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Season Six: Overboard Part Four: Vigilante Prolongism
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Part Four of our crime on cruise ships series.
http://www.cruisejunkie.com/Senate2012.pdf
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Conclusion of 'Overboard' Series
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:58
Speaker
So this is the last in the series, Overboard. And i had kind of left off like with some questions that I had.
True Crime News
00:01:06
Speaker
But I had a piece of true crime news I wanted to put in here. And I do that sometimes in the series because...
00:01:12
Speaker
you know Once you get past like two episodes, like you have like other thoughts on things, and and it's the right timing. This was like a double whammy kind of thing.
00:01:23
Speaker
It doesn't have anything to do with cruise ships, but it certainly would fall under the category of overboard it to some regard.
'To Catch a Predator' Discussion
00:01:31
Speaker
Do you remember the show To Catch a Predator? like Yes.
00:01:35
Speaker
And like the popularity of sort of the insanity of it all? Yeah, that that show, along with like another show called like What Would You Do, which is different but also the same, both of those shows were so like oh so cringe. I mean, I i would cringe, but like watch, but cringe.
00:01:55
Speaker
Well, one of the things that's happened since To Catch a Predator, it's come and gone in like a couple iterations. But at this point, it's kind of gone.
00:02:08
Speaker
And that was from the suicide, right? Yeah. The original version of that show cause multiple legal issues. There was ah there was a death.
00:02:21
Speaker
There were other supposedly linked deaths to that show. But the real problem was... the amount of overturning that occurred along the way made it sort of a ah not very feasible legal limbo surrounding what happened.
00:02:41
Speaker
But what has happened since then that's interesting is no shortage of wannabe influencers have popped up, quote, predator catching.
00:02:54
Speaker
This is such a bad idea. It is. it's a terrible idea. we thought We actually had like a whole episode on this, I think. It is such a bad idea for the vigilante crew to take off.
00:03:08
Speaker
Yeah, and we we've we have we've had actually multiple episodes where it's either come up in news or it's come up in context of something else or stood on its own as a story.
00:03:19
Speaker
This particular one, like i somehow this got in my newsfeed and I could not tell you exactly how, because the only thing I think is maybe it's linked to an area that I frequently was looking at for other things.
Oklahoma Predator Prevention Sting
00:03:32
Speaker
But the way it popped up for me was in early October. A writer named Joe Villisana. This is out of Texas, but it's going to be Waco area. So KWTX is ah News 10 down there.
00:03:50
Speaker
And that's probably how I get this Joe Villisana article. But here's what it says. A central Texas man snared in an undercover sting conducted by a group known as Oklahoma Predator Prevention, or OPP,
00:04:03
Speaker
was arrested and charged in McLennan County. That's according to a criminal complaint affidavit. It says Jimmy Lee Manziel, 46, of Axtell, was arrested on October the 6th, charged with online solicitation of a minor, which is a third-degree felony.
00:04:20
Speaker
That's a pretty serious charge. But then it says, on August 16th, a deputy with the McLennan County Sheriff's Office was dispatched to a residence in Extel, Texas.
00:04:33
Speaker
A person who called authorities identified themselves as a member of OPP and said they were with Manziel. According to the complaint, the OPP member told the deputy they pretended to be Zoe, an underage girl, online.
00:04:48
Speaker
Zoe began communicating with who is now the defendant, and he sent her a photo of his penis. The deputy at the scene asked Mansell if he was willing to tell a side of the story, and he agreed.
00:05:00
Speaker
According to the document, Mansell explained that he had sent a picture of his penis, but he claimed he did not know the girl was a minor. A forensic computer examiner with the Texas Department of Public Safety recovered chats between Zoe and Manziel from June 13th to August 16th.
00:05:16
Speaker
And on July 29th, Zoe told Manziel she was kind of young, quote, only 14 years old. Zoe told Manziel they could still talk online and Manziel allegedly replied,
00:05:27
Speaker
k On August the 8th, he sent the decoy selfie-styled penis picture. And on August 16th, the decoy sent Manziel her phone number, and Manziel proceeded to initiate and exchange text messages with the girl.
00:05:42
Speaker
That's all according to these documents that they've got over at News 10. So he doesn't have a bond at the time of this article, but according to its website, OPP has a mission to ensure the safety of our community's children through diligent collaboration with law enforcement agencies.
00:05:58
Speaker
It says that the OPP team operates on various apps posing as underage child decoys. We identify and engage with individuals who knowingly contact minors, initiate inappropriate conversations, and attempt to arrange meetings.
00:06:12
Speaker
Instead of meeting a child, these predators encounter the OPP team. We conduct live recorded conversations with these individuals and then hand over all collected evidence to law enforcement.
00:06:23
Speaker
Once the group has an appropriate amount of intelligence to ensure a conviction, it submits a comprehensive report to law enforcement.
Ethics of Vigilante Actions
00:06:30
Speaker
So basically, this is a private group that is making themselves cops.
00:06:41
Speaker
Undercover cops, no less. Yeah. You know, I think in our lifetime, I hope when I say this, this might be the closest we ever get to vigilante superheroes.
00:06:54
Speaker
Oh, I disapprove of all of this. Yeah, this is terrible. and so that's just the start of this piece of the story, by the not to mention, though, so I feel like this type of thing where you've got grown men pretending to be underage girls talking to other grown men. Yeah. This is ripe.
00:07:20
Speaker
for defense attorneys to go crazy over. Okay. Because there is no crime being committed here. Yeah. yeah could be Because because of how the law works. It's confusing.
00:07:34
Speaker
and while you can say, well, he thought it was a girl, right? An underage girl. Right. He thought it was, but it wasn't.
00:07:46
Speaker
And so, you know, you're not really making the case here. I don't see how any prosecution based on private citizens, ah catfishing potential predators...
00:08:03
Speaker
I just, I don't see how that's going to stick legally speaking. I somehow, i I think this, this either stems from me, like doing a lot of stuff done in Texas and that area. And that's how I get it in my, my feed, or it potentially could come from this period of time earlier in the year.
00:08:23
Speaker
a member of my family was sending me a lot of reels of the takedowns. Have you seen these where they like, ah They baited them into like a public meeting, and then they embarrassed them in a Walmart or a Target or something, and they posted on the internet after a lot of times physically assaulting them. Not just this group, but groups like it.
00:08:43
Speaker
Predator prevention groups. I have never seen any. I'm not surprised that that's happening, but I've never, I don't think I've ever seen anything. I wouldn't have been looking for it. so Right. Well, I was certainly not looking for it, but now that I've gotten into this, there's an article a little later, October 25th of 2025, same author, Joe Villasana and Isabel Quintanilla, but it pops up on WECT, which is News 6, right?
00:09:13
Speaker
It's another you know Waco article, but this one's addressing some of the concerns that I have. It says deputies arrest members of vigilante group after suspected sex predator injured during sting.
00:09:28
Speaker
It's the exact same one I was just telling you about with Mendel. Three apparent members of Oklahoma Predator Prevention, an online vigilante group that entrapped suspected sex predators, were arrested after their recent involvement in the case in Texas.
00:09:45
Speaker
Russell Goodwin, Ryan Koch, and George Liebsch are charged with felony unlawful restraint, exposing someone to substantial risk of serious bodily injury.
00:09:56
Speaker
Two of the individuals have extensive criminal his history spanning years. according to the McLennan County Sheriff's Office. The investigation started in August when the three Oklahoma Predator Prevention members traveled to McLennan County, Texas, to confront a man who allegedly engaged in an explicit online conversation with someone he believed was an underage girl.
00:10:20
Speaker
The girl was actually a decoy being used by Oklahoma Predator Prevention to entrap the suspected predator, which in this case, I think it's actually like one of the men talking. and then one of their wives posing in the pictures.
00:10:32
Speaker
But Goodwin's wife, Russell Goodwin's wife, said this is a situation they've seen go down many times before. We see where the conversation goes, and then we normally meet up with them and go over the chat logs with them, immediately call police, and hope for a conviction.
00:10:46
Speaker
So she's delusional. According to the McLennan County Sheriff's Office, Oklahoma Predator Prevention was founded by Goodwin, follows a trend that has become common among social media vigilante groups that use decoys and catchers,
00:10:59
Speaker
to carry out sting-like operations that are that target suspected sex predators. The confrontations, often referred to as catches, are often streamed live on social media with the intent of exposing and humiliating the alleged predator.
00:11:13
Speaker
The live streams also generate online content aimed at monetizing and building a large audience. In August of 2025, Oklahoma Watch, a nonpartisan investigative journalism group,
00:11:26
Speaker
published an article describing Oklahoma Predator Prevention, or OPP, as a vigilante group. While OPP claims to protect children, critics say OPP's aggressive tactics, including targeting disabled individuals, jeopardizing criminal cases, will often lead to false confessions and evidentiary issues without legal accountability.
00:11:48
Speaker
This is according to a sheriff's office that is published in the summary of the Oklahoma Watch report. The case involving Oklahoma predator prevention and the Texas man resulted in an investigation that did confirm the target sent sexually explicit photos to the decoy.
00:12:03
Speaker
During the investigation, deputies reviewed video of the confrontation between the sting suspect and the three OPP members. The video revealed a coordinated effort by the three Oklahoma predator prevention members to control and restrict the man's movements, including directing him where to stand, corralling him into a secluded area, all while using aggressive and profaned language.
00:12:25
Speaker
During the confrontation, the man lost consciousness, collapsed, and hit his head. It was at this point that OPP members decided to notify law enforcement. Russell Goodwin says it's still very confusing and claimed that he stood with the other two suspects, quote, a decent space away.
00:12:41
Speaker
The McLennan County Sheriff's Office said it remains fully committed to protecting children, so but also wants to emphasize the importance of public safety and lawful conduct. The Sheriff's Office discouraged the public from engaging in vigilante activities Instead, the agency urge individuals to report suspected criminal behavior to law enforcement immediately.
00:13:00
Speaker
Confronting suspected predators without proper chain training or proper law enforcement support is extremely dangerous and can result in unintended harm, tainted evidence, and interference with criminal investigations.
00:13:12
Speaker
The OPP members were arrested in Oklahoma and are being extradited to McLennan County. Okay. All I can think... is every time you say OPP.
00:13:23
Speaker
The Naughty My Nature song? Yes, yes. Yeah, well, I have to say, I'm glad they pointed out that these are just felons running around being felons and making other people felons.
00:13:36
Speaker
Well, and so I promise you, if there was not social media for clicks and likes and some sort of monetization or infamy, like this would not be happening.
00:13:49
Speaker
ah Yeah. They wouldn't just be like quietly doing it. Right. Well, no, they would not. And to me, the fact that, again, he sent a picture to ah decoy who is probably another middle-aged man.
00:14:09
Speaker
Or woman. I mean, it's a middle-aged person who's engaging with them. and get And see, that's the thing, right? They're engaging. Correct. And so is it really? i mean, i feel like there's a lot of things being overlooked here, especially when they have an end game that they're aiming for. Right.
00:14:30
Speaker
Yes. yes I could probably convince anybody. that they really wanted somebody that I'm pretending to be on the computer, right? If that if my end game was I want reel this person out into public and humiliate them, that's what I'm going to be aiming to do. It doesn't give any sort of...
00:14:53
Speaker
display of what the person's actually like because baiter will be you know trying to get that end result and so given a whole different set of circumstances where they're not baiting them trying to get them out in public like they could act a completely different way you have no idea right and but you're setting them up to e to fail essentially by you know doing the thing you're trying to get them to do and that's just wrong i'm not really sure like why anybody would thinks like oh that's a good idea i do think it's ah a hundred percent likes and clicks and the notoriety or the infamy that comes along with like the idea that they're doing this type of thing
00:15:48
Speaker
It's not coming from like an actual place of what should be happening. Right. They're committing crimes while accusing other people of committing crimes and saying their crimes are worse.
00:16:03
Speaker
It's my favorite thing that happens. I just love it when that happens. And you, you wonder like, okay, so they are restraining again. You have to go back to the root of the thing here because they're like, Oh, you like underage girls.
00:16:20
Speaker
But like, I mean, is that really what happened? Cause like there were, two middle-aged men communicating. And so it's like this whole thing. What if they were like, well, I knew you, I actually have a thing for middle-aged men who pretend to be underage girls.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's the ultimate defense. Exactly. And, and, you know, I could tell that you weren't really an underage kid and that you were an adult pretending to be an underage kid. And I think that's hot. Right. Yeah. And so it's, it's like this whole thing, because like, that's never going to turn out the way that, you know, you think it should.
00:16:58
Speaker
And unless again, unless they could do it completely under the radar, No, do not do that stuff. Right. So i've I've been looking at these groups since last year, like one up in ah Shasta County, they filed charges against a group called dads against predators, which is another one of these groups.
00:17:20
Speaker
We have, uh, Albany, New York, ah they the police there actually ended up having like almost a riot with a local vigilante group, even though they arrest someone accused of child sex crimes in the middle of it.
00:17:36
Speaker
There's another group in July up in Philadelphia. They get arrested after they provide information for an arrest in Bucks County. And I just want to say that like it's kind of the ultimate niche in a way, because our country, by and large, finds it very difficult to defend any actions by someone accused of harming children.
00:18:02
Speaker
And to a degree, we should. These guys haven't harmed children. right Right. Well, so the idea is if they would do it in this situation and a real child presented themselves, then they would do it there too. So that part makes it very difficult to like say anything bad about the vigilante groups until they get out of control.
00:18:30
Speaker
Well, I was going to say, so again, you've got two different goals, right? A kid talking to some rando on the internet is going to act a completely different way than a person who's pretending to be a kid who like has this endgame planned.
00:18:49
Speaker
Right. So it's two different things, right? And as far as we know, like we like to think like, oh they would go after any underage person they were talking to. But we have no idea if that's the case or not because this was all planned.
00:19:05
Speaker
Right, and how much of this is coercion where they normally are they're just lonely people who are talking because someone's talking back. Exactly, and see, I feel like there it's much higher percentage than you might initially think because people are lonely.
00:19:24
Speaker
yeah And engagement, to the extent that I imagine these ah vigilante groups are going to, like It's probably very flattering. Right. And the person feels special.
00:19:40
Speaker
and you just, it's a bigger play than like, oh, you're just a perv, right? Like, it's such a bigger thing that, and I'm not, I'm not saying like anything That would make hurting a child okay at all.
00:19:56
Speaker
One thing I have wondered, which I realize how this would make it even more niche because like the timing. But one thing i I wouldn't probably feel the same way about is let's say, for example,
00:20:11
Speaker
like something happened to like my child and I went to the police and they didn't do anything about it. And then like, you know, I decided I was going to be a vigilante and go get the person. Right. And make the cops do something. See, that's different because that's not like catfishing. That would be like something happened personally. Right.
00:20:36
Speaker
And then the law didn't play out like it was supposed to, but That's one thing that I could actually see kind of the point. I still don't think it's a great idea.
00:20:48
Speaker
But, like, these people, like, literally are are trying to reel in people to get them in trouble, to humiliate them and get them in trouble.
00:20:58
Speaker
Right. It's insane.
Connection to 'Overboard' Theme
00:21:01
Speaker
It is. And so what does this have to do with overboard? Well, one of the things I noticed when I got into this disappearance of Lynn Bradley, which is where this all starts, is her case is pretty simple.
00:21:20
Speaker
And the thing that's kept it alive has largely been like vigilante investigators and then the online community, which like I was checking up to see what the most recent stuff was on her case and kind of going through the subreddits. And there's multiple subreddits dedicated to finding Amy Lynn Bradley, who fell off a boat a very long time ago.
00:21:49
Speaker
and unfortunately drown And unfortunately drowned. drowned. But it has become ah thing. So I encourage people to look at this website, cruisejunkie.com,
00:22:05
Speaker
ah particularly the events portion, which I think you shared with me recently. You shared something from there as well. It was like a chart. Yeah. the the um There's an amazing amount of weird things that have happened on on cruise ships.
00:22:19
Speaker
But there was a mystery or two I wanted to talk about, and I pulled them from this website, jhmondcriff.com, who is a mystery and suspense writer. But they had one that I just want to walk through the details on that. And then I had a question sort of at the end of it that's more general, and you and I are going to talk about that.
00:22:44
Speaker
They put up this story called Unsolved Mysteries, Whatever Happened to Marion Carver? Have you ever heard of her story? Only from how we're covering it now. Okay. So there's this old show. It's a documentary show called Cruise Ship Killers.
00:22:59
Speaker
And the J.H. Moncrief, J-H-M-O-N-C-R-I-E-F-F.com, the person writing here says, I was fortunate enough to be the writer expert for a true crime documentary show called Cruise Ship Killers.
00:23:15
Speaker
And he says, this show tells the stories of 26 people who vanished, died mysteriously, were the victims of other crimes while on board a cruise. And he says, some names and other identifying details have been changed on the show for legal reasons.
00:23:29
Speaker
But he says, this is the story that haunted me the most. And because it's like the spooky season, I thought this is a good one to talk about. but it's a mystery on ah on a cruise ship, so to speak.
00:23:42
Speaker
It says, in august two thousand and four a forty year old redhaired poet and investment banker named marian carver boarded the mercury one of royal caribbeans celebrity cruise show she embarked upon a seven-day cruise from seattle washington to alaska Her steward, Dominique Montero, found her to be personable, relaxed, and looking forward to the cruise.
00:24:03
Speaker
She told him she planned to go upstairs later, but she did not want to visit the dining room. When she mentioned the sandwich the following night, he suggested ordering room service. He brought her two sandwiches at her request.
00:24:15
Speaker
And that's the last time anybody ever sees Marion Carver alive. Now, according to the vanishing part of this little blog post, when Domingo Montero checks on Marion Carver's cabin the following morning, her bed's not been slept
Marion Carver's Disappearance
00:24:29
Speaker
in.
00:24:29
Speaker
There's a tip and a manila envelope with still unknown contents that's been left behind. All of her belongings are are there, including the only pair of shoes she brought with her, apparently. He reports her missing right away, continue continues to report her missing for the remaining five days of the cruise.
00:24:46
Speaker
And his supervisor finally tells him to do his job and forget about it. So the cruise ends and Domingo again raises concerns with his supervisor that he's not seen Marion Carver. And they tell him to box up Marion's personal belongings, bring them into the office.
00:25:02
Speaker
No one secures the cabin. No one collects evidence. The supervisor puts her belongings in like his own locker, except for clothing. The clothing is donated to a charity.
00:25:13
Speaker
No one files a police report. No one contacts her family. The Royal Caribbean... Now, they Royal Caribbean contacts the FBI, but not until Marion Carver had been missing for five weeks.
00:25:26
Speaker
Meanwhile, Ms. Carver's 13-year-old daughter, who'd been living with her dad, she couldn't figure out how to reach her mom, so she contacts... Marion Carver's dad or grandpa, Kendall Carver, he reports the daughter missing through Cambridge, Massachusetts police when he could not reach her.
00:25:46
Speaker
They start investigating her financial records and they discover the credit card charges for the round trip cruise. None of her family members, none of her friends had any idea she'd gone on a cruise.
00:25:58
Speaker
But according to them, it was not all that unusual. She's single, she's independent, she'd been known to take other trips when she wanted to, quote, clear her head. She doesn't let everybody know where she's going, how long she's going to be gone.
00:26:11
Speaker
So when Kendall Carver contacts Royal Caribbean to talk about his daughter having been on the shift, it takes them three days for them to get back to him about her being on this boat. By this point, she's been missing for 26 days.
00:26:25
Speaker
A risk management manager for the cruise line tells him that no alarm had been raised after her disappearance. It is, quote, normal for people to leave their belongings behind and, quote, normal for them to suddenly change their rooms without notice.
00:26:39
Speaker
And according to Kendall Carver, that's when the real living hell was about to begin. In his own words from various reports, he's a grieving father and he's met with multiple obstacles and roadblocks whenever he's trying to get answers about what's happened to his kid.
00:26:55
Speaker
He's told that the ship's surveillance cameras only keep the footage for three days, and then they basically erase and start over. The cruise line maintained they had no reports about his daughter during the cruise.
00:27:07
Speaker
They refused to reveal to him the name of Domingo, the person who was her steward. So he finally hires a private investigation firm. And...
00:27:18
Speaker
This ends up resulting in more questions than answers. So Royal Caribbean lets the investigator onto the ship, but he's not allowed to talk to anyone, including the ship's security officer. He reports that it's a short walk from Marion Carver's room to an observation deck that's about 100 feet above the waterline.
00:27:37
Speaker
And there she could have easily been pushed or have jumped from this deck. but He hires Massachusetts lawyers to start digging into this case. And he ends up hiring Florida lawyers to dig into this case, which is where the cruise line is based out of.
00:27:51
Speaker
Multiple cruise line employees are contacted, and this does result in January of 2005, two of these employees give telephone de depositions.
00:28:02
Speaker
So he figures out that Domingo did care about his daughter, and he gets more distressed when he finds out that Domingo's supervisor brushes off his Domingo trying to report this woman missing.
00:28:15
Speaker
The supervisor dismissing these concerns gets fired and they're kind of sheltered from the FBI. So the FBI doesn't talk to the supervisor. According to this author, he's never been named or located.
00:28:29
Speaker
and there were reports that the supervisor had just found work on a different shift. So the manila envelope... with the money and whatever else is in there, that disappears along with this cruise line supervisor.
00:28:45
Speaker
So Kendall Carver files a lawsuit against Royal Caribbean. That case goes to trial in August 2005, which he finally gets a copy of the security report. And he felt like that indicated a cover-up.
00:28:58
Speaker
He also learned that he'd been lied to about the surveillance footage where they said they were only keeping it for three days. It actually would have still been there because they keep it for over 30 days. And there should have been footage from the time that she disappeared at that 26-day mark when he is trying to ah get Royal Caribbean to pay attention.
00:29:17
Speaker
So during this trial, the cruise line releases official statements to the media. They claim that Marion Carver had severe emotional problems. She had attempted suicide before, and they write it off to her having committed suicide on their boat.
00:29:33
Speaker
So this author and parenthetical expression leaves a note here. Suicide is often the excuse when a passenger goes missing. So Kendall Carver, he wins the lawsuit.
00:29:44
Speaker
It's hollow victory. All told, he'd already spent $75,000 on investigators and lawyers. He still has no idea what's happened to Marion Carver, but he does believe she's dead.
00:29:55
Speaker
He's going to pass away in December 2019 without ever having found out what happened to her. But he was one of the founding members of the International Cruise Victims that i mentioned in the last episode that I wanted to swing back around to.
00:30:09
Speaker
and The author here leaves a couple of notes. It just says more weirdness. It says, Marion had booked passage on the cruise only two days before it sailed. She bought two handbags, no suitcases on board.
00:30:20
Speaker
She had one pair of shoes, one dress, both of which were left in her room when she vanished. If she walked to the observation deck to commit suicide, she did it in her underwear. Marion did not use the cruise ship's currency card during the two days she was on board, which is like a debit card that you could use, but it only works there on the boat.
00:30:39
Speaker
ah There was no record of her ever having left the ship. And it says that there was a former crew member who contacted Kendall Carver and tells him that Marion had been having a relationship with another unidentified crew member.
00:30:52
Speaker
So they close out with, unfortunately, when Marianne's marriage ended in divorce in 2000, she lost custody of her daughter. She sank into a deep depression. She threatened suicide.
00:31:03
Speaker
There's no evidence she even attempted suicide in the past, but this history gave Royal Caribbean the ammunition it needed. However, her steward insisted she did not seem upset, out of sorts, sad, or angry. If she had planned on committing suicide, why the round-trip ticket?
00:31:16
Speaker
If the manila envelope contained a suicide note, why didn't the cruise line release it, since it would have proven their theory? One thing many tourists don't realize is that American cruise ships sail under foreign flags, which is something you have pointed out many times in the past, that allows them to circumvent U.S. laws and taxes.
00:31:34
Speaker
When a crime is committed on a cruise ship, it is rarely investigated promptly or properly, and it's rarely reported promptly. An average of 10 Americans disappear from cruise ships every year, which is slightly different than the numbers we've been throwing around. i don't think that 10 disappear. Well, going overboard, per se. That's a lot of people. Yeah, and they sort of just close this out with a rest in peace to Kendall Carver.
00:32:03
Speaker
that That story is terrible. i do think it's another one where... There's probably an explanation that's falling overboard, jumping overboard, something to a degree.
00:32:16
Speaker
Well, to the extent that I was trying to figure out, like, how long was she accounted for on the cruise? Into the third day.
00:32:28
Speaker
And then how long was the cruise? Seven-day cruise. Okay. And so the fact that she left a generous tip on day three... I think that's correct. Yeah.
00:32:41
Speaker
And, you know, I feel like the manila envelope probably had all the answers in it. Every single thing about this leads up to ah suicide.
00:32:53
Speaker
Right. Right. And the fact that she left a generous tip, because typically when you're on a trip and you stay in a room, I've never been on a cruise before, but like you stay in your room ah anywhere, you have like one or maybe like a couple shifts of people that attend to you.
00:33:12
Speaker
And at the end, you leave them a tip. And the fact that she left a tip in the middle of the cruise tells me she knew she wasn't coming back, but she still wanted to leave her steward a tip.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah. And the manila envelope, I don't know that it had a suicide note in it. It's probably stuff to leave for her daughter.
00:33:39
Speaker
Well, it could have had like her last wishes, her last her last will and testament. like Who knows what it is? But quite frankly, I think she would be genuinely perplexed that anybody thought anything but like suicide was what happened to her.
00:34:01
Speaker
Yeah. i yeah The cruise ship
00:34:07
Speaker
they say, well, we just knew immediately she committed suicide, right? Okay, well, like, you still didn't report it. Right.
00:34:18
Speaker
And that's relevant, right? That's more than likely that's why her father won the lawsuit because it sounds like they just completely dismissed the fact that she was there and then she wasn't. Yeah, it also seems like Royal Caribbean only contacts the FBI because, like,
00:34:35
Speaker
kinddall Carver doesn't seem like he's going to be giving up on it. Well, they should have notified somebody. They should have, something should have occurred not five weeks later.
00:34:47
Speaker
there There should be some sort of, just as a kind of ludicrous example, if you were on a plane and your name's on the manifest And you don't arrive.
00:35:02
Speaker
I feel like they should notify like everybody, right? Yeah. Okay. Same thing here. You have like every right to go missing or whatever, but there are certain situations where like you're in a confined space and it doesn't make sense that like without some, you know, like a helicopter picking you up or something, like something really obvious, like it doesn't make sense that you're no longer there.
00:35:31
Speaker
yeah It requires explanation, i think. But in this case, i think that now it does sound like by the time there was investigation starting to be brewing that, you know, i heard somebody say,
00:35:52
Speaker
she was having a relationship with another unnamed crew member. And so I think that um I can see where everything's always more interesting looking back, right? Oh yeah. The hindsight. Yeah.
00:36:07
Speaker
It always is more interesting. It gets, i guess it gets hyped up cause it is like they're on this cruise vacation and I guess some cruises really can be pretty magical.
00:36:18
Speaker
yeah But I have no idea. I've never been on a cruise. But it you have to think to yourself, like, is this banker poet, like, really the most exciting thing that ever happens in her life is her death?
00:36:34
Speaker
And it is then in turn covered up on the cruise ship. However, there was really no need to cover it up to begin with because, like, hardly anybody noticed To begin with. Right.
00:36:48
Speaker
You see where like the cover up starts to immediately fall apart. They didn't have to cover up anything. Nobody was even like putting the flag out. Right. And that's the part that I think people miss. And I understand her dad's frustrations here. Like not knowing what happened to your kid and having the body to identify and to grieve and to memorialize is its own level of shock.
00:37:16
Speaker
I just like I find it difficult. Right. to look at her life and story and go, okay, well, then we have to couple that with someone having murdered her on a cruise ship, which we've already determined is rare.
00:37:35
Speaker
And like, could it happen? Maybe. What are the chances though? Like she didn't even want to leave her room. She didn't want to go to the dining hall. Like where did she run into her killer at?
00:37:48
Speaker
Right. Right. and that's where that's where these stories become strange. They don't make sense. Right? they just It's just a tale. it's It's a way more interesting story to say, like, ooh, ah, look what happened.
00:38:04
Speaker
And honestly, this is a very sad, personal, terrible tragedy. Right? It i would And, you know, if something came to light that...
00:38:16
Speaker
showed that I was wrong, i would be the first to say i was wrong. But, I mean, really, it it seems highly unlikely that this is not exactly what occurred.
00:38:29
Speaker
Based on the facts as they're presented, at least here. And, you know, I said that I only knew about her because of us talking about it, or getting ready to talk about it now, but I was aware of her um before this time, because we looked at her for, like, keys, even.
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah, we we've ruled her out as a probable suicide when we were looking at... one of the only stories where i think i say this and then you'll probably come up with some examples and i'm wrong but she stands for one thing she had red hair and she stands out in my mind because of that she was young and she was she was attractive and she had had hard times but she had read here but she's also like she was going on a cruise by herself Right. Right.
00:39:18
Speaker
Which is like, okay, I guess. And, but, but it stands out in my mind. And then when they described like how she packed and then they said, if she had walked out, she would have had to have walked out in her underwear. Right.
00:39:35
Speaker
How does anybody know what she had? are like, you know, maybe there was a robe in a room. And that's what she went over around Well, sure. It's all kind of stuff.
00:39:48
Speaker
I'm just saying, though, like, how does anybody know that she really only had the one dress? Oh, they they don't. They're just assuming based on, like, like you you would have to have like, another unusual fact that, like, maybe she carried a spare dress or shorts or something in one of her handbags. Because she clearly had to.
00:40:04
Speaker
Maybe her underwear looked just like a bikini, but I mean, i get they were, it was an Alaskan cruise. Right. i And I don't know. ah Let's see. It was in August. So yeah, it probably gets hot up there.
00:40:19
Speaker
i i I wasn't looking at it from any kind of weather perspective. I was just trying to put together. They said she had to walk out in her underwear. My point being that if it was that type of thing, it may not have looked that odd for her to be in her underwear if it looked like a swimsuit.
00:40:35
Speaker
Right. No, i don't yeah I don't dispute what you're saying. I ultimately think she, whatever she was wearing, I think she probably went over the side, whether it's on purpose or not. But... the circumstances of her having left tend to make me think she took her own life. And like, maybe that's a trap. Maybe I'm falling into like the the wrong pattern of thinking. And she is some kind of unusual example where all that's true. And she was able to, in that situation, become the victim of some type of predator who goes completely unnoticed on this cruise ship.
00:41:07
Speaker
I would bet that she walked away from her life and started over before I would bet that she had been murdered. Yeah, I could see that too. like and she could even have wanted it all to just look like that. And really, she just hid out somewhere else until the – because nobody's looking for her.
00:41:26
Speaker
She hides out somewhere else on the boat and then leaves. Exactly. And I don't – I actually have absolutely no information about, like, tracking on a cruise ship, especially not in 04. Yeah.
Cruise Ship Security Issues
00:41:40
Speaker
But it, you know, there's no record that she left, which means, you know, she didn't leave or she left the unconventional way of over the rail.
00:41:51
Speaker
right Right. somebody put her in something and took her off. That's the other thing. There, you know, there can be some wild stories about how these bodies get removed.
00:42:05
Speaker
Right. Yeah. But I have to say, I think it is very unlikely that the average person is going to have the bag it would take to take another average person and put them in it and transport them off.
00:42:27
Speaker
It would be a lot of work to come on a cruise ship find a person, take them with you. you know i'm not saying it never happens or never has happened. i just think people... think it's never happened.
00:42:39
Speaker
I don't know for sure. That's just my opinion. i think it's possibly never happened. I had read this like one weird...
00:42:52
Speaker
online link and it created more questions for me. I'm going to use it here. I'm going to tell you in advance, this is a weird blog that I pulled this from. ah It apparently comes from lipcon.com, which is Lipcon, Margulies, and Winkleman, PA, which would indicate they're practicing attorneys.
00:43:10
Speaker
They have a blog that is interesting. um I'm going to read a little piece of it then we're going to move on from Marion Carver's case because I have a couple more things I want to talk about. and One of the notes on here was strange.
00:43:26
Speaker
It's, ah
00:43:29
Speaker
it starts off, it's it just says it's written by, you know, the the people who work here. Essentially, it's set the written by L, M, and W, which is the name of the partners for this firm or whatever.
00:43:40
Speaker
It says cruise ship disappearances happen more often than anyone can imagine, much more often than reported. Between the over-serving of alcohol, assault incidents on the high seas, and various other accidents that take place aboard cruise ships, statistics show that over 30 passengers have mysteriously disappeared from vessels in the past four years alone.
00:43:58
Speaker
and this blog is dated, is this blog is undated, um but it looks like it's mid-2000s somewhere. It says attention was given to the subject of Cruz's disappearances recently after the remains of a woman who vanished from a vessel several years ago were uncovered.
00:44:15
Speaker
It says police suspect the bones of a deceased victim that were recently found on Mary Island in Canada were those of Marion Carver. Age 40 at the time of her disappearance, Carver disappeared from the sub celebrity cruise ship ah Mercury while it was on an Alaskan itinerary in August 2004.
00:44:33
Speaker
Police have contacted the alleged victim's father, which was, he died in 2019, which is what makes me think. This is an older blog. In Phoenix, Arizona, hoping that DNA tests would give them answers as to whether those are in fact the remains of Marion Carver.
00:44:48
Speaker
and what could have possibly happened to her. Marion, the mother of one child, left the cruise ship without notifying any left on the cruise ship without notifying any of her family members. The second day of the itinerary, the cabin attendant noticed that no one used the bed and reported the matter to her boss, who promised to look into the incident, incident but told the attendant to just forget it and do your job.
00:45:09
Speaker
Now, that's different than Domingo, but I'm qualifying that this is probably not a great source. It says, doing as she was told, the attendant continued to do her job, placing customary chocolates on the pillow of the untouched bed night after night. Marion was never seen again.
00:45:26
Speaker
After the vessel docked in Vancouver, Marion's possessions were packed away. no one even notified the police or her family she's missing. It wasn't until Marion's father reported her missing that police learned of the cruise ship's disappearance.
00:45:41
Speaker
To this day Kendall Carver has spent thousands of dollars trying to investigate what happened to his daughter on this ship. Carver has been appalled by the delay in reporting the disappearance of his daughter. He had this to say. It took the cruise company three days to conclude that Marion had been on the cruise. By then, 26 days had passed since her disappearance.
00:45:59
Speaker
They confirmed she hadn't slept in her cabin after the first night, but hinted this was not unusual. She could' have spent the night in another cabin or gone offshore in Vancouver without having to document it. The cruise company claimed that films from the surveillance camera was erased after 12 days, which was a flat-out lie.
00:46:14
Speaker
The videos were erased after 30 days. Unfortunately, before that was known, the videos were deleted and it was too late to review them. Marion's case is a prime example of the disturbing reality surrounding cruise ship vacations. There is no police on board, and it's highly unlikely a disappearance case will be resolved quickly. And they go on to talk about between 2003 and 2006, 24 cruise passengers disappeared, and that did not include suicides and accidents caused by intoxication.
00:46:43
Speaker
Since that time, 10 more passengers and two crew members have been reported missing, leading to U.S. Congress to investigate cruise ship security and find out the industry is, in fact, guilty of suppressing or underreporting disappearances.
00:46:56
Speaker
And they say some things here that you've said in different ways. It says a cruise ship is a small town. and that's according to Congressman Christopher Shays. Traveling on a cruise can be the perfect way to commit the perfect crime.
00:47:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. people Okay, yes, that's true. you could That could be. i just don't think it's the goal of, you know, even a percentage of people who go on cruises to, like, go on the cruise to do the crime. It's actually, you know, it could be the perfect crime, but more than likely, it's going to be a very obvious crime that you're going to get caught for immediately. Right.
00:47:42
Speaker
Yeah, i I tend to agree with you. In this case, I had so many questions that I really wanted to find a case that sort of looked typical of a person disappearing that like we didn't understand. So I found that.
00:47:57
Speaker
And then I had the question of, like if someone was killed on a cruise ship, what would happen? And I wanted to bring up like kind of two more stories in this as to wrap up to Overboard. i truly feel like most of...
00:48:12
Speaker
the mystery in these cruise ship cases, like the ones that remain, is fueled by the true crime community wanting clicks and likes, just like these vigilante groups we started out talking about, and less by the actual mystery itself.
True Crime Community's Role
00:48:26
Speaker
i think I do think that the mystery, though, i think people want it to be more mysterious. I agree with you. Like, that's certainly going to, like, the the unknown certainly drives the concept of, like, getting more attention on a case.
00:48:46
Speaker
And the more interesting and weird and mysterious you make it, the more clicks and likes you get. Sure. And see, for me, okay, so... When certain things come up, I actually feel like, I mean, not necessarily with this case, but I actually feel kind of bad because I feel like she left her like estate papers there. ah you think it was like a will? I think she let i think she tipped the steward.
00:49:21
Speaker
And again, you don't, I mean, what are they going to use money for while they're at work, right? Well, if you tip them, they remember you, but they also will do you a favor if you've left them something that needs to be delivered somewhere.
00:49:34
Speaker
Well, that's true, but it did that didn't happen, Right. right And so she there's a manila envelope whose contents were unknown and there was a generous tip.
00:49:47
Speaker
And this is like right at the beginning or the middle of the cruise, right? And so ah generous tip was put out. So my point in saying that is it wasn't unexpected that she disappeared because if she had been murdered, how would she have known to put the tip out?
00:50:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:08
Speaker
Right. Okay. And so the fact that she had already, she said, you know, I'm going to complete my mission here. I'm going to put this manila envelope out with all the information that needs to be given back to my next of kin because they will be so sure that I committed suicide because what else could have possibly happened to me? Right. Right.
00:50:35
Speaker
And then she left the tip, which I imagine she probably, I mean, i don't see why she wouldn't have left all the cash she had to the person. Right. Right. Which is another thing. a generous Was it a generous tip or was it like literally all the cash she had?
00:50:50
Speaker
um That could be quite a bit. Right. Yeah. And why wouldn't you, um it was like the nice, the last person who was nice to her. Right. Yeah. And I get where the steward kind of,
00:51:04
Speaker
said, oh, she didn't seem suicidal. Well, the suicidal ideation didn't develop or, like, go away during that short period of time. This was probably very well thought out on her part. And except for her saying, like...
00:51:21
Speaker
ah you know, except for the earlier ah brush with like, oh, she was suicidal when she lost custody of her daughter after her divorce, she probably never said a word about killing herself.
00:51:34
Speaker
Right. Again, but she planned all this out and it seems to me like she probably went out the way she planned to. And it's every single thing about this sounds like it's possible you know she Well, I would say she didn't even want everybody to know what happened to her.
00:51:56
Speaker
But at the same time, if we found if they had the manila envelope, I think, I mean, what are you going to leave behind on ah in a manila envelope?
00:52:08
Speaker
Except like, oh, okay, so this is who this needs to go to. this is what has happened, right? Yeah. and Or, you know, maybe she felt like, I guess it would have been better to go ahead and address it and ask the steward who, like, you just left the generous tip for to please mail it because, like, nobody's going to notice yeah that she's missing for 25 days until her daughter can't get a hold of her.
00:52:37
Speaker
Which is just bizarre to me. i i feel like there was a severe problem with that. But I do want to point out that the article that you just read about um ah from the professional association lawyers.
00:52:52
Speaker
Yeah. They are talking about thinking that Mary and Kara's body had been found, and that kind of gets left hanging in the air.
00:53:02
Speaker
ah Nobody ever comes back and says it wasn't her. um They were seeking to collect a DNA sample from her father. Right. And this was in 2013, so he would have still been alive at that point in time.
00:53:17
Speaker
And sometimes the answer is in the silence. It is. going to throw one more piece about that case up here.
00:53:28
Speaker
I found the old missing persons bulletin that the Alaska State Troopers put out. So that's the Alaska Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Public Safety. They have a picture of her from 2003 where she's clearly made up well, but her eyes are a little off in the picture.
00:53:48
Speaker
Like, it kind of looks like she's been taken by surprise that someone is photographing her. it And it just says, endangered adult, Marian Lynn Carver, age 40 years old, ah DOB, April 3rd, 1964. She's 100 pounds, with red hair, hazel eyes.
00:54:04
Speaker
It refers to the photo, which, you know, it's very... Clearly her in the photo. It says Marion Carver were last was last seen by a cabin attendant aboard the so celebrity cruise vessel Mercury on the evening of August 28, 2004. She boarded the ship in Seattle, Washington, August 27.
00:54:23
Speaker
The cruise line confirmed she did not disembark at any ports of call in Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, or Prince Rupert, nor did she receive any room service after 28th. The cruise ship is unable to confirm if she got off the vessel at the end of the cruise in Vancouver on September 3rd, 2004.
00:54:40
Speaker
Some of her personal belongings were discovered in her cabin after the cruise ended. Mrs. Carver apparently did not board a return flight to Massachusetts. And it says anyone having contact or information regarding Marion Carver can contact Detective Brian Brantley, Cambridge Police Department, Massachusetts It's got the case number there, then says Alaska.
00:54:59
Speaker
it's got the case number on there and then it says alaska Bureau of Investigation Missing Persons Clearinghouse, and it has their phone number there as well. So, you know, this exists.
00:55:11
Speaker
They put out a bolo on her, basically. um And was it, like, still 25 days later, right? This is at the end of 2004 this goes out. okay Yeah, so there you know there were there was clearly a little bit of work. I don't know how you do that work, though.
00:55:27
Speaker
They're on a boat. You've got Alaska involved. You've got Seattle involved. You've got Canada involved. You've got Massachusetts involved with a Florida company that runs cruises on the West Coast.
00:55:40
Speaker
So based on the information, if you're not trying to like spin a narrative for a true crime-related like form of entertainment, what happened? Correct.
00:55:52
Speaker
she harmed herself and jumped off the boat. And I would even, sell I would even allow that. I would say, you know, without knowing any better, it's possible that she fell.
00:56:04
Speaker
You know, you can make the determination for yourself. There's a whole lot of things like, you know, lack of clothing, like putting the tip out. Like there's a whole lot of things that make it seem like it was, um,
00:56:19
Speaker
more intentional from her part, but I don't care right how you say it. They were on the ocean and she was there. They were still on the ocean and then she was not there.
00:56:33
Speaker
What happened? Well, she's in the ocean. Right. And it's not really this huge mystery. i don't think so. and like I think people underestimate the...
00:56:45
Speaker
Like, let's say that it was somebody who had done something. Cruise ships are very small quarters. um Even, like, deluxe rooms are small rooms, right? Yeah.
00:56:58
Speaker
You're basically, they have all the attractions and everything, and it's like a floating town. But... Like the the quarters, the rooms that they so that the passengers and the crew stay in are tiny and they're basically just right on top of one another. yeah Yeah. That's one of the things that I've always found interesting about all the things that go wrong on cruises and all these mysteries is because people severely underestimate who's going to come forward having seen something suspicious. Right.
00:57:33
Speaker
Most of the time, a passenger is going to have no loyalty to anybody outside of their group. And everybody's so on top of each other, like, people are going to hear stuff.
00:57:47
Speaker
Right. People are going to come for it. Now, in this case, I realized that she wasn't reported missing until much late until, you know, 25 days later, which again is kind of like, I mean, if she was murdered and it wasn't even noticed that she was gone for 25 days, how much does that suck? Right.
00:58:06
Speaker
Right. Because that would suck, but I don't really think that's what happened. But I also don't think that anybody on the cruise ship was like, hey, let's not tell anybody about
Dispelling Cruise Ship Myths
00:58:18
Speaker
this. I think they were like, hey, she decided to do something else besides finish the cruise. None of our business.
00:58:24
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's how it went down. If you're looking for like a rabbit hole to go down the list of people who have disappeared mysteriously at sea is a pretty interesting thing to go down. There's lots of true crime content about this.
00:58:39
Speaker
I pulled out one other story that I'm goingnna talk about now and then sort of, i have a wrap up here in a minute, but it's not this one. Um, one of the things I pulled out when we were going through the, like the, the international, like cruise victims families and the foundation that had been formed out of all of those was I came across the name, James Christopher, because, uh, Scavone,
00:59:01
Speaker
And there's a pretty interesting write-up on Substack on CT Missing People. And I bring him up because he's tied to Connecticut. ah This is written under the name or pen name Victoria Sundquist on ctmissingpeople.substack.com.
00:59:17
Speaker
And it just says the Connecticut man who vanished. um James Christopher Scivone had a promising future. Then he went on a cruise with his friends and he was never seen again. he was 22 years old when he disappeared on July 5th, 1999. He would be 47 today if he's still alive.
00:59:33
Speaker
That's as of the writing, October 13th, 2024. actually be 48 today. um Called Jimmy by his friends and family. He's a 1995 graduate of Maloney High School in Meridian, Meriden, California.
00:59:46
Speaker
And a star player and captain at both the school soccer team and the tennis team, he went to Western Connecticut State University in Danbury and landed a full-time internship at the Newton Office of Community Development.
01:00:00
Speaker
In the spring of 1999, he graduated with from Western Connecticut with bachelor's degree in economics. He had plans to earn a master's degree at Robert Wagner's Graduate School of Public Service.
01:00:13
Speaker
That's at New York University. He wanted to become a city planner. He spent part of the summer working at Ridgewood Country Club in Danbury and lived with his friends on Grandview Avenue, less than a mile away.
James Christopher Scavone's Case
01:00:25
Speaker
His parents had given him money for a graduation gift, which he decided to use on a seven-day cruise on the Carnival cruise ship Destiny, which we've already talked about Destiny and George Smith.
01:00:38
Speaker
who's also from Connecticut, ah with his best friend Jeff Simeon, 12 members of Jeff's family, and a few other friends. The 2,600-passenger ship boasting 500 staterooms left Miami Sunday, July 4th, and headed towards San Juan, Puerto Rico.
01:00:55
Speaker
The ship was also scheduled to stop in St. Croix and St. Thomas in the U.S. s Virgin Islands before it would return to Miami. That first night on the ship, Scavone met up with his friends for an 8 p.m. dinner before heading to the ship's casino around 10 p.m.,
01:01:08
Speaker
And from there, the group went to the point after nightclub. Friends told ah police that Scavone had excused himself around 1230 a.m. to go to a restroom.
01:01:18
Speaker
so as Some of the friends that he had mentioned not feeling well. that he had mentioned not feeling well When the friends returned to their quarters around 3 a.m. m and realized that Scavone wasn't there, they assumed he had met someone would be back later in the morning. When he still wasn't back by 10 his travel companions alerted authorities, who made attempts at contacting Scavone via the ship's intercom system.
01:01:45
Speaker
Those were unsuccessful, which prompted a 12-hour cabin-by-cabin search of the ship. officials also alerted the Coast Guard. At the time, cruise line spokesman told the Hartford Courant that between the time Scobinion was last seen and the Coast Guard was called, the ship might have traveled as many as 200 miles.
01:02:02
Speaker
He told the newspaper it's rare for passengers to, quote, fall off cruise ships, but that it does happen. Now, what I'm about to read here, is coming from this blog. It says between 2009 and 2019 there were 212 reported incidents internationally of people falling overboard from cruise ships, which is an average of about 19 people each year, which is a different number from all the other numbers we've pulled on all of this.
01:02:27
Speaker
But it's according to a report on operational incidents that was issued by the Cruise Lines International Association. For some reason that report did not contain any data for the year that this particular person went missing.
01:02:40
Speaker
It was the same year, however, that Amy Lynn Bradley went missing, right? Right, right. and That's one of the reasons I'm bringing it up here in kind of the conclusion of the series. Scavone's missing persons report in NamUs, the you know national missing persons database, missing and unidentified persons database, indicates he was last seen while at sea in international waters near San Juan, Puerto Rico.
01:03:05
Speaker
I really like the way they have to put like location in and that's how they did it. Yeah. He's just hanging out in the water. Once the ship docks in San Juan, the FBI is given permission to get on board.
01:03:17
Speaker
They conduct their own search. They interview everybody who been traveling with them. They question Jeff, Simeon, the best friend. But he had an alibi. He's ruled out as having had anything to do with the disappearance.
01:03:29
Speaker
So then they check Scavone's sale card, which is those cards we were talking about. It's a debit card on the boat. It's just a cashless payment card, but it's also a key to the passenger's room.
01:03:40
Speaker
It shows him at 12, 10 a.m. buying two drinks. and it has no activity after the time he was last seen around 1230. It also showed that he never reentered his room after he left his group of friends.
01:03:52
Speaker
So officials post flyers across the cruise ship with this photo on it. A few people came forward about having seen him the night disappeared. And these people, some of them show up on Cruise Ship Killers, which is a 2021 series about all of this.
01:04:06
Speaker
One witness said they had seen Scavone eating outside an elevator. Another told police they'd seen the missing man stumbling down hallways and knocking on cabin doors. The FBI did review surveillance footage from various areas of the ship, but they were unable to find any sign effects.
01:04:21
Speaker
A woman from South Carolina told officials she'd gotten a phone call the morning of July 5th from a man saying he needed help, followed by a scream and shuffling of furniture before the call abruptly ended. The authorities looked into if the woman's story but it was uncle they looked into the one story, but it is unclear whether the woman was telling the truth, and if so, whether the phone calls she received had anything to do with Scavone or if it was from someone else.
01:04:45
Speaker
The official investigation closes in August 2000, and he's been presumed dead. The family never gets any answers from this. His mother, Jean, told the Associated Press in 2005, I don't understand how all these people could have fallen off a cruise ship.
01:04:59
Speaker
All i know is my son left home and he never came back. After a week, about a week after Scavone's disappearance, the family held a memorial service at St. Rose of Lima Church in Meriden.
01:05:11
Speaker
Five years in a row, they published an in-memoriam for his birthday saying we love you and miss you. Jean and her late husband, John, also attended congressional hearings to advocate for better security on cruise ships, hoping to make a difference in the lives of others after their own devastating experience.
01:05:26
Speaker
And this v blogger wraps up with, at the time of his disappearance, Scavone was five ten weighed 165 pounds, gray brown hair ah brown He had brown eyes, a mole on the lower right side of his face, and a raised horseshoe-shaped scar on his upper left arm.
01:05:43
Speaker
He was also wearing a silver chain tennis with a tennis racket, silver chain necklace with a tennis racket pendant. So for me, everything about his case seems like this is what should happen if you disappear at sea.
01:06:01
Speaker
Sure. um He clearly... Left because of his ah like money card, sale card. ah He bought drinks, and then he was last seen about 20 minutes after he had those drinks, right? Correct.
01:06:16
Speaker
Okay, and so he said, i don't feel well. I'm going to the bathroom. Well, he never made it to the bathroom. I imagine he probably didn't want to throw up everywhere, so he was trying to throw up over the edge, right?
01:06:30
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, they hit turbulence or something. I don't know. it i do think it probably is rare, right? Yeah. But, I mean, a serial killer did not find the drunk guy that was throwing up and take him as the next victim.
Kenneth Manzaneres' Case
01:06:49
Speaker
No. No, I don't. Like, I bring him up because, like, honestly, he probably falls overboard. Everybody kind of knows that like it could happen.
01:07:01
Speaker
I don't think he's going to be a jumper per se, but I guess he could be because you could still be emotionally set on like something that's a temporary solution to a permanent solution to a temporary problem if you've had too much alcohol and that's not a normal thing for you. You know, that is entirely true. I feel like anybody could get real brave. Yeah.
01:07:22
Speaker
after they've had all the drinks you can possibly drink on a cruise ship and decide that they're just done with everything, even if it's completely out of character. Right.
01:07:34
Speaker
And I, so I got like kind of deep into this cruise ship stuff and I was left with a question that like, we were not going to answer today. And that question is like, has anybody ever been taken from a cruise ship for the purpose of sex trafficking?
01:07:49
Speaker
ah The closest I can give you guys is I doubt it. But I did want to know what would happen if you were murdered on cruise ship? And i don't get the exact answer, but I'm going to give you a little bit of something here.
01:08:07
Speaker
This is from CBS News, June 4th, 2021. This is just written by the staff to put out on the wire. But it says, man who killed wife on Alaska cruise after she allegedly asked for a divorce gets 30 years in prison.
01:08:24
Speaker
So this is going to answer some of those questions. A Utah man was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison in the beating death of his wife on an Alaskan cruise in 2017.
01:08:36
Speaker
ah federal judge A federal judge describes the crime as vital and brutal violent and brutal. Prosecutors had sought life in prison for Kenneth Manzaneres,
01:08:51
Speaker
who pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder in the death of his wife, Christy. His attorneys had requested seven and a half years. It says Kenneth Manzaneres looked back briefly said,
01:09:04
Speaker
toward where two of his daughters were sitting in the courtroom after being led out after U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Burgess announced his decision. His attorneys in a court filing said he had brain abnormalities that a defense expert deemed consistent with injuries caused by playing contact sports.
01:09:22
Speaker
This combined with what was at the time an undiagnosed bipolar disorder and a problematic combination of prescribed medication and alcohol, resulted in an aberrant episode of violence.
01:09:34
Speaker
But Burgess said there were there was competing evidence offered about his culpability, and experts had failed to show what factors led to the crime. Prosecutors had disputed the defense's medical claims and in court documents described the actions as intentional, triggered by his wife telling him she wanted to leave the cruise ship and she wanted a divorce.
01:09:54
Speaker
Prosecutors said Christie told her husband she wanted a divorce that night during an argument about his behavior, So this is the night of her death. A passenger on the ship, Ruby Plata, was with her husband aboard the ship when she heard an announcement over the intercom.
01:10:08
Speaker
Whoever was talking was pretty scared because their voice was shaking, she says in this CBS News interview. She said that it was a domestic altercation. Another passenger, Chris Seaman, he told Yuccas from, this is Jamie Yuccas from CBS News, he was on the ninth level in a room across from where it happened.
01:10:27
Speaker
He said one of the little girls from that room came running out, calling for help, that their parents had been in a fight. She sounded pretty desperate, and the crew came up as quickly as they could. Prosecutors said that Kenneth Manzanaris had issues with anger.
01:10:42
Speaker
He had acknowledged restraining his wife in the past and punching holes in walls. Defense attorneys said the couple had a long and happy marriage. That's at least according to Jamie McGrady, who was a federal public defender in this matter.
01:10:55
Speaker
um Jamie McGrady also accuses prosecutors of selectively parsing details from statements regarding that Kenneth had made try to paint him as someone who was abusive. The judge said that Christie's life was viciously ended by her husband in an attack partly witnessed by two of the couple's children.
01:11:13
Speaker
Christie's brothers and fathers who were on the cruise responded to and witnessed the scene afterwards. The plea agreement that's signed allows for an appeal of the reasonableness of a sentence.
01:11:24
Speaker
This is like kind of Proforma in these cases. ah the federal federal public defender calls the sentence its a tragedy so the judge ignored scientific evidence the attorneys in a court filing last month asked vers to consider the wishes of their children who said they hold their father responsible but also understand his impairments played a major factor in this event and that they'd already lost one parent.
01:11:47
Speaker
Two daughters who gave statements during the emotional first day of the sentencing hearing spoke about their father, but did not speak to a specific sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Schmidt said that basically the husband needs to be held accountable.
01:12:02
Speaker
It's not the sentence that prosecutors wanted, but hopefully would allow the healing process to begin with this 30-year sentence. And a statement by her family said the ruling brings, uh, Christie's family, said the ruling brings us neither joy nor anger. It's ah simply a sense of resolution.
01:12:18
Speaker
They said they believe the court made a fair and just determination. However, the legal system does not and is not intended to a field to fill up the emotional void of their loss. So I bring that up to say that's likely what happens if you commit murder on a cruise ship.
01:12:35
Speaker
Somebody witnesses ear witnesses are around, other members of the party wonder what's happening. but It would be very hard for it to go under the radar and nobody to say anything. Very difficult.
01:12:46
Speaker
Right. and this is just two people in a stateroom fighting, probably louder than usual. But I don't know like i don't know that a domestic incident like this happening on a cruise ship is really going to be any different than you know some kind of predator trying to snatch someone.
01:13:03
Speaker
People are going to come forward. And so i there's an i don't think there's going to be a team of predators. I certainly don't think that. and Like the little things that people hear, they're going to come forward with it as soon as they realize something has happened.
01:13:22
Speaker
Right. And in fact, they're probably going to be reporting things. um It is unfortunate. I wonder. So this is none of my business, but we are talking about it.
01:13:34
Speaker
I wondered if maybe he was like gambling or something. Right. And like, I wonder what cause cause it, all it says is his behavior. She was unhappy with his behavior. Yeah. I mean, I imagine he's drinking and whatever medications he's on. Not like it he's probably just being a giant asshole.
01:13:53
Speaker
Well, and that's possible. But like, she's like, I'm, you know, I want a divorce. I'm getting off and going home and you know, her family's there she's, This is clear. I feel like it's, I mean, I guess it could be ah more, there could be more to it, but like just an angry response, you know, it does seem like second degree murder. Now, what was the sentence?
01:14:19
Speaker
30 years. It was 30 years. Okay. Well, to me, that seems, somebody said they were disappointed and I guess I was confused. 30 years seems like a good amount of time. It was the public defender. They wanted less. They wanted like a manslaughter type sentence.
01:14:34
Speaker
Oh, I see. um Well, no, because like that wasn't manslaughter. It was definitely second-degree murder, but it makes me... um I can see where it is possible he wasn't like a spousal abuser, right?
01:14:47
Speaker
A spouse abuser. ah It just came in a heat of the moment, right? Oh, yeah. But her dad and... Brother or brothers? Two brothers.
01:15:01
Speaker
Her dad and brothers were there. And, like, I was like, oh, my goodness, that is awful. it is. Because, like, how does that even happen? Right? Except he got her, he was alone with her for just enough time.
01:15:13
Speaker
And she said, you know. yeah I want um i'm done want to leave. Right. And, and I imagine it was very specific behavior that was happening. And I don't know, we don't have the background. i have heard people say that like cruises really do so stuff to people. Like it just all changes them. Yeah.
01:15:35
Speaker
And, you have access to, you know, maybe stuff you have never had access to before, or maybe not in the quantity that is available on a cruise ship.
01:15:46
Speaker
But my understanding is like the money that you gamble is real. oh yeah. And that would be like a bad thing to, you know, lose.
01:15:58
Speaker
And so anyway, I don't know that that had anything to do with it, but I did think it was interesting. um It illustrated my point when I said earlier that like people underestimate what you can actually get away with on a cruise ship with nobody noticing.
01:16:16
Speaker
Yeah. And all I can think of is, like, the you know, the average person not fitting in a suitcase. And then, like, if you have to dismember a body, it's going to bleed through the suitcase a lot.
01:16:28
Speaker
So, to me, all those things come up, like, it just would be very obvious. Yeah. ah Yeah. And, you know, i think most of these situations that have come up, as we've talked in this series, Overboard, like, I think there's...
01:16:45
Speaker
a better explanation than some raging mystery for these cases. And that includes Amy Lynn Bradley, and and I think that fall, jump, whether it's an accident or on purpose, that's sort of where I land on almost all of these.
01:17:01
Speaker
And also with Christie's case, like it goes into detail that he was dragging her to the, like he was going to throw her over. Right. Yeah. um And so keeping that in mind, you know, it doesn't say how many people saw it, but at least one of her brothers saw it and didn't allow him to do it. Right.
01:17:21
Speaker
That's the other thing. So there's ah that, uh, helps illustrate that as well. It's not as easy to just toss somebody that's dead weight over the side of, you're much more likely to get there on your own as opposed to somebody throwing somebody.
01:17:40
Speaker
Right. right I will say, so i pulled all of this, this stuff up and like as we're sitting here and I'm talking I pulled BOP which is so BOP is a Bureau of Prisons for people who don't know um i was looking for for Kenneth I wanted to see what had happened to him and there are two people with a similar name one was not in BOP custody as of 2018 so I don't think that's who we're looking for but I did find a
01:18:15
Speaker
BOP entry for the the murder. And I went and had to go back through Pacer. If you've never used Pacer before, can spend a lot of money in Pacer and not realize you've spent it.
01:18:32
Speaker
um But the reason i i I went and kind of poked around, because this is a murder case essentially in federal court, and that's always interesting to me. Because they don't try murders typically. Right.
01:18:44
Speaker
So first of all, the public defender for her, for i mean, the public defender in this murder case for the appellate matters and the more serious matters, just in case people are interested, is guy named Rich Kirtner.
01:18:59
Speaker
um For those of you who don't know, that was Israel Key's attorney in Alaska. He was on Kenneth Manzanera's case supporting Jamie McGrady, who was from the Federal Public Defender's Office.
01:19:14
Speaker
Kirtner is from the Federal Public Defender's Agency. So that was interesting to me that they had the same attorney. Yeah, I think that he's... ah I don't know that popular is the right word, but I think that he's used a lot in the public defense situations in Alaska. He is.
01:19:33
Speaker
You know, this has a different kind of conclusion. um Meg pulled this up. So he's sentenced in 2021, and we get all kinds of information about that. And then we get July 16, 2021, a release from the Alaska Department of Corrections.
01:19:52
Speaker
Ultimately, here's what it says. Phil Halsall, he wrote this article. It says that Utah man sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing his wife on a cruise ship, was found dead and in an Alaska jail this week.
01:20:04
Speaker
Kenneth... ah Manzanaris, 43, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau around 7 a.m. on Wednesday and could not be revived.
01:20:15
Speaker
He was sentenced June 3rd to a 30-year federal prison term after pleading guilty to killing his wife, Christy, during a 2017 family vacation aboard the Emerald Princess. The corrections department said foul play is not suspected and Kenneth Manzaneri's death.
01:20:31
Speaker
Department spokeswoman Betsy Holly said inmates' medical conditions are confidential. He was being held at the state facility until he was going to be transferred to federal prison. All prisoner deaths are reviewed by the Alaska State Troopers and the State Medical Examiner's Office.
01:20:47
Speaker
The Medical Examiner's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. um He had killed his wife as the family was on vacation on the Emerald Princess after ah the wife told him in their cabin she wanted the divorce and she wanted him to get off the ship at Juneau.
01:21:03
Speaker
He told others to leave the cabin, then struck his wife with his fist, repeatedly killing her. He admitted to this in a plea agreement, pleading guilty last year's second degree murder. And then they go on to kind of rehash stuff we've already talked about. But prosecutors said the attack was deliberate.
01:21:17
Speaker
They pointed out that he told others to leave the cabin and lock the door before assaulting his wife. um, that's interesting to me. And that's kind of its own, i guess, karmic justice. Actually, um, it's different than what other accounts had said, but whatever.
01:21:34
Speaker
Cause the, right. Like it was like, she told the girls to leave for their safe, their own safety or whatever. Right. Uh, but it doesn't matter either way. Uh, yeah, that was just a disaster. Can you imagine, you know,
01:21:49
Speaker
Obviously, i i don't think about this a lot, but it's sort of instilled in the back of my mind that I never want to get like that drunk or that tore up where like you know once I come back from the fog, this is what you fall into. Right.
01:22:04
Speaker
Can you imagine? like It would just be awful because, more than i again, I don't know the deeper issues, but I doubt very seriously he meant this, right? Yeah. And it's very sad.
01:22:16
Speaker
I do think um we we're leaving you with a bunch of different rabbit holes here, ah federal court notwithstanding. But um I want to point out cruisejunkie.com. That is a fascinating website where we pull tons of information for this Overboard series.
01:22:33
Speaker
So I maintain that it's not as like crazy mysterious and it doesn't happen very often.
Mundane Realities of Disappearances
01:22:42
Speaker
Yeah. I think the more you that. I realize there's other numbers out there. Yeah.
01:22:47
Speaker
But I just think that those are, um I'm sure, like, i I don't think anybody's trying to intentionally mislead anybody. I'm sure they were derived from something that seemed legitimate. Yeah.
01:23:00
Speaker
But I just, there aren't that many Amy Lynn Bradleys out there. No, no. And like, it it is a very odd confluence of events that gives us that quote unquote mystery that's not a mystery.
01:23:17
Speaker
And i don't. think a lot of times it's actually people who want to help that. and keep things alive. Right. yeah One of the things that um I thought was interesting was the other story that we just talked about the call from South care with Jimmy, I guess he was called Jimmy, right? James Christopher Scaverney. Yeah. ah There was a call that came in that they had received a call. Yeah.
01:23:51
Speaker
That was crazy. Like, how is that linked? It was, it was really random. Um, but people want to help, right? Well, as soon as people start helping, you know, they think they're doing a good thing. And, you know, I, I've said before, i think a lot of people really do believe in what they're saying, right? Like they believe they saw Amy Lynn Bradley, right? yeah um and so it's not that they're trying to be deceptive. It's just like,
01:24:22
Speaker
Well, you know, because it's possible she was seen, she, her family, like, holds on to hope.
01:24:35
Speaker
And it yeah I don't know. I just, I don't know that the tips are, like, the best things to keep happening. I feel like if, like, nobody had ever said anything, right,
01:24:47
Speaker
If nobody had reported seeing her anywhere at any time for any reason, I think that it might have been easier to swallow that she more than likely, you know, went over shortly after her dad saw her legs on the balcony.
01:25:05
Speaker
yeah And I think that the tips can come from a well-meaning place and just be disastrous. Yeah. Yeah, so unfortunately, you know, end result of overboard for me is that the likelihood you're going to get some decades-long mystery out of a cruise ship disappearance is likely, unfortunately, because someone has fallen or jumped overboard and someone else decided that was not the case.
01:25:40
Speaker
And like you said so pointedly, It's because people want to help, but it really muddies the waters, so to speak. It really does. And i I honestly think part of the reason Amy Lynn Bradley's case is so big, obviously docuseries was released this year ah that largely featured her brother, who has been a big proponent. And, you know, if she were to be found, he is pushing to find her.
01:26:11
Speaker
is. it Part of the reason her case is such a big case is because it's such and a weird thing to happen, right? And after I saw the docuseries, I learned a lot from it.
01:26:26
Speaker
And I realized that it wasn't this huge unsolved mystery at all. It was literally just, you know, I'll even give it, you know, an accident if it wasn't, like, straight up suicide.
01:26:41
Speaker
I don't know, except that, like, things were falling into place um for her to have fallen off the boat. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really unfortunate case. And I, you know,
01:26:56
Speaker
I guess I have to say, like, I would be...
01:27:02
Speaker
I would definitely admit if I were wrong and like somebody came up with some proof there that like showed us there was more to that story, but I have seen nothing that indicates it any more than.
01:27:14
Speaker
And so anything but falling in the ocean, like there would be more to it. Like people that, I guess that's sort of part of my point, like, you know, evidence of any sort of,
01:27:29
Speaker
ah scuffle, attack, murder, that kind of evidence, that shows up. That's like impossible to hide forever, right? It's impossible to hide to begin with.
01:27:41
Speaker
And when it's not there like the one of the only things apparently that can occur and leave absolutely no trace evidence behind is falling from a cruise ship into the ocean.
01:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. and And so when there is a lack of... of the evidence to indicate otherwise, and a person is on the ship and then they're not on the ship and it's unclear what occurred for that transition to happen, unfortunately, they're probably in the ocean.
01:28:17
Speaker
yeah and i'll be you know I'll go with it was an accident, but i you know they've made it harder and harder for these accidents to occur, right? But they just keep happening.
Amy Bradley's Case
01:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, and that's unfortunate. um you know It's also a mixture of how accidents occur out there and then just what people will believe and what people will run with in terms of creating content.
01:28:48
Speaker
Amy Bradley's case, it was before social media. It was. And it lived to become part of social media, I presume. If not before, it definitely would be now because it's almost like mainstream. The docuseries is almost mainstream. Her father on, I think, the last part of that, ah the docuseries about her case, her father says that like they kept her Miata in like perfect sense.
01:29:22
Speaker
ah condition for when Amy comes home. And it is one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen.
01:29:36
Speaker
and it's a very real moment. And to me, that's It's just very sad that it I don't want to call someone who was tragically lost at sea's father delusional.
01:29:54
Speaker
Right. But, I mean, it is delusional to think like, oh, we've got her Miata safe and ready for when she comes home.
01:30:05
Speaker
Yeah. She's not coming home. She died a long time ago. And I can imagine being in that situation. i always, whoever's the front person, and Amy's case, it's her brother now. Yeah.
01:30:19
Speaker
And ah his name is Bradley Bradley. I can see how he would probably want to just like somehow crawl out of the hand he was dealt. I'm not saying he would be suicidal, but like, you're like, oh no, this is my life now. And there's nothing you can do to change it Right.
01:30:39
Speaker
Because, like, I'm just the guy whose sister went missing. And i don't know. he seemed to be a little more, like, aware. But I don't want to, you know, re-victimize anybody's family.
01:30:56
Speaker
But, like, she' she's
Acknowledgments and Credits
01:30:58
Speaker
not coming home. She She died.
01:31:05
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabradiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating.
01:31:16
Speaker
It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
01:31:30
Speaker
I break things like guitars.
01:31:39
Speaker
We took it too far.
01:31:49
Speaker
want to go, but it's cause I'll disappoint ya. It's all I've ever dreamed of, something I cannot let go of.
01:32:00
Speaker
I hate the competition, this culture's like a Jimin. I lost the motivation to get fit in your expectations.
01:32:11
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through Patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at TrueCrimeAccess.com.
01:32:29
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.