# Cases So Twisted... Detectives Can't Crack Them | 286

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 2 Aug 2026, 1 h 13 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO9062323768.mp3

Join me for over 1 hour of horrifying cold cases. Episode 286 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: ❤️ 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, cold cases, true crime, true crime solved, 5 true crime cases, cold case compilation, true crime compilation, fall asleep, sleep compilation, sleep video

## Transcript

[0:00] On the evening of December 18th, 2011, a black Chevrolet Blazer
[0:05] sat abandoned near the corner of 9th St. and Saint Clair Ave. in
[0:08] East St. Louis, IL.
[0:11] The engine was idling and the driver's door was hanging open
[0:14] as if someone had just stepped out briefly.
[0:17] Inside were a young woman's prescription glasses, her purse,
[0:22] and her shoes. And as it turned out, the 23
[0:26] year old who'd been driving it was nowhere.
[0:29] Insight. That's the narrative the Phoenix
[0:32] Colden case was built on, and it's appeared in nearly every
[0:36] article, podcast, and television segment about her for close to
[0:40] 15 years. Here's the problem.
[0:44] According to the police officer who actually walked up to that
[0:46] truck, it never happened that way.
[0:49] The most famous fact in the Phoenix case may not be a fact
[0:52] at all, and the space between the two versions may be key to
[0:56] solving this mysterious disappearance.
[1:01] Phoenix was born on May 23rd, 1988 in California under the
[1:05] name Phoenix Reeves, her mother Goldie's maiden name.
[1:10] The family later moved to Missouri for her stepfather
[1:13] Lawrence Colden's work, and there he formally adopted her,
[1:17] giving her the name she'd carry into adulthood.
[1:20] Home was Country Brook Drive and Spanish Lake, an unincorporated
[1:25] suburb tucked into the northern edge of Saint Louis County.
[1:29] By every early account, the Colden's built a tight,
[1:31] sheltered, deeply religious household around their only
[1:34] child. Goldia homeschooled her through
[1:37] high school and Phoenix played piano, violin, and guitar, and
[1:42] she was reportedly a junior fencing champion in the Saint
[1:45] Louis area. By December of 2011, she was 23,
[1:50] living at home and studying at the University of Missouri St.
[1:54] Louis, where her parents understood her to be part way
[1:58] through her degree. Her parents rules hadn't
[2:01] loosened much with adulthood, something that's going to play a
[2:05] fairly large role in this story. Dating before marriage was off
[2:10] the table entirely, and the family's life revolved around
[2:13] church. None of that seemed to bother
[2:16] Phoenix outwardly, though, as we will see, looks can often be
[2:21] deceiving. December 18th, 2011 was a
[2:26] Sunday, and Phoenix went to church that morning with her
[2:29] mother, stopped for groceries, and spent part of the afternoon
[2:33] shooting baskets outside her house.
[2:36] She was dressed in Gray sweatpants, a dark hooded
[2:39] sweatshirt and black sneakers. Sometime between 2:20 and 3:00,
[2:45] she got into the family's black 1998 Chevrolet Blazer, which was
[2:50] parked in the driveway. She didn't announce a
[2:54] destination, and her father assumed she was headed to the
[2:57] convenience store around the corner, or maybe to a friend's
[3:00] house. The sheer casualness of the
[3:03] moment is exactly why nobody worried at the time, since she
[3:07] wasn't dressed for anything in particular.
[3:10] A friend's mother would later report seeing Phoenix driving as
[3:13] late as 4/30 that afternoon, which, if accurate, is the last
[3:17] time anyone from her world laid eyes on her.
[3:21] At 5:27 that evening, police in East St.
[3:24] Louis, IL took a report of an abandoned vehicle in the 900
[3:29] block of Saint Clair Ave., near the corner of 9th St.
[3:33] It was the Colden's Blazer, roughly a 25 minute drive from
[3:37] the house across the Mississippi River and across the state line.
[3:43] Her family knew of no errand that could have taken her to
[3:46] that corner, though her grandmother reportedly lived in
[3:49] East Saint Louis, so the city itself wasn't foreign to her.
[3:54] What's certain is that it was a hard place to break down, if
[3:57] that is indeed what happened. East Saint Louis in 2011 carried
[4:03] one of the worst violent crime rates of any small city in
[4:06] America. The stretch of Saint Clair Ave.
[4:10] where the truck turned up sat along a corridor known for every
[4:13] sort of illicit activity imaginable.
[4:16] At 6:23 that evening, a tow truck hauled the Blazer to an
[4:20] impound lot where it was logged as an ordinary abandoned
[4:24] vehicle. Nobody connected it to a missing
[4:27] person because at that moment, Phoenix wasn't missing yet.
[4:33] Her parents reported her missing to the Saint Louis County police
[4:36] the next day, December 19th, and here the case dropped into a
[4:41] bureaucratic crack it never fully climbed out of.
[4:44] The truck had been towed in Illinois before the missing
[4:47] person report was filed in Missouri, so the license plate
[4:50] was never flagged in any system on either side of the river.
[4:55] The county police spent the following days looking for a
[4:57] woman in a vehicle that, unknown to them, was already sitting in
[5:02] a tow lot across the Mississippi.
[5:05] For the next two weeks, the Colden searched for a truck the
[5:08] authorities already had. They printed Flyers and called
[5:12] hospitals, and they kept searching on their own while the
[5:15] single biggest piece of physical evidence in their daughter's
[5:18] case sat untouched in an impound lot.
[5:22] The family didn't learn where the Blazer was until the first
[5:25] days of January 2012, and they didn't learn it from the police.
[5:31] A family friend searching independently tracked the truck
[5:34] to the East Saint Louis lot, and when the Colden's arrived to
[5:37] claim it, they were met with a shock.
[5:40] They were handed a bill of roughly $1000 in tow and storage
[5:44] fees, which was waived only after they appealed to the
[5:47] mayor's office. An officer reportedly told the
[5:51] family that no inventory sheet had been made because there'd
[5:54] been nothing in the car worth listing.
[5:57] When the Colden's finally got the truck back, they found
[6:00] Phoenix's eyeglasses, her purse with her driver's license
[6:04] inside, her shoes, and a cell phone bill that had gone to
[6:08] collections. The glasses in particular gnawed
[6:11] at her parents, who couldn't picture their daughter
[6:14] voluntarily walking away without them.
[6:17] Later, forensic testing of the vehicle found genetic evidence
[6:20] from only three people in the vehicle, Phoenix and her two
[6:24] parents. The family has said that after
[6:27] February 2012, communication from the East Saint Louis police
[6:31] effectively stopped. Goldia and Lawrence took up the
[6:35] work themselves, going so far as to walk the Saint Clair corridor
[6:40] and question the street level dealers and St. walkers who
[6:42] worked it. What little money the Colden's
[6:46] had went into the search, and in the spring of 2012, a stranger
[6:51] took the rest of it. A man contacted the family
[6:55] claiming to know where Phoenix was, offering details Goldia
[6:59] later described as extremely convincing and pointing them
[7:03] toward Texas. The Colden's hired private
[7:06] investigators to chase the lead and drain their life savings
[7:10] doing it. The tip was a fabrication, and
[7:14] the man admitted as much only after the money was gone.
[7:18] The family's home on Country Brook Dr. went into foreclosure
[7:22] within a year of their daughter's disappearance.
[7:25] The Colden's had lost Phoenix, their savings, and the house
[7:28] she'd grown up in, and the case itself had gone completely cold.
[7:35] The case stayed completely cold for the better part of seven
[7:37] years, and it wasn't until it got national media attention
[7:41] that anything started happening again.
[7:44] On November 3rd and 4th, 2018, a two night special called The
[7:49] Disappearance of Phoenix Colden aired on the Oxygen Network.
[7:54] It was built around a fresh investigation by Shondria
[7:57] Thomas, a Saint Louis television journalist, and Joe Delia, a
[8:02] retired deputy police chief. What they found changed the
[8:06] shape of the case, because the sheltered, homeschooled girl of
[8:10] the early coverage turned out to be only half the story.
[8:15] Phoenix, it emerged, had been living a carefully
[8:18] compartmentalized life that she kept hidden from her parents.
[8:22] She had at least two boyfriends her parents knew nothing about,
[8:26] in a household where dating wasn't allowed at all.
[8:30] For a stretch of her college years, she stayed part of the
[8:33] time with a man identified publicly only as Michael.
[8:37] While her parents believed she was simply at school.
[8:41] She kept a second cell phone that even her boyfriend didn't
[8:44] know about, and the bill found in the truck traced back to it.
[8:49] She also had two birth certificates, one under Reeves
[8:52] and one under Colden, a perfectly ordinary artifact of
[8:56] her adoption that suddenly looked significant in hindsight.
[9:01] She had also stopped being a college student, despite what
[9:04] her parents were led to believe. Investigators found she'd
[9:07] dropped her classes and hadn't enrolled for the spring
[9:10] semester, something her parents apparently never knew.
[9:14] There was also a video Phoenix had recorded of herself in which
[9:18] she talked about wanting to start over.
[9:21] In the video, she said she couldn't remember the last time
[9:24] she'd been happy and seemed to suggest something more serious
[9:27] was going on. A close friend described her as
[9:31] visibly changed in her final six months, on edge,
[9:35] uncharacteristically aggressive, and reportedly carrying a knife
[9:39] for protection. Then there were the phone
[9:43] records. And on December 17th, the day
[9:46] before Phoenix vanished, she and Michael called each other 10
[9:50] times and the final call lasted almost two hours.
[9:54] On the day of the disappearance itself, her phone logged a 6
[9:58] minute incoming call and a one minute outgoing call connected
[10:01] to his number. Questioned by police about what
[10:05] those hours of conversation had been about, he told them he
[10:08] couldn't remember. Lawrence Colden considered him
[10:12] evasive and said so publicly. But investigators had a
[10:15] different take on the matter. One detective described Michael
[10:19] as among the most cooperative figures in the entire file and
[10:23] expressed confidence that he had nothing to do with Phoenix's
[10:26] disappearance. And then there was the truck.
[10:31] And Thomas and Delia. The true crime documentary
[10:34] makers went looking for the origin of the idling engine and
[10:38] the open driver's door. These details had to find this
[10:42] case from the beginning, and they found Kendall Perry, the
[10:46] officer who'd responded to the abandoned vehicle call that
[10:49] December evening in 2011. His account was flatly
[10:54] different, and he said that the engine was off and the doors
[10:57] were closed. Further, the lights weren't on
[11:00] and the keys weren't in the ignition.
[11:03] To Officer Perry, there'd been nothing about the scene to raise
[11:06] a red flag, just an ordinary abandoned truck that looked for
[11:10] all the world like it had run out of gas.
[11:13] Ultimately, the Oxygen documentary was unable to
[11:17] confirm how this narrative inserted itself into the case.
[11:22] What was clear is that by then, the idling engine narrative had
[11:25] travelled everywhere, even on to the Missouri State Highway
[11:28] Patrol's official missing person bulletin.
[11:32] Yet despite this widespread, so-called fact, the
[11:35] reinvestigation couldn't trace it back to a single witness
[11:38] who'd actually seen it. What's left is a case with at
[11:43] least three possibilities and not enough evidence to close any
[11:46] of them. The first is that Phoenix was
[11:48] taken and the truck came to rest on a corridor investigators
[11:52] describe as part of one of the country's busiest trafficking
[11:55] routes. In 2014, a friend reportedly saw
[12:00] a woman who looked strikingly like Phoenix boarding a flight
[12:05] from Las Vegas to Saint Louis. She was travelling with a group
[12:09] of similar looking young women and two imposing men, and the
[12:13] woman reacted to Phoenix's name without answering to it.
[12:17] There's also been speculation, nothing official, that one of
[12:21] Phoenix's quote UN quote boyfriends wasn't actually a
[12:25] boyfriend at all. Simply put, he had trafficked
[12:28] her and then passed her off to someone else.
[12:31] With her ultimate fate being unknown, some have speculated
[12:35] that as the case ended up gaining a national profile, one
[12:39] of the traffickers may have killed her.
[12:42] Ultimately though, that's speculation upon speculation,
[12:46] though unfortunately, it doesn't seem that far fetched.
[12:50] The second Rd. is that Phoenix left on her own, of her own free
[12:54] will. And this is, of course, the most
[12:56] hopeful version of events. She dropped out of school
[13:00] without telling her parents, kept whole relationships hidden
[13:04] and recorded herself talking about starting over.
[13:08] She also had a copy of the birth certificate under her original
[13:11] name, which is potentially quite important if she wanted to take
[13:15] on a new life. Records briefly linked the name
[13:19] Phoenix Reeves to an address in Anchorage, AK, in the months
[13:23] after she disappeared. Investigators ended up visiting
[13:27] the address and ran into a confused home owner who had
[13:30] never heard of anyone by that name.
[13:33] Still, it indicated that someone, for some reason, was
[13:37] using an extremely rare name and linking it to an address.
[13:42] Ultimately, though, I find this theory extremely difficult to
[13:45] accept, even though I would obviously prefer it to be true.
[13:49] A woman planning her own exit generally takes her glasses, her
[13:54] license, and her purse. The prescription glasses in
[13:58] particular strike me as a very bizarre thing to leave behind
[14:01] under a voluntary disappearance scenario.
[14:05] Her bank account also had some money left in it, and people who
[14:08] are trying to start a new life don't generally simply leave
[14:12] behind cash. The third theory is the
[14:15] simplest, that the truck simply ran dry in an unfamiliar and
[14:20] unforgiving part of town as dusk came on.
[14:23] It's possible that Phoenix was visiting a family member or a
[14:26] friend when gas ran out in one of the most dangerous parts of
[14:29] America. Phoenix may have then accepted
[14:32] help from the wrong person, or she may have been abducted,
[14:36] meeting a grim fate soon after. The Saint Louis County police
[14:41] still treat Phoenix Colden as an open missing person case, and
[14:45] the Missouri State Highway Patrol still circulates her
[14:48] bulletin. Her parents have never stopped
[14:51] looking, and for years after she disappeared, her parents kept
[14:54] the family Christmas tree standing with her presence
[14:57] beneath it, waiting to be opened.
[15:00] She'd left a week before Christmas, and they intended to
[15:03] finish the holiday when she came home.
[15:09] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy with my usual quick reminder to ring the
[15:12] notification bell and turn on all notifications.
[15:16] Also, don't forget to check out the Patreon or the membership if
[15:19] you enjoy my content and want to support my channel even further.
[15:26] On April 22nd, 1940, the Police Department in Brookline, MA
[15:32] finally issued a missing persons bulletin for a local housewife.
[15:36] It described Barbara Rogers, age 26, five foot seven, 125 lbs,
[15:44] brown eyes, dark Auburn hair worn in a long Bob.
[15:48] She'd been gone more than four months by then, and the bulletin
[15:52] landed with no impact at all. No newspaper picked it up, no
[15:56] reporter asked a single question.
[15:59] And that's the strangest part, because the woman on that
[16:02] bulletin wasn't an anonymous housewife.
[16:05] Under her maiden name, Barbara Newhall Follett had been one of
[16:10] the most celebrated literary prodigies in American history.
[16:14] She was a novelist praised by the New York Times before she
[16:17] was old enough for high school. When she walked out of her
[16:21] apartment on a December evening in 1939, the whole country
[16:25] should have noticed. Instead, it took 26 years for
[16:29] anyone outside her family to realize she was gone.
[16:34] Barbara Newhall Follett was born on March 4th, 1914 in Hanover,
[16:39] NH. Her father, Wilson Follett, was
[16:42] a literary critic and editor, and her mother, Helen, was a
[16:45] former school teacher who educated Barbara at home.
[16:48] Barbara discovered her father's typewriter as a toddler and
[16:52] became obsessed, typing away by 4 and producing her first little
[16:56] Stories by 5. By age 7, she'd invented an
[17:00] entire imaginary world she called Farxolia, complete with
[17:04] its own history, capital city, and a constructed language named
[17:09] Farxo. She developed it with the
[17:11] seriousness of a philologist, compiling a grammar and a
[17:15] vocabulary that eventually filled filing cabinets.
[17:19] In 1923, at age 8, she began typing a novel as a birthday
[17:24] present for her mother. It told the story of a girl
[17:28] named Epercept who runs away from home to live wild in
[17:31] nature. Her grieving parents chase after
[17:35] her while she dances further out of reach through Meadow,
[17:38] seashore and mountain. Honestly, it sounds like an
[17:43] ultra whimsical Studio Ghibli film, and I'm kind of surprised
[17:46] it hasn't already been adapted. Then real life happened and the
[17:53] family's house caught fire and the manuscript burned with it.
[17:58] Barbara started over and spent the next three years rebuilding
[18:01] the book from memory, along with all the world building lore she
[18:05] had constructed. Her father showed the finished
[18:08] result to his contacts at a variety of publishers in early
[18:12] 1927, and the publishers expressed a serious interest in
[18:16] the work. When Barbara was 12, the
[18:20] completed work appeared in bookstores as The House Without
[18:23] Windows. The reviews were remarkable, and
[18:27] The New York Times treated the novel as an unprecedented
[18:30] document of inner imagination. Another prominent review
[18:34] described its beauty as almost too much to bear, and even HL
[18:38] Mencken, a man not famous for gushing, counted himself an
[18:43] admirer. Not everyone cheered, but not
[18:47] due to the quality of the work itself.
[18:49] Some critics noted that publishing a successful novel
[18:52] before age 13 might be less a blessing than a handicap, the
[18:57] kind of early peak a life never recovers from.
[19:01] Barbara fired back to these criticisms, insisting that the
[19:04] book was simply an expression of joy.
[19:08] Unfortunately, though, based on her later life, these critics
[19:11] may have been at least partially correct.
[19:15] Barbara didn't slow down, and in June 1927, at 13, she shipped
[19:20] out on a coastal lumber schooner called the Normandy.
[19:24] And yes, you heard me correctly, That wasn't the Normandy like
[19:27] the famous region of France. That was the Normandy, A clever
[19:31] little word play. She sailed from New Haven up to
[19:35] Nova Scotia, living alongside the crew and taking notes the
[19:39] whole way. The book she wrote about the
[19:42] voyage was published the following year, and reviewers
[19:46] were arguably more impressed the second time.
[19:49] One critic marvelled that the craftsmanship of the work would
[19:52] have done credit to a veteran writer.
[19:55] Some questioned whether it was even possible for someone of her
[19:58] age to produce such meaningful literature, suggesting her
[20:02] father may have had a significant editorial hand by
[20:07] then. She was 14, twice published and
[20:10] by any reasonable measure, standing at the start of a
[20:13] spectacular career. But what happened then is the
[20:17] fate of so many prodigies. And she never published another
[20:21] book for the rest of her life. That isn't to say she wouldn't
[20:25] complete a novel, but to put it in context, her next manuscript
[20:30] wouldn't be published until 2020.
[20:34] The collapse came from 2 directions at once, and the
[20:37] first was her father. In 1928, Wilson Follett left the
[20:42] family for a younger woman, allegedly using his slice of the
[20:46] earnings of Barbara's books to win this woman over.
[20:50] Barbara, for her part, was clearly a keen and intelligent
[20:54] teenager who could work out the role she played in the causation
[20:58] on that, and this hit her hard. Wilson had also been her editor
[21:03] and her closest intellectual companion, and she wrote to him
[21:07] pleading that even if others needed him, she needed her dad
[21:11] more than anyone else did. Wilson, however, was selfish and
[21:16] he left anyway, and after that he reportedly provided little
[21:20] money to assist the family. Helen responded by taking
[21:24] Barbara to sea, sailing with her through the Caribbean and the
[21:28] South Pacific to gather material for a travel book.
[21:33] But the voyage unraveled, and through circumstances that
[21:36] aren't quite clear, Barbara was left with family friends in
[21:39] California. It's been suggested that Helen
[21:42] had some sort of breakdown as a result of Wilson leaving, but
[21:46] ultimately it was the 1920s and this wasn't well documented.
[21:51] In September 1929, the 15 year old ran away from the family
[21:56] friends, fleeing to San Francisco and hiding in a hotel
[22:00] under a false name before police tracked her down.
[22:05] The second blow hit everyone equally, and weeks after she was
[22:09] found, the stock market collapsed and the Follett
[22:12] households, now thin finances, gave out.
[22:16] By 1930, the girl the papers had once called a genius was 16
[22:22] years old and working as a secretary in New York City,
[22:26] typing other people's words for a paycheck.
[22:29] Her letters from this period have been preserved, and in one
[22:33] she described her dreams as dying, cut down by a world that
[22:37] ran on time and money. She kept writing before work in
[22:41] the early mornings, producing a novel called Lost Island, about
[22:46] a young woman who escapes the grind of New York for a remote
[22:49] island. It's a book that opens with rain
[22:52] hammering the city, as if the weather itself had a grudge
[22:56] against everyone in it. Alongside it, she finished a
[23:00] travel manuscript called Travels Without a Donkey, about a long
[23:05] walk from northern Maine down to the Massachusetts border.
[23:10] Neither found a publisher in her lifetime, and by 1934, she'd
[23:14] essentially stopped writing. And when I say that she stopped
[23:19] writing, I mean that she stopped writing things that she assumed
[23:22] would one day be published. She kept actively writing
[23:26] letters and in her own private diary, something that has given
[23:30] us remarkable insight into her mind state leading up to her
[23:34] mysterious disappearance. The one bright thing in those
[23:39] years was a man named Nickerson Rogers, an easygoing outdoorsman
[23:43] she met in mid 1931 with Nick. Barbara got to live like a
[23:49] character from her first novel for a while, escaping from the
[23:52] world In the summer of 1932, they walked the Appalachian
[23:58] Trail from Mount Katahdin in Maine down to the Massachusetts
[24:02] line. They then crossed the Atlantic
[24:05] to Spain, wandered Majorca, and hiked the Swiss Alps.
[24:10] They settled in Brookline, MA, and married in July 1934.
[24:15] And her early letters from the marriage sound lighter than
[24:18] anything she'd written in years. But the magic didn't last, and
[24:22] by 1937 she was confiding dissatisfaction in letters to
[24:27] friends, and by 1938 the cracks were widening.
[24:33] That October of 1937, the couple had rented an old farmhouse on
[24:38] Pulsifer Hill near Squam Lake in New Hampshire for the
[24:42] astonishing rate of $2.50 a month.
[24:45] I had to run that one through an inflation calculator since I was
[24:49] pretty sure that was still well under $100 per month.
[24:53] And I was right. That old farmhouse cost the
[24:56] couple approximately 60 bucks a month to rent in present day
[25:00] money. Renting A farmhouse for a couple
[25:03] bucks a month wasn't the style at the time, not even in the
[25:06] 1930s, but I digress. The area became their escape,
[25:12] and while they didn't live there full time, Barbara came to know
[25:16] its trails and woods closely. But back in Brookline, away from
[25:21] the rustic appeal of the farmhouse in nature, the
[25:25] marriage was officially failing in 1939.
[25:29] She became convinced that Nick was seeing someone else, and
[25:32] then she learned it for certain. Her letters from that year are
[25:37] bleak, and in a line that says a great deal about her state of
[25:40] mind, she added that she figured she'd had it coming.
[25:45] She also mentioned needing something to help her sleep,
[25:48] since no matter how hard she tried, rest just wouldn't take
[25:52] her. Nick reportedly wanted a
[25:55] divorce, and in November 1939 she wrote to a friend that
[26:00] everything on the surface was terribly calm and terribly
[26:03] wrong. On Thursday, December 7th, 1939,
[26:09] Barbara came home from her secretarial job to the apartment
[26:12] on Kent Street and had an argument with Nick.
[26:16] Whatever was said, we only have his word for it, and some have
[26:20] speculated that he had a strong incentive to make himself look
[26:23] as good as possible. And count me amongst those
[26:26] people speculating. But I'll get to that in a moment
[26:31] since I'm just going to stick to the facts for the time being.
[26:35] Sometime that evening, Barbara walked out the door carrying
[26:38] about $30.00, worth roughly $600.00 today, and a notebook of
[26:43] her writings. She was 25 years old and no
[26:48] confirmed sighting of her exists after that night.
[26:52] What Nick did next is the part that investigators and Barbara's
[26:56] own mother could never quite get past.
[27:00] He waited two weeks before contacting the police,
[27:03] explaining later that she'd left of her own accord and he'd
[27:07] assumed she would cool off and come back.
[27:10] When she didn't, he still waited, and he maintained from
[27:14] then on that Barbara had simply walked out of the marriage and
[27:18] presumably into a new life somewhere.
[27:22] It took him four months to request the official missing
[27:25] Persons Bulletin, the one that went out on April 22nd, 1940,
[27:32] because it listed her under her married name, Barbara Rogers.
[27:36] Not a single journalist connected the missing Brookline
[27:38] housewife to the famous author. The best camouflage she ever had
[27:43] turned out to be her married name, or perhaps I should say
[27:47] the best camouflage that Nick ever had.
[27:51] Her father broke his silence in his own way, and in May 1941,
[27:56] The Atlantic ran an anonymous essay titled To a Daughter One
[28:00] Year. Lost.
[28:02] In it, Wilson Follett circled his guilt and marvelled that a
[28:06] person of his daughter's stature could simply evaporate without
[28:09] leaving a ripple. He signed it as her father, but
[28:13] not with his name, which meant even this public confession kept
[28:17] her disappearance a secret, since he didn't actually name
[28:20] her either. Also, yeah, if you needed
[28:24] another reason to think Wilson Follett is a terrible person.
[28:28] He didn't even bother to use his position of influence to help
[28:30] find his daughter. He simply wrote an anonymous
[28:34] letter where he whined and complained without doing
[28:37] anything whatsoever. Helen Follett, for her part,
[28:42] never accepted the quiet from her daughter.
[28:45] In 1952, thirteen years after her daughter vanished, she
[28:50] pushed the Brookline police to reopen the matter and looked
[28:53] hard at Nick Rogers. Writing to him directly, she
[28:58] told him that his years of silence looked like the behavior
[29:01] of a man with something to hide. She promised she wouldn't spend
[29:05] her remaining years sitting still while the question of
[29:08] whether Barbara was alive or dead went unanswered.
[29:13] The investigation went nowhere, since there was no body to find
[29:16] and no trail to follow. And officially, at least, there
[29:20] was no crime. Wilson Follett passed away in
[29:23] early 1963, with the question his Atlantic essay raised still
[29:28] hanging in the air. The public finally learned the
[29:31] story in May 1966, when the psychologist Harold Greer
[29:36] McCurdy, working with Helen, published a study of Barbara's
[29:40] life. It was built from her letters
[29:43] and manuscripts under a title that called her a genius and
[29:47] called her later writings an unconscious autobiography.
[29:52] Newspapers that had celebrated her in 1927 now discovered,
[29:57] nearly 40 years late, that she'd been missing since 1939.
[30:03] By then, the trail was stone cold, and her papers ended up in
[30:06] a handful of archive boxes at Columbia University.
[30:10] And for decades, that was where the story sat.
[30:14] It took family to revive it, and a relative named Steven Cook
[30:18] later assembled her correspondence into a published
[30:20] collection and built an archive of her work.
[30:24] Cook is also the reason why her final work, Lost Island, was
[30:28] ever published at all, being released in 2020.
[30:33] Now, in an unfortunate twist, the book was released on
[30:37] February 17th of that year, and let's just say the world was
[30:40] going to get a bit weird for a while.
[30:43] Because of this, there was really no meaningful way to
[30:46] promote the book through the usual channels, and when things
[30:49] went back to normal, it looks like the moment passed.
[30:53] The mystery of Barbara's disappearance sadly didn't have
[30:56] its Tiger King moment during those days when everyone was
[30:59] stuck inside. There's one more chapter, and it
[31:04] was hiding in plain sight for 70 years.
[31:07] On Thanksgiving Day 1948, a Deer Hunter named Harold Hukens was
[31:13] working through the woods at Twilight near Durgan Brook in
[31:17] Holderness, New Hampshire. He came across bones scattered
[31:21] in the pine needles, and some of the foot bones were still inside
[31:25] a pair of size 7 moccasin style shoes.
[31:29] Nearby lay the remnants of a wool overcoat, a canvas duffel
[31:33] bag, a metal flask, a medicine bottle, a purse, a compact
[31:38] enameled with a bird design and a pair of horn rimmed glasses.
[31:43] Authorities decided the remains belong to Elsie Whittemore, a 25
[31:48] year old from nearby Plymouth, who'd gone out for an evening
[31:51] walk on June 29th, 1936. It was a tidy answer with
[31:57] obvious problems, but Elsie had left home carrying nothing, yet
[32:02] this woman perished beside a packed duffel bag.
[32:05] There were a few other problems as well, since Elsie wore a size
[32:09] 5 shoe, not A7. Elsie also didn't wear glasses
[32:14] at all, and her own in laws couldn't recognize a single one
[32:17] of the recovered belongings. The county prosecutor closed the
[32:22] case on December 1st, 1948, declaring that the woman was
[32:27] Elsie, and everyone moved on. Decades later, a novelist named
[32:32] Daniel Mills went through the old records and noticed what the
[32:35] investigators of 1948 apparently never considered.
[32:40] The remains were found roughly half a mile from the farmhouse
[32:43] Barbara and Nick had rented in woods.
[32:45] Barbara knew better than almost anyone.
[32:49] Nick reportedly kept the place into the summer of 1940, months
[32:53] after his wife vanished. The original examiner put the
[32:58] woman's height at just over 5 feet, which helped match her to
[33:01] the small framed Elsie. When Mills reran the same bone
[33:05] measurements through modern forensic formulas, the estimate
[33:09] climbed to around 5 foot 5 or taller, far closer to the 5 foot
[33:14] 7 Barbara. Of course I'll add here that
[33:18] Mills is a novelist with no specific expertise in forensics,
[33:22] but if this is accurate, it's a highly interesting finding.
[33:26] Barbara was also known to have worn horn rimmed glasses which
[33:30] were found with the remains. Barbara also left home carrying
[33:34] a bag, and her last letters mentioned medicine for sleep.
[33:39] That could theoretically indicate that she was in a
[33:41] disoriented state when she entered the woods.
[33:45] None of this is proof, and the bones themselves have since been
[33:48] lost, so no complete modern re examination is possible.
[33:54] Anyway, if you thought we were leaving this segment without me
[33:57] going deeper on my own personal theory, think again.
[34:01] When I look at the disappearance of Barbara, I keep coming back
[34:05] to Nick Rogers because nearly every critical detail depends on
[34:09] his version of events. According to Nick, Barbara came
[34:13] home on December 7th, 1939. Then they argued, and then she
[34:19] trotted out carrying about $30.00 in a notebook.
[34:23] Now, I'll openly admit there's nothing inherently impossible
[34:26] about that sequence of events given the facts that we have for
[34:30] this case. Barbara had run away before
[34:33] under different circumstances. She loved wilderness, and her
[34:37] marriage was collapsing. But Nick was also the husband
[34:41] she believed was having an affair, the man who reportedly
[34:44] wanted a divorce, and the last known person to see her alive.
[34:49] That does not make him guilty by any means, but it makes his
[34:53] conduct afterward incredibly important.
[34:56] And his conduct was strange. Nick waited a full 2 weeks
[35:01] before contacting police, which is unusual in and of itself.
[35:06] His explanation was that Barbara had left voluntarily and he
[35:10] expected her to cool down and return.
[35:14] I can understand waiting a night, or perhaps even a few
[35:17] days, but two weeks seems highly suspicious.
[35:21] Barbara had disappeared without collecting her belongings,
[35:25] contacting friends, or returning to work, and at some point she
[35:30] needed space. Stops being a reasonable
[35:33] assumption, then. It took roughly four months for
[35:37] Nick to request an official missing person bulletin.
[35:40] And even worse, the bulletin identified her only as Barbara
[35:44] Rogers. It didn't emphasize that she was
[35:47] Barbara Newhall Follett, the once famous novelist, and as a
[35:51] result, the disappearance attracted virtually no
[35:54] attention. Whether intentional or not, Nick
[35:58] handled the report in the way most likely to keep Barbara
[36:01] invisible. If I had a formerly famous wife
[36:04] and she went missing in the 1930s, I would absolutely
[36:08] emphasize her maiden name because I would want the case to
[36:11] go as wide as possible. Nick clearly didn't seem to have
[36:15] much interest in Barbara's disappearance, being widely
[36:18] reported as it would have been if her maiden name was used.
[36:23] There is also that idyllic farmhouse near Squam Lake.
[36:26] With the cheap rent, Nick and Barbara had rented it together.
[36:30] Barbara knew the surrounding woods intimately, and Nick
[36:33] reportedly retained the property into the summer of 1949.
[36:38] Years later, unidentified female remains were discovered only
[36:42] half a mile away, and several details arguably fit Barbara
[36:46] better than Elsie. None of this proves Nick did
[36:50] anything at all to her, but it doesn't look good and her mom
[36:54] had her suspicions about Nick all along.
[36:57] The remains are lost, so the most important forensic question
[37:00] may never be answered, and as of now, they're officially
[37:03] attributed to Elsie. But Nick had motive, opportunity
[37:08] and exclusive knowledge of Barbara's final known evening.
[37:12] He delayed involving police, accepted an almost non existent
[37:16] investigation and spent years insisting she had simply chosen
[37:20] to vanish. That may be innocent, but the
[37:23] circumstantial case against Nick certainly isn't weak.
[37:27] At least not in my view of the case anyway.
[37:32] Clearly I'm more than a little bit passionate about this case,
[37:35] so let me know what your thoughts are in the comments.
[37:39] Maybe I'm completely off base about Nick, but I can't help but
[37:43] think the results of this case would have been very different
[37:46] if he were ever seriously investigated.
[37:52] The quiet calm of a Texas summer afternoon was shattered on
[37:56] August 2nd, 1997, when a passerby stumbled upon a
[38:00] gruesome find on the east side of Lake Arlington.
[38:03] There, near the water's edge, lay the decomposed body of an
[38:07] unknown man. Authorities were called and a
[38:11] baffling mystery began that endures to this day.
[38:16] The victim was a white male, estimated to be between 40 and
[38:20] 55 years old and around 5 foot 10.
[38:24] Forensic analysis suggested he had been deceased for about one
[38:27] to two months, likely since June or July of 1997.
[38:33] There were no signs of any acute injuries and the medical
[38:36] examiner couldn't determine A cause of death from the remains
[38:41] found in a relatively remote spot by the lake.
[38:44] This John Doe raised many questions from the start, and
[38:47] his mystery continues on today, nearly 20 years later.
[38:53] The man had medium length brown hair and was discovered wearing
[38:56] casual summer attire. He was dressed in cut off
[39:00] Wrangler denim shorts, white Converse sneakers with red trim,
[39:05] and a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses.
[39:08] Along with his clothing, several personal items were recovered
[39:12] which could serve to identify who this man is.
[39:15] These included a silver colored necklace, a lighter, a folding
[39:20] pocket knife, a purple comb, and a gold tone token emblazoned
[39:24] with a riverboat and the words NO cash value.
[39:30] Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any photographs of these
[39:33] items online on Name Us or on any other sources.
[39:38] This is, of course, a bit of an issue, since silver colored
[39:41] necklace doesn't serve to narrow things down very much.
[39:47] At any rate, these belongings painted a rough sketch of his
[39:50] life, at least to those investigators who were able to
[39:53] view them directly. Notably, the token was what has
[39:57] been described as a generic arcade or casino token.
[40:01] Investigators checked its origin, but that went nowhere
[40:04] since such tokens were mass produced.
[40:07] Personally though, without seeing the token itself, I'd be
[40:10] wary of any such conclusion, and I suspect there may have been
[40:14] some minor distinctions added that could be a clue.
[40:20] Despite the evidence recovered, nothing found with the body gave
[40:23] away the man's identity. Unfortunately, he carried no
[40:27] wallet, no identification and no other forms of identifying
[40:31] paperwork. Authorities released a forensic
[40:35] sketch as well, which is quite distinctive, but this too led to
[40:39] nothing. Notably, his fingerprints were
[40:44] taken, but they didn't match any entries in law enforcement
[40:47] databases. Dental records were also
[40:50] compared against missing persons reports with no success.
[40:55] Years later, ADNA profile was eventually obtained from his
[40:58] remains and uploaded to national databases, but as yet it
[41:02] returned no matches either. It quickly became clear that
[41:08] this case wasn't about to be cracked with 90s forensic
[41:11] technology, so detectives looked at the context in which he was
[41:15] found. He was on an isolated patch of
[41:18] shoreline littered with empty bottles and trash, and there was
[41:22] evidence it was a local party spot.
[41:26] This environmental clue hinted that he might have been there
[41:29] socializing or camping, but the cops were unable to find any
[41:33] abandoned campsite that might have been his.
[41:36] That said, this isn't necessarily unusual given the
[41:40] post mortem interval on this case, and any number of factors
[41:44] could have led to his camp being taken down within that interval.
[41:49] Unfortunately, despite police requests, no witnesses ever came
[41:53] forward to say they saw a stranger in the area in the
[41:56] relevant time period. That said, investigators didn't
[42:01] find his body until months later, and of course, memories
[42:05] had already begun to fade at that point.
[42:08] With each Ave. turning up empty, the case went cold.
[42:14] In the absence of answers, several theories have been put
[42:17] forward about who this man was and how he perished.
[42:21] One theory is that he was a transient or homeless drifter
[42:25] who lived off the grid. Perhaps he had no fixed home and
[42:29] moved from place to place, which would explain why no missing
[42:33] person report ever matched him. He might not have had close
[42:37] family in touch or those who knew him didn't realize he was
[42:40] missing. However, running against the
[42:44] homeless theory is that he wasn't dressed in the layered
[42:47] style that homeless people generally adopt so they can
[42:50] carry their entire wardrobe with them.
[42:55] Another possibility is that his death was a misadventure or a
[42:58] simple accident. He could have been fishing or
[43:02] drinking by the water and ended up drowning or suffering A fatal
[43:05] fall or medical emergency. The fact that the area appeared
[43:09] to be a party spot supports this idea.
[43:12] He might have been out there with others late at night and
[43:16] something went wrong. If he was intoxicated or unwell
[43:20] and collapsed, the people with him might have panicked and left
[43:23] him, especially if they were afraid of legal trouble.
[43:28] Notably, under this theory, both the John Doe and the other
[43:32] people involved may have been partaking in less than
[43:34] legitimate pharmaceuticals. An accident in such a secluded
[43:38] area could easily go unreported and undocumented under these
[43:42] circumstances. There is also the theory of foul
[43:46] play, though evidence for this is limited.
[43:49] The remote location raises the question of whether someone
[43:52] could have slain him elsewhere and dumped his body by the lake
[43:56] to avoid detection. However, without obvious trauma
[44:00] on the remains, there's no clear indication of this actually
[44:04] happening. That said, it's possible he was
[44:07] suffocated, something that wouldn't necessarily leave a
[44:10] mark on bones. But again, this is purely
[44:14] speculative. Investigators didn't have enough
[44:17] information to label the case as foul play, so it remains
[44:21] classified as an unexplained event.
[44:26] As of 2025, this John Doe found on the shores of Lake Arlington
[44:32] is still unidentified. However, forensic science is
[44:36] advancing rapidly, and there's hope that forensic genetic
[44:40] genealogy can finally crack the mystery of his identity.
[44:45] From there, the cops will theoretically be able to build
[44:47] out the last days, weeks, and months of his life and determine
[44:52] what actually happened to him. In July 1971, two boys walking
[45:00] near Route 99 in Woodstock, MD, found a woman clinging to life
[45:05] in a wooded field off a dirt Rd. She was unconscious, badly
[45:10] sunburned and had no identification on her
[45:12] whatsoever. Rescuers rushed her to a
[45:16] Baltimore hospital, where doctors performed emergency
[45:19] brain surgery in an attempt to save her life, but she never
[45:23] regained consciousness to tell anyone who she was.
[45:28] She perished about two months later on what would have been
[45:31] her 47th birthday, her name still unknown.
[45:36] The medical examiner determined that a violent blow to her
[45:38] abdomen had caused a fatal stroke, so her death was ruled a
[45:42] slaying. For more than 50 years, the
[45:48] mystery of the Woodstock Jane Doe remained completely
[45:51] unsolved. Police periodically revisited
[45:54] the case, but every effort to identify the woman fell short.
[45:59] Investigators even circulated sketches of her face in
[46:02] newspapers, but nobody recognized her.
[46:07] Finally, in 2024, Howard County investigators turned to Advanced
[46:12] Forensic Technology to crack the case and referred the case to
[46:16] Othrum. Othrum is a forensic genetic
[46:20] genealogy company that has been on an absolute tear in the last
[46:24] number of years helping solve cold cases.
[46:29] Genetic genealogy led to an elderly man in Ohio named
[46:32] Charles Sharkey, who turned out to be a very close relative of
[46:35] the mystery woman. In fact, further testing
[46:38] revealed Charles was her son. Armed with this discovery,
[46:43] detectives located another potential relative, Charles's
[46:46] older sister, Mildred Cantwell, living in Illinois.
[46:51] In September 2025, fifty four years after the woman's death,
[46:57] authorities announced that the Jane Doe had been identified as
[47:00] Sarah Belle Sharkey. She was a Pennsylvania native
[47:06] who had taken the last name Sharkey after marriage in the
[47:09] 1940s. It was an astonishing twist.
[47:12] The victim not only got her name back, but also had two children
[47:16] still alive to learn the truth. Sharkey was the 47 year old
[47:21] mother of two who had vanished from her children's lives in the
[47:24] mid 20th century, only to be found brutally assaulted in
[47:28] Maryland years later. Solving Sarah Sharkey's identity
[47:32] also brought about an unexpected family reunion, as children
[47:37] Charles and Mildred had been placed in an orphanage and
[47:39] adopted into different families, losing track of each other and
[47:44] of their mother entirely. The siblings had been separated
[47:48] since the early 1950s and hadn't seen one another since
[47:52] childhood. Since they were so young when
[47:56] they were split up, they only had vague memories of one
[47:59] another and they never knew what happened to their biological
[48:03] mother. In fact, both Charles and
[48:06] Mildred had spent significant portions of their life trying to
[48:09] piece together their own personal history.
[48:12] That all changed when, 70 years apart, the brother and sister
[48:16] were put back in touch by the cold case detectives.
[48:20] The two began speaking on the phone nearly every day and
[48:23] planned to meet in person for the first time in nearly 70
[48:26] years. They expressed relief at finally
[48:29] learning their mother's fate and an overwhelming sense of joy at
[48:33] finding each other again. Charles said he had believed he
[48:37] would never reconnect with his family, and Mildred said knowing
[48:40] the truth about her mother gave her long-awaited peace.
[48:46] But of course, this is a series on unsolved mysteries, and the
[48:50] obvious question remains here. The investigation has now been
[48:54] reopened into the slaying of Sarah Sharkey, and detectives
[48:57] are working to retrace her last known steps.
[49:02] They know she spent most of her life in Pennsylvania, which
[49:05] makes her presence in rural Howard County in Maryland
[49:08] perplexing. One theory is that she may have
[49:11] travelled to Maryland with someone she knew and that this
[49:15] person turned violent. The fact that her purse was
[49:19] missing hints at a possible robbery or an assailant's
[49:22] attempt to conceal her identity. Investigators have revealed that
[49:27] they believe she was left in that field on purpose, perhaps
[49:31] dumped there after an assault in a different location.
[49:36] No suspects have been publicly named yet, but knowing Sarah's
[49:40] identity gives police new avenues to explore.
[49:43] They are interviewing any remaining friends, acquaintances
[49:47] and relatives of Sarah to learn about her life in the late 1960s
[49:52] and early 1970s. Unfortunately, as yet, there's
[49:57] been no photograph released of Sarah to indicate what she
[50:00] looked like. However, a forensic drawing has
[50:04] been released, which the authorities hope will jog
[50:07] someone's memory. Anyway, if you think you
[50:12] recognize this woman, please reach out to the Howard County
[50:15] Cold Case Unit since they're looking to talk to anyone with
[50:18] any potential connections to Sharkey.
[50:25] In the mid 1980s, Japan was a nation at the apex of its
[50:29] economic power. It was a society defined by an
[50:32] almost futuristic blend of technological innovation, social
[50:36] order, and an unparalleled sense of public safety.
[50:41] At the heart of this modern landscape stood the humble
[50:44] vending machine, the G Dohan Baiki, ready to serve any
[50:48] stranger for the right price. And yeah, that's what I wrote
[50:53] while researching this segment while very sleep deprived at
[50:56] 3:00 AM. But I'm keeping it in, and
[50:59] you've all got to deal with it. More than just a convenience,
[51:05] these machines were a cultural touchstone.
[51:08] Numbering over 5 million, they dotted every city block and
[51:12] rural crossroads, offering everything from cold drinks and
[51:15] hot coffee to noodles and flowers.
[51:19] They were symbols of a high trust, automated, and profoundly
[51:22] safe society. They were unmanned, unvandalized
[51:26] beacons of convenience that millions of people relied on
[51:30] every single day without a second thought.
[51:34] This implicit trust was the bedrock of a simple daily
[51:37] ritual. But in 1985, an unseen predator
[51:41] would weaponize that trust, turning these symbols of
[51:45] convenience into instruments of a terrifying and indiscriminate
[51:48] evil. The story begins on a spring
[51:53] day, April 30th, 1985, in the city of Fukuyama in Hiroshima
[51:59] Prefecture. A man whose name has been lost
[52:02] to history approached A vending machine for a drink.
[52:07] Sitting on top of the machine was an unclaimed bottle of
[52:10] Oronamine CA, popular vitamin fortified caffeine laden energy
[52:15] drink. To him, this wasn't suspicious,
[52:17] but rather it was a stroke of luck.
[52:21] Otsuka Pharmaceutical, the company that produced the drink,
[52:25] was in the middle of a major buy one, get one free promotion to
[52:29] boost sales among a younger demographic.
[52:33] The appearance of an extra bottle would have seemed like a
[52:36] winning ticket, a small welcome gift from someone who wanted to
[52:40] improve the day of a complete stranger.
[52:45] And with that, the man took the bottle and drank it, expecting a
[52:50] boost of energy and likely feeling goodwill towards the
[52:53] person who left it. But what followed wasn't that
[52:56] boost of energy or even a swift demise, but a slow, inexorable
[53:02] descent into agony. He soon fell ill, but the poison
[53:06] inside him worked with a cruel patients.
[53:09] For an entire month, his body was systematically destroyed
[53:13] from the inside out. He finally succumbed on May
[53:16] 30th, a full 30 days after his fateful encounter with the free
[53:20] drink. The agent of his death was later
[53:23] identified as Paraquat dichloride, a potent
[53:27] agricultural herbicide. I'll get into the exact
[53:30] mechanism of this poison shortly, but for now, just
[53:34] imagine your lungs being taken over by endless scar tissue
[53:38] until you literally drown in your own fluids.
[53:41] At the time, no one knew that this horrifying isolated death
[53:46] was the opening act of Esprit that would create one of Japan's
[53:49] most disturbing unsolved mysteries.
[53:54] After the first incident in spring, an eerie silence fell
[53:58] across the nation. For four months, the incident in
[54:03] Fukuyama remained an isolated tragedy unconnected to any
[54:07] larger pattern. The plague returned in September
[54:11] 1985 and it spread with terrifying speed and randomness.
[54:17] On September 5th, a 44 year old executive named Takashi Sakai
[54:22] drank 2 poison vitamin drinks, losing his battle with the
[54:26] poison six weeks after. Less than a week after that, the
[54:30] attacks reached the capital and 52 year old Haru Otsu picked up
[54:35] a free bottle of Oronamin C Less than three days later, Otsu had
[54:41] perished from the contents of this free drink.
[54:46] Over the course of September, the disturbing incident spread
[54:50] across the entire nation and there was no discernible pattern
[54:53] to the attacks. They were men and women, young
[54:57] and old, from different professions and social classes.
[55:01] This total randomness shattered any illusion of safety in this
[55:04] high trust society. Anyone who used a vending
[55:08] machine was a potential target, and the lack of a clear motive
[55:12] made the crimes feel like an act of pure nihilistic violence.
[55:17] By November 1985, at least 13 people had perished and dozens
[55:22] more were left seriously ill, suffering lifelong damage.
[55:28] But to fully understand the profound cruelty of these
[55:31] attacks, one must understand the weapon.
[55:34] Paraquat is a commercial herbicide, A mundane chemical
[55:38] used by farmers to control weeds.
[55:41] In the 1980s in Japan, it was dangerously accessible to almost
[55:45] anyone. While purchasers were
[55:47] technically required to demonstrate an agricultural
[55:50] need, the substance could be bought without a formal
[55:53] prescription or identification. The requirement to demonstrate
[55:58] agricultural need was satisfied simply by giving your word that
[56:02] you needed it for pest control. You could simply say that you
[56:07] had a backyard garden that was being overrun with beetles, and
[56:10] next thing you knew, you had your paraquat.
[56:14] You didn't even need a backyard or a garden, and there didn't
[56:18] need to be any beetles. You just had to give your word.
[56:22] After all, in a high trust society where everyone assumes
[56:26] the best of their fellow citizen, it seemed inconceivable
[56:29] that someone would obtain paraquat to do what the
[56:32] perpetrator did. Notably, the ultimate cause of
[56:37] death is what makes paraquat poisoning uniquely horrific.
[56:42] As I alluded to earlier, it brings on a condition called
[56:45] pulmonary fibrosis inside the lungs.
[56:49] The chemical generates an oxygen reaction that causes
[56:53] catastrophic cellular damage, leading to the progressive and
[56:57] irreversible growth of fibrous scar tissue.
[57:00] Paraquat poisoning hijacks the fundamental breathing mechanism
[57:04] and turns it against your body. The soft, pliable tissue of the
[57:09] lungs hardens, making it impossible to expand and
[57:12] contract. Victims find it increasingly
[57:16] difficult to breathe, as if they are slowly being suffocated.
[57:20] In the end, they effectively drown in their own fluids, often
[57:25] fully conscious of their agonizing demise.
[57:29] Simply put, the person who launched this assault against
[57:31] society didn't just want to destroy lives.
[57:34] The perpetrator wanted to inflict maximum suffering doing
[57:38] it. They also wanted to be sure that
[57:41] the people who did survive the poisonous assault would be
[57:44] permanently scarred, literally for the rest of their lives.
[57:51] For the victims of the vending machine predator and for the
[57:54] doctors who tried to save them, the most terrible truth was
[57:58] their complete helplessness. There's no antidote for paraquat
[58:02] poisoning, and medical interventions are purely
[58:05] supportive and almost always futile.
[58:09] But with that said, let's get to the manhunt for the perpetrator
[58:13] of this disturbing crime. As the body count rose, a
[58:19] massive police investigation was launched, but it quickly became
[58:23] clear that they were hunting a phantom.
[58:25] The case was a profiler's nightmare, a crime that seemed
[58:29] perfectly designed to defy traditional investigative
[58:33] methods. The perpetrators randomness was
[58:36] their greatest defense. With no connection between the
[58:39] victims, police could not establish A motive, leaving them
[58:43] with no starting point. The perpetrator was also
[58:46] meticulous in their methods. They chose vending machines in
[58:52] low traffic areas, ensuring there were never any witnesses
[58:55] to their actions. The technology of the era also
[58:58] worked in their favor. Surveillance cameras were not
[59:02] yet a common feature of the urban landscape, so there was no
[59:05] video evidence to analyze. Most importantly, the
[59:09] perpetrator left nothing behind whatsoever.
[59:12] DNA analysis wasn't yet a tool in the forensic arsenal, but
[59:16] even if it had been, there was nothing to test.
[59:21] With the police investigation at a standstill, the responsibility
[59:25] for public safety shifted dramatically.
[59:28] Unable to catch this silent predator, authorities and
[59:32] corporations were forced to try and prevent the next attack.
[59:36] This led to an unprecedented public safety campaign that
[59:40] transformed the daily life of the nation.
[59:43] Warnings were posted on over 5 million vending machines, a
[59:47] massive logistical undertaking that brought the threat into the
[59:51] public's immediate view. These notices, issued jointly by
[59:56] police, vending machine operators and soft drink
[59:59] companies, urged the public to adopt A new defensive position.
[1:00:05] While at these formerly friendly machines, customers were warned
[1:00:10] to carefully inspect beverage caps for tampering, to check
[1:00:14] dispenser slots for any unusual items, and, most importantly, to
[1:00:18] throw away any drinks they found.
[1:00:23] In the absence of evidence, all that remained was speculation.
[1:00:27] Criminal psychologists note that poisoners, particularly those
[1:00:31] who attack anonymously, often fit a specific profile.
[1:00:35] They tend to be cunning, methodical and emotionally
[1:00:39] immature, driven by a deep seated sense of inadequacy for
[1:00:43] which they compensate with a desperate need for power and
[1:00:46] control. Poisoning is the ultimate remote
[1:00:49] control crime. It allows the perpetrator to
[1:00:52] feel God like and omnipotent without the mess of a direct
[1:00:56] confrontation. Further, the perpetrator's rage
[1:01:00] is often not directed at a specific individual, but is a
[1:01:04] nihilistic fury towards existence itself.
[1:01:10] At the time, Japanese experts offered theories that tried to
[1:01:13] place the crimes within a national context.
[1:01:16] A professor of criminal sociology in Tokyo suggested the
[1:01:20] attacks could be a twisted manifestation of the pressures
[1:01:23] of Japan's intense and work oriented society.
[1:01:27] He speculated that for an individual living under
[1:01:30] tremendous stress, attacking others indiscriminately could
[1:01:34] become a disturbed outlet for frustration.
[1:01:39] Meanwhile, A forensic psychologist who was helping the
[1:01:42] National Police Agency with the case proposed a more chilling
[1:01:45] motive at the time. He argued that the perpetrator
[1:01:48] was likely motivated by the adrenaline rush and the sense of
[1:01:52] superiority that came from imagining the suffering of their
[1:01:55] victims. In essence, the perpetrator
[1:01:58] enjoyed a secret power they held over the lives of complete
[1:02:01] strangers. Other theories would flourish in
[1:02:04] the years after the attacks, but I'll get to those in a quick
[1:02:08] moment. The attack stopped as suddenly
[1:02:13] as they had started in late November 1985.
[1:02:16] And with that, the Phantom vanished permanently.
[1:02:19] In 1986. In direct response to the
[1:02:22] crisis, the Japanese government took action.
[1:02:26] It severely restricted the sale of paraquat and mandated that
[1:02:29] the chemical be reformulated into a less concentrated, less
[1:02:33] toxic version, even when sold for legitimate usage.
[1:02:39] One theory surrounding the paraquat poisonings is that they
[1:02:42] were linked to yakuza extortion. The logic behind this suspicion
[1:02:47] rests on how the attacks coincided with Japan's booming
[1:02:50] beverage industry. During this period, vending
[1:02:54] machine operators and drink manufacturers were making
[1:02:57] enormous profits. Organized crime groups had long
[1:03:00] infiltrated legitimate industries through protection
[1:03:03] rackets, forcing businesses to pay for, quote UN quote, safety.
[1:03:08] In this light, the poisonings may have been a demonstration
[1:03:12] aimed at beverage companies that resisted such demands by
[1:03:17] contaminating products placed on vending machines.
[1:03:20] The culprit created widespread fear, tarnishing consumer trust
[1:03:25] and damaging corporate reputations.
[1:03:28] The randomness of the victims would have amplified the terror,
[1:03:32] ensuring maximum pressure on the companies rather than targeting
[1:03:36] specific individuals. However, no direct evidence ever
[1:03:42] tied the yakuza to the paraquat cases, and criminologists note
[1:03:46] that this doesn't fit the pattern of their crimes.
[1:03:49] While they're known to engage in corporate manipulation, they
[1:03:53] generally do so in a discreet way so as not to involve the
[1:03:57] authorities. The level of attention and heat
[1:04:01] that would have been brought from engaging in a mass
[1:04:03] poisoning event is unprecedented for the yakuza.
[1:04:07] Further, and perhaps most importantly, skeptics note that
[1:04:12] there was a total lack of demands and no ransom note was
[1:04:16] ever issued. This suggests the crimes may
[1:04:19] have instead been the work of a lone poisoner driven by nihilism
[1:04:24] rather than profit. However, perhaps the most
[1:04:28] disturbing theory related to this case has nothing whatsoever
[1:04:32] to do with a lone nihilist out for revenge against the world.
[1:04:37] There's the theory that the attacks may have been
[1:04:39] orchestrated by the North Korean state to inflict terror upon the
[1:04:43] Japanese populace. Now, those of you who are
[1:04:47] unfamiliar with this period in history may believe that this is
[1:04:50] a fringe conspiracy theory with no backing to it whatsoever.
[1:04:55] Well, that's where you're wrong, because during this time, North
[1:04:58] Korean agents were literally pulling up in submarines and
[1:05:01] kidnapping Japanese citizens, amongst other crimes.
[1:05:07] However, skeptics have a difficult time squaring the
[1:05:10] poison used with this theory. North Korea has access to much
[1:05:15] more powerful chemical agents that can guarantee virtually
[1:05:18] instant results. They claim that had this been a
[1:05:21] campaign by this state, actor Paraquat wouldn't have been
[1:05:24] used. That said, the counterpoint to
[1:05:28] this is that North Korean sleeper agents may have simply
[1:05:31] had to work with the poisons they could obtain locally.
[1:05:36] The case of the vending machine poisoner remains completely
[1:05:39] unsolved at this point. No potential perpetrator was
[1:05:43] ever identified, and the motive remains a subject of
[1:05:47] speculation. Notably, in 2010, Japan
[1:05:51] abolished the statute of limitations for severe crimes
[1:05:54] such as this. However, the abolition of the
[1:05:58] law isn't retroactive, so even if the poisoner was caught
[1:06:01] today, they wouldn't be able to be prosecuted criminally.
[1:06:08] In August 2000, a routine construction dig in Ocala, FL,
[1:06:13] turned into a crime scene when workers uncovered a human
[1:06:16] skeleton hidden inside a red sleeping bag.
[1:06:20] The remains were buried on SW 12th St. alongside discarded
[1:06:24] alcohol cans and bottles. It was a shocking find, a
[1:06:29] makeshift grave in the heart of Marion County, and it marked the
[1:06:32] beginning of a mystery that endures to this day.
[1:06:36] This anonymous victim, soon dubbed the Marion County John
[1:06:39] Doe, has remained unidentified for over 25 years.
[1:06:46] The Ocala Public Works crew that found the skeleton immediately
[1:06:49] alerted police. The fact that it was wrapped in
[1:06:53] a sleeping bag and deliberately covered with soil raised
[1:06:56] immediate suspicions of foul play.
[1:06:59] Forensic examination determined the deceased was a white male,
[1:07:03] around 45 to 60 years old and stood about 5 foot seven.
[1:07:08] He had no identification on him, so examiners had to rely on
[1:07:11] physical clues. Notably, he was missing most of
[1:07:15] his teeth and had a distinct gap between his upper front teeth.
[1:07:20] This unusual dental profile was publicized in case it matched
[1:07:23] someone's long lost relative or friend, but no hits have been
[1:07:27] made so far. The skeleton also showed
[1:07:32] evidence of past injuries, which the authorities believed could
[1:07:35] be used to identify the man. Several ribs and the nose had
[1:07:39] been broken at some point, and a foot bone had a healed fracture.
[1:07:44] Notably, these injuries were healed, and for the broken nose,
[1:07:48] it was likely that he had sought medical intervention.
[1:07:53] Notably, investigators didn't find any evidence of any
[1:07:57] significant acute trauma on his remains.
[1:08:00] However, given the clandestine burial, the Ocala Police
[1:08:04] Department treated the case as a likely slaying right from the
[1:08:07] start. Along with the bones, detectives
[1:08:11] collected the man's clothing and belongings for clues.
[1:08:14] The John Doe was found with multiple layers of clothes on
[1:08:17] his body, including black sweatpants, blue jeans, and a
[1:08:22] pair of green sweats. The odd combination of wearing
[1:08:27] several pairs of pants suggests he may have been living outdoors
[1:08:30] and carrying his entire wardrobe on his person.
[1:08:34] If you're a regular viewer of my channel, you'll probably already
[1:08:37] know this practice is often seen among homeless individuals who
[1:08:41] wear all their layers both for warmth and convenience.
[1:08:46] Notably, a generic Wilson wristwatch was still on his
[1:08:49] wrist, and the red sleeping bag likely served as his bedding.
[1:08:54] These personal items paint a picture of a man living rough,
[1:08:57] camping out in an empty lot, or perhaps living out in the woods.
[1:09:04] Based on the condition of the remains, experts estimated that
[1:09:07] the man died anywhere from 8 months to five years before he
[1:09:10] was found. In other words, he likely
[1:09:13] perished sometime in the mid 1990s through late 1999, a
[1:09:18] massive span of time that gave the perpetrator a huge head
[1:09:21] start. Whoever buried him in that
[1:09:24] unused plot managed to keep the secret until development work
[1:09:27] unearthed it by chance. Notably, DNA analysis, often the
[1:09:34] trump card in modern cold cases, has been problematic.
[1:09:37] Here, no usable DNA profile could be obtained from the
[1:09:41] remains due to severe degradation.
[1:09:45] Without a DNA profile, advanced forensic genealogy techniques
[1:09:49] can't be applied yet to hunt down relatives.
[1:09:52] Instead, investigators have relied on traditional detective
[1:09:56] work and public outreach. Over the years, forensic artists
[1:10:01] created composite images reconstructing the man's face,
[1:10:06] and these have been circulated through media and police
[1:10:08] channels. Notably, it's unclear to me if
[1:10:13] the John Doe's remains have been preserved and sent for modern
[1:10:16] forensic testing. This would allow the authorities
[1:10:20] to search the CODIS database at the very least.
[1:10:23] If successful, this would give the decedent his name back and
[1:10:27] would serve as a better starting point for actually solving the
[1:10:30] crime against him as well. Without solid leads, several
[1:10:37] theories have emerged about who this man was and how he met his
[1:10:41] end. The prevailing idea is that he
[1:10:44] was a homeless individual who fell victim to violence.
[1:10:49] Perhaps he was camping on that property and encountered
[1:10:51] trouble, such as a robbery or a altercation that turned into
[1:10:56] something way more serious. The empty liquor bottles at the
[1:11:00] scene suggest alcohol might have been involved, though given the
[1:11:04] passage of time, it's possible that these were simply
[1:11:07] incidental. That said, it's easy to imagine
[1:11:11] two people drinking together in that secluded spot and a fight
[1:11:15] breaking out, ending in tragedy. In such a scenario, the
[1:11:20] assailant may have hastily buried the body to conceal the
[1:11:24] crime. Another possibility is that the
[1:11:29] case doesn't actually involve any foul play at all.
[1:11:32] If the John Doe passed away of an overdose while with
[1:11:35] companions, those people might have panicked and buried him to
[1:11:39] avoid legal trouble. Alternatively, he may have
[1:11:43] simply perished due to natural causes and the people with him
[1:11:47] may have done their best to give him a burial with what they had
[1:11:51] on hand. This could explain the lack of
[1:11:54] overt trauma on the remains. More speculative ideas have also
[1:12:00] been floated by amateur sleuths. It does always remain possible
[1:12:05] that a serial predator targeted this John Doe.
[1:12:08] Unfortunately, people living on the outskirts of life, like the
[1:12:12] homeless, are often targeted by these predators simply because,
[1:12:16] in general, no one will notice that they've gone missing.
[1:12:20] If a homeless person vanishes, they're generally assumed to
[1:12:24] have moved on to greener pastures, even by their own
[1:12:27] friends from the streets. Further, even when they're
[1:12:30] reported missing, generally by other homeless people, the
[1:12:34] police generally don't sink any investigative efforts into the
[1:12:38] case. For now, the Marion County John
[1:12:43] Doe remains nameless, but he's not forgotten.
[1:12:47] The hope is that one day this man's identity will be restored
[1:12:51] and the full story of what happened to him will finally
[1:12:54] come to light.

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