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Mysterious Disappearances (Back to the Conspiracy)
373 Plays28 days ago
We're revisiting a topic from over ten years ago (which we can do, because apparently this podcast is over ten years old, even though that can't be right), as we talk about notable cases of people disappearing in conspiratorial circumstances, never to be seen again. We hit the classics (Hoffa and Lucan) and more besides.
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Transcript
The 'Disappearance' of Josh Addison
00:00:00
Speaker
This week in Mysterious Mysteries of the Mystery, we look at the mysterious disappearance of one Josh Addison, former co-host of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy.
00:00:11
Speaker
Once a rising star of the podcast industry, Addison's disappearance sent shockwaves through an industry mostly made up of middle-aged men with nothing better to do with their time.
00:00:22
Speaker
To get an idea of what might have happened, we turn to our resident Josh Addison expert, Mr. Josh Addison. Mr. Addison, good morning. Good evening, Mr. Bumcottle.
00:00:33
Speaker
Josh, you're an expert on Josh Addison. How did that come about? Well, because I am Josh Addison, I guess I just know a lot about him. Me. Us. Interesting. So what happened to Josh Addison?
00:00:47
Speaker
Why did he disappear? Well, I, and I mean we, or us, didn't. I'm right here. And so am I. Well, this is a breaking news story, and a first for Mysterious Mysteries of the Mystery.
00:00:59
Speaker
We have solved a mystery. Namely, we have found Josh Addison, former co-host of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy. Mr. Addison, why announce your return this way? ah well, because I wasn't missing.
00:01:12
Speaker
Just went to the bathroom. Does it normally take you weeks to use a bathroom, Mr. Addison? hitler Look, what a man does on a toilet is his own business. The public deserves answers. Fine.
00:01:23
Speaker
All I'll say is that what happened broke no laws. Well, no, celestial laws. Interesting. Now you've returned from your sanitary sojourn, does this mean you'll be returning to the exciting world of podcasting? Uh, sure, why not? Can you give us some insight then into what you will be podcasting next?
00:01:43
Speaker
Well, Mr. Bumcoddle, it's all about mysterious disappearances. See, uh, hold on, Mr. Bumcoddle, are you there? Bumcoddle? Bumcoddle? Hmm, I think he's disappeared. Mysteriously.
00:01:57
Speaker
Mysteriously.
Introduction to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy
00:02:05
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and M. Denteth.
00:02:25
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison and I'm Guangzhou, China. it is doctor, professor, associate professor, whatever the hell you are, MR Extenteth.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yes, that is correct. One of those titles, in fact, all of those titles in some respect are correct. For I am a doctor, that is the title that I earned. I am an associate professor, that is the title that I've been granted.
00:02:51
Speaker
And of course, the concession for associate professors in the academic world is they get referred to as professors, ah Because an associate professor is a form of professor.
00:03:02
Speaker
It's just an associate professor as opposed to a full professor, an emeritus professor, a distinguished professor. We put a lot of adjectives in front of the word professor. But we're all professors in the end, except you.
00:03:15
Speaker
And the whatever the hell you are obviously applies pretty much universally. So we have a back to the conspiracy episode this week. Do we have anything to cover?
00:03:26
Speaker
before we go back to the conspiracy. No, I don't think we have any business this week. Surprising lack of admin. Okay, well then, who's editing this one? Me. i will play a chime, and then we will talk about some odd stuff.
00:03:42
Speaker
Buckle up. We're going back to the conspiracy.
Evolution of Podcast Episode Lengths
00:03:50
Speaker
Yes, we're going back, back all the way back, so far back you wouldn't believe, back to February of 2015, which by my chronometer, that's more than 10 years ago. I actually don't believe this. I can't believe we haven't talked about disappearances for over a decade because it is March 2025. And this is a February 2015 episode. Josh, we've been podcasting for over a decade now. And actually by the time that we recorded this, we'd been podcasting for a year and a bit and change.
00:04:23
Speaker
so Just under a year. This is a lot. A lot of podcasts. A lot of podcasts. And we're going back to this. Yep, 10 years and the law's done nothing to stop us. What a world we live in.
00:04:38
Speaker
But yes, we are going back to what we numbered as episode 43 at the time of February 2015, which was about mysterious disappearances.
The Mystery of Jimmy Hoffa's Disappearance
00:04:48
Speaker
And we're going to talk about everything that we talked about again, but in more detail possibly. Because back then we were still were still naive fools who thought half-hour-long podcast episodes were the way to go.
00:04:59
Speaker
But these days we've weve but in fact like these days, it seems like an hour and a half seems to be pretty normal. I'm getting lots of hour and a half episodes of podcasts these days. So us sticking to around an hour, I think we're still fairly fairly economical with your time, quite frankly.
00:05:14
Speaker
That's true. And that's why you should reward us with your patronage. Yes, we'll get to that at the end ah But no mysterious unsolved disappearances. often Often, as we noted at the time, these things are just plain depressing. so somebody but Somebody disappears and it's fairly clear they've either been murdered or committed suicide or just died in some sort of sad accident. And there's not really a lot more to say about it But sometimes they get conspiratorial.
00:05:39
Speaker
And that's where we come in. Well, yes, I mean, famously, the two big ones are, and we'll talk about these, the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa and the perennial story that is the disappearance of Lord Lucan.
00:05:53
Speaker
Now, this is one of these things where I think almost anyone in the English-speaking world knows about James' middle name Riddle Hoffa,
00:06:05
Speaker
But mostly I would say it's only people in the Commonwealth who have even the vaguest idea of what a Lord Lucan might be. Yeah, it's a funny one. Hoffer has become the byword for a person who went went missing in in sinister circumstances. but Lord Lucan seems to be the equivalent, but only sort of in in England and possibly, as you say, yes, Commonwealth countries. I certainly, i remember, and I said this at the time, um i like I've seen references to Jimmy Hoffa in The Simpsons. I definitely remember that there's so someone mentions him and it cuts away to somebody, to to a baseball player tripping over a
00:06:43
Speaker
a corpse-shaped mound in a baseball field somewhere. um I've seen him in comic books in Preacher. They definitely referenced him there. i didn' i read The only time remember hearing about Lord Lucan was was the good old Rick Mayall show, The New Statesman.
00:06:58
Speaker
um i remember there was an episode of that where they're wanting to bring back capital punishment and they... get in the guy who was their previous executioner back when they still had capital punishment, who sort of blackmails them to get his opposition back by saying, well, otherwise I'll i'll tell what happened to Lord Lucan. And I was like, who the hell is Lord Lucan?
00:07:16
Speaker
um So yeah, big story in England. Like big stories. Yeah, and as we'll see, also a story back home, but we'll get to that in a minute. So, yeah, Hoffer and Lucan, they're the big names, so let's start with them.
00:07:30
Speaker
Do you want to do one and then I'll do the next? you want to Hoffer or I'll do? I'll do the Lord Lucan, you do the Mr. Jimmy Hoffer. Jimmy Hoffer, yes, as you say, James Riddle Hoffer. His middle name was Riddle. Yeah, that's one of those things, even though I know it to be true, I still don't believe it.
00:07:47
Speaker
No. I mean, I have a lot of middle names, so you can't usually trip me on middle names. But people go, hmm, James is a good first name and, you know, has to keep the Hoffer surname.
00:08:00
Speaker
But what kind of middle name mic shall we give good old Jim here? What's word that rhymes with middle? I know. Yes. And initially they actually went for James Piddle Hoffer, but quite rightly the priest went, no, I'm i'm just not saying that.
00:08:16
Speaker
Anyway, we're not here to mock the middle name of a dead man, and he's very definitely dead, I think we could say. Even if even if he hadn't be even if he hadn't been murdered, he would be dead by now, workers because it's 2025, a full years after he disappeared. so And he did disappear July from Detroit. He was declared legally
00:08:39
Speaker
so jimmy jimmy hoffa was A big name in labor unions he had been the president of the the fairly powerful Teamsters Union for some time. Who used to be kind of more Democrat-supporting, but really have come out quite pro-Trump in recent years.
00:08:57
Speaker
But you're a big vi likeka the the the fact that they have a political leaning is important because they are ah they are a political force. Now, Hoffer had been involved in labor unions for most of his life and involved with organized crime almost as long.
00:09:12
Speaker
um he He was well known to have connections within the mafia, and he himself had done time for racketeering. He was convicted of a bunch of different offenses and spent a bit of time in prison. He was eventually pardoned by Nixon in the early 70s, but a condition of his release was that he wasn't allowed to be involved in labor unions for another 10 years until 1980. Now, he did not take this lying down. He immediately started trying to campaign so that he could become involved with with unions once again.
00:09:43
Speaker
And even before anything had been settled there, he started campaigning to be the president of the Teamsters Union, assuming that he he could get this get this condition revoked. Now, this brought him into contact with a man called Anthony Provenzano, who was a high-ranking member of the Genovese crime family.
00:10:00
Speaker
um he had also been active in the Teamsters Union. Apparently, the two of them had had met in prison, and some sort of a feud had developed between them. So so Provenzano hated Hoffa.
00:10:10
Speaker
Hoffa asked for his help, his support in getting back into the Teamsters Union, and Provenzano said, hell no, i will literally murder you if you do that.
00:10:22
Speaker
Slight clue there as to what may have happened to him. Hmm, interesting. You've put a bit of breadcrumb there. Yeah. So Provenzano, more than one of his opponents in the Union had been either murdered or assaulted.
00:10:37
Speaker
so the guy had some history. um so so So there was, I mean, Hoffer was not not not not powerless himself, but... So there's there's bad there's this conflict between the two. So supposedly, according according to some, what had happened was that um other figures in the mafia had set up a meeting that was supposed to be sort of a peace meeting between Hoffa or a meeting to broker peace between Hoffa and Provenzano. I don't think don't know if he was actually going to be at the meeting or if it was a a representative of him. ah but So they set up a meeting on July 30, 1975, at a diner. Hoffer parked in the car park of the diner, waited around for a while, ah but it seemed that nobody showed. He's placed several calls from payphone by the car park ah to his wife and to other people, complaining, oh, I've been waiting here for ages and these guys never never showed. What the hell?
00:11:27
Speaker
His last call... There were some disputes. Some people put it at 3.30, but then other people looking at other timelines reckon was probably bit before 3, a bit before 3 p.m.
00:11:38
Speaker
on July the 30th. He placed his last telephone call and was never heard from again. When he didn't show up the next day, people people raised the alarm.
00:11:49
Speaker
and investigate people started investigating what had happened to him. ah His car was found still parked at the Diner car park. There was no sign of um any any any any violence or anything having happened there. So the the conclusion of the investigators was that he had he had gone he had left the car park with a third party without a struggle, basically, and was never heard from again.
00:12:17
Speaker
So the various mafia figures, Provenzano and the other people who were supposedly involved in this meeting, all denied either all denied that a meeting had ever been scheduled and all had alibis for for um what they had been doing at the time.
00:12:31
Speaker
But and in in time in more recent times, multiple people, it's it's kind of one of those things, multiple people have come forward claiming that they they were there, they knew what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. It was sort of those things, a A dying mafioso or someone trying to make a name for themselves would um claim to have, I was the hit man, I killed him, or I helped dispose of the body or something like that. And the fact that more than one person has come forward like this shows that at least some of them aren't telling the truth. So we have we have no reliable information of exactly what happened to him. I mean, and i've I've always maintained on my deathbed, I'm going to admit to a lot of things I've never done. I'm going to say I've been thanked the moon landing.
00:13:12
Speaker
i was the person who assassinated Jack Ruby after assassinating Lee Harvey Oswald. I'm going to claim a lot of things on my deathbed because, frankly, as far as I can tell, deathbed confessions are just a fun time had by all.
00:13:26
Speaker
Yes. Yes, they are. But as far as Hoffa goes, His disappearance is a mystery and that we don't know. Nobody knows conclusively exactly what happened.
00:13:37
Speaker
But I think everybody has a pretty good idea. yes People conspired to cover up what happened at the time. So no matter what your suspicions are about who did it, which is probably the mafia,
00:13:50
Speaker
The mafia produced a cover story to go, oh, but we were nowhere we're near the center of the crime. In fact, weren't even in America. we were on a riverboat in Venice at the time. Oh, no, no, no. And we would never commit crimes like that. No siree.
00:14:06
Speaker
Indeed. So I guess the only other interesting point about the tale of Jimmy Hoffa is that the attorney general who went after him and and and ended up convicting him and putting him in prison was one ah RFK appointed by his brother, Mr. JFK.
00:14:21
Speaker
So connections to the Kennedys and mafia and what happened what have you also sort of leaped into your general JFK conspiracies as well. Well, yeah, especially given that many of the conspiracy theories about both the death of JFK and the death of RFK kind of point to the fact that in election mode, at least John Kennedy was going, oh, you know, I'm willing to have some olive branches sent out to the mafia here.
00:14:53
Speaker
And as as soon as he became president, was, I'm going to prosecute these people to hell. And so there is this suspicion that the mafia were going, I thought we had an accord we were going to be friendly. And now you've turned your back on us.
00:15:06
Speaker
ah We're not really the kind of people for turning our backs on you. We're more the kind of people like to do a bit of the old stabby-stabby in the front. Yes, or shooty-shooty in the back of the head, but yes.
00:15:17
Speaker
So that's Jimmy Hoffa. He...
00:15:21
Speaker
I mean, it's kind of hard to say. This is 1975. Both of the these two events that we're going to talk about happened before either of us was born, and we are not spring chickens.
00:15:32
Speaker
So, I mean, I sort of say that they're the reference. for anyone our age... These are the two the two canonical examples of people disappearing mysteriously. i wonder I wonder, though, if they're actually that that's well known. Well, yes, because now I think about it, those Jimmy Hoffa references are in the early seasons of The Simpsons. Now, admit they haven't watched recent seasons of the simpsons at all but all the references to citizen kane and jimmy hoffer are kind of in the first five years of that show and that show is nearing its third decade now stupidly old almost even older than this podcast and that's old
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, maybe Jimmy Hoffa just isn't a touchstone for the young conspiracy theorist or person interested in conspiracy theories who will be a conspiracy theorist by my definition anyway.
The British Scandal of Lord Lucan
00:16:27
Speaker
And as for Lord Lucan, I think he's... Certainly outside of the British Isles, he's definitely less well known. And we we' we'll talk, and in what once you've done your spiel, we can talk about where I heard about him more recently, which suggests that maybe he's not that well known within England anymore either. But um for now, tell us about John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan.
00:16:49
Speaker
Before we get into the mysterious disappearance of Lord Lucan, let me give you my theory as to why Lord Lucan was a big story in the UK and the Commonwealth, but probably never in the US.
00:17:01
Speaker
And that's because the story of what Lord Lucan did is a very British kind of scandal. a Ganglang shooting or disappearance is a kind of universal story appreciated by people across the globe.
00:17:18
Speaker
But what Lord Lucan did and then what happened afterwards is very much something you go, oh yeah, yeah, that's really British. That's really, really British.
00:17:30
Speaker
Because John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lugan, disappeared on the 8th of November 1974 after allegedly killing the nanny that looked after his children whilst he was in the process of trying to murder his wife, although guess we say ex-wife now, Veronica.
00:17:53
Speaker
So... Bingham had separated from his wife, and they were having a custody dispute over their children. Now, like many Toths, he considered his options. I mean, was he going to simply divorce the woman and move on with his life? Actually, if I can button here, I didn't put this in the notes, but I just read it recently.
00:18:14
Speaker
Before he got into this point, he had actually tried to have her committed, essentially, or tried tried to have it proven that she was mad. and therefore not not to be put into account of tea. He makes it even a more a British kind of scandal. yeah Yes, was he going to try and prove his wife was psychologically ill and have her committed to an asylum, something which was still going on in the nineteen seventy s in the English-speaking world.
00:18:40
Speaker
Was he simply going to stalk her and cause her trouble? No, Lucan decided the sensible thing to do because of this custody dispute would simply be to kill his wife. That would be the sensible thing to do.
00:18:53
Speaker
But it turned out he was good at only two things, socializing and gambling, He turns out to not be very good at murder.
00:19:04
Speaker
So, on the 8th of November, 1974, he goes to the house where his wife is living. He waits around a corner and then swings a lead pipe at the first person he sees coming down the stairs.
00:19:19
Speaker
This turns out to be a mistake on his part because it wasn't his wife, it was the nanny, Sandra Riverett, who was looking after the children.
00:19:30
Speaker
His wife Veronica is following Riverett downstairs, and having now fatally injured Riverett, Veronica fights back, grabs him by the junk,
00:19:41
Speaker
Which then leads to Bingham going, oh, oh, I seem to be doing something ever so slightly wrong here. I really should apologize for my most recent behavior. His most recent behavior being attempted murder of his wife and fatally injuring the nanny looking looking after their che ah children. And you joke, but from what i from what I've heard, that's pretty much how it went.
00:20:04
Speaker
Like I've heard it described, as she grabs him literally by the balls and the pain of that just suddenly sort of snapped him out of it and he went all we we went all Hugh Grant upper class toff. Oh, oh, co my goodness. I'm not particularly... Yes, I'm not quite sure.
00:20:19
Speaker
What I've been thinking recently, I mean, I've just been having these... Pretty weird. well i I really do apologize for my behavior here. This is a lord, a guy who's, as far as he's concerned, whatever he says is the truth, whatever he thinks should be, will be. you know he's He's used to getting his way about everything and seem to honestly believe he can he can smooth this this murder, smooth this all over and make it all okay. I mean, Josh, haven't we all, in a fit of outrage, tried to commit at least one murder in the past? I mean, really.
00:20:51
Speaker
Surely this kind of thing is easily forgiven amongst friends or spouses. Only with my mind. And it turns out I'm not a scanner, so nothing ever came of it.
00:21:03
Speaker
You and Michael Ironside. You and Michael Ironside. Anyway, ah turns out that his wife or ex-wife, certainly the spouse he's having separation anxiety with, doesn't really accept this apology, flees the scene and goes to a nearby pub where she tells everyone there what had just happened.
00:21:23
Speaker
Lucan, or you know John Bingham, obviously realizes that this is not going to go down well for him. So he leaves the house and is never seen again.
00:21:35
Speaker
ah So all we have as evidence as to kind of what happened around about that event. is he had talked to his mother saying he was he is going by his wife's house when he heard some fighting. So he kind of tries to create a cover story for himself by telling his mum, oh yes, you're going to hear about there being some disturbance at Veronica's house. ah And I was there, but I only popped in because I heard about the disturbance, not because I created it myself.
00:22:05
Speaker
He also pens some letters to friends basically making the same claim, but he is never seen again after the 8th of November, 1974. nineteen seventy four And by 1999, having not been seen for almost 25 years, he is declared officially dead.
00:22:26
Speaker
And that technically is where the trail ends. Lord Lucan attacks his nanny, attempts to murder his wife, tries to cover it up with some letters and fo phone calls, but basically walks out of the scene, never to be seen again.
00:22:46
Speaker
And because this is a major scandal in the UK, the media starts speculating to a very large degree what happened to Lord Lucum. Some people thought he'd done the honorable thing and committed simple suicide.
00:23:02
Speaker
Others believed that he'd used what little influence he had left to flee the country and start a new life. And so people claimed that he'd gone to South America to start a new life.
00:23:14
Speaker
He'd gone to South Africa to start a new life. He'd gone to Australia to start a new life. And some people even claimed he fled all the way to Aotearoa, New Zealand to start a new life.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yes, there have been hundreds of sightings and of him around the world um in the in the intervening years. None of them were ever substantiated. But um why why would people think that Lord Lucan had had taken up in New Zealand?
00:23:40
Speaker
That is a good question, and I can't actually give you a good answer as to why they thought he had. All I can say is that at least one person back in around about 2007 was pinged as being John Bingham.
00:23:55
Speaker
ah So we're talking here about an article that it was in the New Zealand Herald back in 2007. It's from the Whanganui Chronicle, where a man by the name of Roger Woodgate...
00:24:10
Speaker
who was a British expat, was fingered as being Lord Lucan by his neighbours. So Roger Woodwardgate was living a solitary life with his possum Redfern, his cat Smokey, and a hairy goat named Camilla in the back of a rusted landlover pi parked in a boggy paddock beside a railway track in Martim.
00:24:35
Speaker
And his neighbours were going, ooh... He's a bit of a queer one, this Roger Woodgate, and he looks ever so slightly like a picture of Lord Lucan from the 1970s.
00:24:49
Speaker
think Lord Lucan is living in an old Land Rover just outside of Martin. Yes, now one issue against this is that Lucan would have been 72 in 2007. Mr. Woodgate claims to only be 62 and also claims to not be Lord Lucan. Like people said to him, are you Lucan? And he was like, no, no, of course not.
00:25:11
Speaker
ah Yeah, he seemed to find it ever so slightly ridiculous, which I have to is probably the best result you can possibly have when you accuse someone of being a person who attempted to kill his own wife. Yes.
00:25:25
Speaker
No, so apparently um this this neighbour of his, one Margaret Harris, had done done a bit of amateur detective work. Apparently Mr. Woodgate mentioned had told a real estate agent that he owned two properties in London and had told someone else that he was considering returning to Ireland. And she did a bit of internet research and found that that there are Woodgates and Binghams in the same family tree. A Woodgate family is related to the Bingham family.
00:25:54
Speaker
um And indeed, the Binghams had an estate in Ireland, which is fairly coincidental slash circumstantial, if you ask me. But it was good enough for these people to write, ah to to to make a newspaper article about it 22 years ago, 12 years ago, ago.
00:26:13
Speaker
three two years ago But that's the thing about croine two this yeah Lord Lucan appearances or suspected appearances. On a slow news day, newspapers seem to be very happy in the Commonwealth to go, oh, anyone seen Lord Lucan recently?
00:26:32
Speaker
Now, it was interesting for me um because since we um since we did this episode, I've, well, ah many things have happened in the 10 years since we looked at this topic, but one of them was the fall of the Berlin Wall.
00:26:51
Speaker
I think that's before, yeah, no, no, tell me that's wrong. so um The release of Jurassic Park. Four and five. Which one's that? The New World. No, the i don't know, the crappy ones with Chris Pannenstown. doesn't matter. point minister I have never seen them. Yeah, they're fine, but they're not great.
00:27:12
Speaker
ah The point is that more recently than any of those things, the Behind the Bastards podcast did a series on Lord Aspinall. who was sort of the the the gambling king of of of London or in the 1970s. He made a hell of a lot of money by organising these affairs where rich men with way too much money and way too much free time would get together and basically just light piles of cash on fire, gambling away. And sometimes, in some cases, gambling away their entire fortunes and bringing ruin to their families.
00:27:44
Speaker
Lucan wasn't one of them, but he was part of that set. And it was sort of, it was... It has been suggested that this plan to, um the that the the sensible thing to do is is to kill his wife, is something that possibly was cooked up between Lucan and Aspinall and these other lords, you know, sitting around smoking cigars and swilling brandy and, gosh, bit of a rum-doings with your wife there. You know what? You you should belly well kill her, you know? we we we We could make it work.
00:28:11
Speaker
um It was even suggested that the car that he drove to Veronica's house and eventually and and fled in had been loaned to him by one of these other lords and what have you. And so in that series of Behind Bastards, they gave a different theory on exactly what may have happened to Lord Lucan, which is that following this this murder and attempted murder, he had been sheltered by these friends of his, friends who had aided and abetted him in his crimes, um and that eventually they had been killed by him.
00:28:41
Speaker
ah Sorry, he had been killed by them. i Because i this is a mass murder of the Lords. No, that that that they ended up killing him or having him killed because as a Lord, he was never going to accept a life in seclusion. He was not the sort of man who would have been in any way accepted living in a light a rusty land rover in Martin. rob and i mean And this is quite evident by the fact that as soon as he's caught trying to attempt a murder, he thinks he can smooth the entire thing out with a with a bit of a smooth-talking apology. So of course he's going to be a kind of person, look, and do I need to hide for the next month or so? But surely surely by mid-year i can I can reappear and people are going to go, oh, that Lord Lucan, you tried to commit a murder, but we your we'll accept you back in decent society.
00:29:35
Speaker
Yes, so the idea was that his friends realised that he was never going to lie low permanently and was never going to keep his mouth shut permanently, so to save their own hides they had him killed. and So that's ah that's a food a third theory of exactly what happened to Lord Lucan.
00:29:50
Speaker
It also did occur to me in our more recent episode about the disappearance of Shergar, the Irish racehorse. I remember that episode. that happened in 1983. And I remember at the time that this was ah this was another mysterious disappearance.
00:30:03
Speaker
And the fact that people would make jokes at the time about, oh, yes, I saw Shergar. Lord Lucan was riding away on him. So certainly, at least in the 1980s, Lord Lucan was a...
00:30:14
Speaker
was a cultural touchstone when it came to mysterious disappearances. Maybe not so much anymore. And I say that again, referring to that um Behind the Bastards series. um The co-host on that was Ed Zitron of the Better Offline podcast, who had heard of Lord Lucan but didn't know any of the details. So he's he's a younger guy than us, but he is actually English.
00:30:36
Speaker
and didn't know a hell of a lot about Lord Lucan.
The Vanished Australian PM, Harold Holt
00:30:39
Speaker
So maybe ah and maybe both of these examples are um ah no longer the cultural touchstones they used to be. Josh, are you saying we're getting old?
00:30:49
Speaker
It's entirely possible. It's been known to happen to people. I don't I resent the implication. Well, then let's let's let's quickly move on before things get awkward, because, you know, who is even less well known and yet still a mysterious disappearance is, of course, Harold Holt.
00:31:10
Speaker
Well known in Australia, less so in New Zealand. I hadn't heard about him until I think it was when we were originally thinking about doing an episode on ah mysterious disappearances 10 years ago. I mentioned this to my wife and she said, oh, you going to talk about the Australian prime minister who disappeared? And I said, what?
00:31:29
Speaker
and Because yes, ah even even before Hoffer and Lucan on the 17th of December 1967, Harold Holt, the sitting prime minister of Australia, went for a swim and never returned.
00:31:41
Speaker
So it's it seemed fairly clear that he had unfortunately got into trouble out out sea somewhere, but it was quite surprising that um his body was near. As you can imagine, the leader of a country goes for a swim and doesn't come back in, and so there was a massive search effort, but um his body was never found. i You say quite surprising, so he disappears at Cheviot Beach.
00:32:05
Speaker
And one interesting factor about Cheviot Beach is it was always recommended in the 1960s that nobody should swim there. ah Holt was known to swim there, had been warned by his- He was a strong swimmer. Yeah, but had been named after him, not a good place to swim.
00:32:23
Speaker
You cannot swim at Cheviot Beach now. It's basically off-limits because there are incredibly strong riptides just beneath the surface of this beach.
00:32:34
Speaker
And so if you were to slip into the one of those riptides, you're going straight out to sea, and no matter how strong a swimmer you are, you're not getting back to land. So the official theory about the disappearance of Harold Holt was that having been warned you should not swim at this beach, Harold Holt continued to swim at this beach and one day got himself trapped in a riptide he couldn't get out ah of.
00:33:00
Speaker
But sitting prime ministers or sitting presidents or indeed leaders of countries in general don't generally just disappear routinely.
00:33:11
Speaker
And so there have been a large number of conspiracy theories saying, well, the official theory says... It was a swimming accident. But that to cover story four, and then what the four is ends up being a variety of different conspiratorial explanations.
00:33:28
Speaker
One of the most common ones, Holt was a left-wing prime minister of Australia. People claim that he was working either for the communist Russians or the communist Chinese,
00:33:42
Speaker
and that he was about to be found out to be a double agent and thus defected to a foreign power. So when he went for a swim, he wasn't actually wasn't going for a swim at all. He was going to the beach to meet members of the submarine crew to take him back to their homeland.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yes. Now, at the time, heard about... I looked up Harold Holt and found out, okay, yes, he died. Doesn't seem overly conspiratorial. So I remember 10 years ago, i just just Googled Harold Holt conspiracy, and boy, did I hit a good one.
00:34:17
Speaker
If you go to www.herald-holt.net... dot knit You find – you know what you imagine? If if I just tell you ah it's sort of your classic stereotypical tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracist, if you imagine what their website is looks like, it looks like this website.
00:34:36
Speaker
It's still up right now. it starts by – saying, my Iran web server website and server are protected through my 1970 invoking of law of intent. The failure to defeat Lucifer's Five Eyes Israel Devil's Game drags all to hell for eternity. And carries on in that thing. It has x-rays of the neck of the guy who made this website pointing out the implants that have been forcibly implanted in him. But when you go down, when you go down and down and down, you do get to his Prime Minister Harold Holt was murdered.
00:35:08
Speaker
Now, he claims Harold Holt was murdered because he was opposed to American bases such as Pine Gap being built on Australian soil. Now, he says there was no evidence of a Chinese submarine abducting him.
00:35:20
Speaker
No, he was killed by a Navy diver and and and and and died, as what usually happens when you're killed. And it goes on and on and on and talks about a great many things.
00:35:35
Speaker
Oh, hang on. Your Earth experience has ended. All alien races are accountable through my invoking of the second law of the unit. There's a lot of this. Maybe we should just spend one episode looking through this website. but Maybe we should.
00:35:48
Speaker
but actually you you You mentioned Pine Gap. i don't whether we've ever talked to any length about Pine Gap, which is essentially... the Area 51 in Australia and that it's say known military base. I think it's run jointly by Australia and the US.
00:36:07
Speaker
It is suspected they know what goes on at Pine Gap, but there are lots of theories about other things that go on at Pine Gap. And many years ago, when the Fitbit data leak scandal came out, we learned an awful lot about the shape of the Pine Gap facility. because of course, it's one of those things, you're not meant to go close to you're not meant to take any aerial photography. So people only have a vague idea of what the shape or size of the installation should be be there.
00:36:37
Speaker
But it turns out at least one patrolling officer at Pine Gap was walking the perimeter of Pine Gap every day to get his or her steps in.
00:36:50
Speaker
And the GPS data that was leaked in the Fitbit leak meant you got a perfect shape of the perimeter of the Pine Gap installation. Yes, yeah. and And that was not the only installation where that happened, was it? Yeah.
00:37:05
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and now it turned out this is the reason why military officers are not meant to wear any kind of GPS device on their person for entirely this particular reason.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yes, yes, exactly. ah So moving on. you know You've got to get those steps in. You've got to get your steps in. That's important. but moving More important than national security. you're not going to let me move on, are you?
00:37:32
Speaker
No, but I will now. Okay. um So another interesting case we talked about last time was that of the disappearance of French inventor. Now, his name is Louis Le Prince, but he's French, so I assume it's Louis Le Prince or something like that.
00:37:47
Speaker
ah But his his his was an interesting disappearance because it's kind of a locked room mystery almost. He caught a train on September the 16th. This is a very old case. Caught a train on September the 1890.
00:38:00
Speaker
And when the train got to where it was going, he was nowhere to be found. He appears to have disappeared from his train carriage mid-voyage. Now, some people thought possibly this was some sort of a suicide. Did he jump out of his carriage's window into they were over water or something like that? But then some people thought that maybe there was something more more malicious than that, that perhaps he'd been kidnapped, perhaps he'd been killed.
00:38:29
Speaker
Perhaps it had been done on the order of a certain Thomas Edison. Because Mr. Le Prance was an inventor who recorded the first ever continuous motion picture, and indeed he was taking this train voyage to go and patent one of his inventions.
00:38:46
Speaker
And after his disappearance, Edison was the one who ended up being credited with the invention of and awarded the patent on the motion picture camera. So some people have suggested, yeah know, this is the the whole patent wars thing with Edison at the time. Some people have suggested maybe he was a casualty of the patent wars.
00:39:03
Speaker
And that nefarious Edison was up to no good. And certainly, I mean, whether or not Edison was a murderer or someone who went around ordering the murders of other people, he was very interested in getting to market first with inventions and thus being underhanded in order to ensure that he was the first person to patent and and be claimed to invent a device even when he knew he was not.
00:39:33
Speaker
Now, there was another conspiracy theory. There were implications that he was gay, which in 1890, obviously, was was would have been a big deal if that had come out.
00:39:45
Speaker
And so there are some some conspiracy theories that his family had arranged for him to disappear one way or another, possibly to to go somewhere and start a new life so that um this this wouldn't get back to them. They didn't want him bringing shame on the family.
00:40:00
Speaker
There was also the theory that he was murdered indeed by a member of his family, his own brother. As far as I'm aware, the only reason why his brother was a murder suspect is because he's the one who saw him off on the train. So I think some people have thought, are well, the only evidence that we have that he got on the train in the first place is because his brother said so. but what if does the brother actually was responsible for his murder? and Yeah, what if he never got on the train at all and the brother's simply lying about, hold up!
00:40:26
Speaker
Nope. I waved Louis off. So as far but as far as I'm aware, that that was purely conjecture and there's been no evidence at all, except many, many years later, over 100 years later, in 2003, some archivists were going through a bunch of old archived police photographs in France. I...
00:40:46
Speaker
Realize now I have not written in my notes exactly where he was going. But in France, um they they found a bunch of archived police photographs and developed them. And one of them showed the body of a drowning victim from 1890 who did apparently look a lot like Mr. Le Prince. So possibly he fell from the train or jumped.
00:41:07
Speaker
from the train over a body of water and drowned. But I mean, this is ah this is a photograph from 1890. I don't know what the quality would have been like. And if it's from someone who was pulled out of the water, their appearance probably was not quite the same as when they went into it. So again, evidence is is shaky at best.
00:41:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's one of those things, maybe you have a photo of someone who looks a lot like LaPrance, but whether it is LaPrance is another matter entirely. But I see you are overlooking the possibility that actually what really happened was that not only was LaPrance the inventor of the continuous motion picture, but was also trying to invent water skiing.
00:41:48
Speaker
And thus, as the train is going by the water, he jumps out on his skis, having attached, the rope to the train and just fails to water ski for the first time.
00:42:00
Speaker
You may have something there. I shall can contact the French authorities, see if this case still has legs or skis. It's true. That's true. So we have, the ah did we talk about these last time? These political disappearances?
00:42:13
Speaker
I don't remember these. Not in the amount of d detail that we have to so These were also runs or we could mention. So we have two cases which we're going to talk about slightly more than we did 10 years ago, which is the case of the kidnapped Iranian diplomats in Lebanon back in 1982 the disappearance of Vladimir Aleksandrov.
00:42:38
Speaker
Aleksandrov. and lix andro alexandro <unk>ov Yes. That sounds good to me. Kleshnikov.
00:42:49
Speaker
a So diplomats in Iran. Three Iranian diplomats. This 1982. Three Iranian diplomats, as well as a reporter for the Islamic Republic News Agency, were abducted in linnot Lebanon on the 4th of July 1982, and none of them have been seen since.
00:43:05
Speaker
So, I mean, this we we know we we we know who took them, though, don't we? well we know they Well, we know they were stopped at a checkpoint in northern Lebanon by Lebanese forces commanded by Samir Ghegheer.
00:43:22
Speaker
But what happened next is the contention. So officials in Iran believe they were handed over to Israel after they were kidnapped and are still alive and being held in Israeli territory.
00:43:38
Speaker
Although if they're still alive, i mean, 1982, that's almost years ago ago Yeah. yeah Israel says that the diplomats were captured, but they were captured by militia on the other side, being controlled by Eli Chobika.
00:43:58
Speaker
The Israeli newspaper Harit says the diplomats were believed to be executed. after their abduction and the person who was ah who commanded the Lebanese forces as well as his but bodyguard says that they were executed under somebody else's custody.
00:44:18
Speaker
So essentially you've got an official story by Iran, you have the official story by the state of Israel, You have the journalistic story that was propounded in Israeli newspapers at the time.
00:44:32
Speaker
And then you've got people who were involved in at least the checkpointing of these Iranian diplomats say oh, no, no, no, actually, you're all wrong. There's a fourth option here.
00:44:44
Speaker
So all we know is that they disappeared. And we know that the official story in Iran is a conspiracy theory in Israel, and the official story in Israel is considered to be a a conspiracy theory by the Iranians.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yes. So I guess that counts then. They did disappear, and there is indeed a mystery about exactly exactly where they yeah where where they went and who took there.
00:45:11
Speaker
And one story says they're still alive, or at least they were alive for quite some time. Other stories say no, no, no, they they didn't survive the day. They did not survive the day at all.
00:45:22
Speaker
Now, this disappearance is still commemorated to this day in Lebanon. in part because of the suspicion that actually these diplomats were kidnapped by Israel and thus a crime is being committed against the state of Lebanon.
00:45:41
Speaker
Yes, so again with the political um disappearances, there's the case of Vladimir Alexandrov, He was a Russian Soviet, Russian physicist.
Cold War Intrigue: Vladimir Alexandrov
00:45:51
Speaker
and we're we're We're back in the 1980s again, middle of the Cold War, 1985.
00:45:56
Speaker
He had created a mathematical model for the nuclear winter theory, um He was at the Second International Conference of Nuclear-Free Zones Local Authorities in Spain on the 31st of March.
00:46:09
Speaker
He disappeared from there. And once again, that's all we know. So he, when I say nuclear winter, he'd he'd worked on climate modelling.
00:46:20
Speaker
um and And part of that had come up with models on the effects of a nuclear winter. um and And that could could potentially have been used as ammunition by people within both the United States and the USSR who were the the anti-nuclear people. Because here is here's the scientific evidence of, hey, if if we ever ah did have a nuclear war, as well as all the other stuff, we'd have the the whole nuclear winter effect as well.
00:46:44
Speaker
Yeah, so it so it's kind of interesting hypothesis here because the conspiracy theory kind of swings in both directions here. So some people think that the nuclear winter hypothesis as put forward by Vladimir was a politically motivated scientific hypothesis being propounded by Soviets.
00:47:08
Speaker
in order to discourage the West from building up a nuclear stockpile, given the West was building more nukes than the Soviet Union was at the time. So the idea being that if we can come up with a model that shows if we use these nukes, it's bad for everyone...
00:47:25
Speaker
then that's going to force people in the West to go, oh maybe we shouldn't build so many nukes. And so people go, well, look, this is a politically motivated hypothesis, which is convenient for the Soviets here.
00:47:39
Speaker
Thus, it is a suspicious scientific hypothesis. Other people go, well, no, actually, Russia also found the nuclear winter hypothesis to be awkward, because even though it was in their interest to dissuade the West from building up a nuclear stockpile, Russia was still in the process of trying to get on the same rank of the arms race as the US was.
00:48:05
Speaker
So the idea that there was a Soviet scientist saying actually building these nukes is a bad idea is something that the Soviet Union might have gone, oh I mean, we don't really want that information out there.
00:48:19
Speaker
So some people think... There was a reason for the Americans to make Vladimir disappear. Other people think no, it's equally good reason for the Russians to go, this person's got to go.
00:48:33
Speaker
All we know is that he disappears and is never seen again. Yes, apparently the head a head guy in the KGB accused the CIA of kidnapping him.
00:48:46
Speaker
But then other people yeah thought that well maybe the soviets the Soviets were the ones who kidnapped and possibly killed him. And compounding the issue here... He disappears, and several of his friends in the West don't report his disappearance. People who were at the conference with him. Yeah, because they thought he was in the process of defecting.
00:49:08
Speaker
So, of course, they don't want to draw any attention by the authorities. to So ah where's your... Soviet scientists go if he's defecting and we probably want to make sure that he's got time to complete his defection procedures and it's only after some time has passed they're going actually I don't think he's defecting I think he's disappeared and by that time the trail has gone cold so yeah another interesting one now timers Time is drawing short.
00:49:39
Speaker
the The last few cases to talk about are kind of the most depressing ones, really, because they involve the disappearance of children. Now, when we're talking about disappearances in the popular culture, I guess, possibly these days, the biggest one is, of course, Madeleine McCann.
00:49:53
Speaker
Although even that's a long time ago now. It's a long time ago, but it's still going because we are recording this on Tuesday, the 25th of March, 2025. Yesterday, 24th of March, I saw a paper, I saw an article in the local news um talking about more developments in the Madeleine McCann case. The German authorities apparently have a prime suspect, someone who supposedly, it's it's one of those cases of like a cellmate confession thing, one of his... He's he's currently serving time um for a rape in the same place as Madeline, where Madeline McCann disappeared from, I think. And allegedly he had all but confessed to McCann's murder to cellmates in the past. And you never quite know how much you can you can trust these sorts of
00:50:39
Speaker
things we've We've seen that before in other cases of former cellmates claiming that this person confessed to a crime to them, but you never know whether they have an ulterior motive. Yeah, and sometimes when these things are investigated, you find out that police officers or FBI officers have induced people to well, if you say x did something, then you might get early release. So there's always a large amount of suspicion about these cellmate confessions. Yeah.
00:51:06
Speaker
But yes, um I don't know if that's the only evidence, but um that that is one thing that's that's been claimed. So apparently this guy has been prime suspect since 2020. And there's there's just a rush at the moment because he's soon to be released for his sentence from this earlier crime. And people are afraid that once he's out of jail, he's gone because he knows he's the prime suspect in this in this high high profile case.
00:51:29
Speaker
So he's he's going to be in the wind. And so they're they're making they're trying to put a case together against him so they can put him on trial for Madeleine McCann's death before he's released from from his current sentence.
00:51:40
Speaker
Interesting thing, in this article, it says, German crop prosecutors claim to have physical evidence that Madeleine is dead, but lack forensic evidence.
00:51:52
Speaker
i i don't I don't know what that means. What's the difference between physical evidence and forensic evidence? i mean Physical evidence could be signs of a struggle somewhere or something, and I guess forensic evidence would be would be DNA or something actually proving...
00:52:08
Speaker
and you But you also could have evidence a corpse has been disposed of, which would be physical evidence. i suppose you could, yeah. yeah So that's that that struck me as ah is an interesting thing to say. or you know, photographs would be physical evidence. That's true.
00:52:22
Speaker
We have photographs of Madeleine McCain's corpse, but we don't have the corpse, and we have physical if evidence she's dead, but no forensic evidence. Right. So, yeah, there's a lot of evidence which would count as being physical without being forensic.
00:52:37
Speaker
That would still be probative in this particular case. Is that the right word? It feels like it's the right word. once so It sounds legalistic, so it'll do. But, I mean, as you say, that was 2007, so it was a while ago now.
00:52:50
Speaker
But I think as we noted at the time, like it's And disappearances are not as common as they used to be simply because it's much easier to keep tabs on people.
The Madeleine McCann Case: New Developments
00:53:00
Speaker
Indeed, like if you've seen the movie Looper, which is set a bit into the future, that the the whole plot of it is driven by the fact that a few decades from now, it's completely 100 percent impossible to make someone disappear because of the amounts of of surveillance and and tracking that exists that exists then. And we're pretty much there already now.
00:53:19
Speaker
Now, there was another We kind of don't have time for it, and it's kind of just depressing and not particularly conspiratorial. But we didn't last time mention about the disappearance of Bobby Dunbar because it kind of... it We were running out of time then, and this one also isn't super conspiratorial, but it is an interesting case for what it says about society, perhaps.
00:53:40
Speaker
So just quickly, Bobby Dunbar was a four-year-old boy who disappeared in 1912 near Swayze Lake in Louisiana. Now, i I tend to think as a rule of thumb, anytime someone, especially a child, disappears near a body of water, they they have just drowned. that's That's the sad fact. We had a case of, what was her name? Aisling Sines, young girl in New Zealand years ago. She disappeared and there was a look for her everywhere, but she had disappeared near a storm drain or something. And that's just the sad fact. That seems to be like a thing. Yeah.
00:54:10
Speaker
Eight months after his disappearance, a man ah with with with this four-year-old boy with him is found um in Louisiana, and some people think that this boy is actually Bobby Dunbar.
00:54:23
Speaker
The man says, ah this boy, it's not his son, it's the son of his friend, the son of his ex-partner, and he's sort of sort of his ward. He's looking after the boy for his mother. But the family, but Bobby Dunbar's family think he looks enough like him that there might be his Bobby, that he might be their Bobby. And there was a court case. The man's ex-partner showed up claiming to be the mother. They apparently even did the did the sort of go to your mother test thing with him. And he was just, he was four years old and very confused and didn't seem to know what the hell was going on. And it was all a little bit inconclusive.
00:54:56
Speaker
ah But the court ruled that this boy was indeed Bobby Dunbar, and so gave him took took him from the man claiming to be his his caretaker and the woman claiming to be his mother, and gave him to the family of Bobby Dunbar.
00:55:09
Speaker
Now, ah more recent DNA testing on the relatives of this supposed Bobby Dunbar has shown that no he was not Bobby Dunbar. He was not genetically related to the people claiming to be his family. So it turns out that basically the court... just took this boy from his parents and gave him to another family who were who were grieving the loss of their child. And one thing that was sort of interesting thing about it was that there was a lot of, you know, in 1912, there was a lot of um social prejudice seemed to play a large part in the court ruling.
Bobby Dunbar: A Century-Old Misidentification
00:55:39
Speaker
this This woman who claimed to be his mother, who we now have good reason to believe was actually his mother, was ah was an unwed mother. She'd had children out of wedlock, whereas the Dunbars were this respectable family,
00:55:49
Speaker
And that seemed to play a large part in the court's decision that, oh, yes, they they're probably telling the truth and she probably isn't. So it's very interesting, but just kind of a bit of a downer. We probably shouldn't have on. We were probably right not to go on an episode, and and now we're going out and it on this episode.
00:56:05
Speaker
But what can you do? Well done, Josh. Well done. Yes. Now, I remember at the time we were trying to think, yeah what what what else is there? You've you've got your Hoffers and your Lukens from 50 years ago, Harold Holt from before that, Madeleine McCann, 2007.
00:56:17
Speaker
two thousand and seven that's still That's still quite a while ago now. that's that Her disappearance is older than both of my children. And trying to think of local examples, again, not really a lot. There was the case of Irena Asher, who was around 2000 or early 2000s,
00:56:32
Speaker
ah But there's nothing conspiratorial about her disappearance. She um walked into the walked into the woods near Pihar, West Coast Beach in New Zealand, while in a ah what she was suffering from a mental illness of some kind, schizophrenia or something, appeared to be having some sort of episode, wandered into the bush and was never seen again.
00:56:51
Speaker
Kirsta Jensen in 1983 was another young woman who disappeared. But again, they were mysterious disappearances, but didn't seem super conspiratorial. So not a lot for us to say about them. um mean so I'm actually looking at the FBI's kidnappings and missing persons list. There's nothing for 2025.
00:57:09
Speaker
There are 14 items for 2024. It's kind of the, is that an average? So I'm looking at 2023 here and the page is no longer loading.
00:57:22
Speaker
But yes, I mean, there are people who are still disappearing, but they're not big stories in the way that things were in the nineteen eighty s Yeah, so if we if we want to leave on a hopeful, possibly positive note, with any luck, these sorts of things will become less and less common as um the surveillance state becomes all-pervading and no one can ever get away with anything again.
00:57:49
Speaker
that just sounds wonderful. yeah Yeah. I mean, you're making things so much even worse. you'll agree Even worse. Yes. like So in that case, I think it's time to quit while we're ahead. But of course, we're not going to completely quit. We're going to quit this episode, but then we're going to record a bonus episode for our beloved patrons where we will talk about... We're not going to disappear at all. now We're going to just take a brief hiatus and then our patrons will get a bonus episode.
00:58:17
Speaker
And... I mean, what a bonus episode it will be. We're going south to Fiordland, then we're zipping across to Dallas in the US, and then we're going to zip all the way to the Giza Plateau in Egypt. So yes, lots to talk about.
00:58:34
Speaker
so if you want to become one of our patrons to get get access to all this sort of content and possibly possibly more besides, go to patreon.com and look for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy and sign yourself up. It's literally as easy as that, I assume.
00:58:49
Speaker
I mean, there are a few clicks and things, and it's recommended you don't sign up using iOS, but it is relatively easy to become an if a patron or Patreon of our patronage or Patreonage system.
00:59:03
Speaker
Yep. So i guess it's time to bring the episode to a close. I still don't think I've really got ah got a decent catchphrase to go out on. So this this this week, I'm going to trial out us bidding you adieu with a Hey, just hold this for me for a second.
00:59:20
Speaker
Yoink! And I need to go and re-articulate a rhesus monkey.
00:59:32
Speaker
podcaster's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who is so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
00:59:46
Speaker
You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not mum.
01:00:13
Speaker
And remember, bees.