# 4 Chilling Cases That Netflix Would Never Greenlight | 194

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 24 Mar 2026, 50 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4944830209.mp3

A woman vanishes into the darkness of a Melbourne train station, leaving behind blood, a locked car, and a scream that still echoes decades later. In this episode, we dive deep into the disappearance of Sarah MacDiarmid, one of Australia’s most haunting unsolved cases, where every clue seems to raise more questions than answers. From there, we step into the brutal, chaotic world of professional wrestling and the shocking real-life killing of Bruiser Brody, a larger-than-life figure who was stabbed backstage in Puerto Rico. What followed wasn’t just a death, but a legal collapse that many believe denied justice in plain sight. Then we uncover one of the most disturbing true crime cases you’ve probably never heard of, the story of William Unek, a man who committed mass murder, escaped across borders, reinvented himself as a police officer, and then did it all over again. It’s a case that exposes the terrifying gaps in colonial systems and the reality of how easily a killer can disappear. Finally, we explore the legend of the Lost Cement Gold Mine, a mystery buried in the Sierra Nevada mountains that has driven prospectors, inspired Mark Twain, and left behind a trail of obsession, violence, killings and unanswered questions. Is it real, or just one of the greatest myths of the American West? This episode blends true crime, unsolved mysteries, historical intrigue, and dark human stories into a single, immersive narrative. If you’re drawn to cold cases, missing persons, serial killers, historical mysteries, and unexplained phenomena, this is exactly where you want to be. These are not just stories, they’re unresolved, unsettling, and in some cases, still very much alive. Episode 194 of the true crime podcast btw. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 HYPERSEO-PODCASTMAXXED: true crime podcast, unsolved mysteries, cold cases, missing persons, too dark for netflix, Sarah MacDiarmid, Kananook station disappearance, Melbourne cold case, Australian true crime, Bruiser Brody death, wrestling murder, Puerto Rico crime, William Unek, serial killer history, mass murder case, African true crime, colonial crime history, identity fraud killer, unsolved disappearance, real crime stories, dark history podcast, mysterious vanishings, true crime storytelling, investigative podcast, unexplained mysteries, historical true crime, crime documentary audio, chilling cases, criminal psychology, famous cold cases, missing person cases, eerie mysteries, crime analysis, storytelling podcast, long form true crime, mystery podcast, crime history, disturbing cases, real unsolved crimes, hidden history mysteries, American true crime, Aussie crime

## Transcript

[0:01] Somewhere in the darkness of a Melbourne parking lot, a woman
[0:04] screamed for someone to give her back her keys.
[0:07] Then she was gone. No body, no suspect, no arrest.
[0:13] The only thing left behind was a clue on the asphalt and a red
[0:17] Honda Civic sitting locked and abandoned under a broken light.
[0:21] That was July 11th, 1990. More than 35 years later, the
[0:27] question remains exactly the same.
[0:30] What happened to Sarah Mcdermid that fateful night?
[0:34] Sarah Mcdermid was born on November 15th, 1966 in the
[0:39] Scottish Highlands. In 1987, when Sarah was 20 years
[0:44] old, the Mcdermid family, her parents Peter and Sheila, and
[0:49] her younger brother Alistair emigrated to Australia.
[0:54] They settled in the southeastern Melbourne suburb of Frankston.
[0:58] Peter found work as an Airways operations officer and Sheila
[1:02] worked as a nurse. By her parents own admission,
[1:05] Sarah was initially upset by the move and missed her life back in
[1:09] Scotland. But she slowly adapted to her
[1:12] new surroundings. She developed something of an
[1:15] Australian Scottish fusion accent, built a wide social
[1:19] circle and landed a job at an insurance company.
[1:24] By 1990, at 23, Sarah was firmly establishing her life in a new
[1:29] country. She'd bought her first car, a
[1:32] red 1978 Honda Civic, and had written excitedly to a friend
[1:37] back in Scotland about the road trips they'd take once the
[1:40] friend came to visit. Tragically, though, those Rd.
[1:44] trips were destined to never happen.
[1:48] The evening of July 11th, 1990 was unremarkable in every way
[1:52] that mattered. It was a Wednesday, the middle
[1:55] of the Australian winter. After finishing work, Sarah and
[2:00] two colleagues headed to Flinders Park in East Melbourne
[2:04] for a social game of tennis. Afterwards, the three women
[2:08] walked to Richmond station to catch a Frankston Line train
[2:11] home, but they just missed one. Rather than wait around, they
[2:16] caught a taxi to a nearby station and changed to a
[2:19] Frankston bound train. Sarah's two friends got off at
[2:23] Bond Beach a couple of stops before Cananook, where they said
[2:27] their goodbyes. Sarah stayed on the train alone,
[2:31] likely believing that this unremarkable day would end in an
[2:34] unremarkable fashion. The train arrived at Cananook
[2:39] station at approximately 10:20 PM, running about 20 minutes
[2:43] behind schedule. Witnesses later confirmed that
[2:47] Sarah got off the train and crossed the foot bridge toward
[2:50] the lot where her Honda Civic was parked.
[2:53] The parking lot was poorly lit, a detail that would haunt the
[2:57] investigation for decades. Sarah was last seen walking in
[3:01] the direction of her car, but she never made it home.
[3:07] By 11:00 PM, Sarah's family was worried.
[3:10] She was reliable and punctual, and the drive from Canon Oak
[3:14] Station to the family home in Frankston was only a few
[3:16] minutes. When she still hadn't returned
[3:19] by 1:00 AM, her brother Alistair drove to the station to meet the
[3:23] last train, which arrived at 1:15.
[3:26] But Sarah wasn't on it. What Alistair did find was her
[3:30] red Honda Civic sitting in the desolate lot with all the doors
[3:34] and the trunk locked. When police arrived the
[3:38] following morning after the family reported Sarah missing,
[3:41] what they found at the scene painted a grim picture.
[3:45] There were blood stains on the ground beside the driver's side
[3:48] door of the Honda Civic, and more was found on the ground
[3:52] beneath a car that had been parked next to Sarah's.
[3:55] A trail LED from the vehicle to a small area of vegetation and
[3:59] trees on the western side of the parking lot.
[4:03] In the dirt near the bushes, investigators discovered 2
[4:06] parallel drag marks that had slightly indented the ground,
[4:11] and more blood was found in the bushes themselves.
[4:15] Sarah's lighter was lying on the ground nearby, and forensics
[4:18] conducted much later confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that
[4:22] all the genetic material found belonged to her.
[4:26] In a tragic turn of events, multiple people reported hearing
[4:30] a woman in the vicinity of the parking lot that night.
[4:34] One witness described hearing a woman's voice calling out
[4:37] demanding someone give her keys back, followed by an exclamation
[4:41] to stop fooling around. Then shortly after came a loud
[4:46] scream, followed by deafening silence.
[4:50] But for reasons which are unclear, no one directly
[4:53] intervened and no one called police.
[4:57] Victoria Police launched one of the most extensive searches in
[5:01] the state's history. Over 21 days, more than 250
[5:06] officers conducted A coordinated air, sea and land operation
[5:12] across the wider area surrounding Canon Oak Station.
[5:16] They found absolutely nothing whatsoever.
[5:19] There was no body, not a scrap of clothing, no further forensic
[5:23] evidence whatsoever. Whoever had attacked Sarah had
[5:26] managed to remove her entirely and dispose of her remains so
[5:30] thoroughly that not a single trace has ever been recovered.
[5:35] Over the decades, several theories have emerged about what
[5:38] happened that night, though none has ever been definitively
[5:42] proven. The strongest early police
[5:44] theory centered on a group of homeless addicts who were known
[5:47] to frequent the Canon Oak Station area.
[5:50] According to investigators, the leading suspect within this
[5:53] group was a woman named Jody Jones, a violent addict in the
[5:58] Frankston area. In the days following Sarah's
[6:01] disappearance, Jones reportedly began telling people that she
[6:04] was responsible for the attack. The theory held that Jones and
[6:09] her associates had attempted to rob Sarah as she approached her
[6:12] car and that the situation had escalated into fatal violence.
[6:17] Jones, however, was never charged, and she died of an
[6:20] overdose in 1991, barely a year after Sarah vanished.
[6:26] If she was involved, she took whatever she knew to the grave.
[6:31] But the theory has its skeptics. The original lead investigator
[6:35] was never fully convinced by it, noting that the physical
[6:38] evidence didn't entirely align with a random St. robbery.
[6:43] If it had been a chaotic, drug fueled attack, he reasoned,
[6:46] investigators would likely have found more evidence, not less.
[6:51] The investigator stated that in all the attacks he had worked on
[6:55] involving addicts, the crime was extremely disorganized and lots
[7:00] of evidence was left behind. Here the attack seemed to be
[7:03] carried out with surgical precision, suggesting that the
[7:07] person who did it may not have been an amateur, so to speak.
[7:11] Which brings me to the next theory.
[7:15] Another name that surfaced was Paul Denier, A convicted
[7:19] Frankston serial predator who had slain 3 young women in the
[7:23] same area in 1993. The geographic overlap was
[7:27] impossible to ignore, since Denier had lived near Cananook
[7:31] and his crimes followed a pattern of targeting vulnerable
[7:34] women in isolated locations. However, when detectives
[7:39] interviewed Denier in 2011, he denied any involvement.
[7:44] Denier had been openly boastful about the crimes he did commit,
[7:49] which some argue makes keeping such a secret inconsistent with
[7:52] his personality. Personally though, I would
[7:55] discount this idea since upon further research, Denier has
[7:59] applied for parole, which was denied.
[8:03] Admitting to additional crimes could result in additional
[8:06] charges, and in my view, it's possible that his apparent
[8:10] boastful nature about his other crimes may be a smokescreen.
[8:14] Serial predators are by their nature, liars who have managed
[8:18] to successfully meld into society, at least for a time,
[8:22] while they commit their horrific offenses.
[8:25] It seems logical to me that someone like this might be
[8:28] planning a few steps ahead, building up the reputation of
[8:32] someone who fully admits to the crimes he did commit.
[8:36] Adding the element of bragging about convicted crimes also
[8:39] allows him to attempt to manipulate psychologists into
[8:43] believing he has changed his ways, in addition to providing a
[8:46] smokescreen. Also, since I know some of you
[8:50] are going to comment, I'm going to go ahead and invoke
[8:53] nominative determinism to say that you can't trust denials
[8:57] from a guy named Denier. Anyway, I'm clearly going off on
[9:02] a bit of a tangent here, but if it wasn't obvious, I clearly
[9:05] believe that Denier did it. That said, unfortunately, based
[9:10] on the evidence at present, it doesn't look like there's enough
[9:14] evidence to have a reasonable chance of conviction at trial.
[9:19] Victoria Police maintain that Sarah Mcdermid's disappearance
[9:23] is an active case, though there don't appear to have been any
[9:26] meaningful new developments in recent years, detectives have
[9:30] renewed appeals on multiple anniversaries, each time
[9:33] emphasizing that someone in the community knows what happened.
[9:37] Detectives have recently stated that there are still people
[9:40] alive who possess information about what happened to Sarah,
[9:44] suggesting that the addict attack theory is no longer
[9:47] officially favored. Over the years, a truly massive
[9:51] fund has grown and at present there's $1,000,000 reward for
[9:55] information that brings closure to this case.
[9:59] In the end, what we know is this.
[10:02] On an Australian winter's night in 1990, a 23 year old woman got
[10:07] off a train, walked toward her car and was never seen again.
[10:12] Someone took Sarah Mcdermid and if investigators are to be
[10:15] believed, someone currently alive knows what happened to
[10:18] her. And her family, worn down by
[10:22] decades of grief and uncertainty, is still waiting
[10:25] for that answer. On the evening of July 16th,
[10:32] 1988, a six foot eight, £300 man walked into a shower stall in a
[10:38] Puerto Rican stadium. He had been asked to step inside
[10:41] for a quick chat about business, but within seconds, two screams
[10:46] echoed through the locker room of Juan Ramon Lubriel Stadium in
[10:49] Bayamon. These screams were loud enough
[10:53] that every wrestler in the building heard them.
[10:55] When the first man rushed in, he found Frank Goodish, known to
[11:00] the world as Bruiser Brody, doubled over and clutching his
[11:03] stomach. Standing across from him, still
[11:07] holding a knife, was José González.
[11:10] The wildest man in professional wrestling had been gutted like
[11:13] an animal, and in the hours and months that followed, nearly
[11:17] everything that could go wrong did.
[11:20] This is the story of how one of wrestling's most electrifying
[11:23] performers was cut down in plain sight, and why, Despite that,
[11:27] this is still an unsolved mystery.
[11:31] Frank Goodish was born on June 18th, 1946 in Uniontown, PA.
[11:37] He grew up outside Detroit, MI where he became an all state
[11:41] football and basketball player at Warren High School.
[11:44] His athletic gifts earned him a spot at West Texas State
[11:48] University where he played offensive guard and contributed
[11:52] to winning seasons in 1967 and 1968.
[11:57] After college, Goodish chased a football career with brief
[12:01] stints on various teams, but the NFL dream never meaningfully
[12:05] materialized. He pivoted to sports, writing in
[12:09] San Antonio, TX, covering the world of athletics he'd failed
[12:13] to crack at the highest level. It was a quiet, cerebral life
[12:17] for a man who'd soon become one of the most terrifying figures
[12:20] in professional wrestling. The transition came through
[12:24] Fritz Von Erich, the Texas wrestling patriarch who
[12:28] recognized Goodish's massive frame as raw material for
[12:32] stardom. Fritz trained him and launched
[12:35] his career in the Dallas Fort Worth territory in the early
[12:38] 1970s. Goodish debuted under the name
[12:42] The Hammer before settling on the persona that would define
[12:45] his legacy, Bruiser Brody. With wild, tangled hair, a feral
[12:51] beard, fur covered boots and a steel chain he'd swing into
[12:55] crowds, Brody was the embodiment of barely controlled chaos.
[13:01] What made Brody unique beyond his wrestling gimmick was his
[13:04] independence from the system that existed at the time.
[13:08] In an era when most wrestlers tied themselves to a single
[13:11] territory and did whatever the local promoter demanded, Brody
[13:16] operated as a freelancer. He travelled the globe and
[13:19] negotiated his own terms, working for multiple different
[13:23] wrestling promotions, including the precursor to the WWE.
[13:28] It was in Japan where Brody reached a level of stardom few
[13:32] foreign wrestlers have ever achieved, becoming a genuine
[13:35] cultural phenomenon Kenny Omega style.
[13:39] Behind the scenes, though, Brody's refusal to lose matches
[13:43] cleanly and his insistence on protecting his image created
[13:47] friction with promoters everywhere he went.
[13:51] Brody was difficult to work with by design, since his value
[13:54] depended on seeming unbeatable, and he wasn't about to let
[13:58] anyone diminish that. Away from the ring, the contrast
[14:03] was striking. His second wife, Barbara Smith,
[14:07] a New Zealander, described a man who was the complete opposite of
[14:12] his wrestling persona. His wife noted that he was a
[14:15] quiet family man who enjoyed intellectual pursuits, a fact
[14:20] that would have surprised most people who didn't know he was a
[14:23] sports journalist at one point. By 1987, Brody was working
[14:29] primarily for the World Wrestling Council in Puerto
[14:31] Rico, a promotion run by Carlos Colon and managed in part by
[14:36] Booker José González. The latter also participated
[14:40] more directly in the Melees, and he wrestled as Invader 1.
[14:45] The WWC was notorious for its intense feuds and fans who
[14:49] believed deeply in the reality of what they watched.
[14:53] Brody was a massive draw, feuding with the top figures in
[14:56] the wrestling promotion. But underneath the surface,
[15:00] tensions had been building for over a decade between Brody and
[15:04] Gonzalez, and this wasn't an act by any means.
[15:08] During a match at Nassau Coliseum in New York, Brody had
[15:12] brutalized Gonzalez for real, beating him so severely that a
[15:16] fellow wrestler had to drive him to the hospital, according to
[15:20] multiple accounts. Gonzalez allegedly claimed that
[15:24] after the beating, he would more than get even with Brody one
[15:27] day. By the summer of 1988, the
[15:31] situation had grown even more volatile.
[15:34] Brody was earning enormous money in Japan and had begun exploring
[15:38] the possibility of buying a minority ownership stake in the
[15:41] WWC, according to wrestling insiders.
[15:46] If Brody had gained that ownership position, he'd
[15:49] indicated he would fire Gonzalez.
[15:52] To make matters worse, Gonzalez was dealing with devastating
[15:56] personal grief as his daughter had recently drowned in a
[15:59] swimming pool accident. The combination of a decade old
[16:03] grudge, A looming power shift, and profound personal anguish
[16:08] created a mixture that was like a spark meeting gasoline.
[16:14] On the evening of July 16th, Brody arrived at the stadium for
[16:17] a scheduled match against a wrestler known as Dan Spivey.
[16:21] Earlier that day, he'd been in good spirits, chatting with a
[16:25] fellow wrestler known as Tony Atlas at their hotel.
[16:29] According to Atlas, Brody had hinted at upcoming changes with
[16:33] the promotion, suggesting that his ownership deal was close to
[16:37] completion. At the arena, however, something
[16:41] was off. Atlas recalled that Gonzalez and
[16:44] Carlos Colon were huddled in what looked like an urgent
[16:47] private meeting in the locker room.
[16:50] Shortly after Gonzalez approached Brody and asked him
[16:53] to step into the shower area for a private word.
[16:57] What happened next is known only through its aftermath and is the
[17:01] subject of a great deal of controversy.
[17:04] What is known for a fact, though, is that Gonzalez had
[17:07] concealed a knife inside a towel he carried in his right hand.
[17:12] Supporters of Gonzalez would claim that he did so because he
[17:15] had been severely injured by the much stronger and more
[17:17] physically imposing Brody in the past.
[17:21] Supporters of Brody, on the other hand, allege that carrying
[17:24] this weapon was a very clear sign of premeditation.
[17:29] No one witnessed the initial moments of the confrontation,
[17:32] but two loud screams ripped through the locker room.
[17:37] Tony Atlas was the first to reach the shower, where he found
[17:40] Brody hunched over, holding his stomach, blood spreading across
[17:44] the tile. Gonzalez stood nearby with the
[17:48] knife still in his hand, and other wrestlers rushed in and
[17:51] pulled Gonzalez away. Before he could strike again,
[17:55] the blade had pierced Brody's abdomen and punctured his lung.
[17:59] Air bubbles escaped from the wound, a sign as the on site
[18:03] doctor confirmed that the damage was catastrophic.
[18:07] What followed was a cascade of failures due to traffic in the
[18:11] massive crowd at the stadium. It took paramedics between 25
[18:15] and 40 minutes to reach Brody. When they finally arrived, they
[18:20] couldn't lift him, since he was simply too much of a human
[18:23] fortress for even a group of regular sized paramedics to
[18:27] handle. Tony Atlas, living up to his
[18:31] ring name, operating on pure adrenaline and grief, physically
[18:35] carried the enormous wrestler up several steps and loaded him
[18:39] into the ambulance himself. He rode alongside Brody to a
[18:43] hospital in San Juan, providing comfort to him in what would
[18:48] ultimately be his last day on Earth.
[18:51] Meanwhile, back at the stadium, Gonzalez calmly emerged from the
[18:55] shower area, grabbed his car keys and drove home.
[19:00] Disturbingly, despite what had happened, Carlos Colon then
[19:05] asked the remaining wrestlers to continue with the show.
[19:09] At the hospital, surgeons operated on Brody twice through
[19:13] the night, and Brody ultimately bled to death on the operating
[19:16] table during the second surgery. He was 42 years old.
[19:20] His last coherent words were a plea to take care of his family,
[19:24] and his wife was immediately notified that he was in the
[19:27] hospital. His wife arrived at the airport
[19:30] soon after, only to run into the famous wrestler Abdullah the
[19:34] Butcher, who informed her that Brody had already passed.
[19:40] José González was arrested and charged in relation to the ACT,
[19:44] but he posted bail almost immediately and claimed he'd
[19:47] acted in self-defense. The trial took place in Puerto
[19:51] Rico in 1989, and from the outset it was plagued by what
[19:56] many in the wrestling world considered to be deliberate
[19:59] obstruction. The key prosecution witnesses,
[20:04] including Tony Atlas, claimed they never received their court
[20:07] summonses until after the trial had already concluded.
[20:12] No one was charged with contempt for their absence, and the case
[20:16] wasn't postponed to accommodate their testimony.
[20:20] Without those witnesses, the prosecution's case collapsed and
[20:25] Gonzalez testified in his own defense, while Carlos Colon also
[20:30] testified on his behalf. Surprisingly, the knife used in
[20:34] the attack was never recovered either, leading to questions
[20:38] about the thoroughness of the investigation.
[20:41] The jury accepted that the attack was in self-defense, but
[20:45] in a bizarre twist, no one has ever been able to locate the
[20:48] court transcripts from the trial.
[20:52] What happened after the acquittal only deepened the
[20:54] wound. Gonzalez returned to wrestling
[20:57] in Puerto Rico almost immediately.
[20:59] The WWC even gave him a new push, repackaging him as a
[21:03] heroic character with prominent television time.
[21:07] The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, run by the legendary
[21:10] Dave Meltzer, named it the most disgusting promotional tactic of
[21:14] 1989. Disturbingly, a year later,
[21:19] Gonzalez participated in an angle for the Japanese promotion
[21:23] Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling that recreated the stabbing.
[21:28] It was grotesque exploitation of the situation, and it cemented a
[21:33] feeling among wrestlers worldwide that justice had been
[21:37] not merely denied, but openly mocked.
[21:41] Today, José González is retired from wrestling, surprisingly
[21:46] having wrestled deep into his 70s, though his other career
[21:49] also raises some eyebrows as well.
[21:52] And in a move that would be called too unrealistic if it was
[21:55] included in a movie, he ended up spending a significant amount of
[21:59] his later life as a local politician on the island.
[22:03] Ultimately, we don't know for sure what happened in that
[22:06] Puerto Rican shower stall that night in 1988, and officially,
[22:11] whatever did was done purely in self-defense.
[22:15] And whether you believe and accept that unusual narrative or
[22:18] not is entirely up to you. But for me, I say no way, Jose.
[22:28] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here with my usual quick reminder to
[22:31] hit the like and subscribe buttons and the notification
[22:34] bell and turn on all notifications.
[22:36] Also, don't forget to drop a comment with any cases you'd
[22:39] like to see me cover, or perhaps most importantly, updates on
[22:43] older cases that have had significant new developments.
[22:47] And as usual, huge shout out to everyone who supports my channel
[22:51] through the YouTube memberships and through Patreon.
[22:55] Anyway, I'm rambling here and we've got a ton of content left
[22:58] to cover in this episode. So, as I like to say, let's get
[23:03] back to business. Imagine a man who slaughters 22
[23:10] of his own family members in the dead of night, flees across an
[23:14] international border, assumes a false identity, and gets hired
[23:18] as a police officer. Then imagine that three years
[23:21] later, this individual living under a new identity does it all
[23:26] over again. Not to his family this time, but
[23:30] to an entire village. If that sounds like the plot of
[23:33] a movie too dark for Netflix to green light, you haven't heard
[23:37] of William Munich. Between 1954 and 1957, this
[23:43] Ugandan born man carried out two separate spree killings across
[23:48] two different countries in colonial East Africa, leaving at
[23:52] least 58 people dead. William Munich wasn't his birth
[23:57] name. He was born a Drogo, the son of
[24:01] Irwin Yo, an Allure man from the Jahilur chiefdom in Okoro
[24:05] County. This was located in the West
[24:08] Nile district of what was then the Protectorate of Uganda.
[24:11] And trust me, this will be important.
[24:14] The Allure people lived in a region straddling the border
[24:17] between the northeastern Belgian Congo and northwestern Uganda,
[24:22] and they enjoyed a degree of autonomy under colonial rule.
[24:26] Importantly, this included self regulated border crossings
[24:30] through their chiefdoms. This detail matters enormously
[24:34] because it's what allowed Odrogo to disappear after his first
[24:38] spree. Before the violence began,
[24:41] Odrogo was dealing with deep personal turmoil.
[24:45] Belgian Congo authorities later reported that he'd blamed his
[24:48] relatives for the infertility he experienced during his second
[24:51] marriage, accusing them of placing hexes on him.
[24:56] He was described by later experts looking back on the case
[24:59] as exhibiting signs of neurasthenia, a now obsolete
[25:03] diagnosis characterized by chronic mental and physical
[25:07] fatigue. Others believed that he was
[25:10] working within a delusional framework where he had become
[25:13] extremely paranoid about those surrounding him.
[25:17] What is clear is that something inside a Drogo had broken and it
[25:21] was about to manifest in the worst possible way.
[25:27] On a Saturday night in February 1954, Odrogo invited 22 family
[25:32] members to a banquet at his home in Angola village.
[25:36] This was part of the Mahogi territory, which importantly for
[25:40] this narrative, was near the Congo, Uganda border.
[25:44] The occasion was a traditional festival, with various sources
[25:48] reporting different meanings for the festivities.
[25:51] However, what is clear is that the gathering was meant to be
[25:54] celebratory, and alcohol flowed extremely freely.
[25:59] After the festivities, 20 of his guests went to sleep in the
[26:02] house, apparently deeply intoxicated, while two children
[26:07] stepped outside to play. That's when a Drogo picked up a
[26:11] machete. He moved through the house
[26:13] methodically, hacking apart each of the 20 sleeping relatives, 1
[26:17] by 1. When he'd finished inside, he
[26:21] set the home on fire. On his way out, he encountered
[26:26] the two oblivious children returning home.
[26:29] And I'll leave what happened there to your imagination.
[26:33] Congolese authorities launched an extensive investigation and
[26:36] reached out to the Ugandan administration for help.
[26:40] But Odrogo had already exploited the allure, cross-border
[26:43] privileges and undercover of the late weekend hours, he'd secured
[26:48] a boat on Lake Albert and crossed into Uganda.
[26:52] Despite a sustained search, he was never found, a fact that was
[26:56] complicated by the fact that most of the people who knew him
[27:00] had been eliminated. Odrogo reinvented himself
[27:05] entirely and despite the unimaginable horror that he
[27:09] committed, seemingly re established himself with no
[27:12] meaningful difficulty. After fleeing the Congo, he made
[27:16] his way to the Tanganika territory, modern day Tanzania,
[27:21] where he adopted the alias William Unic and claimed to be a
[27:25] member of the Acholi people. This is an ethnic group from
[27:29] northern Uganda and importantly he knew what he was doing when
[27:33] he claimed to be from this group.
[27:36] The British colonial administration regarded the
[27:38] Acholi as a quote UN quote Marshall race, prized for their
[27:42] fighting abilities and commonly assigned them to police duties.
[27:48] The languages of the Allure which he came from, and the
[27:51] Acholi which he was pretending to be were largely mutually
[27:56] intelligible, meaning a Drogo could pass without raising
[27:59] suspicion. By 1956, the man now calling
[28:03] himself William Unic had joined the Tanganyika police force.
[28:08] No background check had been performed, and his colleagues
[28:11] knew he was from Uganda. But nobody dug deeper.
[28:16] He was stationed in August 1956 to Mallampaka, a small village
[28:21] in the Mazwa district of Lake Province, about 40 miles
[28:25] southeast of Moanza. For all you African geography
[28:28] buffs, he lived behind the police post with a woman named
[28:32] Angelina and fellow officers described him as quiet and
[28:36] reserved. On the night of February 10th,
[28:40] 1957, William Unek went on his second rampage.
[28:45] He'd spent most of the previous day behaving unusually and
[28:49] drinking extremely heavily. Just after midnight, he arrived
[28:53] at the Mallampaca police post and approached 2 superior
[28:57] officers, Sergeant Clement and Corporal Opio, with a fabricated
[29:03] story about needing their help. According to UNIC, they had to
[29:07] arrest a man who was smuggling diamonds through the region.
[29:12] The three set out in single file, with Clement at the front
[29:16] and UNIC strategically positioned at the rear of the
[29:18] group. During the walk, UNIC struck
[29:22] Opio in the back of the head, likely with an axe handle,
[29:26] knocking him unconscious. The opening blow of the second
[29:29] rampage. When Opio regained consciousness
[29:33] about 15 minutes later, both Clement and Unic were gone.
[29:37] Ultimately, it remains unclear why Opio was just knocked out,
[29:42] but given what would happen to Sergeant Clement, he'd evidently
[29:45] never have an answer to this question.
[29:49] Opio staggered back to the post to rally other officers and soon
[29:53] heard shots near the Mallampaka railway station.
[29:56] There they found two dead men, the assistant station master and
[30:01] an Indian laborer who had been brought to the colony by the
[30:04] British Sergeant. Clement's body was discovered
[30:08] shortly afterward in a hedge about 1/4 of a mile from the
[30:11] police post. He had been struck repeatedly
[30:14] with the sharp edge of an axe, raising questions about why Opio
[30:18] was spared. UNIC had then used the axe to
[30:22] break into the police Armory, stealing 6 rifles and numerous
[30:25] rounds of ammunition. What followed was a 12 hour
[30:29] nightmare. William moved through Mallampaca
[30:33] and the surrounding area, shooting, hacking, burning and
[30:37] strangling anyone he encountered.
[30:40] Tragically, he cut down Corporal Opio's wife and three children
[30:44] at their home, suggesting that he may have believed that he had
[30:48] struck Opio with enough force to finish him off.
[30:51] He set fire to the Hut he'd shared with Angelina and inside.
[30:55] Investigators later recovered the burned bodies of two women,
[30:59] one of whom was believed to be Angelina herself.
[31:02] Once in the village, he appeared to shoot anyone who crossed his
[31:05] path, most at close range. He shot employees at a local
[31:10] business, burned down additional huts, and at one point changed
[31:14] out of his police uniform into clothes stolen from a victim
[31:18] before fleeing into the Bush. By the time the massacre had
[31:22] stopped, the toll was staggering.
[31:25] The final body count from the Mallampaca spree stood at 36
[31:28] dead and approximately 30 wounded, with some of them
[31:32] succumbing to their injuries in the months and years later.
[31:37] The search for this rampaging fugitive quickly became the
[31:40] largest manhunt in East African history up to that time.
[31:44] For 9 days, Bush and swamp areas covering several 100 square
[31:49] miles were combed by a force that eventually swelled to 4000
[31:53] people. Initially, 3000 tribesmen were
[31:58] recruited to join up with 200 Tanganika police officers to
[32:02] hunt the fugitive cop. A British spotter plane was
[32:06] deployed on the second day, and by February 15th, military
[32:10] assistance was formally invoked when no signs of UNIC emerged.
[32:16] Eventually, a company of over 100 King's African Rifle
[32:19] soldiers dispatched by train from a nearby outpost.
[32:23] British authorities eventually posted a reward of 125 lbs and
[32:28] deployed additional jeeps and aircraft.
[32:32] And trust me, the person who would claim this reward earned
[32:35] absolutely every penny of it. As you're about to see in a
[32:39] moment, the terrain made the search agonizing.
[32:43] Tall grass provided UNIC with ample cover, and heavy rainfall
[32:47] degraded tracker dog effectiveness.
[32:51] Farmers and herders refused to work outside, and people
[32:54] barricaded their homes and traveled only when heavily
[32:57] armed. People who were financially
[33:00] better off carried rifles, while others carried bows or Spears as
[33:05] a more rudimentary form of defense against the heavily
[33:07] armed UNIC residents across a wide region began living in a
[33:12] series of communal encampments for mutual protection and to
[33:16] pool their resources and weaponry.
[33:19] After all, a spear wouldn't be able to do much against someone
[33:22] carrying the sort of firepower that UNIC was packing.
[33:26] Some of the searchers began watching for circling vultures,
[33:30] believing UNIC had likely died of exhaustion due to the rough
[33:33] conditions. And that's where things stood
[33:36] and it began to look like the saga of William Unoch may again
[33:39] repeat once more, with him slipping away into a neighboring
[33:42] territory. But his luck would soon run out
[33:46] when he ran into a heroic man who risked his life to bring
[33:49] this menace to justice. On February 18th, William Unoch
[33:55] appeared at the home of a 45 year old man named Iyumbu bin
[33:59] Akumbu looking for food. Late that night, the man was
[34:03] heavily armed and appeared to be absolutely exhausted.
[34:06] While he wasn't able to positively identify the
[34:09] fugitive, given the slow spread of posters at the time, the
[34:13] situation struck him as odd. He let the curious stranger into
[34:18] his home and dined with him, trying to gather further
[34:21] information from the conversation.
[34:24] He became increasingly convinced that the mysterious stranger was
[34:29] the Mad Butcher. Iyumbu reported the encounter to
[34:33] police, who instructed him to keep William there if he
[34:36] returned and to alert them immediately.
[34:40] Sure enough, UNIC came back the next night at around 1:00 in the
[34:44] morning, still armed to the teeth.
[34:48] And here I just need to take a moment to acknowledge the
[34:50] bravery of a Yumbu Binnikumbu, because it's absolutely wild
[34:56] that he was essentially used as bait by the authorities.
[35:00] Personally, I'd like to say that I would have attempted to take
[35:04] down William Unic or insist that the authorities send a
[35:07] contingent of guards to the house, but I'm going to be
[35:10] honest here, I would have packed up and left as soon as possible,
[35:14] knowing what I knew about Unic. When Unic arrived, Ayumbu told
[35:20] his wife to leave under the pretense of fetching a chicken
[35:23] to make some food, but she actually went to alert the local
[35:27] tribal leader. Meanwhile, Iyumbu sat with the
[35:31] man who terrorized the entire region, feeding him and making
[35:35] conversation for nearly two hours to keep him in place.
[35:39] Shortly after two in the morning, a colonial police
[35:42] company arrived, led by a British officer.
[35:46] Tribal soldiers had already surrounded the house in the
[35:49] meantime, and police ordered William to surrender,
[35:53] threatening to bomb the building, but he refused to
[35:56] respond. A British officer threw a tear
[35:59] gas canister at the doorway, which bounced off and detonated
[36:03] outside. He then approached the house and
[36:06] slid a smoke bomb through an opening between the roof and
[36:08] wall, all while a Yumbo was kept hostage inside.
[36:13] The house caught fire and William Unic came running out
[36:16] toward the officers. He was ordered to stop, and when
[36:19] he didn't, a colonial officer shot him once in the abdomen.
[36:25] During questioning, UNIC provided some insight into the
[36:28] attack and told investigators he'd suspected Sergeant Clement
[36:32] of having an affair with Angelina.
[36:35] He claimed the other victims were cruelly cut down because
[36:38] they were, quote UN quote, spying on him.
[36:42] While some have noted that this may indicate paranoia, others
[36:46] have pointed out that this may have simply meant that he simply
[36:49] attacked anyone who could report his whereabouts given the
[36:53] circumstances. While this is obviously
[36:55] completely deranged, it's potentially not paranoid given
[36:59] that he was the most wanted man on the entire continent at that
[37:03] point. He was charged with a whole host
[37:05] of crimes, but on February 20th, 1957, two days after the
[37:10] standoff, he ended up succumbing to his injuries.
[37:14] At the time, no one knew that William Unik was a Drogo, the
[37:18] man who had committed the atrocity a few years earlier.
[37:22] It wasn't until late March 1957 that William Unic was
[37:26] definitively linked to the previous massacre.
[37:29] Only one day prior to the second massacre, William Unic as a
[37:34] Drogo had sent a postcard to one of his old friends.
[37:38] The letter included a photograph which showed a Drogo in his
[37:41] police uniform and he was identified by the authorities as
[37:44] being William Unic. The announcement was made public
[37:48] on March 28th and newspapers around the world declared
[37:52] William Unic one of the deadliest criminals in history.
[37:57] Iyumbu Binakumbu, the man who'd risked his life to stall William
[38:01] Unic, received the £125.00 reward in March 1957, but there
[38:06] was more in store for him. That October, he was awarded the
[38:11] British Empire Medal by Governor Edward Twining for his
[38:15] extraordinary bravery. And yes, for anyone out there
[38:19] who is familiar with tea, yes, he's from that Twining family,
[38:24] but I digress. What makes the William Unic case
[38:27] truly haunting isn't just the body count, it's the fact that
[38:31] the entire second massacre was preventable.
[38:34] One of the worst criminals in history walked across
[38:37] international borders, fabricated an identity, joined a
[38:42] police force with 0 vetting, and was handed a weapon and a
[38:46] uniform. The colonial systems of 1950s
[38:50] East Africa were vast in territorial ambition, but
[38:54] dangerously thin in any actual administrative capacity.
[38:59] There was no database and no communication infrastructure
[39:02] capable of flagging A fugitive who simply changed his name.
[39:06] Another haunting element is the senselessness of it all, and we
[39:10] will never truly know the motivations of William Unix and
[39:14] why he committed these disturbing acts against innocent
[39:16] people. The California Gold Rush
[39:22] produced thousands of stories about sudden wealth and bitter
[39:25] disappointment, but few legends have endured quite like the tale
[39:29] of the lost cement gold mine. Somewhere in the eastern Sierra
[39:33] Nevada, hidden among volcanic peaks and dense mountain
[39:37] forests, there supposedly exists a vein of reddish cement, like
[39:42] rock loaded with gold. It's a story that dates back to
[39:46] 1857, one that drove prospectors to madness, inspired Mark Twain
[39:52] to write about it, and continues to lure treasure hunters into
[39:56] the wilderness today. Whether it's real, exaggerated,
[40:00] or pure, fiction remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of
[40:04] the American Old West. What makes this legend
[40:07] particularly compelling isn't just the gold itself, but the
[40:11] trail of death, obsession, and near misses that surrounds it.
[40:17] The most commonly told version begins in 1857.
[40:21] When two German immigrants separated from a California
[40:24] bound wagon train and struck out on their own through the Sierra
[40:27] Nevada. Exhausted and lost, they wound
[40:31] up in the Mono Lake region, an area one of them would later
[40:35] describe as burnt and desolate. Near the headwaters of the Owens
[40:40] River. The two men sat down to rest
[40:42] beside a stream and noticed something unusual about the
[40:46] rockledge beneath them. It was a reddish formation of
[40:50] hardened volcanic rock that miners of the era commonly
[40:54] called cement. They noticed embedded in it were
[40:57] thick lumps of dull yellow metal, and upon further
[41:00] examination it was gold and a staggering amount of it.
[41:05] One man was skeptical and laughed off the discovery, The
[41:10] other hammered out roughly 10 lbs of ore, drew a crude map,
[41:14] and the two continued westward. What happened next varies by
[41:19] source. In one account, the skeptic died
[41:23] along the way and the believer stumbled into a local settlement
[41:27] gravely ill. In Mark Twain's version from his
[41:31] 1872 book Roughing It, the discoverers were three German
[41:36] brothers, and two perished during the trek.
[41:40] What remains consistent is that a single survivor reached
[41:44] civilization carrying fragments of ore so rich they set the
[41:49] mining world on fire. But here's the thing, the
[41:53] surviving prospector was too I'll to ever return.
[41:57] And what happens next is where the story veers heavily into Old
[42:00] West myth and legend. In most versions, the remaining
[42:05] man contracted an illness, usually tuberculosis, and could
[42:09] barely function, let alone mount an expedition back into the
[42:13] mountains to pay a physician named as Doctor Randall for his
[42:18] medical care. The man handed over his
[42:20] remaining ore samples, the hand drawn map, and a detailed
[42:25] description of the area. With that exchange, the legend
[42:29] shifted from a tale of discovery to 1 of obsession.
[42:34] Randall arrived at Old Monteville in the spring of 1861
[42:38] with a group of men and began prospecting on 1/4 section of
[42:42] land called Pumice Flat, roughly 8 miles north of Mammoth Canyon.
[42:49] His assistant, Gideon F Whitman, another figure of dubious
[42:53] historicity, became the Legends most tragic figure.
[42:58] After Randall's search came up empty, Whitman took the map and
[43:02] dedicated his life to finding the vein he searched for over a
[43:06] decade, enduring hunger, poverty, and sickness.
[43:12] Twain, living in the Nevada Territory at the time, witnessed
[43:16] this first hand, though whether Whitman was a real person or a
[43:21] literary composite of multiple figures is debated.
[43:25] He described how word that Whitman had passed through a
[43:28] camp at night would empty entire towns within hours, every
[43:33] prospector convinced he had the secret sauce to the cement mine.
[43:38] Every horse, mule and donkey would be bought, hired, or
[43:41] stolen, and half the population would charge into the mountains,
[43:45] hoping to follow Whitman. Twain described how Whitman
[43:49] would wander aimlessly through gorges until their pursuers ran
[43:53] out of supplies and gave up. That said, while the book is
[43:58] semi autobiographical in nature, Whitman isn't a fleshed out
[44:02] character. The book freely melds actual
[44:05] historical occurrences of the time, elements of Twain's life,
[44:09] and a good dash of pure fiction to create a compelling
[44:13] historical narrative. This has lent credit to the idea
[44:16] that he was a later invention attached to the legend that
[44:20] Twain had essentially created him as a composite figure
[44:24] representing the Mad prospector archetype.
[44:27] Whitman allegedly continued searching until 1880, when
[44:31] injuries in old age forced him to retire to San Francisco.
[44:35] Notably, many later prospectors who searched for the mine in the
[44:39] late 19th century and the 20th century took Twain's work to be
[44:43] a pure history when it was never intended.
[44:46] As such, some believe the book could inadvertently carry clues
[44:50] about where the lost cement mine was actually located, even if
[44:54] Twain didn't know the location himself.
[44:58] This, of course, is a misreading of the text.
[45:00] But when there's a large quantity of gold to be had,
[45:04] there's always someone who will look for any potential scrap of
[45:07] evidence. The search for the mine also
[45:10] ended up costing lives, and doing so in a quite major way.
[45:15] The flood of prospectors into the Eastern Sierra during the
[45:18] early 1860s coincided with the Owens Valley Indian Conflict.
[45:23] This was sparked largely by the sheer number of well armed
[45:26] miners who'd encroached upon the lands of the local population.
[45:31] The indigenous population, which had previously been relatively
[45:35] peaceful, pushed back hard against the intrusion.
[45:39] According to accounts from the period, at least seven men were
[45:43] slain by Native American warriors while searching
[45:46] specifically for the cement vein.
[45:49] The area around Dead Man Pass earned its grim name from a
[45:53] series of violent deaths connected to the search.
[45:57] And much like everything with the lost cement mine, assessing
[46:00] the actual factual nature of these alleged historical events
[46:04] is hard to gauge given the myth making surrounding the mine.
[46:09] In 1861, a prospector named Robert Hume was found burned in
[46:14] a shallow grave near the pass, his head later turned up in a
[46:18] nearby stream which became Dead Man Creek.
[46:23] Hume had last been seen with his partner, a man named Farnsworth,
[46:27] who later claimed they've been ambushed by Native American
[46:30] warriors. However, an investigation proved
[46:34] that the story was likely false, but Farnsworth vanished before
[46:38] he could be arrested. Some have speculated that he
[46:42] found the mine, eliminated his partner, but was then unable to
[46:46] actually exploit the find since he could never return.
[46:50] Since his story didn't hold up, more bodies followed, and two
[46:55] prospectors were found dead near the pass in separate incidents
[47:00] over the following decades. Ultimately, all these tragedies
[47:05] begged the question of whether the lost cement gold mine was
[47:08] ever truly rediscovered, if it ever existed at all.
[47:12] A local newspaper correspondent writing in 1879 speculated that
[47:17] the lost mine was actually located further away.
[47:21] Under this theory, the German who had discovered it originally
[47:24] and paid for his treatment may not have properly advised Doctor
[47:28] Randall as to the location of the mine.
[47:32] The most dramatic late chapter involves 2 men known to legend
[47:36] as Kent and McDougal. And as with virtually every
[47:39] figure involved in this story with the exception of Mark
[47:42] Twain, these two also may never have existed.
[47:46] In a deathbed confession allegedly made in San Francisco
[47:50] in late 1877, McDougal claimed Kent had first rediscovered the
[47:55] deposit in 1861 but couldn't exploit it due to the Indian
[47:59] conflict. They reportedly returned
[48:02] together and secretly mined the vein each summer from 1872
[48:06] through 1877, secretly extracting large quantities of
[48:10] gold. Ultimately, though, it's unclear
[48:14] if this is just another aspect of the legend building
[48:16] surrounding the mine spread by later prospectors.
[48:22] Even if the original vein was never officially relocated or
[48:25] never even existed, at least in the form mentioned, the search
[48:30] produced real and lasting consequences.
[48:34] Prospectors who flooded the Eastern Sierra looking for the
[48:37] cement mine discovered other significant gold deposits along
[48:41] the way, leading to the establishment of boom towns in
[48:44] the region. In 1877, a prospector named
[48:48] James Parker accidentally struck gold near Mono Lake while
[48:53] hunting for the fabled mine. But the Lost Mines greatest
[48:57] contribution to history might well be the wealth it generated
[49:01] indirectly through the sheer volume of determined prospectors
[49:05] it drew into the region. The story also occupies a unique
[49:09] place in American literature through Twain's account.
[49:12] In Roughing It, his depiction of the frenzy surrounding the
[49:16] absurdity of men chasing a lone prospector through mountain
[49:20] gorges remains one of the most vivid portraits of Gold Rush
[49:24] fever ever written. Personally, I question whether
[49:29] the Lost Cement Gold mine ever even existed.
[49:32] And this isn't just me being a skeptic or a debunker.
[49:36] Hear me out, because I've got a theory on this one.
[49:40] Strangely, many of the lost gold mine stories from the Old West,
[49:44] like the Lost Dutchman's gold mine, start with a mysterious
[49:48] German prospector moving West and lucking into gold.
[49:53] In that case, Dutchman is an archaic word that was common in
[49:57] American English at the time to describe Germans, as was the
[50:01] style at the time. To me, this suggests that the
[50:05] idea of a German finding a goldmine and then passing on
[50:09] fragmentary knowledge of it had become something of a legendary
[50:13] archetype. Having the story start with a
[50:16] mysterious German may have been the equivalent cultural marker
[50:20] to ending a story with happily ever after, though that's just
[50:24] speculation on my part.

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