25] Monroe's death might have been an accidental overdose, but that
[26:29] Robert Kennedy and his brother-in-law, Peter Lawford,
[26:32] were present at her home that night.
[26:35] Believers in this theory point out that Robert Kennedy was in
[26:38] Los Angeles on the night when she perished, which is factual
[26:43] and well documented. The story goes that Marilyn was
[26:47] alive when found and could perhaps have been saved if they
[26:52] took action. Instead they watched her die
[26:57] like Walter does to Jesse's troublesome girlfriend in that
[27:01] one episode of Breaking Bad, knowing they could have saved
[27:04] her. And yeah, I just watched that
[27:07] episode about a week back. Currently working my way through
[27:11] the show. Great program.
[27:16] Not all the theories revolve around the Kennedys in such a
[27:19] direct manner, though they often still play a significant part.
[27:24] Another prominent theory emerged in the 1980s, championed by
[27:28] private investigators pointing the finger at the Mafia.
[27:32] In this telling, mob boss Sam Giancana had Marilyn Monroe
[27:37] slain as revenge or leverage against the Kennedy brothers.
[27:41] The Kennedy administration was aggressively cracking down on
[27:44] organized crime. John Kana, who allegedly knew of
[27:49] Monroe's intimate ties to JFK and RFK, saw an opportunity to
[27:54] attack where they were vulnerable.
[27:58] This grisly account contends Monroe was slain on the
[28:01] mobster's orders to send a message to the Kennedys.
[28:04] It's a theory that reads like something out of Pulp Fiction,
[28:08] yet it remains one of the OFT repeated conspiracy angles some
[28:14] theorists have dragged the CIA into.
[28:16] The picture 1 hypothesis suggests the feds eliminated
[28:20] Marilyn Monroe as payback against President Kennedy for
[28:23] the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Another, perhaps fanciful
[28:27] version claims Monroe was snuffed out because she had
[28:30] learned government secrets about extraterrestrials through her
[28:34] Kennedy connection. Under this theory, she had
[28:37] threatened to go public with her knowledge of what information
[28:40] the American government really had on the phenomenon.
[28:44] When she couldn't be convinced to be quiet through conventional
[28:47] methods, shadowy figures within the government ended her life.
[28:53] Officially, the case is closed. Marilyn died of a overdose, a
[28:58] sad end to a life of dizzying highs and devastating lows.
[29:02] The real mystery is likely whether this act was intentional
[29:05] or not, but without knowing Marilyn's state of mind that
[29:09] night, it's truly impossible to know.
[29:16] It was a chilly November night in 1981 when Hollywood icon
[29:20] Natalie Wood vanished from her yacht under mysterious
[29:24] circumstances. The beloved film star, known for
[29:28] classics like West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause, had
[29:32] always harbored a deep fear of dark water.
[29:35] This was an irony not lost on anyone when she was found
[29:38] drowned off California's Catalina Island.
[29:42] Her death at age 43 and the uncertainty surrounding her
[29:46] final hours have fueled decades of speculation about what really
[29:51] happened. Over the Thanksgiving weekend of
[29:55] 1981, Natalie Wood set sail with her husband, Robert Wagner, on
[30:01] their 60 foot yacht, the Splendor, for a trip to Catalina
[30:04] Island. Along with them were Woods,
[30:07] Brainstorm Co star Christopher Walken and the yacht's captain,
[30:11] Dennis Davern. The group spent the evening
[30:14] drinking at a harbor restaurant on the island, where witnesses
[30:17] said they were heavily intoxicated.
[30:20] After dinner, they returned to the yacht around 10:00 PM to
[30:24] continue the night on board and perhaps have a few more drinks.
[30:29] Tensions flared not long after. Wagner later recounted that he
[30:33] and Walken got into a heated argument about Woods career.
[30:38] During the altercation, A distraught Wood retreated to her
[30:41] stateroom below deck, with Wagner following behind.
[30:45] Around midnight, the commotion finally subsided and when Robert
[30:49] went to check on Natalie, she was nowhere to be found.
[30:54] Natalie Wood had disappeared from the Splendor and the yacht
[30:58] Small Dinghy was also missing. Given Natalie's famous aversion
[31:02] to deep water and the fact she couldn't swim, it seemed
[31:06] implausible that she would take a boat out alone after midnight.
[31:10] Wagner later said he initially thought she might have gone
[31:13] ashore to cool off from the argument, but this was out of
[31:16] character. Realizing she was gone, Wagner
[31:20] and Davern searched the boat. Finding no trace of her, Davern
[31:24] radioed for help at around 1:30 AM, alerting the Coast Guard.
[31:29] Rescuers scoured the waters through the early morning
[31:32] darkness. At about 5:30 AM on November
[31:36] 29th, the Splendors dinghy was found adrift in a Cove with its
[31:40] engine off, but Natalie wasn't on board.
[31:44] Shortly after, Wood's body was discovered floating in that same
[31:48] area, roughly a mile from the yacht.
[31:52] Her body showed bruises on the arms and legs and an abrasion on
[31:56] her cheek, and her blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit.
[32:02] It was a tragic end to her life and the start of an enduring
[32:06] enigma that would continue on for decades.
[32:11] The coroner, the exact same man who had done the autopsy on
[32:15] Marilyn Monroe, ruled Wood's death an accidental drowning, a
[32:19] fact which immediately raised eyebrows.
[32:22] He theorized that Natalie had gone outside to secure the
[32:25] dinghy and then slipped on the boat's swim step, falling
[32:29] overboard. The bruises and scratches were
[32:33] attributed to her hitting the yacht or struggling to climb
[32:36] into the dinghy after falling. Scratch marks on the dinghy's
[32:40] side suggested she clung to it for a time, but her heavy jacket
[32:44] became soaked and weighed her down.
[32:47] After a few minutes in the cold water, she likely succumbed to
[32:50] hypothermia and drowned. All three men on the ship
[32:54] maintained that nothing criminal had occurred and that Natalie's
[32:58] death was a tragic case of misadventure in 1981.
[33:03] Police saw no reason to suspect otherwise, and the investigation
[33:08] was closed. Many people had doubts about the
[33:12] official story. The notion that Natalie would
[33:15] deliberately venture out alone in a dinghy at night struck
[33:19] skeptics as highly unlikely. Years later, a nearby boater
[33:23] named Marilyn Wayne came forward with a chilling account of that
[33:26] night. She said that around 11:00 PM,
[33:30] while moored about 40 yards from the Splendor, she heard a woman
[33:34] screaming that she was drowning and begging for help.
[33:38] According to her, the cries lasted about 15 minutes, but
[33:42] there was more. At one point, Wayne heard a
[33:45] man's slurred voice from the Splendor say that help was on
[33:49] the way. Before the scream stopped,
[33:52] Wayne's party allegedly tried to call Harbor Patrol but got no
[33:57] response at any point, and no records of the call exist.
[34:01] She was never interviewed by police, and days later, she says
[34:05] she found an anonymous note warning her to keep quiet about
[34:09] what she knew. Such details were not part of
[34:12] the initial investigation, but they fueled suspicion that more
[34:16] had happened than was officially acknowledged.
[34:19] Her report remains unverified, and it remains unclear why she
[34:23] waited for so long to come forward, though the threatening
[34:26] note has provided potential evidence as to why.
[34:30] In 2011, nearly 30 years after Natalie's death, the Los Angeles
[34:36] County Sheriff's Department reopened the case.
[34:40] The catalyst was Dennis Davern, who admitted he had lied to
[34:43] investigators in 1981. He now claimed there had been a
[34:47] violent altercation between Natalie and Robert before she
[34:51] disappeared, and alleged that Robert delayed calling for help
[34:55] after she went missing. His new testimony prompted the
[34:59] authorities to take a fresh look at the evidence to see what
[35:02] really happened. In 2012, the coroner's office
[35:06] amended Wood's death certificate, changing the cause
[35:09] of death from accidental drowning to quote drowning and
[35:13] other undetermined factors. This change cited the
[35:16] unexplained bruises on Natalie's body, which experts concluded
[35:21] could have been sustained before she entered the water.
[35:24] A 2013 coroner's report addendum went further, noting that some
[35:29] injuries, like a bruised forearm and a scratched knee, might be
[35:34] consistent with a struggle. However, detectives still lacked
[35:38] proof of wrongdoing. The Sheriff's Department didn't
[35:41] label Natalie's death a slaying. In 2018, additional witnesses
[35:48] emerged to add intrigue. A couple on another boat told
[35:52] investigators they saw a man and woman, presumably the couple,
[35:57] arguing on the Splendor's deck that night.
[36:00] This LED authorities to publicly name Robert Wagner as a person
[36:04] of interest in the case. Investigators also noted that
[36:07] Wagner refused to be interviewed in the renewed inquiry and that
[36:11] some of his statements over the years didn't align with other
[36:14] accounts. Still, these new claims weren't
[36:18] enough to bring charges in the case.
[36:20] The evidence remained inconclusive, with no definitive
[36:23] proof of foul play or of a purely accidental fall to close
[36:28] the case. Either way, by 2022,
[36:33] investigators reached a dead end.
[36:36] The Sheriff's Department announced that all leads were
[36:39] exhausted and no evidence implicated anyone.
[36:42] Wagner was formally cleared of wrongdoing.
[36:45] Due to lack of evidence, the case remains officially open,
[36:48] essentially a cold case in case new information ever comes to
[36:52] light. To this day, how Natalie Wood
[36:56] ended up in the deep dark water she feared so much is still
[36:59] unknown, though let's just say I have my suspicions.
[37:07] In the early hours of May 7th, 1988, a chilling sound crept
[37:12] through the walls of a quiet Burbank apartment building.
[37:16] Muffled shrieks and high pitched moans Jarred awake 23 year old
[37:20] Susan Aiken, a former Miss America.
[37:23] She listened in alarm with her fiance as the mysterious cries
[37:27] continued rhythmically for nearly an hour.
[37:31] Less than a week later, on Friday the 13th of May,
[37:35] neighbors complained of a foul odor from that same upstairs
[37:38] unit. Police responded and discovered
[37:41] the lifeless body of 29 year old Crystal Spencer lying face down
[37:46] on the floor of her apartment. Crystal Spencer was an ambitious
[37:52] young woman with Hollywood aspirations.
[37:55] She grew up in a small Northern California town, and after her
[37:59] father passed away when she was just eight, life got a lot more
[38:02] difficult for her. Crystal ended up having to leave
[38:06] high school early to help her mom support the family.
[38:09] In her early 20s, she moved to Los Angeles dreaming of stardom.
[38:14] But like many hopeful actresses, she found only bit parts and
[38:18] frustration in her first years. To make ends meet, Crystal
[38:23] reluctantly took a job as a dancer at the Wild Goose, an
[38:26] adult club near Los Angeles International Airport.
[38:30] She wasn't happy that she was in this line of work, and Crystal
[38:34] never abandoned her Hollywood dreams.
[38:37] She landed a couple of small roles, including two TV
[38:40] commercials, and enrolled in drama and comedy workshops to
[38:44] hone her craft. By 1988, at 29 years old, she
[38:50] was still striving for that big break.
[38:55] In 1987, she had begun dating Anton Klein, a 37 year old
[39:00] aspiring screenwriter whom she met at a garden party.
[39:04] For several months, Crystal hid her dancing job from him, afraid
[39:08] of losing his respect and that it would cause them to break up.
[39:13] When Anton eventually discovered her other life, he was shocked
[39:17] but accepted it and the two stayed together.
[39:23] In early 1988, a new opportunity on the horizon gave her hope.
[39:28] Crystal was preparing to spend 3 months in Japan working as a
[39:31] nightclub Hostess, a job that promised quick money and a
[39:35] chance to step up from the dancing scene.
[39:39] She confided to a friend that the idea of moving to Japan made
[39:42] her nervous, but she was determined to go through with
[39:45] it. On Wednesday, May 4th, Anton
[39:51] stopped by Crystal's Burbank apartment because she was home
[39:54] sick with what seemed like a bad cold.
[39:57] He brought her groceries and noted that she appeared to be in
[40:00] good spirits. The next night, Thursday, May
[40:04] 5th, would be the last time Crystal spoke with her family.
[40:08] Late that evening, Crystal phoned her sister Julie,
[40:12] sounding distressed and claiming she had come down with a
[40:15] terrible flu. She wanted to know what number
[40:18] their mom could be reached at, since their mom was staying with
[40:22] friends in Los Angeles while Crystal plan to leave for Japan.
[40:27] She begged Julie for their mother's phone number, desperate
[40:30] to reach her mom for comfort or help, but Julie thought Crystal
[40:34] was being dramatic and told her she didn't have it.
[40:39] As midnight passed into the early hours of May 6th,
[40:43] troubling signs continued at Crystal's apartment.
[40:46] Very late that night, unusual noises emanated from her Unit 1
[40:51] neighbor later told police they had heard sounds throughout the
[40:54] day and into the night that sounded a lot like violent
[40:57] vomiting. Then came the harrowing screams
[41:00] that Susan Aiken and her fiance heard in the early hours.
[41:04] As mentioned, due to the rhythmic style of agony they
[41:07] heard, they assumed that a couple were taking a walk on the
[41:10] wild side and didn't call the cops.
[41:14] This decision not to call the cops because they didn't want to
[41:17] interrupt a freaky night going on upstairs would come to haunt
[41:21] the couple. Meanwhile, Anton Klein was
[41:26] growing concerned. All through that weekend, he
[41:29] repeatedly tried calling Crystal, but her phone line was
[41:33] persistently busy. Eventually, a phone operator
[41:37] informed him that the line wasn't just busy, The telephone
[41:40] receiver in Crystal's apartment was off the hook, effectively
[41:44] disabling incoming calls. On Monday, May 9th, with still
[41:49] no word from Crystal, Anton took an extra step.
[41:54] He phoned the Wild Goose Club where she worked and asked the
[41:57] doorman if anyone had seen her. The response he got was strange
[42:02] and unexpected, since Anton was informed that Crystal had left
[42:06] for Japan. Anton was rather heartbroken
[42:09] that she had left without saying goodbye, but ultimately decided
[42:13] to reluctantly accept what he was told.
[42:18] On May 13th, 1988, nearly one week after the mysterious late
[42:23] night screams, the truth of Crystal's fate was finally
[42:26] revealed. Neighbors, unable to ignore the
[42:30] awful smell seeping through the building's hallway, called the
[42:33] police. Officers entered Crystal
[42:36] Spencer's apartment and found her on the living room floor.
[42:40] Crystal's body had lain there for days, decomposing in the
[42:44] spring heat. She was found wearing only a red
[42:47] top, with no clothing from the waist down, and her telephone
[42:52] was off its hook next to her, the cord wrapped around her
[42:55] legs. The apartment itself was in
[42:58] disarray, belongings scattered about which could have indicated
[43:02] A struggle or break in. Although friends noted Crystal
[43:06] wasn't the tidiest person to begin with.
[43:09] One responding officer noted immediate suspicion of a
[43:12] possible slaying given the state of the apartment and her body.
[43:16] However, with the corpse so badly decayed, it was difficult
[43:19] to discern much from the crime scene.
[43:22] Notably, there were absolutely no signs of trauma that could be
[43:26] conclusively identified on the remains.
[43:29] Further yet, investigators found no trace of substances in
[43:33] Crystal's system either. In the absence of clear
[43:36] evidence, the coroner could not determine how Crystal Spencer
[43:40] perished. After a thorough autopsy, the
[43:44] cause was officially recorded as undetermined, essentially
[43:49] acknowledging that the forensic experts were unable to say what
[43:52] ended her life. When Crystal Spencer's remains
[43:57] were first examined, the coroner's office registered them
[44:01] as a Jane Doe. Her body was so decomposed that
[44:04] staff had to remove her fingertips surgically just to
[44:07] get prints for identification. This autopsy would cause a
[44:11] significant degree of controversy for Crystal's family
[44:14] and friends. It listed a 5 foot seven, 140 LB
[44:19] woman, while Crystal was barely 5 feet tall and just over 100
[44:24] lbs Anton Klein suggested that her body may have been switched
[44:29] out either accidentally or on purpose.
[44:32] However, the authorities explained that the height
[44:35] discrepancy was likely a clerical error and the weight
[44:38] discrepancy came from not factoring in the weight of the
[44:41] Gurney. Notably, the authorities tested
[44:44] her fingerprints 2 more times to ensure the proper body had been
[44:48] examined, which they were able to confirm.
[44:54] Questions also arose about the initial police investigation.
[44:58] Burbank police did look into Crystal's passing, but only
[45:02] briefly. They processed the apartment and
[45:04] interviewed a few people. Yet within a few months, the
[45:07] department quietly closed the case, having found no concrete
[45:11] evidence of foul play. Eventually, by the summer of
[45:15] 1988, Crystal's file was marked as a passing due to probable
[45:20] natural causes. This conclusion infuriated
[45:23] Crystal's family and Anton Klein, who believed the police
[45:27] had been too quick to write off the case.
[45:30] Anton and Crystal's family took it upon themselves to find what
[45:34] the police didn't. In the days after the autopsy,
[45:39] Crystal's relatives went through her disheveled apartment and
[45:43] discovered a potential clue that investigators had left behind
[45:47] Crystal's camera. This camera had a roll of
[45:51] undeveloped film still inside, and the police had not
[45:54] confiscated it or even noted its existence.
[45:58] Anton had the film developed on his own, and the photos revealed
[46:02] something intriguing. It showed a middle-aged man with
[46:05] a mustache sitting in Crystal's apartment, smiling at the
[46:09] camera. This unknown man's presence
[46:12] raised alarm bells. Anton managed to obtain
[46:15] Crystal's phone records and playing detective, matched a
[46:19] number to the mystery man's identity, then handed this
[46:22] information to the Burbank police.
[46:25] Detectives did track the man down and interview him, and in
[46:28] the end, he was ruled out as a suspect.
[46:34] More than three decades later, the death of Crystal Spencer
[46:38] remains an unsolved puzzle, and people still debate whether she
[46:41] perished from natural causes, causes or was the victim of a
[46:45] sinister plot. Over the years, several theories
[46:50] have emerged to explain what might have happened in that
[46:52] Burbank apartment in May 1988. One possibility is that Crystal
[46:59] did in fact die of a medical issue, a rapid and severe
[47:03] illness that struck suddenly. No definitive illness was
[47:07] identified in the autopsy, but not every condition leaves
[47:11] obvious traces. It's conceivable that severe
[47:15] complications from the flu or another natural cause took her
[47:18] life quickly. Proponents of this theory point
[47:21] out that no evidence of violence was found on her body and the
[47:25] coroner couldn't pinpoint any injury or toxin which might
[47:29] indicate a medical cause. However, the natural death
[47:34] hypothesis struggles to explain the haunting screams heard in
[47:39] the night. Some have suggested that it's
[47:43] unusual for someone dying of illness to make the kind of
[47:47] prolonged, shrill cries that were described.
[47:51] Further, it doesn't fully explain why she wouldn't have
[47:53] called an ambulance as her condition was worsening.
[47:57] However, those who believe this theory generally think that she
[48:00] did make an attempt to call 911, but only did so when it was too
[48:04] late. Many, including Crystal's
[48:09] family, strongly suspect that she met with foul play.
[48:13] The screams heard by multiple neighbors bolster the idea that
[48:16] she wasn't alone and was in severe distress.
[48:20] If this theory is true, the identity of the attacker remains
[48:24] unknown, and no direct suspects have ever been identified
[48:27] publicly. It could have been a stranger,
[48:31] perhaps a patron or stalker from the club, or someone Crystal
[48:35] knew casually. It could even be someone such as
[48:38] a boyfriend who inserted himself into the investigation
[48:41] consistently over the following years.
[48:44] But that's just speculation, of course.
[48:48] Notably, there were no signs of forced entry reported, but
[48:52] Crystal might have opened her door willingly if she recognized
[48:55] the visitor. Unfortunately, the delayed
[48:59] discovery of her body meant much of the evidence which may have
[49:02] existed could have vanished by the time the cops found her
[49:06] body. One particularly tangled theory
[49:11] involves A corrupt ex cop and the criminal underworld orbiting
[49:14] the adult club scene. Horace McKenna was a former
[49:18] California Highway Patrol officer who, according to rumor,
[49:22] allegedly secretly owned or controlled the wild goose where
[49:26] Crystal worked. According to an LA Times report,
[49:30] McKenna was said to run an illegal gambling operation out
[49:33] of an Englewood warehouse. In fact, a waitress friend of
[49:37] Crystal's later attested that Crystal had spent time at this
[49:40] clandestine casino, possibly rubbing shoulders with dangerous
[49:44] people in Mckenna's circle. The theory goes that Crystal
[49:48] might have become an informant on Mckenna's illicit activities.
[49:52] Notably in favor of this theory, it turned out that the FBI had
[49:57] an open file on Crystal, which Anton obtained.
[50:01] The only problem was that the file was almost entirely
[50:04] redacted. According to this theory,
[50:07] McKenna ordered the hit and then used his significant connections
[50:10] within the Los Angeles Police Department to botch the
[50:13] investigation. However, McKenna himself was
[50:17] eliminated just months later, and no evidence ever tied him to
[50:20] Crystal's demise. Another theory branches off from
[50:26] Crystal's planned trip to Japan. Some have wondered if the offer
[50:30] to work as a nightclub Hostess in Tokyo wasn't as quote UN
[50:34] quote innocent as it seemed. During the 1980s, there were
[50:39] real instances of young American women being lured abroad for
[50:43] Hostess jobs that ended up being fronts for forced exploitation.
[50:50] Now this theory really gets into wild and speculative territory.
[50:53] So I mentioned that there was initially some doubt about
[50:56] whether the body examined was Crystals due to some issues with
[51:00] mismatches and information. This theory claims that the
[51:05] Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, kidnapped Crystal and then
[51:09] shipped her to Japan or Hawaii and then put another body in her
[51:13] apartment. Notably, the authorities double
[51:16] checked the fingerprints on the body twice and determined that
[51:20] they were indeed from Crystal. Notably, there's been no
[51:25] connection whatsoever found between the Yakuza and Crystal.
[51:29] To this day, it remains entirely unclear whether Crystal was the
[51:32] victim of a crime or whether she simply perished due to natural
[51:36] causes. However, personally, I can't
[51:42] accept that Crystal's death was simply natural or accidental.
[51:46] The condition of her body left to decompose for nearly a week
[51:50] may have erased the very signs that would have revealed the
[51:53] truth. Advanced decomposition can
[51:56] obscure bruising, subtle trauma, or even evidence of
[52:00] strangulation if the hyoid bone wasn't broken.
[52:05] The fact that she was found half clothed, the phone ripped from
[52:09] its base, and neighbors reported hearing what sounded like
[52:12] screams makes me strongly suspect foul play.
[52:20] Hey everyone, Jimmy here as usual with a shout out to all
[52:23] subscribers, YouTube members, and patrons.
[52:27] Also, don't forget to check out my new history video podcast,
[52:31] Lazy Chill History by clicking the link in the description.
[52:36] A cracked tail light was all it took.
[52:38] A single piece of broken plastic on a 1985 Ford Thunderbird set
[52:43] off a chain of events that left one man dead and destroyed
[52:47] multiple families. It also created one of the most
[52:51] baffling unsolved disappearances in American criminal history.
[52:56] On an August evening in 1990, Adam Emery chased down the wrong
[53:00] car, attacked the wrong person, and then, after a jury told him
[53:05] he'd spend decades behind bars, he vanished completely.
[53:10] According to some accounts, both he and his wife jumped off a
[53:14] bridge and his wife's skull turned up months later in a
[53:18] fisherman's net. Adam Emery himself has never
[53:21] been found, and though he's been declared legally deceased in
[53:25] Rhode Island, the FBI believes he's still a free man.
[53:30] August 31st, 1990 was supposed to be unremarkable.
[53:34] Adam Emery, 27, was out with his wife, Elena, her sister Maria,
[53:40] and Maria's husband, Ronnie. They had gone to Rocky Point
[53:44] amusement park in Warwick, RI. They'd picked up seafood from a
[53:48] restaurant along the coast, an informal celebration of the
[53:52] couple's second wedding anniversary.
[53:55] Emery worked in customer service at a local plastics company and
[53:59] was a graduate of Rhode Island College who'd previously served
[54:02] as a military policeman in the Rhode Island National Guard.
[54:07] He had no criminal record and was, by all accounts, generally
[54:10] well liked and not quick to anger.
[54:12] But something changed that day. As they sat in Emery's
[54:17] Thunderbird, another vehicle sideswiped the car and speed off
[54:22] 2 cars left the lot at roughly the same time and in the
[54:26] confusion, Maria pointed to a dark red 1977 Ford and insisted
[54:32] it was the one that struck them, to which Elena vehemently
[54:35] agreed. Adam Furious threw the car into
[54:39] gear and gave chase, tailing the Ford for approximately 2 miles.
[54:44] Police would later confirm through paint chip analysis that
[54:48] the Ford wasn't the car that hit them.
[54:51] The 20 year old behind its wheel, Jason Bass, had
[54:54] absolutely no idea why a stranger was pursuing him
[54:57] through the streets of Warwick. Jason Bass was a Providence
[55:02] native who worked in food service.
[55:04] He'd recently left a concession job at Rocky Point Amusement
[55:08] Park, the very place where the Emery's had just eaten dinner.
[55:13] That night. He was driving with his cousin
[55:15] Joshua Post when Emery's Thunderbird appeared behind
[55:18] them. Bass was terrified and he tried
[55:22] to drive away, but Emery eventually cut him off, forcing
[55:26] the Ford onto the lawn of a residential property.
[55:29] What happened next took only seconds as Elena escalated the
[55:33] situation by handing her enraged husband a military style double
[55:38] edged knife. Emery approached Bass's car,
[55:43] shouting about the damage to his Thunderbird.
[55:46] When Bass, confused and frightened, put the car in
[55:49] reverse to escape, Emery lunged through the driver's side window
[55:53] and stabbed him directly through the heart.
[55:56] The car rolled to a stop against a boulder near the driveway of a
[55:59] local prison guard named Bruce Bishop.
[56:02] When Bishop came outside, Emery dropped the knife and admitted
[56:06] what he'd done. State Police Trooper Kevin
[56:09] Hopkins, the first officer to arrive, found Bass lying beside
[56:14] his car. Emery, for his part, had asked
[56:17] Bishop for a glass of water and was casually drinking it on the
[56:21] porch when the officer arrived. Emery was charged and held on a
[56:27] $270,000 bond. After eight months in custody,
[56:32] his family posted bail and he remained free for nearly two
[56:36] years before trial. He stayed employed, kept out of
[56:40] trouble and showed up to every court appearance.
[56:44] He'd been offered a manslaughter plea deal but rejected it,
[56:47] bizarrely insisting that he jumped through the window to
[56:50] attack Jason in self-defense. He claimed that when Bass
[56:54] reversed the car, he'd felt threatened and had no choice but
[56:57] to use the knife. I'm probably not going to shock
[57:00] anyone here. But the jury didn't buy it, and
[57:03] on November 10th, 1993, they returned a guilty verdict.
[57:08] He faced up to 25 years, and observers watched closely to see
[57:12] how he would react to what he clearly must have believed was
[57:16] an unexpected outcome. Jason Bass's family watched his
[57:20] face for any reaction when the verdict was read, but there was
[57:25] none. In a controversial decision, the
[57:29] judge allowed Emery to remain free on bail pending formal
[57:33] sentencing. A month later, he was permitted
[57:35] to leave the courthouse to get his affairs in order, and Adam
[57:39] and Elena walked out together at approximately 3:00 that
[57:43] afternoon. What happened over the next few
[57:47] hours reads more like something out of a true crime novel or a
[57:50] movie than real life. Around 3:30 PM, the couple
[57:55] arrived at Kelly's Sporting Goods in Cranston, where they
[57:58] purchased black hooded sweat suits, athletic socks and 80 lbs
[58:03] of exercise weights. The store manager recalled Elena
[58:07] as chatty and smiling, while Adam seemed oddly bothered by
[58:10] the cost. Personally, I think this is a
[58:14] strange concern for someone supposedly about to jump off a
[58:18] bridge to his certain doom. They were next seen eating at a
[58:22] Burger King, where witnesses described them as calm and
[58:26] relaxed. At approximately 4:45 PM, their
[58:31] Toyota Camry was spotted on the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge, a
[58:36] massive span rising over 200 feet above Narragansett Bay.
[58:41] Motorists recalled seeing them walking along the pedestrian
[58:44] walkway. They were then seen driving away
[58:47] from the bridge, only to apparently return later that
[58:50] evening. Shortly before 7:00, A bridge
[58:54] supervisor and a state trooper discovered the Camry abandoned
[58:58] in a westbound lane, engine running, headlights on.
[59:03] On the front seat lay cash, cut up credit cards and Adam's
[59:07] driver's license. On the back seat, neatly folded,
[59:11] were the clothes they'd worn to court that morning.
[59:14] Notes signed by both arrived in family mailboxes the next day
[59:19] explaining why they had done it. In August 1994, a human skull
[59:25] was recovered from the Bay and identified as Elena Emerys.
[59:30] Elena's younger brother, Dominic Derocco, told The Associated
[59:34] Press that the couple had been in love and full of plans, and
[59:38] that they'd felt their lives ended the moment the conviction
[59:41] came down. Whatever happened on that
[59:44] bridge, Elena had gone into the water and Adam, by all evidence,
[59:49] had not. Not a bone, not a tooth, not a
[59:54] shred of his clothing was ever found.
[59:58] Rhode Island State Police turned to an unusual piece of evidence.
[1:00:02] Courtroom footage captured by a news crew showing the couple.
[1:00:05] In a whispered exchange after the verdict, investigators
[1:00:09] brought in a lip reading expert who, according to the state
[1:00:12] police, determined Elena had told her husband something to
[1:00:16] the effect of will do what we originally said.
[1:00:19] It confirmed the Emery's had a plan, but whether that was some
[1:00:22] sort of deranged pact or an escape scheme remains unknown.
[1:00:27] Sightings of Emery poured in from Connecticut in the weeks
[1:00:30] that followed. The day before his scheduled
[1:00:33] sentencing, the FBI received a tip he'd fled to Florida,
[1:00:38] reported sightings, then followed a geographic arc
[1:00:41] Florida, then France, then Italy, where Elena had family
[1:00:46] ties. A Rhode Island judge declared
[1:00:49] Emery legally dead in 2004, but the FBI wasn't buying it.
[1:00:55] In 2010, they placed him on their wanted list, noting he may
[1:00:59] have travelled to Florida or Italy and should be considered
[1:01:03] armed and dangerous. In 2019, the Bureau released a
[1:01:07] new statement saying that they had made progress and that they
[1:01:11] believed he would be arrested shortly, but nothing more
[1:01:14] happened. From where I'm sitting, the idea
[1:01:18] that this was some kind of tragic pact just doesn't hold
[1:01:21] together. And when you strip it down to
[1:01:24] what we actually know, only one of them was confirmed to have
[1:01:28] actually ended up in the water. And that's the part that sticks
[1:01:31] with me. If this was truly a shared
[1:01:34] decision, there should have been two bodies.
[1:01:38] Instead, Elena's remains surface months later, and atom memory
[1:01:43] simply disappears. To me, it looks less like a pact
[1:01:48] and more like an exit strategy, something constructed to look
[1:01:52] final while giving Emery a way out.
[1:01:55] And if that's the case, then Elena becomes part of that plan
[1:01:58] in a much darker way. I think Emery did what he'd
[1:02:02] already shown he was capable of doing by perhaps having Elena
[1:02:06] jump or push her off and then walking away.
[1:02:10] Whatever the case, Elena clearly paid the price for placing so
[1:02:14] much faith and trust in Adam Emery.
[1:02:17] Personally, I believe Emery will be caught one day since I
[1:02:21] suspect he's too narcissistic to actually pull the curtains on
[1:02:25] himself, though that's just my pop psychology take on it.
[1:02:33] Someone loved her. That's what Barstow Police
[1:02:36] Detective Keith Libby concluded after examining the remains.
[1:02:40] This wasn't a hunch born from sentiment, but rather a
[1:02:44] professional observation rooted in evidence.
[1:02:47] Her teeth showed years of consistent, high quality dental
[1:02:51] care. Someone had taken this girl to
[1:02:54] the dentist, paid for fillings, made sure she was looked after,
[1:02:59] and yet more than 15 years later, not a single person has
[1:03:03] come forward to claim her. She remains known as the Barstow
[1:03:07] Jane Doe, a designation that reduces a human life to a
[1:03:11] location and a placeholder. On February 10th, 2010, a man
[1:03:18] was walking along Lenwood Rd. in Barstow, CA collecting aluminum
[1:03:22] cans. It was an unremarkable afternoon
[1:03:26] in the Mojave Desert, the kind of dry, sun bleached day that
[1:03:30] makes the landscape feel emptied out and half forgotten.
[1:03:34] Lenwood Rd. sits just West of the Interstate 15 freeway, a
[1:03:39] heavily trafficked corridor that serves as the main artery
[1:03:42] between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
[1:03:45] The man spotted a black backpack on the ground near the roadway
[1:03:49] and he opened it. Inside, wrapped in two plastic
[1:03:52] shopping bags, one from Walgreens and the other from a
[1:03:56] grocery chain called Fiesta Foods, was the severed head of a
[1:04:00] young female. Police were called to the scene
[1:04:03] at approximately 2:55 in the afternoon and an investigation
[1:04:07] rapidly got under way. An autopsy conducted on February
[1:04:13] 17th by the San Bernardino County Coroner's Office
[1:04:16] estimated the girl had died three to four days before her
[1:04:20] discovery. She was believed to be between
[1:04:23] 14 and 19 years old, either white or Hispanic, with
[1:04:27] straight, medium length dark brown hair featuring reddish
[1:04:30] highlights. Her eyes were brown and her ears
[1:04:33] were pierced, though no earrings were found.
[1:04:36] Her dental records revealed extensive care, including
[1:04:40] numerous fillings suggesting she'd had reliable access to
[1:04:44] healthcare at some point in her life.
[1:04:47] The rest of her body was never recovered, and because only her
[1:04:50] head was found, investigators couldn't determine her height,
[1:04:55] weight or cause of death. No fingerprints from a potential
[1:04:59] suspect were obtainable from the remains, the backpack or the
[1:05:03] plastic bags. The case was classified as a
[1:05:07] suspected killing given the obvious evidence of foul play.
[1:05:13] Barstow sits at the junction of three major highways in the
[1:05:17] western Mojave Desert, a landscape that has long served
[1:05:21] as a grim repository for the unwanted dead.
[1:05:25] The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department's cold case
[1:05:28] files stretch back decades, with victims found, stabbed,
[1:05:32] strangled, shot and dumped along the region's roads and desert
[1:05:37] flats. The stretches of Interstate 15
[1:05:41] and Interstate 40 between Barstow and the Nevada state
[1:05:44] line have repeatedly yielded numerous John and Jane Doe
[1:05:48] cases. The FBI was brought in to help
[1:05:51] on the basis that the Jane Doe may have been the victim of a
[1:05:54] serial predator, potentially a long haul trucker.
[1:05:58] Barstow, with its truck stops and its position along a major
[1:06:02] Interstate corridor, fits this potential profile with
[1:06:05] unsettling precision. The plastic bags offered the
[1:06:10] most tangible investigative leads.
[1:06:13] The Walgreens bag was essentially untraceable given
[1:06:16] the pharmacy chain's ubiquity across the country.
[1:06:19] The Fiesta Foods bag was more interesting since Fiesta is a
[1:06:23] small grocery chain with limited locations.
[1:06:27] The closest store was in Bakersfield, CA, roughly A2 hour
[1:06:31] drive from Barstow. This suggested the perpetrator
[1:06:35] or the victim potentially had a connection to this area, but the
[1:06:38] lead never produced anything conclusive.
[1:06:43] Perhaps one of the most puzzling aspects of the investigation is
[1:06:46] the location where the backpack was left.
[1:06:49] Barstow is flanked by absolutely vast stretches of empty desert
[1:06:53] that are generally inhospitable and desolate.
[1:06:56] A person looking to conceal remains could have driven a
[1:06:59] short distance off the road and buried them in sand that might
[1:07:03] not be disturbed for years, if ever.
[1:07:06] Instead, the backpack was left near a well travelled freeway in
[1:07:10] a residential area just on the edge of this obvious dumping
[1:07:13] ground. This has LED some investigators
[1:07:16] to speculate that whoever did this wanted the head to be
[1:07:20] found, perhaps as a message or a deliberate display of power.
[1:07:26] In September 2021, a significant development emerged and the San
[1:07:31] Bernardino County Coroner's Office revealed it was
[1:07:33] attempting to use genetic genealogy to solve her case.
[1:07:38] Testing confirmed that the Barstow Jane Doe had Hispanic
[1:07:42] ancestry with relatives in Mexico as well as Italian
[1:07:46] heritage. As of the most recent public
[1:07:49] updates, this testing appears to still be ongoing, and you may
[1:07:53] notice my usage of the word appears here sometimes.
[1:07:58] In these genetic genealogy cases, the connection revealed
[1:08:01] suggests that the family may have played some role in what
[1:08:04] happened to the victim. If the family still has a strong
[1:08:08] ongoing connection to Mexico, any attempt to confirm the Jane
[1:08:13] Doe's identity could result in the perpetrator fleeing the
[1:08:16] country rapidly. There's also the potential that
[1:08:20] she was trafficked across the border and that her immediate
[1:08:23] family entirely resides in Mexico.
[1:08:26] This could create complications for identifying her, since
[1:08:30] genealogists would likely have to attempt to triangulate her
[1:08:33] identity using more distant relatives in the United States.
[1:08:42] Whoever walked into the Advance America Cash Advance store on
[1:08:45] Telegraph Rd. in Taylor, MI on November 12th, 2013 didn't
[1:08:50] stumble into a crime of opportunity.
[1:08:53] He carried a 45 caliber semi automatic fitted with a
[1:08:56] federally regulated suppressor, a device so uncommon in
[1:09:00] robberies that one detective said he'd never seen one used in
[1:09:03] a crime. The man rang A buzzer, was let
[1:09:06] in by the lone employee behind the counter, and within seconds
[1:09:10] produced his weapon. He shot her once in the chest,
[1:09:14] and then he walked behind the counter and shot her once more,
[1:09:17] this time in the head. He rummaged briefly through the
[1:09:20] office, grabbed less than $250 from the register, and left.
[1:09:27] The entire event lasted roughly 60 seconds.
[1:09:30] The woman who was slain was 30 year old Chelsea Small, a single
[1:09:35] mother of two who wasn't even supposed to be working that day.
[1:09:39] Chelsea Small was born on August 9th, 1983 and grew up in Taylor,
[1:09:45] a working class suburb of Detroit in Michigan's Downriver
[1:09:48] region. Around 2002, she met a man named
[1:09:51] Rick Farley and the two eventually had two children
[1:09:55] together, a son named Logan and a daughter named Jocelyn.
[1:10:00] Chelsea was, by every account, a devoted mother who organized her
[1:10:05] life around her children. She worked full time at Advance
[1:10:09] America, a check cashing and payday loan business, in a busy
[1:10:13] strip mall along an 8 lane highway.
[1:10:16] She was simultaneously enrolled full time at Wayne County
[1:10:20] Community College, where she'd made the Dean's List while
[1:10:24] studying to become a physiotherapist.
[1:10:27] The reason Chelsea was at work on November 12th was bittersweet
[1:10:30] in the cruellest possible way. She'd swapped shifts with a Co
[1:10:34] worker so she could celebrate her son Logan's 5th birthday the
[1:10:37] previous weekend. That trade meant Chelsea was
[1:10:41] alone in the store that Tuesday, and tragically, it also meant
[1:10:45] she died on her son's actual birthday.
[1:10:49] The Advance America store had standard security measures for a
[1:10:53] business such as this. Doors were locked at all times,
[1:10:57] requiring customers to ring a buzzer for entry, and there were
[1:11:01] surveillance cameras as well as a silent panic alarm behind the
[1:11:04] counter. Around noon, Chelsea buzzed a
[1:11:08] man into the store and there appears to have been a brief
[1:11:11] exchange between them, though the system recorded no audio.
[1:11:15] Chelsea managed to hit the panic button, triggering a silent
[1:11:19] alarm to police, but it didn't save her.
[1:11:22] Detectives described his demeanor as disturbingly calm,
[1:11:25] and there was no rush, no panic and no hesitation.
[1:11:31] After killing Chelsea, he spent a handful of seconds looking
[1:11:34] through the office, took cash from the register and walked
[1:11:38] out. He either didn't find or
[1:11:40] deliberately ignored larger sums stored in a backroom.
[1:11:45] Taylor police arrived minutes later and had to force their way
[1:11:48] in because the doors were still locked.
[1:11:53] On its surface, the crime appeared to be a straightforward
[1:11:55] robbery gone fatally wrong. But from the earliest stages of
[1:11:59] the investigation, details nagged at detectives.
[1:12:03] The suppressor was the most glaring anomaly.
[1:12:05] Since silencers are tightly regulated under the National
[1:12:08] Firearms Act and are exceedingly rare in armed robberies, its
[1:12:14] presence suggested a level of forethought and sophistication
[1:12:17] far beyond a typical holdup, with a detective noting that
[1:12:21] they're more associated with professional hit men than
[1:12:24] anything else. Then there was the question of
[1:12:27] motive and sequence. Since the financial payoff was
[1:12:30] absolutely minimal compared to this disturbing crime,
[1:12:34] detectives questioned the motive and why Chelsea was shot almost
[1:12:38] immediately, especially since she could have opened the safe
[1:12:42] that contained a large amount of cash.
[1:12:45] The lead detective on the case has questioned whether the
[1:12:47] entire event was a professional hit designed to look like a
[1:12:50] robbery gone wrong. Personally, though, I have to
[1:12:55] question this since the criminal clearly knew he would be on a
[1:12:59] surveillance camera and made little attempt to hide his
[1:13:02] identity. Speaking of that, surveillance
[1:13:07] footage gave investigators A reasonably clear look at the
[1:13:10] perpetrator. Taylor Police described him as a
[1:13:14] white male, estimated between 35 and 50 years old, approximately
[1:13:20] 5 feet 10 inches tall with shoulder length brown hair.
[1:13:25] He walked with an irregular gait, a kind of hunch or curve
[1:13:29] in his upper back. His clothing appeared to be work
[1:13:32] style attire, cargo pants and light colored shoes, which
[1:13:36] detectives speculated might be recognizable to someone in the
[1:13:40] same trade. He wore a ball cap and
[1:13:42] sunglasses, and investigators believed his baggy clothing was
[1:13:46] deliberately chosen to disguise his build.
[1:13:49] Some who reviewed the footage believe the man was wearing
[1:13:52] gloves, which could explain why no usable fingerprints were
[1:13:56] recovered despite him touching multiple surfaces personally.
[1:14:02] Having looked at the surveillance footage, his hands
[1:14:04] appear to be noticeably whiter than the skin on his face.
[1:14:08] Notably, the bullets recovered from the scene were entered into
[1:14:11] a national Ballistics database, but no matches came back.
[1:14:16] Police investigated Chelsea's personal life thoroughly and her
[1:14:19] ex partner was questioned and ultimately cleared.
[1:14:23] Nothing in her background suggested enemies or involvement
[1:14:27] in anything that might have made her a target.
[1:14:30] Hundreds of tips came in over the years, but none produced a
[1:14:34] breakthrough. Investigators have explored
[1:14:39] every theory, from the killer being a gun enthusiast who
[1:14:42] frequents ranges and shows, to the possibility of security,
[1:14:46] military or militia training. The case's proximity to two
[1:14:51] major interstates has also fueled speculation that he could
[1:14:55] be a long haul truck driver living anywhere in the country.
[1:14:59] However, aside from that very tangential relationship, there's
[1:15:03] nothing to suggest he was employed as a trucker at the
[1:15:06] time of this crime. Whoever he is, he walked into a
[1:15:10] strip mall in broad daylight, ruthlessly eliminated a young
[1:15:14] mother in front of a camera, and vanished.
[1:15:18] More than a decade later, Chelsea's children are growing
[1:15:22] up without her, and the man on the surveillance tape remains at
[1:15:25] large. In 1973, 4 hostages walked out
[1:15:32] of a bank vault in Stockholm, Sweden, after six days of
[1:15:36] captivity and then did something that stunned the world.
[1:15:40] They refused to testify against their captors, and not only
[1:15:44] that, some of them also raised money for their legal defense.
[1:15:49] One of them reportedly became engaged to one of the men who'd
[1:15:52] held a revolver to her head. The police, the prosecutors, and
[1:15:57] the public couldn't make sense of it.
[1:16:00] How could anyone develop affection for the person
[1:16:03] threatening to end them? That question launched one of
[1:16:06] the most recognizable and most misunderstood terms in modern
[1:16:12] psychology, Stockholm Syndrome. It's a phrase that gets tossed
[1:16:17] around in true crime podcasts, courtroom dramas, and pop
[1:16:22] culture debates with alarming casualness, often stripped of
[1:16:25] its original context. But the real story behind the
[1:16:30] term, and the science that's grown up around it, is far
[1:16:34] stranger and more unsettling than most people realize.
[1:16:40] The event that gave Stockholm Syndrome its name began on
[1:16:43] August 23rd, 1973, when Jan Eric Olson, a convicted criminal on
[1:16:49] prison leave, walked into the asparagus credit banking.
[1:16:54] He took four employees hostage and demanded, among other
[1:16:57] things, the release of his friend Clark Olafson from
[1:17:00] prison. Surprisingly, the Swedish
[1:17:03] authorities complied, sending Olafson into the bank to join
[1:17:07] the standoff. What followed was a tense 6 day
[1:17:11] siege that captivated the Swedish public and baffled law
[1:17:14] enforcement. During those six days, the
[1:17:17] hostages began to exhibit behavior no one anticipated, and
[1:17:21] they expressed fear of the police rather than their
[1:17:23] captors. They spoke to Prime Minister
[1:17:26] Olaf Palma by phone and criticized the government's
[1:17:30] handling of the situation. Kristen and Mark, one of the
[1:17:34] hostages, later described feeling safer with Olsen and
[1:17:37] Olafsson than with the authorities trying to rescue
[1:17:41] them. After the ordeal ended with a
[1:17:44] tear gas assault by police, the hostages continued to defend the
[1:17:48] two men publicly. They visited them in prison.
[1:17:52] They expressed gratitude for small kindnesses, being allowed
[1:17:55] to move, being given food, being spoken to like human beings.
[1:18:01] Psychiatrist Niels Bayerott, who consulted for Swedish police
[1:18:05] during the crisis, described the hostages seemingly irrational
[1:18:10] attachment. He gave the concept an extremely
[1:18:14] complex Swedish name. And I'll spare you my butchering
[1:18:17] of the language, but the concept later entered English as
[1:18:22] Stockholm Syndrome. However, this psychiatrist never
[1:18:26] examined the hostages directly, a fact that's drawn criticism
[1:18:31] from researchers and from the hostages themselves.
[1:18:34] Kristen Enmark has spoken publicly about feeling that the
[1:18:37] label pathologized her survival instincts and dismissed her
[1:18:41] perspective on what she went through.
[1:18:44] She's argued that her responses during the siege were rational
[1:18:47] assessments of danger, not symptoms of a disorder.
[1:18:52] But more on that in a moment. Regardless of the debate
[1:18:57] surrounding the original case, the psychological phenomenon
[1:19:00] described by Stockholm syndrome has been observed in a wide
[1:19:04] range of captivity situations. At its core, the concept
[1:19:09] describes a process in which hostages or other victims
[1:19:12] develop positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the
[1:19:16] point of identifying with their goals.
[1:19:20] Researchers have proposed several mechanisms to explain
[1:19:23] this seemingly highly unusual response.
[1:19:26] The most widely cited explanation involves a survival
[1:19:30] strategy rooted in evolutionary psychology.
[1:19:34] When a person is placed in a situation of extreme
[1:19:36] powerlessness and perceives A genuine threat to their life,
[1:19:41] any small act of kindness from the captor can be
[1:19:44] psychologically amplified. The captives brain operating
[1:19:49] under intense stress begins to interpret these gestures as
[1:19:53] evidence of a bond. This isn't conscious
[1:19:57] manipulation on the part of the hostage, but rather a deep
[1:20:01] automatic response that serves to reduce terror and increase
[1:20:05] perceived chances of survival. 4 Conditions have been commonly
[1:20:10] identified as necessary for this attachment to develop.
[1:20:14] The captive must perceive A genuine threat to their
[1:20:16] survival, and simply being in a highly dangerous situation isn't
[1:20:21] enough. They must perceive some amount
[1:20:24] of kindness from the captor within the context of terror.
[1:20:29] They must be isolated from all outside perspectives, and they
[1:20:33] must believe escape is impossible when all four
[1:20:37] conditions are present. The psychological ground is
[1:20:40] fertile for the kind of bond that outside observers find so
[1:20:44] difficult to understand. It's worth noting that Stockholm
[1:20:48] syndrome isn't recognized as a formal diagnosis.
[1:20:52] It exists in a Gray area widely referenced in clinical
[1:20:56] literature and popular discourse, but without
[1:20:59] standardized diagnostic criteria.
[1:21:02] Some researchers have argued it would be more accurately
[1:21:05] described as a trauma response or a subset of complex post
[1:21:09] traumatic stress disorder rather than a stand alone syndrome.
[1:21:15] The concept has been applied far beyond hostage situations, and
[1:21:18] it's been invoked to explain behavior in cases ranging from
[1:21:21] cult membership to prisoner of war scenarios.
[1:21:25] The argument is that the same dynamics extreme power
[1:21:29] imbalance, isolation, intermittent kindness and
[1:21:34] perceived inability to escape can produce similar bonding
[1:21:38] effects. One of the most famous cases
[1:21:41] linked to Stockholm Syndrome is that of Patty Hearst, the
[1:21:46] newspaper heiress kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army
[1:21:51] in 1974. After weeks in captivity, Hearst
[1:21:56] appeared to join her captors, adopting a new name and
[1:21:59] participating in a bank robbery. Her defense argued she'd been
[1:22:03] brainwashed, a claim the prosecution firmly rejected.
[1:22:07] Hearst was convicted but later had her sentence commuted by
[1:22:11] President Jimmy Carter and received a full pardon from
[1:22:14] President Bill Clinton. Her case became a lightning rod
[1:22:18] for debates about free will, coercion, and the limits of
[1:22:22] personal responsibility under conditions of extreme duress.
[1:22:28] The kidnapping of Natasha Campusch in Austria presents
[1:22:32] another frequently cited example.
[1:22:34] Campusch was abducted at age 10 in 1998 and held by Wolfgang
[1:22:39] Priclopil for over 8 years after escaping in 2006, she expressed
[1:22:46] complex emotions about her captor, including grief when she
[1:22:50] learned he'd pulled the curtains on himself after her escape.
[1:22:53] Some interpreted her response as evidence of Stockholm syndrome.
[1:22:58] Campus herself has rejected that framing, arguing that her
[1:23:02] feelings were a natural consequence of the reality she'd
[1:23:05] inhabited. Stockholm syndrome has faced
[1:23:10] significant academic criticism. One major objection is that the
[1:23:14] evidence base is remarkably thin.
[1:23:17] A widely cited 2008 study analyzing over 400 hostage cases
[1:23:22] found that the supposed syndrome appeared in fewer than 8% of
[1:23:26] them. This calls into question whether
[1:23:29] it represents a reliable psychological pattern or simply
[1:23:33] an unusual response elevated to the status of a general theory.
[1:23:38] There's also the problem of the psychiatrist's original
[1:23:41] methodology, or lack thereof, in quote UN quote diagnosing the
[1:23:46] syndrome. Since he never interviewed the
[1:23:49] hostages, he observed the crisis from the outside and applied a
[1:23:54] label based on behaviour he found inexplicable.
[1:23:58] Critics have noted this isn't how psychological conditions are
[1:24:01] typically identified, and that building a widely used clinical
[1:24:05] concept on such a foundation is scientifically questionable.
[1:24:10] The hostages own account suggests their behavior was more
[1:24:13] nuanced than the Stockholm Syndrome narrative implies.
[1:24:17] They feared police intervention because they believed A forceful
[1:24:20] rescue could get them eliminated not by their captors but by
[1:24:25] their rescuers. Their cooperation was strategic,
[1:24:30] not pathological, since their goals fundamentally were aligned
[1:24:34] with those of the bank robbers. Both the captives and the
[1:24:37] robbers wanted to escape the situation unharmed, and forming
[1:24:41] an uneasy alliance may have been a logical thing to do rather
[1:24:45] than a pathological thing. Despite these criticisms, the
[1:24:51] concept continues to serve an important function in how we
[1:24:55] understand human resilience. Even if the term is imperfect,
[1:25:00] it points toward an uncomfortable truth about human
[1:25:02] psychology that under conditions of extreme stress and captivity,
[1:25:08] the mind can form attachments that defy logic, apparent
[1:25:12] self-interest, and even self preservation.
[1:25:19] On the evening of February 2nd, 2008, a 24 year old real estate
[1:25:24] agent walked into a vacant house in one of Victoria, BC's
[1:25:28] quietest suburbs. She intended to show it to a
[1:25:31] wealthy couple she'd never met, the exact sort of individuals
[1:25:35] who she expected to purchase the home.
[1:25:38] She told her boyfriend and her father that something about the
[1:25:41] clients felt off, but she went anyway.
[1:25:45] Within 10 minutes of stepping through the front door, Lindsay
[1:25:48] Buziak was dead, stabbed repeatedly in an upstairs
[1:25:52] bedroom while her boyfriend sat in the car waiting for her to
[1:25:55] finish. The supposed buyers vanished
[1:25:59] without a trace. They left behind no
[1:26:01] fingerprints, no genetic evidence, no weapon and no
[1:26:06] motive that anyone has ever been able to prove.
[1:26:09] This is one of Canada's most chilling unsolved cold cases, a
[1:26:14] narrative where everything we know only deepens the mystery of
[1:26:17] what we don't. Lindsay Buziak was born on
[1:26:22] November 2nd, 1983 in Calgary, AB, a province in Canada known
[1:26:27] for its vast quantities of oil. Raised by her parents, Jeff and
[1:26:32] Evelyn, alongside her sister Sarah, she was described by
[1:26:36] those who knew her as energetic, ambitious and personable.
[1:26:41] After relocating to Victoria, she began building a career in
[1:26:45] real estate, joining a re/max office where she worked
[1:26:48] alongside her boyfriend, Jason Zalo, and his mother, Shirley
[1:26:53] Zalo. By early 2008, Lindsay had made
[1:26:58] a promising start in the industry.
[1:27:01] She was still junior, but she was driven and eager to prove
[1:27:04] herself. Her father, himself a real
[1:27:07] estate agent in Calgary, was a close confidant, and Lindsay
[1:27:12] spoke with him regularly about her career and personal life.
[1:27:16] By late 2007, she'd been telling him the relationship with Jason
[1:27:20] was faltering. She felt he lacked ambition, and
[1:27:24] friends knew she was seriously considering a breakup.
[1:27:28] Despite those doubts, she stayed as the new year began, a
[1:27:32] decision that indirectly placed her directly in the path of
[1:27:35] whoever was planning what came next.
[1:27:39] In late January 2008, Lindsay received a call on her personal
[1:27:43] cell from a woman claiming to be house hunting with her husband.
[1:27:47] The caller said her husband had just been transferred to
[1:27:49] Victoria, that they needed to move quickly, and that their
[1:27:53] budget was roughly $1 million. She wanted a vacant move in
[1:27:59] ready property with at least three bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and
[1:28:03] a separate area for a housekeeper.
[1:28:06] For a young agent still building her client list.
[1:28:09] It was the kind of opportunity that could define a career.
[1:28:14] But Lindsay was uneasy from the start, since a number of things
[1:28:17] simply didn't add up. The woman spoke English with an
[1:28:21] accent Lindsay described to her father as sounding somewhat
[1:28:25] Spanish but not quite right, as though it might be affected to
[1:28:30] hide her real voice. She also questioned why this
[1:28:34] wealthy client had reached out to her, specifically a junior
[1:28:38] agent using her personal number. The caller claimed a previous
[1:28:42] client had referred her, but Lindsay wasn't convinced and she
[1:28:47] shared her concerns with Jason and her father.
[1:28:51] Notably, it appears that she didn't name drop who this client
[1:28:54] was. Another massive red flag.
[1:28:57] Everyone involved found the inquiry suspicious and felt it
[1:29:01] was too good to be true. Jason nonetheless encouraged her
[1:29:05] to keep the appointment because of the Commission $1,000,000
[1:29:08] sale would generate and offered to wait outside in his car
[1:29:12] during the showing. What neither of them knew was
[1:29:15] that the phone used to make the call was a prepaid burner
[1:29:18] purchased at a Vancouver convenience store weeks earlier
[1:29:22] under a fictitious name. It had been activated less than
[1:29:25] 48 hours before Lindsay's slaying and had only ever been
[1:29:29] used to contact one person, Lindsay.
[1:29:35] That Saturday afternoon, Lindsay and Jason went for a late lunch
[1:29:39] at a restaurant called Sauce, paying their bill around 430
[1:29:42] before departing. Separately, Lindsay appears to
[1:29:45] have gone home to change before the 5:30 showing.
[1:29:49] Jason drove to an auto detailing shop to pick up a colleague,
[1:29:52] Cohen Oatman. Security footage from the shop
[1:29:56] confirmed they left together at approximately 5:30 PM.
[1:30:00] The property was at 17 O 2 D'souza Place in the Saanich
[1:30:04] suburb of Gordon Head, a small cul-de-sac with just four
[1:30:08] houses. The street was named after
[1:30:10] developer Joe D'souza, a friend and business associate of
[1:30:14] Jason's mother. D'souza had been on site
[1:30:18] supervising construction just an hour before the attack, and the
[1:30:22] area was considered extremely safe.
[1:30:26] At around 5:30 PM, witnesses observed a man and woman walking
[1:30:30] up the cul-de-sac. The man was described as white,
[1:30:34] roughly 6 feet tall, with dark hair and a light jacket.
[1:30:39] The woman was described as white, mid 30s to 40s, with
[1:30:43] short blonde hair and a distinctive dress, black with
[1:30:47] thick white and red or pink swirls.
[1:30:51] Witnesses watched Lindsay greet the couple with a formal
[1:30:54] handshake, suggesting she hadn't met them before.
[1:30:58] Jason and Oatman arrived at roughly 5:40 PM.
[1:31:02] Jason saw what appeared to be figures near the entrance,
[1:31:05] assumed Lindsay was with her clients and parked nearby to
[1:31:09] wait. He texted her asking if she was
[1:31:12] OK, but she never opened the message.
[1:31:16] By about 6 O 5:00 PM. Growing worried, he approached
[1:31:20] the front door and found it locked, unusual for a property
[1:31:24] being shown. He called the cops, then had
[1:31:27] Oatman climb the backyard fence to access an unlocked rear patio
[1:31:31] door. Jason ran up stairs and found
[1:31:34] Lindsay lying on her back in the master bedroom in a pool of
[1:31:37] blood, her skin already cold to the touch.
[1:31:42] The autopsy determined Lindsay had been stabbed multiple times.
[1:31:46] There were no defensive wounds, indicating she'd likely been
[1:31:50] attacked from behind. Without warning, the coroner
[1:31:53] placed the time of death at approximately 5:40 PM, roughly
[1:31:58] within 10 minutes of entering the house.
[1:32:00] Nothing was stolen, and she hadn't been subjected to any
[1:32:04] other forms of assault beyond the stabbing.
[1:32:07] It was targeted deliberate violence against a junior real
[1:32:10] estate agent who had no known enemies.
[1:32:12] Saanich police reported virtually no forensic evidence
[1:32:15] left behind, no usable DNA, no fingerprints.
[1:32:21] The perpetrators had been extraordinarily careful and the
[1:32:24] weapon used was never recovered. The burner phone was never used
[1:32:29] again, but a second prepaid phone was later identified,
[1:32:33] apparently used to check the first phone's voicemail.
[1:32:36] Jason and Oatman were questioned but cleared by the time stamped
[1:32:40] security footage, which proved they couldn't have committed the
[1:32:43] crime. Jason and Oatman both cooperated
[1:32:46] fully, submitted to multiple interviews and passed a series
[1:32:50] of polygraph tests. By February 2009, Saanich police
[1:32:56] publicly stated neither of the men was considered a suspect.
[1:33:00] Jason's family was also investigated partly due to their
[1:33:04] connections to the D'souza Place development, but police stated
[1:33:08] no member of the Xylo family was considered a suspect.
[1:33:14] Investigators pursued multiple theories and one early lead
[1:33:18] focused on a cartel connection and one of the largest busts in
[1:33:21] Canadian history. In December 2007, Lindsay had
[1:33:26] visited Calgary and attempted to contact an acquaintance linked
[1:33:29] to her ex-boyfriend. On January 22nd, 2008, less than
[1:33:35] two weeks before her slaying, Alberta authorities executed the
[1:33:39] province's largest ever drug bust and that acquaintance was
[1:33:43] arrested as a major participant. The theory emerged that Lindsay
[1:33:47] may have been eliminated by a cartel faction that mistakenly
[1:33:51] believed she was a police informant.
[1:33:55] Investigators dismissed this, and Lindsay had no known
[1:33:58] involvement in criminal activity and wasn't an informant.
[1:34:02] Experts on cartel hits also weighed in, noting that these
[1:34:06] sorts of hits are either brutal in the extreme or extremely
[1:34:09] professional with virtually nothing in the space in between.
[1:34:14] The Lindsay Buziak case is disturbing because of how much
[1:34:17] is known. We know she was specifically
[1:34:20] targeted and that a man and woman posed as home buyers using
[1:34:24] a burner phone registered to a fake name.
[1:34:28] The perpetrators were well dressed and appeared to be in
[1:34:30] their mid 30s to 40's. The attack was swift, the
[1:34:34] perpetrators escaped without a trace and the weapon was never
[1:34:38] found. A significant degree of planning
[1:34:41] went into this the burner phone, the fictitious identity, the
[1:34:47] choice of a vacant house on a dead end St.
[1:34:52] There's a natural instinct to try to make the slaying of
[1:34:54] Lindsay Buziak fit into some familiar category, But we know
[1:34:59] it wasn't a jealous partner, a bad relationship, and we're
[1:35:04] pretty sure it wasn't some kind of drug connection gone wrong.
[1:35:08] The deeper I look at the facts, the less it feels like a
[1:35:12] personal crime, and the more it starts to feel like something
[1:35:15] colder. This wasn't random, and it
[1:35:19] definitely wasn't sloppy, at least in the planning.
[1:35:23] And someone went to real effort here to target Lindsay or a
[1:35:27] young female real estate agent more generally.
[1:35:31] They bought a burner phone weeks in advance, created a fake
[1:35:35] identity, and specifically targeted a young real estate
[1:35:38] agent. They could get a loan inside an
[1:35:41] empty house. They showed up as a normal
[1:35:44] looking couple. Nothing that would raise alarm
[1:35:47] bells. And within minutes of getting
[1:35:49] her inside, it was over. There was no struggle, no
[1:35:53] defensive wounds, no evidence left behind suggesting that they
[1:35:58] had the entire act planned out in advance.
[1:36:01] Then, just like that, they disappeared without leaving
[1:36:05] behind any meaningful trace of evidence.
[1:36:08] That part is hard to ignore, since most people who commit
[1:36:11] such an act leave something behind, some small piece of
[1:36:14] evidence to indicate who they are, despite the preparation
[1:36:18] they took. Even when they plan it,
[1:36:21] something slips. But here nothing did, suggesting
[1:36:24] it wasn't this couple's first rodeo.
[1:36:27] And the fact that there were two of them matters as well, and
[1:36:31] makes the whole scenario that much more unusual.
[1:36:35] A man and a woman working together isn't common, but when
[1:36:38] you do see it, it usually points to something more deliberate.
[1:36:44] I'm not saying this is definitely the work of a
[1:36:46] seemingly normal couple that moonlight as serial predators,
[1:36:50] but it doesn't feel like a one off either.
[1:36:55] Notably, I also think it's interesting that they targeted a
[1:36:58] young real estate agent who essentially couldn't turn down
[1:37:01] the business. She more or less had no choice
[1:37:04] but to agree to meet the couple, even though there were red flags
[1:37:08] since the payoff could have made her career.
[1:37:11] In that sense, I don't believe that they targeted Lindsay
[1:37:14] because they knew her specifically, but because they
[1:37:17] were looking to target a certain category of person.
[1:37:21] I theorized that they wanted to find a young female real estate
[1:37:24] agent who posed no physical threat to the couple if things
[1:37:28] went off the rails. Another possibility that doesn't
[1:37:32] get talked about enough is that the attackers perhaps weren't
[1:37:35] local at all. Absolutely everything about this
[1:37:38] feels transient, from the burner phone to the fake identity to
[1:37:43] the quick in and out operation. There were no sightings
[1:37:47] afterward and no loose threads that could be tugged upon by
[1:37:50] investigators. It's entirely possible they were
[1:37:54] just passing through, maybe even from outside North America
[1:37:58] altogether if they were experienced in mobile Canada.
[1:38:02] Could have been just one stop on some sort of disturbing world
[1:38:05] tour. Anyway, unfortunately, given the
[1:38:11] amount of time that's passed and the fact that there's absolutely
[1:38:14] no forensic evidence, I suspect this case will forever remain an
[1:38:18] unsolved mystery. Somewhere in the darkness of a
[1:38:26] Melbourne parking lot, a woman screamed for someone to give her
[1:38:29] back her keys. Then she was gone.
[1:38:33] No body, no suspect, no arrest. The only thing left behind was a
[1:38:39] clue on the asphalt and a red Honda Civic sitting locked and
[1:38:43] abandoned under a broken light. That was July 11th, 1990.
[1:38:48] More than 35 years later, the question remains exactly the
[1:38:52] same. What happened to Sarah Mcdermid
[1:38:55] that fateful night? Sarah Mcdermid was born on
[1:39:00] November 15th, 1966 in the Scottish Highlands.
[1:39:05] In 1987, when Sarah was 20 years old, the Mcdermid family, her
[1:39:11] parents Peter and Sheila, and her younger brother Alistair
[1:39:15] emigrated to Australia. They settled in the southeastern
[1:39:19] Melbourne suburb of Frankston. Peter found work as an Airways
[1:39:23] operations officer and Sheila worked as a nurse.
[1:39:27] By her parents own admission, Sarah was initially upset by the
[1:39:31] move and missed her life back in Scotland.
[1:39:34] But she slowly adapted to her new surroundings.
[1:39:38] She developed something of an Australian Scottish fusion
[1:39:41] accent, built a wide social circle and landed a job at an
[1:39:45] insurance company. By 1990, at 23, Sarah was firmly
[1:39:51] establishing her life in a new country.
[1:39:54] She'd bought her first car, a red 1978 Honda Civic, and had
[1:39:59] written excitedly to a friend back in Scotland about the road
[1:40:03] trips they'd take once the friend came to visit.
[1:40:06] Tragically, though, those Rd. trips were destined to never
[1:40:10] happen. The evening of July 11th, 1990
[1:40:15] was unremarkable in every way that mattered.
[1:40:17] It was a Wednesday. The middle of the Australian
[1:40:20] winter. After finishing work, Sarah and
[1:40:24] two colleagues headed to Flinders Park in East Melbourne
[1:40:27] for a social game of tennis. Afterwards, the three women
[1:40:32] walked to Richmond station to catch a Frankston Line train
[1:40:35] home, but they just missed one. Rather than wait around, they
[1:40:40] caught a taxi to a nearby station and changed to a
[1:40:43] Frankston bound train. Sarah's two friends got off at
[1:40:47] Bond Beach a couple of stops before Kananook, where they said
[1:40:51] their goodbyes. Sarah stayed on the train alone,
[1:40:55] likely believing that this unremarkable day would end in an
[1:40:58] unremarkable fashion. The train arrived at Kananook
[1:41:02] station at approximately 10:20 PM, running about 20 minutes
[1:41:07] behind schedule. Witnesses later confirmed that
[1:41:11] Sarah got off the train and crossed the footbridge toward
[1:41:14] the lot where her Honda Civic was parked.
[1:41:17] The parking lot was poorly lit, a detail that would haunt the
[1:41:21] investigation for decades. Sarah was last seen walking in
[1:41:25] the direction of her car, but she never made it home.
[1:41:31] By 11:00 PM, Sarah's family was worried.
[1:41:34] She was reliable and punctual, and the drive from Canon Oak
[1:41:37] Station to the family home in Frankston was only a few
[1:41:40] minutes. When she still hadn't returned
[1:41:43] by 1:00 AM, her brother Alistair drove to the station to meet the
[1:41:47] last train, which arrived at 1:15.
[1:41:50] But Sarah wasn't on it. What Alistair did find was her
[1:41:54] red Honda Civic sitting in the desolate lot with all the doors
[1:41:58] and the trunk locked. When police arrived the
[1:42:02] following morning after the family reported Sarah missing,
[1:42:05] what they found at the scene painted a grim picture.
[1:42:09] There were blood stains on the ground beside the driver's side
[1:42:12] door of the Honda Civic, and more was found on the ground
[1:42:16] beneath a car that had been parked next to Sarah's.
[1:42:19] A trail LED from the vehicle to a small area of vegetation and
[1:42:23] trees on the western side of the parking lot.
[1:42:26] In the dirt near the bushes, investigators discovered 2
[1:42:30] parallel drag marks that had slightly indented the ground,
[1:42:34] and more blood was found in the bushes themselves.
[1:42:38] Sarah's lighter was lying on the ground nearby, and forensics
[1:42:42] conducted much later confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that
[1:42:46] all the genetic material found belonged to her.
[1:42:50] In a tragic turn of events, multiple people reported hearing
[1:42:54] a woman in the vicinity of the parking lot that night.
[1:42:58] One witness described hearing a woman's voice calling out
[1:43:01] demanding someone give her keys back, followed by an exclamation
[1:43:05] to stop fooling around. Then shortly after came a loud
[1:43:10] scream, followed by deafening silence.
[1:43:14] But for reasons which are unclear, no one directly
[1:43:17] intervened and no one called police.
[1:43:21] Victoria Police launched one of the most extensive searches in
[1:43:24] the state's history. Over 21 days, more than 250
[1:43:29] officers conducted A coordinated air, sea and land operation
[1:43:36] across the wider area surrounding Canon Oak Station.
[1:43:40] They found absolutely nothing whatsoever.
[1:43:42] There was no body, not a scrap of clothing, no further forensic
[1:43:46] evidence whatsoever. Whoever had attacked Sarah had
[1:43:50] managed to remove her entirely and dispose of her remains so
[1:43:54] thoroughly that not a single trace has ever been recovered.
[1:43:59] Over the decades, several theories have emerged about what
[1:44:02] happened that night, though none has ever been definitively
[1:44:06] proven. The strongest early police
[1:44:08] theory centered on a group of homeless addicts who were known
[1:44:11] to frequent the Canon Oak Station area.
[1:44:14] According to investigators, the leading suspect within this
[1:44:17] group was a woman named Jody Jones, a violent addict in the
[1:44:21] Frankston area. In the days following Sarah's
[1:44:24] disappearance, Jones reportedly began telling people that she
[1:44:28] was responsible for the attack. The theory held that Jones and
[1:44:32] her associates had attempted to rob Sarah as she approached her
[1:44:36] car and that the situation had escalated into fatal violence.
[1:44:41] Jones, however, was never charged, and she died of an
[1:44:44] overdose in 1991, barely a year after Sarah vanished.
[1:44:50] If she was involved, she took whatever she knew to the grave.
[1:44:54] But the theory has its skeptics. The original lead investigator
[1:44:58] was never fully convinced by it, noting that the physical
[1:45:02] evidence didn't entirely align with a random St. robbery.
[1:45:06] If it had been a chaotic, drug fueled attack, he reasoned,
[1:45:10] investigators would likely have found more evidence, not less.
[1:45:15] The investigator stated that in all the attacks he had worked on
[1:45:19] involving addicts, the crime was extremely disorganized and lots
[1:45:23] of evidence was left behind. Here the attack seemed to be
[1:45:27] carried out with surgical precision, suggesting that the
[1:45:31] person who did it may not have been an amateur, so to speak.
[1:45:35] Which brings me to the next theory.
[1:45:39] Another name that surfaced was Paul Denier, A convicted
[1:45:43] Frankston serial predator who had slain 3 young women in the
[1:45:47] same area in 1993. The geographic overlap was
[1:45:51] impossible to ignore, since Denier had lived near Canaanook
[1:45:55] and his crimes followed a pattern of targeting vulnerable
[1:45:58] women in isolated locations. However, when detectives
[1:46:03] interviewed Denier in 2011, he denied any involvement.
[1:46:08] Denier had been openly boastful about the crimes he did commit,
[1:46:12] which some argue makes keeping such a secret inconsistent with
[1:46:16] his personality. Personally though, I would
[1:46:19] discount this idea since upon further research, Denier has
[1:46:23] applied for parole, which was denied.
[1:46:27] Admitting to additional crimes could result in additional
[1:46:30] charges, and in my view, it's possible that his apparent
[1:46:34] boastful nature about his other crimes may be a smokescreen.
[1:46:38] Serial predators are by their nature, liars who have managed
[1:46:41] to successfully meld into society, at least for a time,
[1:46:46] while they commit their horrific offenses.
[1:46:49] It seems logical to me that someone like this might be
[1:46:52] planning a few steps ahead, building up the reputation of
[1:46:55] someone who fully admits to the crimes he did commit.
[1:46:59] Adding the element of bragging about convicted crimes also
[1:47:03] allows him to attempt to manipulate psychologists into
[1:47:06] believing he has changed his ways, in addition to providing a
[1:47:10] smokescreen. Also, since I know some of you
[1:47:14] are going to comment, I'm going to go ahead and invoke
[1:47:17] nominative determinism to say that you can't trust denials
[1:47:21] from a guy named denier. Anyway, I'm clearly going off on
[1:47:25] a bit of a tangent here, but if it wasn't obvious, I clearly
[1:47:29] believe that denier did it. That said, unfortunately, based
[1:47:34] on the evidence at present, it doesn't look like there's enough
[1:47:37] evidence to have a reasonable chance of conviction at trial.
[1:47:43] Victoria Police maintained that Sarah Mcdermid's disappearance
[1:47:47] is an active case, though there don't appear to have been any
[1:47:50] meaningful new developments. In recent years, detectives have
[1:47:54] renewed appeals on multiple anniversaries, each time
[1:47:57] emphasizing that someone in the community knows what happened.
[1:48:01] Detectives have recently stated that there are still people
[1:48:04] alive who possess information about what happened to Sarah,
[1:48:08] suggesting that the addict attack theory is no longer
[1:48:11] officially favored. Over the years, a truly massive
[1:48:15] fund has grown, and at present there's $1,000,000 reward for
[1:48:19] information that brings closure to this case.
[1:48:23] In the end, what we know is this.
[1:48:25] On an Australian winter's night in 1990, a 23 year old woman got
[1:48:31] off a train, walked toward her car, and was never seen again.
[1:48:35] Someone took Sarah Mcdermid, and if investigators are to be
[1:48:39] believed, someone currently alive knows what happened to
[1:48:42] her. And her family, worn down by
[1:48:46] decades of grief and uncertainty, is still waiting
[1:48:49] for that answer. On the evening of July 16th,
[1:48:56] 1988, a six foot eight, £300 man walked into a shower stall in a
[1:49:02] Puerto Rican stadium. He had been asked to step inside
[1:49:05] for a quick chat about business, but within seconds, 2 screams
[1:49:10] echoed through the locker room of Juan Ramon Lubriel Stadium in
[1:49:13] Bayamon. These screams were loud enough
[1:49:16] that every wrestler in the building heard them.
[1:49:19] When the first man rushed in, he found Frank Goodish, known to
[1:49:23] the world as Bruiser Brody, doubled over and clutching his
[1:49:27] stomach. Standing across from him, still
[1:49:30] holding a knife, was José González.
[1:49:34] The wildest man in professional wrestling had been gutted like
[1:49:37] an animal, and in the hours and months that followed, nearly
[1:49:41] everything that could go wrong did.
[1:49:44] This is the story of how one of wrestling's most electrifying
[1:49:47] performers was cut down in plain sight, and why, Despite that,
[1:49:51] this is still an unsolved mystery.
[1:49:55] Frank Goodish was born on June 18th, 1946 in Uniontown, PA.
[1:50:01] He grew up outside Detroit, MI, where he became an Allstate
[1:50:05] football and basketball player at Warren High School.
[1:50:08] His athletic gifts earned him a spot at West Texas State
[1:50:12] University, where he played offensive guard and contributed
[1:50:16] to winning seasons in 1967 and 1968.
[1:50:21] After college, Goodish chased a football career with brief
[1:50:25] stints on various teams, but the NFL dream never meaningfully
[1:50:29] materialized. He pivoted to sports, writing in
[1:50:33] San Antonio, TX, covering the world of athletics he'd failed
[1:50:37] to crack at the highest level. It was a quiet, cerebral life
[1:50:41] for a man who'd soon become one of the most terrifying figures
[1:50:44] in professional wrestling. The transition came through
[1:50:48] Fritz Von Erich, the Texas wrestling patriarch who
[1:50:52] recognized Goodish's massive frame as raw material for
[1:50:56] stardom. Fritz trained him and launched
[1:50:59] his career in the Dallas Fort Worth territory in the early
[1:51:02] 1970s. Goodish debuted under the name
[1:51:06] The Hammer before settling on the persona that would define
[1:51:09] his legacy, Bruiser Brody. With wild, tangled hair, a feral
[1:51:15] beard, fur covered boots, and a steel chain he'd swing into
[1:51:19] crowds, Brody was the embodiment of barely controlled chaos.
[1:51:25] What made Brody unique beyond his wrestling gimmick was his
[1:51:28] independence from the system that existed at the time.
[1:51:32] In an era when most wrestlers tied themselves to a single
[1:51:35] territory and did whatever the local promoter demanded, Brody
[1:51:39] operated as a freelancer. He travelled the globe and
[1:51:43] negotiated his own terms, working for multiple different
[1:51:47] wrestling promotions, including the precursor to the WWE.
[1:51:52] It was in Japan where Brody reached a level of stardom few
[1:51:55] foreign wrestlers have ever achieved, becoming a genuine
[1:51:59] cultural phenomenon Kenny Omega style.
[1:52:03] Behind the scenes, though, Brody's refusal to lose matches
[1:52:07] cleanly and his insistence on protecting his image created
[1:52:11] friction with promoters everywhere he went.
[1:52:15] Brody was difficult to work with by design, since his value
[1:52:18] depended on seeming unbeatable, and he wasn't about to let
[1:52:22] anyone diminish that. Away from the ring, the contrast
[1:52:26] was striking. His second wife, Barbara Smith,
[1:52:31] a New Zealander, described a man who was the complete opposite of
[1:52:35] his wrestling persona. His wife noted that he was a
[1:52:39] quiet family man who enjoyed intellectual pursuits, a fact
[1:52:44] that would have surprised most people who didn't know he was a
[1:52:47] sports journalist at one point. By 1987, Brody was working
[1:52:52] primarily for the World Wrestling Council in Puerto
[1:52:55] Rico, a promotion run by Carlos Colon and managed in part by
[1:52:59] Booker José González. The latter also participated
[1:53:04] more directly in the Melees, and he wrestled as Invader 1.
[1:53:08] The WWC was notorious for its intense feuds and fans who
[1:53:13] believed deeply in the reality of what they watched.
[1:53:16] Brody was a massive draw, feuding with the top figures in
[1:53:20] the wrestling promotion. But underneath the surface,
[1:53:24] tensions had been building for over a decade between Brody and
[1:53:27] Gonzalez, and this wasn't an act by any means.
[1:53:32] During a match at Nassau Coliseum in New York, Brody had
[1:53:36] brutalized Gonzalez for real, beating him so severely that a
[1:53:40] fellow wrestler had to drive him to the hospital.
[1:53:44] According to multiple accounts, Gonzales allegedly claimed that
[1:53:48] after the beating, he would more than get even with Brody one
[1:53:51] day. By the summer of 1988, the
[1:53:55] situation had grown even more volatile.
[1:53:58] Brody was earning enormous money in Japan and had begun exploring
[1:54:02] the possibility of buying a minority ownership stake in the
[1:54:05] WWC. According to wrestling insiders,
[1:54:10] if Brody had gained that ownership position, he'd
[1:54:13] indicated he would fire Gonzalez.
[1:54:16] To make matters worse, Gonzalez was dealing with devastating
[1:54:20] personal grief as his daughter had recently drowned in a
[1:54:23] swimming pool accident. The combination of a decade old
[1:54:27] grudge, A looming power shift, and profound personal anguish
[1:54:32] created a mixture that was like a spark meeting gasoline.
[1:54:38] On the evening of July 16th, Brody arrived at the stadium for
[1:54:41] a scheduled match against a wrestler known as Dan Spivey.
[1:54:45] Earlier that day, he'd been in good spirits, chatting with a
[1:54:48] fellow wrestler known as Tony Atlas at their hotel.
[1:54:53] According to Atlas, Brody had hinted at upcoming changes with
[1:54:57] the promotion, suggesting that his ownership deal was close to
[1:55:00] completion. At the arena, however, something
[1:55:05] was off. Atlas recalled that Gonzalez and
[1:55:08] Carlos Colon were huddled in what looked like an urgent
[1:55:11] private meeting in the locker room.
[1:55:14] Shortly after, Gonzalez approached Brody and asked him
[1:55:17] to step into the shower area for a private word.
[1:55:20] What happened next is known only through its aftermath and is the
[1:55:24] subject of a great deal of controversy.
[1:55:28] What is known for a fact, though, is that Gonzalez had
[1:55:31] concealed a knife inside a towel he carried in his right hand.
[1:55:35] Supporters of Gonzalez would claim that he did so because he
[1:55:39] had been severely injured by the much stronger and more
[1:55:41] physically imposing Brody in the past.
[1:55:45] Supporters of Brody, on the other hand, allege that carrying
[1:55:48] this weapon was a very clear sign of premeditation.
[1:55:53] No one witnessed the initial moments of the confrontation,
[1:55:56] but two loud screams ripped through the locker room.
[1:56:00] Tony Atlas was the first to reach the shower, where he found
[1:56:04] Brody hunched over holding his stomach, blood spreading across
[1:56:08] the tile. Gonzalez stood nearby with the
[1:56:12] knife still in his hand, and other wrestlers rushed in and
[1:56:15] pulled Gonzalez away Before he could strike again.
[1:56:18] The blade had pierced Brody's abdomen and punctured his lung.
[1:56:22] Air bubbles escaped from the wound, a sign as the on site
[1:56:27] doctor confirmed that the damage was catastrophic.
[1:56:31] What followed was a cascade of failures due to traffic in the
[1:56:35] massive crowd at the stadium. It took paramedics between 25
[1:56:39] and 40 minutes to reach Brody. When they finally arrived, they
[1:56:44] couldn't lift him, since he was simply too much of a human
[1:56:47] fortress for even a group of regular sized paramedics to
[1:56:50] handle. Tony Atlas, living up to his
[1:56:54] ring name, operating on pure adrenaline and grief, physically
[1:56:59] carried the enormous wrestler up several steps and loaded him
[1:57:03] into the ambulance himself. He rode alongside Brody to a
[1:57:07] hospital in San Juan, providing comfort to him in what would
[1:57:11] ultimately be his last day on Earth.
[1:57:15] Meanwhile, back at the stadium, Gonzalez calmly emerged from the
[1:57:19] shower area, grabbed his car keys and drove home.
[1:57:24] Disturbingly, despite what had happened, Carlos Colon then
[1:57:28] asked the remaining wrestlers to continue with the show.
[1:57:33] At the hospital, surgeons operated on Brody twice through
[1:57:37] the night, and Brody ultimately bled to death on the operating
[1:57:40] table during the second surgery. He was 42 years old.
[1:57:44] His last coherent words were a plea to take care of his family,
[1:57:48] and his wife was immediately notified that he was in the
[1:57:50] hospital. His wife arrived at the airport
[1:57:54] soon after, only to run into the famous wrestler Abdullah the
[1:57:58] Butcher, who informed her that Brody had already passed.
[1:58:03] José González was arrested and charged in relation to the ACT,
[1:58:08] but he posted bail almost immediately and claimed he'd
[1:58:11] acted in self-defense. The trial took place in Puerto
[1:58:15] Rico in 1989, and from the outset it was plagued by what
[1:58:20] many in the wrestling world considered to be deliberate
[1:58:23] obstruction. The key prosecution witnesses,
[1:58:27] including Tony Atlas, claimed they never received their court
[1:58:31] summonses until after the trial had already concluded.
[1:58:36] No one was charged with contempt for their absence, and the case
[1:58:40] wasn't postponed to accommodate their testimony.
[1:58:44] Without those witnesses, the prosecution's case collapsed and
[1:58:49] Gonzalez testified in his own defense, while Carlos Cologne
[1:58:53] also testified on his behalf. Surprisingly, the knife used in
[1:58:58] the attack was never recovered either, leading to questions
[1:59:02] about the thoroughness of the investigation.
[1:59:05] The jury accepted that the attack was in self-defense, but
[1:59:09] in a bizarre twist, no one has ever been able to locate the
[1:59:12] court transcripts from the trial.
[1:59:15] What happened after the acquittal only deepened the
[1:59:18] wound. Gonzalez returned to wrestling
[1:59:20] in Puerto Rico almost immediately.
[1:59:23] The WWC even gave him a new push, repackaging him as a
[1:59:27] heroic character with prominent television time.
[1:59:30] The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, run by the legendary
[1:59:34] Dave Meltzer, named it the most disgusting promotional tactic of
[1:59:38] 1989. Disturbingly, a year later,
[1:59:43] Gonzalez participated in an angle for the Japanese promotion
[1:59:47] Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling that recreated the stabbing.
[1:59:52] It was grotesque exploitation of the situation, and it cemented a
[1:59:57] feeling among wrestlers worldwide that justice had been
[2:00:00] not merely denied but openly mocked.
[2:00:05] Today, José González is retired from wrestling, surprisingly
[2:00:09] having wrestled deep into his 70s, though his other career
[2:00:13] also raises some eyebrows as well.
[2:00:16] And in a move that would be called too unrealistic if it was
[2:00:19] included in a movie, he ended up spending a significant amount of
[2:00:23] his later life as a local politician on the island.
[2:00:27] Ultimately, we don't know for sure what happened in that
[2:00:30] Puerto Rican shower stall that night in 1988, and officially,
[2:00:35] whatever did was done purely in self-defense.
[2:00:39] And whether you believe and accept that unusual narrative or
[2:00:42] not is entirely up to you. But for me, I say no way, Jose.
[2:00:52] Imagine a man who slaughters 22 of his own family members in the
[2:00:56] dead of night, flees across an international border, assumes a
[2:01:00] false identity, and gets hired as a police officer.
[2:01:04] Then imagine that three years later, this individual living
[2:01:07] under a new identity does it all over again.
[2:01:12] Not to his family this time, but to an entire village.
[2:01:16] If that sounds like the plot of a movie too dark for Netflix to
[2:01:19] green light, you haven't heard of William Munek.
[2:01:23] Between 1954 and 1957, this Ugandan born man carried out two
[2:01:29] separate spree killings across two different countries in
[2:01:33] colonial East Africa, leaving at least 58 people dead.
[2:01:40] William Unic wasn't his birth name.
[2:01:42] He was born a Drogo, the son of Erwinyo, an Allure man from the
[2:01:47] Jahilur Chieftom in Okoro County.
[2:01:50] This was located in the West Nile district of what was then
[2:01:53] the Protectorate of Uganda. And trust me, this will be
[2:01:57] important. The Allure people lived in a
[2:02:00] region straddling the border between the northeastern Belgian
[2:02:03] Congo and northwestern Uganda, and they enjoyed a degree of
[2:02:07] autonomy under colonial rule. Importantly, this included self
[2:02:12] regulated border crossings through their chiefdoms.
[2:02:16] This detail matters enormously because it's what allowed Odrogo
[2:02:20] to disappear after his first spree.
[2:02:24] Before the violence began, Odrogo was dealing with deep
[2:02:27] personal turmoil. Belgian Congo authorities later
[2:02:31] reported that he'd blamed his relatives for the infertility he
[2:02:34] experienced during his second marriage, accusing them of
[2:02:38] placing hexes on him. He was described by later
[2:02:42] experts looking back on the case as exhibiting signs of
[2:02:45] neurasthenia, a now obsolete diagnosis characterized by
[2:02:49] chronic mental and physical fatigue.
[2:02:53] Others believed that he was working within a delusional
[2:02:55] framework where he had become extremely paranoid about those
[2:02:59] surrounding him. What is clear is that something
[2:03:03] inside a Drogo had broken and it was about to manifest in the
[2:03:07] worst possible way. On a Saturday night in February
[2:03:12] 1954, Odrogo invited 22 family members to a banquet at his home
[2:03:18] in Angola village. This was part of the Mahogi
[2:03:21] territory, which importantly for this narrative, was near the
[2:03:25] Congo, Uganda border. The occasion was a traditional
[2:03:30] festival, with various sources reporting different meanings for
[2:03:33] the festivities. However, what is clear is that
[2:03:37] the gathering was meant to be celebratory, and alcohol flowed
[2:03:41] extremely freely. After the festivities, 20 of his
[2:03:45] guests went to sleep in the house, apparently deeply
[2:03:48] intoxicated, while two children stepped outside to play.
[2:03:53] That's when a Drogo picked up a machete.
[2:03:56] He moved through the house methodically, hacking apart each
[2:03:59] of the 20 sleeping relatives, 1 by 1.
[2:04:03] When he'd finished inside, he set the home on fire.
[2:04:08] On his way out, he encountered the two oblivious children
[2:04:11] returning home. And I'll leave what happened
[2:04:14] there to your imagination. Congolese authorities launched
[2:04:18] an extensive investigation and reached out to the Ugandan
[2:04:22] administration for help. But Odrogo had already exploited
[2:04:26] the allure, cross-border privileges and undercover of the
[2:04:29] late weekend hours, he'd secured a boat on Lake Albert and
[2:04:34] crossed into Uganda. Despite a sustained search, he
[2:04:38] was never found, a fact that was complicated by the fact that
[2:04:42] most of the people who knew him had been eliminated.
[2:04:47] Odrogo reinvented himself entirely and despite the
[2:04:51] unimaginable horror that he committed, seemingly re
[2:04:54] established himself with no meaningful difficulty.
[2:04:58] After fleeing the Congo, he made his way to the Tanganika
[2:05:02] territory, modern day Tanzania, where he adopted the alias
[2:05:06] William Unic and claimed to be a member of the Acholi people.
[2:05:12] This is an ethnic group from northern Uganda and importantly
[2:05:16] he knew what he was doing when he claimed to be from this
[2:05:18] group. The British colonial
[2:05:21] administration regarded the Acholi as a quote UN quote
[2:05:24] Marshall race, prized for their fighting abilities and commonly
[2:05:29] assigned them to police duties. The languages of the Allure
[2:05:33] which he came from, and the Acholi which he was pretending
[2:05:37] to be were largely mutually intelligible, meaning a Drogo
[2:05:42] could pass without raising suspicion.
[2:05:45] By 1956, the man now calling himself William Unic had joined
[2:05:49] the Tanganyika police force. No background check had been
[2:05:54] performed, and his colleagues knew he was from Uganda, but
[2:05:57] nobody dug deeper. He was stationed in August 1956
[2:06:03] to Mallampaka, a small village in the Mazwa district of Lake
[2:06:07] Province, about 40 miles southeast of Muanza.
[2:06:10] For all you African geography buffs, he lived behind the
[2:06:15] police post with a woman named Angelina, and fellow officers
[2:06:19] described him as quiet and reserved.
[2:06:23] On the night of February 10th, 1957, William Unik went on his
[2:06:27] second rampage. He'd spent most of the previous
[2:06:31] day behaving unusually and drinking extremely heavily.
[2:06:35] Just after midnight, he arrived at the Mallampaca police post
[2:06:39] and approached 2 superior officers, Sergeant Clement and
[2:06:44] Corporal Opio, with a fabricated story about needing their help.
[2:06:49] According to Unik, they had to arrest a man who was smuggling
[2:06:53] diamonds through the region. The three set out in single
[2:06:57] file, with Clement at the front and Unix strategically
[2:07:01] positioned at the rear of the group.
[2:07:04] During the walk, Unix struck Opio in the back of the head,
[2:07:08] likely with an axe handle, knocking him unconscious, the
[2:07:12] opening blow of the second rampage.
[2:07:15] When Opio regained consciousness about 15 minutes later, both
[2:07:19] Clement and Unix were gone. Ultimately, it remains unclear
[2:07:23] why Opio was just knocked out, but given what would happen to
[2:07:27] Sergeant Clement, he'd evidently never have an answer to this
[2:07:30] question. Opio staggered back to the post
[2:07:35] to rally other officers and soon heard shots near the Malampaka
[2:07:39] railway station. There they found two dead men,
[2:07:43] the assistant station master and an Indian laborer, who had been
[2:07:47] brought to the colony by the British Sergeant.
[2:07:51] Clement's body was discovered shortly afterward in a hedge
[2:07:54] about 1/4 of a mile from the police post.
[2:07:57] He had been struck repeatedly with the sharp edge of an axe,
[2:08:00] raising questions about why Opio was spared.
[2:08:04] UNIC had then used the axe to break into the police Armory,
[2:08:07] stealing 6 rifles and numerous rounds of ammunition.
[2:08:12] What followed was a 12 hour nightmare.
[2:08:15] William moved through Mallampaca and the surrounding area,
[2:08:18] shooting, hacking, burning and strangling anyone he
[2:08:22] encountered. Tragically, he cut down Corporal
[2:08:26] Opio's wife and three children at their home, suggesting that
[2:08:30] he may have believed that he had struck Opio with enough force to
[2:08:33] finish him off. He set fire to the Hut he'd
[2:08:37] shared with Angelina and inside. Investigators later recovered
[2:08:41] the burned bodies of two women, one of whom was believed to be
[2:08:44] Angelina herself. Once in the village, he appeared
[2:08:48] to shoot anyone who crossed his path, most at close range.
[2:08:52] He shot employees at a local business, burned down additional
[2:08:56] huts and at one point changed out of his police uniform into
[2:09:00] clothes stolen from a victim before fleeing into the Bush.
[2:09:04] By the time the massacre had stopped, the toll was
[2:09:07] staggering. The final body count from the
[2:09:10] Mallampaca spree stood at 36 dead and approximately 30
[2:09:15] wounded, with some of them succumbing to their injuries in
[2:09:18] the months and years later. The search for this rampaging
[2:09:23] fugitive quickly became the largest manhunt in East African
[2:09:26] history up to that time. For 9 days, Bush and swamp areas
[2:09:31] covering several 100 square miles were combed by a force
[2:09:35] that eventually swelled to 4000 people.
[2:09:39] Initially, 3000 tribesmen were recruited to join up with 200
[2:09:44] Tanganika police officers to hunt the fugitive cop.
[2:09:48] A British spotter plane was deployed on the second day and
[2:09:52] by February 15th military assistance was formally invoked
[2:09:57] when no signs of UNIC emerged. Eventually, a company of over
[2:10:01] 100 King's African Rifle soldiers dispatched by train
[2:10:05] from a nearby outpost. British authorities eventually
[2:10:08] posted a reward of 125 lbs and deployed additional jeeps and
[2:10:14] aircraft. And trust me, the person who
[2:10:18] would claim this reward earned absolutely every penny of it.
[2:10:21] As you're about to see in a moment, the terrain made the
[2:10:25] search agonizing. Tall grass provided Unic with
[2:10:29] ample cover, and heavy rainfall degraded tracker dog
[2:10:33] effectiveness. Farmers and herders refused to
[2:10:36] work outside, and people barricaded their homes and
[2:10:40] travelled only when heavily armed.
[2:10:43] People who were financially better off carried rifles, while
[2:10:46] others carried bows or Spears. As a more rudimentary form of
[2:10:50] defense against the heavily armed UNIC, residents across a
[2:10:54] wide region began living in a series of communal encampments
[2:10:58] for mutual protection and to pool their resources and
[2:11:01] weaponry. After all, a spear wouldn't be
[2:11:05] able to do much against someone carrying the sort of firepower
[2:11:08] that UNIC was packing. Some of the searchers began
[2:11:11] watching for circling vultures, believing UNIC had likely died
[2:11:15] of exhaustion due to the rough conditions.
[2:11:18] And that's where things stood And it began to look like the
[2:11:22] saga of William UNIC may again repeat once more, with him
[2:11:25] slipping away into a neighboring territory.
[2:11:29] But his luck would soon run out when he ran into a heroic man
[2:11:32] who risked his life to bring this menace to justice.
[2:11:37] On February 18th, William Unik appeared at the home of a 45
[2:11:41] year old man named Iyumbu bin Akumbu looking for food.
[2:11:45] Late that night, the man was heavily armed and appeared to be
[2:11:48] absolutely exhausted. While he wasn't able to
[2:11:51] positively identify the fugitive, given the slow spread
[2:11:55] of posters at the time, the situation struck him as odd.
[2:12:00] He let the curious stranger into his home and dined with him,
[2:12:04] trying to gather further information from the
[2:12:07] conversation. He became increasingly convinced
[2:12:11] that the mysterious stranger was the Mad Butcher.
[2:12:15] Iyumbu reported the encounter to police, who instructed him to
[2:12:19] keep William there if he returned and to alert them
[2:12:22] immediately. Sure enough, UNIC came back the
[2:12:26] next night at around 1:00 in the morning, still armed to the
[2:12:30] teeth. And here I just need to take a
[2:12:33] moment to acknowledge the bravery of a Yumbu Binnikumbu,
[2:12:37] because it's absolutely wild that he was essentially used as
[2:12:41] bait by the authorities. Personally, I'd like to say that
[2:12:46] I would have attempted to take down William Eunuch or insist
[2:12:50] that the authorities send a contingent of guards to the
[2:12:53] house, but I'm going to be honest here, I would have packed
[2:12:57] up and left as soon as possible, knowing what I knew about UNIC.
[2:13:02] When UNIC arrived, Ayumbu told his wife to leave under the
[2:13:05] pretense of fetching a chicken to make some food, but she
[2:13:09] actually went to alert the local tribal leader.
[2:13:12] Meanwhile, Ayumbu sat with the man who terrorized the entire
[2:13:16] region, feeding him and making conversation for nearly two
[2:13:20] hours to keep him in place. Shortly after two in the
[2:13:24] morning, a colonial police company arrived, led by a
[2:13:28] British officer. Tribal soldiers had already
[2:13:32] surrounded the house in the meantime, and police ordered
[2:13:35] William to surrender, threatening to bomb the
[2:13:38] building, but he refused to respond.
[2:13:42] A British officer threw a tear gas canister at the doorway,
[2:13:45] which bounced off and detonated outside.
[2:13:48] He then approached the house and slid a smoke bomb through an
[2:13:51] opening between the roof and wall, all while a Yambu was kept
[2:13:55] hostage inside, The house caught fire and William Unic came
[2:14:00] running out toward the officers. He was ordered to stop, and when
[2:14:03] he didn't, a Colonial officer shot him once in the abdomen.
[2:14:09] During questioning, Unic provided some insight into the
[2:14:12] attack and told investigators he'd suspected Sergeant Clement
[2:14:16] of having an affair with Angelina.
[2:14:19] He claimed the other victims were cruelly cut down because
[2:14:22] they were, quote UN quote spying on him.
[2:14:26] While some have noted that this may indicate paranoia, others
[2:14:30] have pointed out that this may have simply meant that he simply
[2:14:33] attacked anyone who could report his whereabouts given the
[2:14:37] circumstances. While this is obviously
[2:14:39] completely deranged, it's potentially not paranoid given
[2:14:43] that he was the most wanted man on the entire continent at that
[2:14:47] point. He was charged with a whole host
[2:14:49] of crimes, but on February 20th, 1957, two days after the
[2:14:54] standoff, he ended up succumbing to his injuries.
[2:14:58] At the time, no one knew that William Unick was a Drogo, the
[2:15:02] man who had committed the atrocity a few years earlier.
[2:15:06] It wasn't until late March 1957 that William Unick was
[2:15:10] definitively linked to the previous massacre.
[2:15:13] Only one day prior to the second massacre, William Unick as a
[2:15:18] Drogo had sent a postcard to one of his old friends.
[2:15:22] The letter included a photograph which showed a Drogo in his
[2:15:25] police uniform, and he was identified by the authorities as
[2:15:28] being William Unick. The announcement was made public
[2:15:32] on March 28th and newspapers around the world declared
[2:15:36] William Unick one of the deadliest criminals in history.
[2:15:41] Iyumbu Binukumbu, the man who'd risked his life to stall William
[2:15:45] Unik, received the £125.00 reward in March 1957, but there
[2:15:50] was more in store for him. That October he was awarded the
[2:15:55] British Empire Medal by Governor Edward Twining for his
[2:15:59] extraordinary bravery. And yes, for anyone out there
[2:16:02] who is familiar with TEA, yes he's from that Twining family,
[2:16:08] but I digress. What makes the William Unic case
[2:16:11] truly haunting isn't just the body count, it's the fact that
[2:16:15] the entire second massacre was preventable.
[2:16:18] One of the worst criminals in history walked across
[2:16:21] international borders, fabricated an identity, joined a
[2:16:26] police force with 0 vetting, and was handed a weapon and a
[2:16:30] uniform. The colonial systems of 1950s
[2:16:34] East Africa were vast in territorial ambition but
[2:16:38] dangerously thin in any actual administrative capacity.
[2:16:43] There was no database and no communication infrastructure
[2:16:46] capable of flagging A fugitive who simply changed his name.
[2:16:50] Another haunting element is the senselessness of it all, and we
[2:16:54] will never truly know the motivations of William Unic and
[2:16:58] why he committed these disturbing acts against innocent
[2:17:00] people. The California Gold Rush
[2:17:06] produced thousands of stories about sudden wealth and bitter
[2:17:09] disappointment, but few legends have endured quite like the tale
[2:17:13] of the lost Cement gold mine. Somewhere in the eastern Sierra
[2:17:17] Nevada, hidden among volcanic peaks and dense mountain
[2:17:21] forests, there supposedly exists a vein of reddish cement, like
[2:17:26] rock loaded with gold. It's a story that dates back to
[2:17:30] 1857, one that drove prospectors to madness, inspired Mark Twain
[2:17:36] to write about it, and continues to lure treasure hunters into
[2:17:40] the wilderness today. Whether it's real, exaggerated,
[2:17:44] or pure, fiction remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of
[2:17:48] the American Old West. What makes this legend
[2:17:51] particularly compelling isn't just the gold itself, but the
[2:17:55] trail of death, obsession, and near misses that surrounds it.
[2:18:01] The most commonly told version begins in 1857 when 2 German
[2:18:06] emigrants separated from a California bound wagon train and
[2:18:10] struck out on their own through the Sierra Nevada.
[2:18:13] Exhausted and lost, they wound up in the Mono Lake region, an
[2:18:17] area one of them would later describe as burnt and desolate.
[2:18:22] Near the headwaters of the Owens River.
[2:18:25] The two men sat down to rest beside a stream and noticed
[2:18:28] something unusual about the rockledge beneath them.
[2:18:32] It was a reddish formation of hardened volcanic rock that
[2:18:36] miners of the era commonly called cement.
[2:18:40] They noticed embedded in it were thick lumps of dull yellow
[2:18:43] metal, and upon further examination it was gold and a
[2:18:47] staggering amount of it. One man was skeptical and
[2:18:51] laughed off the discovery, The other hammered out roughly 10
[2:18:55] lbs of ore, drew a crude map, and the two continued westward.
[2:19:01] What happened next varies by source.
[2:19:05] In one account, the skeptic died along the way and the believer
[2:19:09] stumbled into a local settlement gravely ill.
[2:19:13] In Mark Twain's version from his 1872 book Roughing It, the
[2:19:18] discoverers were three German brothers, and two perished
[2:19:22] during the trek. What remains consistent is that
[2:19:26] a single survivor reached civilization carrying fragments
[2:19:30] of ore so rich they set the mining world on fire.
[2:19:35] But here's the thing, the surviving prospector was too
[2:19:39] I'll to ever return. And what happens next is where
[2:19:42] the story veers heavily into Old West myth and legend.
[2:19:48] In most versions, the remaining man contracted an illness,
[2:19:51] usually tuberculosis, and could barely function, let alone mount
[2:19:55] an expedition back into the mountains to pay a physician
[2:19:59] named as Doctor Randall for his medical care.
[2:20:03] The man handed over his remaining ore samples, the hand
[2:20:07] drawn map, and a detailed description of the area.
[2:20:11] With that exchange, the legend shifted from a tale of
[2:20:15] discovery. To 1 of obsession Randall
[2:20:18] arrived at Old Monteville in the spring of 1861 with a group of
[2:20:23] men and began prospecting on 1/4 section of land called Pumice
[2:20:28] Flat, roughly 8 miles north of Mammoth Canyon.
[2:20:33] His assistant, Gideon F Whitman, another figure of dubious
[2:20:37] historicity, became the legend's most tragic figure.
[2:20:42] After Randall's search came up empty, Whitman took the map and
[2:20:46] dedicated his life to finding the vein he searched for over a
[2:20:50] decade, enduring hunger, poverty, and sickness.
[2:20:56] Twain, living in the Nevada Territory at the time, witnessed
[2:21:00] this first hand, though whether Whitman was a real person or a
[2:21:05] literary composite of multiple figures is debated.
[2:21:09] He described how word that Whitman had passed through a
[2:21:12] camp at night would empty entire towns within hours, every
[2:21:17] prospector convinced he had the secret sauce to the cement mine.
[2:21:22] Every horse, mule and donkey would be bought, hired, or
[2:21:25] stolen, and half the population would charge into the mountains,
[2:21:29] hoping to follow Whitman. Twain described how Whitman
[2:21:33] would wander aimlessly through gorges until their pursuers ran
[2:21:37] out of supplies and gave up. That said, while the book is
[2:21:42] semi autobiographical in nature, Whitman isn't a fleshed out
[2:21:46] character. The book freely melds actual
[2:21:49] historical occurrences of the time, elements of Twain's life,
[2:21:53] and a good dash of pure fiction to create a compelling
[2:21:57] historical narrative. This has lent credit to the idea
[2:22:00] that he was a later invention attached to the legend that
[2:22:04] Twain had essentially created him as a composite figure
[2:22:08] representing the Mad prospector archetype.
[2:22:11] Whitman allegedly continued searching until 1880, when
[2:22:15] injuries in old age forced him to retire to San Francisco.
[2:22:19] Notably, many later prospectors who searched for the mine in the
[2:22:23] late 19th century and the 20th century took Twain's work to be
[2:22:27] a pure history when it was never intended.
[2:22:30] As such, some believe the book could inadvertently carry clues
[2:22:34] about where the lost cement mine was actually located, even if
[2:22:38] Twain didn't know the location himself.
[2:22:42] This, of course, is a misreading of the text.
[2:22:44] But when there's a large quantity of gold to be had,
[2:22:48] there's always someone who will look for any potential scrap of
[2:22:51] evidence. The search for the mine also
[2:22:54] ended up costing lives, and doing so in a quite major way.
[2:22:59] The flood of prospectors into the Eastern Sierra during the
[2:23:02] early 1860s coincided with the Owens Valley Indian Conflict.
[2:23:07] This was sparked largely by the sheer number of well armed
[2:23:10] miners who'd encroached upon the lands of the local population.
[2:23:15] The indigenous population, which had previously been relatively
[2:23:19] peaceful, pushed back hard against the intrusion.
[2:23:23] According to accounts from the period, at least seven men were
[2:23:27] slain by Native American warriors while searching
[2:23:30] specifically for the cement vein.
[2:23:33] The area around Dead Man Pass earned its grim name from a
[2:23:37] series of violent deaths connected to the search.
[2:23:41] And much like everything with the lost cement mine, assessing
[2:23:44] the actual factual nature of these alleged historical events
[2:23:48] is hard to gauge given the myth making surrounding the mine.
[2:23:53] In 1861, a prospector named Robert Hume was found burned in
[2:23:58] a shallow grave near the pass, his head later turned up in a
[2:24:02] nearby stream which became Dead Man Creek.
[2:24:07] Hume had last been seen with his partner, a man named Farnsworth,
[2:24:11] who later claimed they've been ambushed by Native American
[2:24:14] warriors. However, an investigation proved
[2:24:18] that the story was likely false, but Farnsworth vanished before
[2:24:22] he could be arrested. Some have speculated that he
[2:24:26] found the mine, eliminated his partner, but was then unable to
[2:24:30] actually exploit the find since he could never return.
[2:24:34] Since his story didn't hold up, more bodies followed, and two
[2:24:39] prospectors were found dead near the pass in separate incidents
[2:24:44] over the following decades. Ultimately, all these tragedies
[2:24:49] begged the question of whether the lost cement gold mine was
[2:24:52] ever truly rediscovered, if it ever existed at all.
[2:24:56] A local newspaper correspondent writing in 1879 speculated that
[2:25:01] the lost mine was actually located further away.
[2:25:05] Under this theory, the German who had discovered it originally
[2:25:08] and paid for his treatment may not have properly advised Doctor
[2:25:12] Randall as to the location of the mine.
[2:25:16] The most dramatic late chapter involves 2 men known to legend
[2:25:20] as Kent and McDougal. And as with virtually every
[2:25:23] figure involved in this story with the exception of Mark
[2:25:26] Twain, these two also may never have existed.
[2:25:30] In a deathbed confession allegedly made in San Francisco
[2:25:34] in late 1877, McDougal claimed Kent had first rediscovered the
[2:25:39] deposit in 1861 but couldn't exploit it due to the Indian
[2:25:43] conflict. They reportedly returned
[2:25:46] together and secretly mined the vein each summer from 1872
[2:25:50] through 1877, secretly extracting large quantities of
[2:25:54] gold. Ultimately, though, it's unclear
[2:25:58] if this is just another aspect of the legend building
[2:26:00] surrounding the mine spread by later prospectors.
[2:26:06] Even if the original vein was never officially relocated or
[2:26:09] never even existed, at least in the form mentioned, the search
[2:26:14] produced real and lasting consequences.
[2:26:18] Prospectors who flooded the Eastern Sierra looking for the
[2:26:21] cement mine discovered other significant gold deposits along
[2:26:25] the way, leading to the establishment of boom towns in
[2:26:28] the region. In 1877, a prospector named
[2:26:32] James Parker accidentally struck gold near Mono Lake while
[2:26:37] hunting for the fabled mine. But the Lost Mines greatest
[2:26:41] contribution to history might well be the wealth it generated
[2:26:45] indirectly through the sheer volume of determined prospectors
[2:26:49] it drew into the region. The story also occupies a unique
[2:26:53] place in American literature through Twain's account.
[2:26:56] In Roughing It, his depiction of the frenzy surrounding the
[2:27:00] absurdity of men chasing a lone prospector through mountain
[2:27:03] gorges remains one of the most vivid portraits of Gold Rush
[2:27:07] fever ever written. Personally, I question whether
[2:27:13] the Lost Cement Gold mine ever even existed.
[2:27:16] And this isn't just me being a skeptic or a debunker.
[2:27:20] Hear me out, because I've got a theory on this one.
[2:27:23] Strangely, many of the lost gold mine stories from the Old West,
[2:27:28] like the Lost Dutchman's gold mine, start with a mysterious
[2:27:32] German prospector moving West and lucking into gold.
[2:27:37] In that case, Dutchman is an archaic word that was common in
[2:27:41] American English at the time to describe Germans, as was the
[2:27:45] style at the time. To me, this suggests that the
[2:27:49] idea of a German finding a gold mine and then passing on
[2:27:53] fragmentary knowledge of it had become something of a legendary
[2:27:57] archetype. Having the story start with a
[2:28:00] mysterious German may have been the equivalent cultural marker
[2:28:04] to ending a story with happily ever after, though that's just
[2:28:08] speculation on my part. David Holtzclaw had no reason to
[2:28:16] linger that fateful day when he'd stopped by Blue Ridge
[2:28:19] Savings Bank just after 1:00 on the afternoon of May 16th, 2003.
[2:28:25] He was dropping off some Arby's sandwiches for his mother,
[2:28:28] Sylvia, a bank teller who was the lone employee on duty.
[2:28:33] They chatted for a few minutes, said goodbye, and David left.
[2:28:39] Less than half an hour later, three people inside that bank
[2:28:43] would be dead, and David would never speak to his mother again.
[2:28:48] What happened in the intervening minutes remains, more than two
[2:28:51] decades later, one of the most haunting unsolved crimes in
[2:28:56] South Carolina history. Blue Ridge Savings Bank wasn't
[2:29:00] what most people picture when they hear the word bank.
[2:29:04] It was an Asheville based institution that had expanded
[2:29:07] into South Carolina's upstate region in 2002, opening several
[2:29:12] branches in search of a more stable economy.
[2:29:15] The Greer branch sat in a single wide mobile home on E Frontage
[2:29:19] Rd. a dead end stretch overlooking Interstate 85 near
[2:29:23] the Highway 14 exit. Unsurprisingly, there was no
[2:29:28] imposing marble lobby, nor was there a security guard at the
[2:29:31] door. It was a modest trailer,
[2:29:34] isolated and exposed, with one employee working inside on any
[2:29:39] given shift. That employee on the afternoon
[2:29:42] in question was 56 year old Sylvia Holtzclaw.
[2:29:47] Born and raised in Greer, Sylvia was a fixture of her community.
[2:29:52] She'd married her high school sweetheart and raised two sons
[2:29:55] as a single mother after their divorce.
[2:29:58] She was a regular at Greer First Baptist Church and it helped
[2:30:02] organize a yearly Christmas toy drive for children in need.
[2:30:06] Sylvia was exactly the kind of person who'd stay late when a Co
[2:30:10] worker called in sick, which is precisely what happened that
[2:30:14] fateful Friday. She was supposed to be done by
[2:30:17] lunchtime, but her backup couldn't make it in, and Sylvia
[2:30:21] agreed to cover the full shift alone.
[2:30:26] The timeline that investigators later assembled is chillingly
[2:30:29] precise. At approximately 1:00 PM, David
[2:30:32] Holtzclaw arrived at the bank with lunch and spent a few
[2:30:35] minutes with his mother. He left around 1:10 at 124.
[2:30:40] PMA surveillance camera at a gas station down the road captured a
[2:30:45] red coupe, later identified as most likely an Oldsmobile Alero,
[2:30:49] driving toward the bank. 4 minutes later, at roughly 128, a
[2:30:55] man armed with a Glock entered and confronted Sylvia at
[2:30:58] gunpoint. Seconds into this confrontation,
[2:31:02] the situation escalated in the worst possible way.
[2:31:07] Doctor James Barnes, a 61 year old physics professor at the
[2:31:11] University of South Carolina, Spartanburg, walked into the
[2:31:14] bank with his wife Margaret Barnes, aged 58.
[2:31:19] The couple, married for 38 years since meeting as college
[2:31:22] sweethearts at King University, had come to do a routine money
[2:31:26] transfer. Doctor Barnes was nearing
[2:31:29] retirement after 28 years at the university, where he'd served
[2:31:33] twice as interim Dean. Maggie worked as a convention
[2:31:37] coordinator for the National Beta Club and Academic Honor
[2:31:40] Society. Unfortunately for this couple,
[2:31:44] they walked straight into an armed robbery in progress.
[2:31:47] The robber now had three hostages.
[2:31:50] At 1:30 PM, Sylvia managed to trip the bank's silent alarm, a
[2:31:55] mechanism built into the cash drawer designed to alert police.
[2:32:00] What happened in the minutes between the alarm and police
[2:32:03] arrival is where the case becomes deeply disturbing and
[2:32:07] frustratingly mysterious. Officers from the Greer Police
[2:32:12] Department arrived at approximately 1:41 PM, roughly
[2:32:16] 11 minutes after the alarm was triggered.
[2:32:19] From the outside, nothing appeared obviously wrong, but
[2:32:22] inside, the bank was empty. The cash drawer had been cleared
[2:32:27] out. Though the amount taken was
[2:32:29] relatively small and consisted entirely of unmarked bills, The
[2:32:34] cops didn't notice any signs of struggle and proceeded to
[2:32:37] attempt to secure the small banking facility.
[2:32:40] As officers moved down the back hallway, they entered a utility
[2:32:44] room and found all three victims.
[2:32:47] Sylvia Holtzclaw, Doctor James Barnes and Maggie Barnes.
[2:32:53] Tragically, they had all been shot to death with a 40 caliber
[2:32:56] Glock. Perhaps most disturbingly of
[2:32:59] all, there was no sign of a struggle and they appeared to
[2:33:03] have been herded into the backroom where this senseless
[2:33:07] act of cruelty took place. The gas station camera that
[2:33:11] captured the red car heading toward the bank at 1:24 PM also
[2:33:16] recorded it speeding away at approximately 1:33 PM.
[2:33:21] The entire crime from entry to exit had unfolded in roughly 9
[2:33:26] minutes. Adding to the investigative
[2:33:29] nightmare, the bank's own VHS security tape, which should have
[2:33:33] recorded everything inside, was missing.
[2:33:37] Further investigation would reveal that the robber took the
[2:33:40] tape, with some speculating that he had ordered Holtzclaw to
[2:33:44] remove it before eliminating the witnesses.
[2:33:49] The investigation that followed was massive.
[2:33:52] The Greer Police Department partnered with the Greenville
[2:33:55] and Spartanburg County sheriff's offices, the South Carolina Law
[2:33:59] Enforcement Division and the FBI.
[2:34:02] Over the years, investigators followed up on more than 2000
[2:34:06] tips and the Bureau offered a $100,000 reward.
[2:34:12] Composite sketches were released of a man seen at the bank
[2:34:15] shortly before the robbery described as a white male
[2:34:19] between 5 feet six and five feet 8 inches tall.
[2:34:23] He was described as moderately obese, between 50 and 55 years
[2:34:28] old, with short blonde hair showing touches of Gray and a
[2:34:32] general clean cut appearance. Every lead for years went
[2:34:36] nowhere, likely because this man wasn't ever even confirmed to be
[2:34:40] a suspect. Police eventually looked into
[2:34:44] Lenal Ditches, a former janitor responsible for 17 bank
[2:34:49] robberies across South Carolina between 2000 and 2006.
[2:34:54] But he had a strong alibi and, crucially, nobody had ever been
[2:34:59] harmed in any of his robberies. That's not to say he wasn't
[2:35:03] violent, and after all, he was robbing banks.
[2:35:07] But for him, his eyes were on the loot, not on committing
[2:35:12] something that could get him a visit to the chair.
[2:35:15] He was eventually cleared and ultimately spent 15 years in
[2:35:19] prison for the bank robberies. The strongest lead came in the
[2:35:24] summer of 2005, when investigators identified a man
[2:35:28] named Emerson Wright as a person of interest.
[2:35:31] Wright, a convicted felon from Beech Island, SC, who also went
[2:35:36] by the names Ernest Wright and Akeem Johnson, had an extensive
[2:35:41] criminal record. He had convictions in Georgia
[2:35:44] and South Carolina, including convictions for aggravated
[2:35:47] assault on police, burglary, and receiving stolen property.
[2:35:53] Most critically, on May 1st, 2003, just 15 days before the
[2:35:58] slayings, Wright had used his sister's vehicle to crash
[2:36:01] through a fence at an Avis rental lot near the bank.
[2:36:05] From there, he proceeded to steal a red Oldsmobile Alero,
[2:36:10] the same type of car seen on surveillance footage.
[2:36:14] To make matters worse, his weapon of choice across multiple
[2:36:18] robberies in Georgia was a 40 caliber Glock, the same type
[2:36:22] used during the robbery. The circumstantial evidence was
[2:36:26] compelling, but investigators couldn't place Wright in Greer.
[2:36:31] There were no receipts, no addresses, no physical evidence
[2:36:35] tying him to the area beyond the stolen car.
[2:36:39] They needed to talk to him, but they never got the chance.
[2:36:42] Since the saga of Emerson, Wright was about to take a very
[2:36:45] bizarre turn. In October 2004, Wright was
[2:36:50] spotted during a police checkpoint in Georgia and fled.
[2:36:54] He led officers on a high speed chase before crashing and
[2:36:57] eventually successfully escaping on foot.
[2:37:00] Then on August 2nd, 2005, Georgia State Patrol pulled
[2:37:05] right over in Eatonton. But this time the fugitive did
[2:37:09] something rather bizarre. He stepped out of the stolen
[2:37:13] vehicle and rather than fighting or attempting to run, he pulled
[2:37:17] out the Glock he was packing and pulled the curtains on himself.
[2:37:22] Whatever he might have known about the Blue Ridge Savings
[2:37:24] Bank robbery perished with him. Notably, his Glock was
[2:37:29] eventually tested, but investigators eliminated it as
[2:37:33] the specific weapon used during the robbery.
[2:37:37] Of course, this doesn't actually eliminate him as a suspect, but
[2:37:41] it does make it less likely that he was the person involved.
[2:37:45] Also, unlike the possible suspect seen at the bank just
[2:37:49] before the robbery, Emerson was black while the potential
[2:37:54] suspect was white. Investigators now generally
[2:37:58] believe that Emerson wasn't involved in the crime, though
[2:38:01] his disturbing final act suggests to some that he may
[2:38:05] have been. In November 2016, the case took
[2:38:10] a strange and unexpected new turn involving a serial
[2:38:13] predator, Todd Cole Hep, a successful real estate agent
[2:38:18] from Moore, SC, was arrested after police rescued a woman
[2:38:22] named Kayla Brown. She'd been chained inside a
[2:38:25] shipping container on his property for two months.
[2:38:29] Under interrogation, the police ended up getting more than they
[2:38:32] bargained for. Cole Hep confessed to the
[2:38:35] quadruple slaying at Super Bike Motorsports in Chesney, South
[2:38:39] Carolina on November 6th, 2003. This shooting had occurred less
[2:38:45] than six months after the Blue Ridge robbery, and it was only
[2:38:48] 30 miles away. The Greer Police Department
[2:38:52] naturally immediately took notice and wanted further
[2:38:54] information. There were unsettling
[2:38:57] similarities between the two crimes, starting with the fact
[2:39:01] that both involved execution style shots at somewhat isolated
[2:39:05] commercial locations. Both attacks also happened in
[2:39:09] broad daylight with no surviving witnesses, and both offered easy
[2:39:13] escape routes with minimal chance of detection.
[2:39:17] Cole Hep had also previously been a student at the same
[2:39:20] university where Doctor Barnes taught physics, with some
[2:39:23] believing there could have been tension between the two men.
[2:39:27] However, no concrete proof that the two knew of each other or
[2:39:30] interacted was ever established. When he was questioned about
[2:39:36] Blue Ridge, he denied any responsibility for what
[2:39:39] happened, despite claiming responsibility for 7 confirmed
[2:39:43] slayings over the course of decades.
[2:39:46] Personally I think he looks a lot like the forensic sketch
[2:39:49] that was released and Cole Hep is also noticeably obese, much
[2:39:53] like the potential suspect. However, on the flip side, he
[2:39:58] was in his early 30s at the time of the attack, far outside the
[2:40:02] range for the middle-aged man the suspect was described as
[2:40:07] notably in 2011. Someone attempted to rob the
[2:40:11] Greer branch a second time, unsuccessfully.
[2:40:15] Later that year, the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks
[2:40:19] shut down the entire Blue Ridge Savings Bank Corporation and its
[2:40:23] assets were transferred to the Bank of North Carolina.
[2:40:27] The Greer branch closed for good in November of that year and the
[2:40:30] little green trailer has sat vacant ever since, Rusting along
[2:40:34] that dead end Frontage Rd. On October 9th, 1979, a Harvard
[2:40:43] educated attorney from one of San Diego's wealthiest enclaves
[2:40:47] was supposed to walk through the doors of a federal prison.
[2:40:52] Instead, Walter Wink walked off the face of the earth.
[2:40:55] He left behind a wife of 30 years, 2 grown children, a
[2:41:00] tangled empire of looted companies, and a federal
[2:41:03] conviction for fraud. No confirmed sighting, no
[2:41:07] arrest, no body. Just a blurry photograph on AUS
[2:41:12] Marshals wanted poster and a trail that goes cold somewhere
[2:41:16] South of the border. It's the longest running
[2:41:19] fugitive case in San Diego history, and the man at its
[2:41:23] center may have pulled off the most successful vanishing act in
[2:41:26] American white collar crime. Wenk was born on March 30th,
[2:41:32] 1924. He attended Harvard Law School,
[2:41:35] spoke multiple languages, and reportedly had some background
[2:41:39] in intelligence work, though the specifics remain murky.
[2:41:43] By the 1960s, he'd established himself as a prominent attorney
[2:41:48] in San Diego, even running as a Democratic candidate for
[2:41:51] Congress in 1960. He lost that race, but his
[2:41:56] appetite for influence didn't shrink, not in the least.
[2:42:01] By the early 1970s, Wenk had shifted his attention to
[2:42:04] finance, and it was here that his genius for manipulation
[2:42:08] found its fullest expression. He'd acquire controlling
[2:42:12] interests in publicly owned companies that were struggling
[2:42:15] or had minimal real assets. He chose such stellar companies
[2:42:19] like Time Lenders Inc, Sunfruit Limited and Santa Fe Financial
[2:42:24] Corporation to become vehicles for his complex scheme.
[2:42:28] Once he had control, he'd sell stock in these entities while
[2:42:32] siphoning off their assets, funneling money through a
[2:42:35] labyrinth of trusts and corporate shells for his
[2:42:38] personal benefit. The Securities and Exchange
[2:42:42] Commission caught on in 1976, and there would be major
[2:42:46] consequences for this once well respected lawyer.
[2:42:50] They filed a massive civil action against Wank, his wife
[2:42:53] Catherine, several associates and more than 25 corporate and
[2:42:58] trust entities he controlled. The SEC alleged that Wank had
[2:43:03] been systematically looting publicly owned companies in
[2:43:06] violation of federal securities laws.
[2:43:09] The fraud was enormous, touching investors across the country
[2:43:13] who'd bought stock and companies being hollowed out from the
[2:43:15] inside. What made the case more brazen
[2:43:19] was Wank's attempt to outmaneuver the federal courts.
[2:43:23] Before the SEC filed its complaint, he'd petitioned a
[2:43:26] Nevada court to play Sunfruit, one of the companies he was
[2:43:30] hollowing out into receivership. Because Nevada law didn't
[2:43:34] require a disinterested receiver, Wink got himself
[2:43:38] appointed as the receiver of his own company.
[2:43:42] The 9th Circuit later found that the state receivership was
[2:43:45] nothing more than a continuation of the fraud itself, a legal
[2:43:49] cloak thrown over his ongoing looting.
[2:43:53] The federal court stripped away that protection, appointed their
[2:43:56] own receiver, and permanently barred bank from securities
[2:43:59] activity. In April 1978, a federal jury
[2:44:04] convicted Wank of mail fraud. He was sentenced to five years
[2:44:08] in prison. His appeals were denied, and by
[2:44:12] October 1979, he'd exhausted his legal options.
[2:44:17] The court ordered him to surrender on October 9th,
[2:44:20] believing that he would ultimately simply show up to
[2:44:23] serve his sentence. But he never showed up, and on
[2:44:28] the very day he was supposed to surrender, Wank vanished from
[2:44:32] his home in Rancho Santa Fe. He left behind his family and
[2:44:36] everything that tied him to his former life.
[2:44:40] The disappearance was clean, deliberate, and well planned.
[2:44:45] Investigators learned he'd travelled extensively before his
[2:44:48] conviction, visiting the Bahamas, Mexico, Europe and
[2:44:52] South America. He was almost certainly laying
[2:44:55] the groundwork for exactly this scenario if his appeals failed.
[2:45:00] The assistant US attorney who prosecuted the case, Tom Coffin,
[2:45:04] remembered Wank as exceptionally intelligent but also arrogant
[2:45:08] and rude. It was a combination that
[2:45:10] alienated the jury during his legal proceedings but served him
[2:45:14] well on the run. Coffin, himself a Harvard Law
[2:45:19] graduate who owned a dachshund with the same name as Winks,
[2:45:23] found the disappearance almost personally insulting.
[2:45:26] Investigators suspected Vank ended up in China, leveraging
[2:45:30] language skills and intelligence connections to vanish where
[2:45:34] extradition was impossible. A number of American
[2:45:38] intelligence agencies eventually had to publicly deny
[2:45:42] involvement. And of course, as you know,
[2:45:45] having three letter agencies come out and publicly say that
[2:45:48] they weren't involved in something definitely means he
[2:45:51] wasn't an intelligence asset. After all, There's no one who I
[2:45:56] would sooner take at their word than representatives of
[2:45:59] organizations who explicitly deal in deception.
[2:46:04] Over the decades, the hunt for Wink ebbed and flowed, but never
[2:46:07] stopped. In February 1989, Unsolved
[2:46:12] Mysteries aired a segment on his case, generating roughly 120
[2:46:16] tips. None LED anywhere.
[2:46:19] In 1991, federal agents launched a major push, interviewing
[2:46:24] relatives and former associates across the country, but there
[2:46:28] was still nothing. Sightings were reported from the
[2:46:31] Caribbean to Mexico to Europe to various parts of Asia.
[2:46:37] While in most cases this may have indicated a number of false
[2:46:40] sightings, with Wank and his shadowy intelligence connections
[2:46:44] and endless hoard of wealth, these may have been real.
[2:46:49] The most recent credible lead came in 2011, when US Marshals
[2:46:53] followed a tip to Taxco, a silver mining town in the
[2:46:57] Mexican state of Guerrero. The fugitive wasn't there,
[2:47:01] though there was some indication to suggest that he had been
[2:47:04] there at one time in the past. Ultimately, though, that's where
[2:47:09] the trail ends, and no more sightings have been reported in
[2:47:12] the years since. Meanwhile, the financial
[2:47:15] wreckage took over 2 decades to sort through.
[2:47:19] One single attorney, Alex Harper, spent the better part of
[2:47:23] his career unraveling the cases tangled aftermath, tracing
[2:47:27] looted assets, and pursuing disgorgement proceedings through
[2:47:31] the courts. Interestingly, when Harper died
[2:47:35] in 2020, his family's published obituary mentioned the case and
[2:47:40] how the fugitive's escape had haunted him into retirement.
[2:47:45] In all likelihood, what finally caught up with Wank wasn't
[2:47:49] justice, but the unceasing March of Father Time.
[2:47:53] Whatever the case, though, Walter White effectively got
[2:47:56] away with one of the most massive frauds in American
[2:47:59] history, perhaps with a little help from his friends and
[2:48:02] intelligence. On the afternoon of December
[2:48:08] 4th, 2008, a man pulled into a gas station along Auto Route 440
[2:48:14] in Laval, QC to fill up his pale grey Nissan.
[2:48:19] It was the kind of mundane errand that thousands of people
[2:48:22] run every day without a second thought.
[2:48:25] But Mario Marabella wasn't like most people, and this wasn't
[2:48:28] going to be a normal stop. Within moments, 3 or 4 men
[2:48:33] descended on him, forced him into a waiting minivan, and
[2:48:37] speed off into the cold December afternoon.
[2:48:41] That evening, Marabella's Nissan was found engulfed in flames at
[2:48:45] Guam Blvd. and Lambert St. in East End Montreal.
[2:48:49] By the time it was found, it was virtually completely destroyed,
[2:48:53] along with any evidence it may have held.
[2:48:56] Mario Marabella, known to the Mafia underworld as Skinny, was
[2:49:01] never seen again. His disappearance didn't make
[2:49:04] international headlines, and for anyone outside Montreal's
[2:49:08] underworld, the name barely registered.
[2:49:12] But within organized crime circles in Quebec, his abduction
[2:49:16] sent a very specific message, one that reverberated for years,
[2:49:21] triggering retaliatory violence that would leave multiple men
[2:49:24] dead. Marabella inhabited a world of
[2:49:28] loan sharks, drug traffickers and the most powerful Mafia
[2:49:32] family in Canadian history. The Marabella name carried a
[2:49:37] strange duality in Montreal. On one side, there was Tony
[2:49:41] Marabella. Born in the early 1970s in the
[2:49:45] borough of Saint Leonard, Tony was a baseball prospect, and a
[2:49:49] legitimate one at that. He signed with the Montreal
[2:49:52] Expos as an undrafted free agent at 16 and spent eight
[2:49:57] professional seasons grinding through the Miners.
[2:50:00] Along the way, he suffered A bizarre health scare during
[2:50:03] batting practice, collapsing with sudden amnesia that landed
[2:50:07] him on a 1996 episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
[2:50:12] Despite that brush with fame, Tony never cracked the majors,
[2:50:16] topping out at AA Harrisburg before drifting into independent
[2:50:20] ball and then retiring. Mario, on the other hand, took a
[2:50:25] very different route, and he became deeply entangled in the
[2:50:29] criminal underworld of Montreal's Italian community.
[2:50:34] He accumulated convictions for loan sharking, extortion and
[2:50:38] breaking probation. In 1992, he and Giuseppe DeVito
[2:50:44] robbed a liquor truck, an escapade that earned Marabella a
[2:50:48] guilty plea for possessing stolen goods and a 90 day
[2:50:51] sentence. By the mid 2000s, he was also
[2:50:56] reportedly involved in trafficking massive quantities
[2:50:58] of weed as well. None of this was small time
[2:51:02] freelancing. Mario Marabella was a soldier, a
[2:51:06] recognized member of the Rizzuto crime family, the most powerful
[2:51:10] organized crime syndicate in Canada.
[2:51:14] To understand why Marabella's kidnapping mattered, we need to
[2:51:18] grasp the state of the Rizzuto organization in late 2008.
[2:51:24] The family, LED for decades by patriarch Niccolo Rizzuto and
[2:51:28] his son Vito, had built an empire stretching across Quebec
[2:51:32] and Ontario. They also had international
[2:51:35] connections, reaching into New York, Venezuela, and certain
[2:51:39] parts of Italy, mainly Sicily. They controlled drug
[2:51:43] importation, loan sharking, illegal gambling, and
[2:51:48] construction rackets. American law enforcement
[2:51:52] considered them a faction of New York's Banano crime family,
[2:51:56] though Canadian authorities recognize them as independent.
[2:52:00] They have occasionally been dubbed the 6th Family, as their
[2:52:03] power rivalled any of the Five Families of New York.
[2:52:08] But by 2008, that empire was crumbling, and in January 2004,
[2:52:14] Vito Rizzuto had been arrested on racketeering charges
[2:52:17] connected to the 1981 slayings of three Bonanno captains in New
[2:52:21] York. After years fighting
[2:52:24] extradition, he was sent to the United States in 2006 and
[2:52:29] ultimately sentenced to 10 years.
[2:52:32] With the Boss in an American prison, the family's grip on the
[2:52:35] underworld began to weaken. Then came Operation Colisea.
[2:52:40] In November 2006, more than 700 police officers executed the
[2:52:46] largest organized crime sweep in Canadian history.
[2:52:50] They arrested 90 individuals, including Nicolo Rizzuto, along
[2:52:54] with key lieutenants. In the vacuum that followed, a
[2:52:59] power struggle erupted. Agostino Contrera, a senior
[2:53:03] member of the Allied Contrera Caruana Mafia clan, was tapped
[2:53:07] as the successor to lead the Montreal Mafia.
[2:53:10] And Mario Marabella, known on the street as Skinny, answered
[2:53:15] directly to Contrera. He was, by many accounts,
[2:53:19] Contreras right hand man. The grab was swift and coldly
[2:53:25] professional. On the afternoon of December
[2:53:28] 4th, Marabella stopped at a service station in Laval's
[2:53:31] Valdebris district, just off Auto Route 440.
[2:53:36] Several men converged on him, overpowered him, and shoved him
[2:53:39] into a minivan. The vehicle then drove off at
[2:53:42] high speed. There was no prolonged struggle,
[2:53:46] no dramatic standoff, and it was over in moments, with some
[2:53:51] people in the vicinity seeing nothing at all.
[2:53:55] And this was before the wall of silence went up from ordinary
[2:53:59] people who didn't want to get themselves entangled in Mafia
[2:54:02] affairs. Later that evening, police
[2:54:06] located Marabella's Nissan burning in Montreal's East End.
[2:54:11] The torching of the car was a deliberate act of evidence
[2:54:14] destruction, but it was also a statement.
[2:54:17] In organized crime, burning a victim's vehicle signals that
[2:54:21] the person isn't coming back. Police developed several
[2:54:25] theories about why Marabella was targeted.
[2:54:28] The prevailing explanation was that Marabella had accumulated
[2:54:31] significant deaths and had been drawing too much attention to
[2:54:35] himself in the Mafia. Maintaining a low profile is a
[2:54:39] survival requirement for most members, with flashy members
[2:54:43] like John Gotti being notable exceptions rather than the rule.
[2:54:48] Excessive visibility attracts public attention from the
[2:54:51] general public, which leads to police scrutiny, and scrutiny is
[2:54:55] bad for everyone's business. But there was a deeper
[2:54:58] dimension. Given Marabella's position as
[2:55:01] Contreras right hand man, his abduction was also interpreted
[2:55:05] as an attack on Contreras authority.
[2:55:08] By extension, this was also an assault on whatever remained of
[2:55:11] the Rizzuto power structure, and somebody was sending a message
[2:55:15] that the old guard was no longer untouchable.
[2:55:20] Mario Marabella's body has never been found, and while he could
[2:55:23] technically still be alive, nobody seriously believes that.
[2:55:28] Quebec's cold case unit lists him as almost certainly
[2:55:31] deceased, and investigators have long assumed that he was
[2:55:35] eliminated shortly after being taken.
[2:55:38] His case remains officially unsolved, but the story doesn't
[2:55:42] end with his disappearance. In the months and years that
[2:55:45] followed, the Rizzuto organization continued to
[2:55:48] hemorrhage. In June 2010, Agostino Contrera
[2:55:53] himself, the man Marabella had served, was shot down with his
[2:55:58] bodyguard outside his totally legitimate place of business in
[2:56:01] Montreal. Then, in November 2010, a
[2:56:06] sniper's bullet struck 86 year old Nicolo Rizzuto through his
[2:56:10] own kitchen window, pulling the curtains on this once powerful
[2:56:13] Mafia kingpin. When Vito Rizzuto was finally
[2:56:17] released from prison in 2012, the retaliation was immediate.
[2:56:23] Within a single month of his return to Montreal, several men
[2:56:27] connected to the campaign against his family turned up
[2:56:29] dead. In fact, three men who were
[2:56:32] implicated in another kidnapping of a Rizuto ally were all found
[2:56:36] dead under mysterious circumstances.
[2:56:39] Some sources have connected their slayings directly to the
[2:56:42] Marabella kidnapping, but given the secrecy around these sort of
[2:56:46] events, nothing was publicly confirmed.
[2:56:50] The message was unmistakable. The Rizuto's had long memories,
[2:56:54] and debts would be repaid in kind.
[2:56:59] Mario Marabella's case occupies an uncomfortable space in the
[2:57:02] history of organized crime. He wasn't an innocent bystander.
[2:57:08] He was a man with a criminal record, a soldier in a Mafia
[2:57:11] family, someone who'd spent years operating in a world where
[2:57:15] violence was a routine cost of doing business.
[2:57:19] That context doesn't make his disappearance any less
[2:57:22] disturbing or chilling. In fact, perhaps it makes it
[2:57:25] more so because it reveals just how disposable even connected
[2:57:29] men can become when the tides of power shift in the brutal arena
[2:57:33] of the criminal underworld. Bladenboro, North Carolina is
[2:57:41] the kind of place where everybody knows everybody and
[2:57:43] nothing much ever happens. Nestled among pine forests and
[2:57:48] swampland at the southeastern edge of the Piedmont, the town
[2:57:51] had barely a few 100 residents in the early 1950s.
[2:57:56] But in the winter of 1953 and into January of 1954, something
[2:58:03] started eating farm animals in and around this usually quiet
[2:58:06] town. It did so in a manner so savage
[2:58:10] that this quiet community became the epicenter of one of the
[2:58:13] strangest monster scares in American history.
[2:58:17] The trouble began on December 29th, 1953 in the nearby town of
[2:58:22] Clarkton. About 8 miles away, a woman
[2:58:26] heard her neighbors dogs barking frantically, then falling
[2:58:29] silent. When she went outside she
[2:58:32] spotted a large dark cat like creature slinking into the
[2:58:36] night. Two days later, on New Year's
[2:58:39] Eve, Police Chief Roy Forays was called to the farm of a resident
[2:58:43] named Johnny Voss. Two of his dogs had been
[2:58:47] eliminated overnight by some sort of bizarre and unseen
[2:58:50] force. Their bodies were mangled,
[2:58:53] skulls crushed, and blood pooled across the porch.
[2:58:58] On New Year's Day 1954, two more dogs turned up dead on Woody
[2:59:03] Storm's farm. And normally I wouldn't have
[2:59:07] mentioned the name of this guy, but I couldn't resist the power
[2:59:10] of the name Woody Storm. The two dogs bodies showed the
[2:59:15] same hallmarks as previously and there was a near total absence
[2:59:19] of blood. An autopsy on one of the canine
[2:59:22] victims reportedly confirmed the animal had been drained, a
[2:59:25] detail that earned the predator a chilling nickname in the
[2:59:28] press. The vampire beast eyewitness
[2:59:33] descriptions varied but painted a broadly consistent picture.
[2:59:37] Most people describe something feline, dark in color, with a
[2:59:41] long tail and a face resembling a Panther.
[2:59:45] Estimates placed it at 4 to 5 feet long and about 20 inches
[2:59:49] high, weighing between 80 and 150 lbs.
[2:59:53] A few witnesses claimed they'd seen a smaller animal or a group
[2:59:57] of them traveling alongside it, suggesting this creature was
[3:00:01] feeding its offspring. Multiple residents described
[3:00:05] hearing a cry that sounded like a woman screaming, a noise that
[3:00:09] made even hunting dogs cower. Then, just like that, the beast
[3:00:14] apparently turned its attention toward a person.
[3:00:18] On the evening of January 5th, 1954, a 21 year old mother named
[3:00:24] Missus Kinlaw was outside her home a few miles from town.
[3:00:28] She heard dogs whimpering and went to her porch.
[3:00:32] There she saw a large cat like creature moving toward her and
[3:00:36] she screamed and bolted inside. Her husband grabbed his shotgun
[3:00:40] and rushed out, but the animal had vanished, leaving only large
[3:00:44] paw prints in the dirt. The encounter ran on the front
[3:00:47] page of the Raleigh News and Observer and the story went from
[3:00:51] local curiosity to regional sensation.
[3:00:56] The coverage ignited A frenzy and hunters from across the
[3:01:00] Carolinas and as far as Tennessee descended on
[3:01:03] Bladenboro. Professional trackers from
[3:01:06] Wilmington brought trained hound dogs.
[3:01:09] Fraternity brothers from UNC Chapel Hill showed up armed and
[3:01:12] looking for a trophy for their frat house.
[3:01:15] By January 5th, over 500 people were tramping through the woods
[3:01:20] looking to get a shot at this unknown cat beast.
[3:01:24] The following night, that number passed 800.
[3:01:29] By January 7th, nearly 1000 hunters had gathered.
[3:01:33] The town was overwhelmed with armed strangers, reporters and
[3:01:38] curiosity seekers, and the spectacle of the beast was
[3:01:41] getting to be more disturbing than the animal itself.
[3:01:45] At the center of the chaos stood Mayor Woodrow Fussell, who also
[3:01:49] owned Bladenboro's movie theater.
[3:01:52] It was Fussell who'd called the Wilmington newspapers about the
[3:01:56] dead dogs, and he later told the Carolina Farmer magazine that a
[3:02:00] little publicity never hurt a small town.
[3:02:04] During the panic, he travelled to Charlotte to book a film
[3:02:07] called The Big Cat for his theater, advertising that
[3:02:10] audiences could now see the cat on screen and in Technicolor.
[3:02:15] A local sign painter began producing souvenir bumper plates
[3:02:19] proclaiming Blattenborough as the Beast's home.
[3:02:23] The line between genuine terror and carnival spectacle was
[3:02:26] getting thinner by the day, a fact that upset many of the
[3:02:29] residents. By mid January, the situation
[3:02:34] had become dangerous. The town was armed to the teeth
[3:02:38] with various posses from across the region seeking the creature.
[3:02:42] Police Chief Flores and Mayor Fussell recognized someone was
[3:02:46] going to get shot. Given the general lawlessness
[3:02:49] and tomfoolery that had taken hold.
[3:02:52] Many of the hunters, being unable to find their quarry,
[3:02:55] took to drinking and socializing, all while
[3:02:58] maintaining their arsenals. Controversially, one group of
[3:03:03] hunters had announced their plan to adopt A shelter dog for the
[3:03:07] sole purpose of using it as bait for the cat beast.
[3:03:11] This sparked regional outrage, and combined with the growing
[3:03:14] tensions in the town, Fussell begrudgingly told the hunters to
[3:03:18] go home. On January 13th, a farmer named
[3:03:23] Luther Davis found a bobcat in a steel trap in Big Swamp, about
[3:03:28] four miles from town, and shot it, the mayor declared.
[3:03:32] The Beast of Bladenboro found and eliminated, and the dead cat
[3:03:36] was strung up on a flagpole in the center of town beneath a
[3:03:39] sign announcing its identity. Few people believed it.
[3:03:44] Skeptics pointed out that an ordinary bobcat couldn't have
[3:03:48] inflicted such damage. That same day, a local man
[3:03:52] claimed to have struck a much larger cat with his vehicle
[3:03:55] while leaving Bladenboro. That animal was described as
[3:03:58] spotted like a leopard, roughly 22 inches high and weighing up
[3:04:03] to 90 lbs. He later claimed that he took it
[3:04:06] home, and for reasons unknown, it was never examined.
[3:04:11] However, there was no independent confirmation that
[3:04:15] such a cat ever existed beyond the much later recollections.
[3:04:21] Some later even claimed that a local German shepherd had been
[3:04:24] responsible for the attacks, claiming it was mixed with some
[3:04:27] form of large hound. The profiteering mayor later
[3:04:33] admitted he believed the whole affair was roughly 90%
[3:04:36] imagination and 10% truth. Persistent rumors suggest a
[3:04:41] group of Bladenboro men deliberately fanned the story,
[3:04:45] feeding exaggerated details to reporters to see who'd bite.
[3:04:50] But if that's how it was initially conceived, the story
[3:04:53] didn't end in 1954. That December, 5 pigs and three
[3:04:58] chickens were found dead on a farm near Robeson Memorial
[3:05:02] Hospital with crushed skulls, torn limbs and no blood.
[3:05:07] In 2760, goats turned up dead, completely drained of blood in
[3:05:13] Lexington, and more were slaughtered the same way 30
[3:05:17] miles away in Greensboro. During the same year in Bolivia,
[3:05:21] NC, a group of large, powerful dogs were partly consumed
[3:05:26] despite no apparent sign of struggle.
[3:05:30] Whatever the truth of the matter, today Bladenboro hosts
[3:05:33] an annual Beast Fest every October, drawing Cryptid
[3:05:36] enthusiasts with live music, storytelling and beast themed
[3:05:40] merchandise. Whether the creature was a rogue
[3:05:42] bobcat, an eastern cougar thought long gone, a feral dog
[3:05:48] or something stranger, no one has definitively proven what
[3:05:52] stalked Bladen County that winter.

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