Ep.44: Unsolved Disappearances

Transcript

Speaker: Well, you are listening to Castles and Cryptids, where the castles are haunted, and the cryptids are cryptic as fuck. I am Alanna.

Speaker: And I'm Kelsey. And I'm doing my newscaster voice. Breaking news. You are listening to a podcast. Are you ready? Yeah. How are you guys doing? Great. Good. Glad to hear it. We're surviving. Everyone is surviving. This comes out February 4th.

Speaker: So we finally made it through the hump of January. Yeah. That was almost springtime. It was 84 years long. January. My friend today is like, Oh, where did January go? And I was like, I felt every minute of it. Yeah, I did too. It feels like it's been forever since Christmas and like forever since my birthday and my birthday's literally only been a week.

Speaker: And it feels like a billion things have happened since my birthday. Oh, I know. It's like, what did I say? Life moves pretty fast. No, but the days are shut up.

Speaker: That has a good track where it's that they have that sampled in there. It's good. It's like life moves pretty fast. Repeat no. But the days are getting kind of longer, which is kind of nice. Finally see some like daylight as I'm driving home. It's a little bit. Yeah, it's a lot better. We hope you guys have hung in there all January. We're glad to see you back.

Speaker: Yes. In droves, I might say. No. It's insane. I just looked and did you see on Anchor that how many people have listened to us in the last unique listeners we've had in the last seven days? Yeah. I feel like it's 60 something and normally like we were celebrating when it was in the 30s and like in the last week it doubled.

Speaker: That's true. When you're little, a little growth is a lot of growth. It's good for the percentages. Yeah, we're bearing our souls to you. You know how many listeners we have. And I don't know, some episodes kind of blow up a little bit like and you're like,

Speaker: And then like, we got, I feel like we had just gotten a new country and it was India. And I went to see if it was just, you know, what the area was. And then there was like five areas. And I was like, holy shit. I know India has a lot of people, but like, holy shit. They all like tell their friends and like, everyone's mom downloaded the Japan episode, I guess. Japan and prisons. Oh yeah. You guys like your prisoners. Yeah.

Speaker: Well, there's prisoners in the Japan episode too, because I talked about the disgusting atrocities of the special unit that the Japanese had unit 731, where they kept torturing people to see how much like pain they could withstand and stuff. I did. Yeah, a little bit after the Yakuza stuff. It was kind of like a little bookend. Go back and listen.

Speaker: I don't remember this. Oh, it was horrible. They did horrible things to like prisoners of war and stuff. Yeah. Burn them, freeze them, like blow them up with shit. This took a turn. No, yeah, it was gross. It's terrible. Yeah. What's going on in the world today, guys? We should. What?

Speaker: Are we going to talk about our plan for February or we could do some heads up announcements.

Speaker: Yeah, so Vegas has been rebooked. So tentatively. I'm afraid to like say things out loud. It feels weird. Vegas, Vegas take two. Vegas 2 .0. It's gonna be like the hangover part.

Speaker: Except part one like didn't happen was us like sitting in our homes being sad. Me looking at my light up Vegas pin on my fridge. I have the tiny little like desktop Vegas sign that I got when I was in travel. I should just like put it on my desk here and just like stare at it.

Speaker: no but yes take it with us when we go to Vegas yeah take a picture with it in front of the sign because we got to take the freaking touristy picture in front of the sign see when i went with my family we didn't take a picture in front of the sign because it was a month after like the shooting that happened um and the

Speaker: Hollywood or not Hollywood. Wow. The Las Vegas like Welcome to Las Vegas sign had a whole bunch of like flowers and memorial stuff put up in like people's pictures. And I didn't want to we didn't want to take pictures with that.

Speaker: No, that it would be very tasteless looking. A lot of people on our tour bus when we were driving back to the hotels did stop and take pictures. Nobody in my family did. They're like, get me from the knees up. I don't want to see these flowers at the bottom. Right. Yeah. We didn't want to.

Speaker: We didn't want to have pictures of that or really look at it or anything like that because you could feel it still like everywhere and even the tour guides and staff were like we really really thank you for coming and tell people it's really safe here and stuff like that doesn't happen. It was really sad. Yeah they don't usually have to do that. They don't use it to bang people in Vegas.

Speaker: Yeah, so yeah, it'd be nice to get to take a cool picture of us in front of the sign. Yes, whether we have to ironically put our masks on our face when we're outside taking a picture in front of the sign. Oh, we got here during the pandemic. Yeah, right. Fuck you, COVID. Just take a picture of us giving the double bird.

Speaker: Oh, I, from my hotel room when we stayed, I could see Trump tower, like the Trump hotel. So I took a picture of me flipping it off from my hotel room. And I'm sure it's still, it's either on Facebook or in my camera roll somewhere of me giving the finger to a huge Trump tower. Nice. Yeah. Ooh, we should do the fair, uh, high roller at night.

Speaker: the London Eye thing. I wanted to do that. Yeah. Has anybody done it? You guys should let us know. We have a lot of US listeners. Where we should go in Vegas and what we should do. Oh, so that was our announcement. No, no, but we're going at the it's basically it's the end of February. So yeah.

Speaker: So we're going to be skipping a couple weeks. The last two Fridays in February, the 18th and the 25th, we are not planning on releasing an episode. And then. Unless I throw in, here's a classic episode. Yeah. So that I don't have to rewrite my stupid number list again. And I know when we get to episode 50, for fuck's sakes.

Speaker: Right. Every time we change something, just like me, whenever we change something and I have to edit all the numbers on the website of all the pages I've like pre -built with all the episode names and links to the source pages. And I'm like, great, gotta like change all these now.

Speaker: Um, but yeah, so this episode, obviously everybody knows came out on the fourth and we'll be releasing an episode next Friday on the 11th. And that will be our farewell until March 4th. So yes, coming back in my birthday month, coming back hot. Yeah. So don't, if since you guys won't hear from us, don't think we just quit the podcast.

Speaker: We are having fun in Vegas, hopefully. I don't mind if I get a few concerned. Where the hell are you? It's nice. It's nice to know you're wanted. Well being, Jack. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people take off, like whether at the end of December, like because of at least New Year's and different stuff like that, or some people will take off a good chunk or all of January as well for podcasts.

Speaker: We try to work hard for you guys. No, we take them off as we need them. It is. It's fun. It is a lot of fun. Don't get us wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's our topic this week?

Speaker: Yeah, don't keep us hanging, guys. Shut the fuck up. I mean, it's in the description. It's the title of the episode. They already know. It's disappeared, but it's not about us disappearing after Vegas. Oh, that's great. I love it. I'm sorry. Yeah. Unsolved disappearances, the the castles and cryptids podcast. Where did they go? Oh, but.

Speaker: Tell us what you guys want us to do there, besides take pictures at the Binion's Casino that we mentioned in the Killer Couples episode. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Such a weird episode for me to have covered in it. But I'm very excited about the topic, if not the number. Yeah. I didn't see it in my whole listing from me. Okay. So yeah, we're doing disappearances, which are fascinating.

Speaker: And I'm always like, Oh, I kind of like love hearing about cases like that, but you hate it, but it's fascinating. And there's some that I still want to do really, really bad. But like I was saying to you, I think that I wanted to read, there was a book out on one of the most creepy disappearances of two

Speaker: students that I want to read the book first, because they said they basically figured they like had a bit of a timeline figured out it's down to maybe a couple hours. So anyway, it's like, I want to get all the information. It's nice to do ones where you actually have time and maybe when we're on our trip, I can read and research. Yeah, you can do a follow up disappearances episode when we come back. I don't know. I know I want to revisit it though, because it's a good topic.

Speaker: You're ready. I'm ready. Have you heard about this case? It's the disappearance of Ben McDaniel. Ben McDaniel. No, I have not. Does not sound familiar.

Speaker: And you could be forgiven if you confused it or it did sound familiar, but it wasn't. Cause I was like, I feel like any of the ones that I've heard about that have to do with missing males, a lot of them start with B cause there's this one. And then there's also one where Bryce was less pieces. There's a lot of S's in that. He's another pretty famous one. And then, uh, Brian Shafer.

Speaker: I don't know. Okay. It's funny because your eyes start with B. Be careful. It's funny because my missing person is also a male. And I feel like more often it's like missing women. And it's funny that we both show up. Yay. We like to go against the grain. Yeah. Yeah. And there's somebody, yeah, we've already done some like,

Speaker: missing children type ones when we did abduct it. So I stayed away from that. Yeah. So for his little bit of background, Ben was born on April 15th, 1980. And he grew up in Tennessee with his two younger brothers. And his mom and dad were Shelby and Patty McDaniel. Shelby, Shelby. Yeah, that's the dad. Yeah.

Speaker: And Ben got into scuba diving in his teens and he really loved that. So that became a really big hobby for him. And flash forward to him being a grownup when he's about 29 to 30 years old. He has moved into his parents' beach home after what I'm gonna just call a series of unfortunate events. Well, you know, life gets us all down sometimes. He had gone through a divorce

Speaker: He had a construction company that had gone bankrupt. And recently, in 2008, he lost his younger brother, Paul, his youngest brother, Paul, to a stroke. Wow. So yeah. Definitely a series of unfortunate events that had a rough, it was having a rough couple of years, as we all can relate to. It was living in their Santa Rosa beach condo.

Speaker: So this is Florida now, sorry. Didn't put that in there for some reason. And his parents like beach house basically. So he had gone on what they were calling a sabbatical, a little bit of a break to kind of heal up and do some self -care hopefully and just feel a little bit better. Work on his mental health.

Speaker: And he did seem to be improving overall. And he was getting back into like his old passion of diving and stuff. Cause like in the area, he became a regular at this nearby place called a vortex Springs recreational area. I know vortex Springs vortex is such a cool word. Any time the word like vortex is used, you're immediately like, that sounds interesting. You're like, uh, sounds like we're about to talk about like a tornado or something. So what the hell?

Speaker: But this was a recreational area, home to like an actual spring, vortex spring. And it was one of, quote, one of Florida's largest freshwater diving facilities. So like, it's not just like a little ground mountain spring. I didn't put a picture of that on the drive, but. Okay, there's a picture of

Speaker: There's a map on there but it's going to be of something else. Okay, yeah, when just let me know when I'm allowed to look at it. I mean, okay so I'm going to describe the recreational area a little better. It's a quote commercially operated recreation area camping and dive park near pumps to the on Florida.

Speaker: And, um, it's basically got this big basin where you can swim in, like that the spring runs out into. So it's yeah, it's got a big swimming area beach. And then like, it's so deep that you can do a lot of diving there too. The average like depth is, um, like 61 meters. Wow. I don't know why I don't have the feet. I'll have feet later. It's deep. Um, lots of fish live there.

Speaker: There's koi, gar, catfish, American eels, bass. I'm sorry. I always in my head have to go. Is it bass or bass? I'm talking about fish. Blue gill and red horse suckers. Don't they sound fun? Interesting.

Speaker: Yeah, and I thought this was kind of funny. I read that some divers like to bring them snacks, kind of like you might feed like ducks at the pond or whatever, which I hear you're not supposed to do. So I guess I'm not endorsing that, but they like to have cheese whiz and those little like Vienna sausages that you like get in a can.

Speaker: That's very strange things to take underwater with you to feed fish. I would not think of something like Cheez Whiz. It sounds way too liquidy. Yeah. Is it like a spray cheat? Because Cheez Whiz, you would have to literally go down with a jar. Yeah. I'm starting to question this information now. Maybe it's more of a spray. Yeah, spray cheese, which is also equally gross.

Speaker: Strange choice. Aerosol cheese. What? Um, yeah. So on August 10th, 2010.

Speaker: Around 7 .30 PM, Ben was spotted heading into the Springs by two dive shop employees, Eduardo Turan and Chuck Cronin. This wasn't unusual to see him going down by himself, even kind of later in the evening, because he was around their lots, like we said. And people love the underwater caves in the spring. They provided a nice challenge for the divers. Cool.

Speaker: not my thing. But you know what, in the caves I went with my family in Mexico, it's I've never been claustrophobic in my life. But like, it was eerie enough. I don't know if I'd ever be able to do it again.

Speaker: were you guys scuba diving or just swimming? No, so there was parts like where you were walking and then there was parts where you kind of had to swim because it was like underwater cavern. So some spots were like basically, well, it's all wet, like the ground's wet everywhere, but spots where it's like sandy and then, but you're still inside a cave, like deep underground and then spots where

Speaker: you're in water but like you're basically so you have like a life jacket on at all times and you're wearing like a wetsuit so you don't really feel how cold it is because it's very cold and then you have like a camera or a helmet on with like I think it had a light on it and stuff so your hands could always be free but you weren't really allowed to touch stuff because the oils on your fingers could like destroy

Speaker: the ecosystem right and stuff. So there was a spot where we were literally swimming and you're basically floating on your back and like the cave wall like the roof of the cave was like probably five inches from your face and you're like swimming for probably a minute with like just this cave wall like this in front of your face and like you can't see anything and you're just swimming like this and yeah it started to bug me and I was like okay no it was bad

Speaker: like yeah that's very uncomfortable it was a lot and it happened like a couple times where you're like okay or like just your head could fit like just so like between the thing or you had to like have half your face underwater yeah it was it was never a point where you had to like fully submerge your head they didn't like allow that in the thing

Speaker: But right, because then you probably would have had to have a certification. Yeah, well, but it was it was pretty intense. It's not the cave like that we went to. It was open to the public to go into and they shut it down shortly after because researchers hadn't actually even been in there.

Speaker: Yeah, to like study the ecosystem. Yeah. So it's been, it's shut down now. It's on like private property. So the guy like wanted to open it up to tourism and make a bunch of money before the government was like, we want to study it. Um, so we got in, but, um, yeah, we have a picture of us, like inside one of the huge caverns that was really open and they're like treading water in the middle of it. And it's all lit up. And they told us that the people that like take you on the tour, cause there's like

Speaker: groups of like seven or eight of you for like one tour guide essentially that that person in order to be like finish their training to be the tour guide they have to without a light and without the track lighting basically navigate the entire thing start to finish without light to be able to like properly be allowed to like give the tours at the place

Speaker: yeah and it's insane we were we were in there for almost an hour so like imagine navigating underground in water you're not allowed to touch everything there's like rocks in your face and like everything you could trip on a rock and you basically have a headlamp and you have to like navigate the whole way to be by yourself alone that'd be so creepy hello hell yeah no thank you yeah and i'm like it must have been creepy going there and then like

Speaker: It's good they had the trainers, so. Yeah. Train professional, but then you wonder like if it hasn't been checked out by the government, how much safety inspected it's been. Yeah. Well, I guess. Yeah. It was, it was pretty creepy because it was like silent and you could just hear like drip.

Speaker: drip like oh the descent look yeah it was 100 % like the descent minus like the actual thing is trying to kill you the rest of it that we know of yeah yeah it was just creepy oh yeah i don't think i could ever do like cave things like that again no no spelunkers us but that's yeah more when you're even without the water

Speaker: So yeah, this particular cave had a reputation that preceded it. It had almost been completely closed off and banned in the 90s after 13 deaths occurred at the Springs, I believe over the 10 years before that. Yeah. Wow.

Speaker: It's very twisty. I think I have a little bit more on it later, but there's really in -depth descriptions of the cave. Oh, and you can look at the cave picture now. Oh, okay. Because it shows, and you'll need to see as we go along how far in it goes for a cave. It looks, yeah. And then you...

Speaker: So from what I'm seeing, you go like all the way in and then you have to use the same entrance to get out, right? Yeah. Yeah. One way in, one way up. Ooh. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's scary. So, um, so they, instead of getting it condemned or whatever you call a cave,

Speaker: being shut down, they made safety precautions. So that was good. They placed a warning sign at the mouth of the cave. These ones you can Google, I Googled it and it's, you know, it gives the, it's, they're quite grim looking, it's gonna picture the grim reaper on it and stuff. But they put that at the beginning, but they didn't just do that. That was just at the mouth of the cave.

Speaker: then they placed a locked gate about 300 feet into the mouth of the cave. So yeah, they only let certified divers into there. The only people that had a key to it was the dive shop people. Which I mean, assuming that people drawn on this little picture, you

Speaker: sent me are like to scale it looks like you could barely swim in any of the spots oh yeah oh my god yeah like the whole way down you're basically like might as well be in a water slide yeah it's very very difficult and dangerous in there and because yeah there's no place to like turn around and places you have to go through with like

Speaker: You know, some places I read, you had to like take your tank off and put it ahead of you sometimes to fit through. Why would anybody do this? I know if you want to read some disgustingly claustrophobic descriptions of it, there was actually a really long detailed description on a Reddit series someone is doing in like four parts. So he actually did quite a detailed description, but I'm not going to scare you.

Speaker: I don't like it. Oh, we're just kidding into it. No, let's dive into it. No, no. I'm staring at this picture going, why is there not, why is this not like locked off and absolutely nobody's allowed in it. This looks like so dangerous. So the mouth of the cave is about 18 meters or 58 feet down.

Speaker: So that's where they have a little sign with the grim reaper that says, stop, prevent your death, go no further.

Speaker: And then a bunch of, my dog's scraping. And then it has a bunch of like little blurbs about like better divers than you. Like 300 divers have dived down here and been lost or I don't know, it just goes on. It's like basically like stay the fuck out. See, I didn't write it all down, but it was like, it's basically like, you know, there should be enough to deter anyone.

Speaker: Yeah. And then further in from that, then you have the locked gate. So only dive shop employees at the Vortex Springs dive shop had the key to the gate, like I said, and they only gave it out to certified cave divers, or they were only supposed to. So Ben was not a certified cave diver. No. I can see where this is going.

Speaker: sources said that the dive shop employee Eduardo recognized Ben and unlocked it for him. So he said that he saw him try to pick the gate lock. Already he was already tampering Ben was tampering with the gate lock trying to get in it when they saw him go down there at like 730 at night when they were leaving for the night. Okay. Can they see like the gate? Like do they have like a camera or something by it?

Speaker: they were coming out okay like he's a dive shop employee that's actually um he's a commercial technical diver hired by the springs to vacuum out sand and silt from the cave

Speaker: So it stays passable. So most of his job is in the water and then they like often went for their own dive at the end of the day anyway, like for fun. I was just picturing him being in like the shop and I'm like, how do they know he's fucking with the date? Sorry. 18 meters underwater. Sorry. Okay. Cause my mind puts these facts and I try to put it in a logical order, but then it doesn't always come out that way. I'm like, these notes made sense to me. Cause I heard it all. Yeah. Read it off.

Speaker: So it's good to ask questions. But yeah, he was they were actually

Speaker: we'll get to it a little bit, but it was at the end of the day. So it was closed at about six. So they were doing their own like little fun dive and then coming home, like going home. So they saw him going down and he thought, he figured if Ben was going to be down there and tampering with the gate, determined to go down in there because he was a passionate, aspiring,

Speaker: you know, good, really good scuba diver that he was like, he's probably sitting down there. He's going to be tampering with the gate and he could be losing a lot of his using a lot of his air up doing that. And if he's so determined to go in, I'm going to open it because he thought it would be a better choice.

Speaker: No, you call the fucking cops. This is his. And fuck him. Like he is concerned about Ben there, but he knows him. He knows he's familiar with the area too. Um, and he knows he's down there alone with nobody. And he knows that if he opens the gate for him, it's probably going to save him about five to six minutes of air down there. So he opens it. And they're the last two people to ever see Ben, of course. Jesus. Yeah.

Speaker: It's tough. I kind of feel for the guy. We'll hear a little bit more about him. Like I said, he's a commercial diver that works there.

Speaker: Well, in their words, from a quote I took, that he's not there to babysit or police the activities of the spring's guests. He was, however, friendly with many of the visiting divers, casually chatting with Ben and the others as they filled their tanks. He has stated that he frequently stayed late at Vortex Springs, Eduardo, the worker, meaning, and he would often wait to see the bubbles of the last diver of the day, meaning that the diver was decompressing and would soon surface.

Speaker: On the 18th, however, Eduardo had plans to hang out with Chuck, his coworker, but he felt okay leaving before seeing Ben's bubbles because the owner of Vortex Springs at the time, Lowell Kelly, was staying late that night. Oh, okay. So just assumed he would be waiting to make sure he surfaced? I think so. Yeah. I think he thought everything would be fine. Cause who knows when this shit's going to happen. Yeah.

Speaker: So two days later, when Ben's truck was still sitting in the vortex Springs parking lot, the Holmes County Sheriff Department was then called in. They found what? Sorry. Oh, I just said geez, terrible. Yeah, it sucks. They found his keys his wallet with $700 cash. Why? And his cell? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: in his truck. Well, yeah, I mean, can't take it with you. Well, it would be. Well, would it be locked up? Cause then how would you, anyway, he's got a key in his shoe somewhere in the dive shop, maybe. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know where you stashed your clothes when you're diving, but, uh, they are organized further searches with volunteer divers, um, helping out to dive the cave area. And the family was contacted.

Speaker: So they could come down and be there while they were searching for Ben. And the full scale search went on for about three whole days. And then dogs and even cadaver dogs were brought in to like sniff the water area and stuff. But they, it said they like alerted, but they didn't like find a trail or anything. You know what I mean? There was nothing like going away from the water or anything. And they didn't find anything.

Speaker: The dogs didn't find anything. The only trace that anybody found of Ben were two of the scuba tanks. So, commonly called air tanks or oxygen tanks or whatever. They were found at the mouth of the cave. So, it's very odd to say that. Yeah, just looking at the narrowness of it, I feel like if you sometimes have to take your own oxygen tank off to like

Speaker: swim through it, how would they not find his body, you know, his body would be like blocking it at any point, given how narrow it is. It is, yeah, it's so narrow. It's so weird. For him to leave his tanks, it's really weird too. Yeah. So a reward was eventually offered by his family when no information came up on his whereabouts.

Speaker: But eventually after some time went on with this reward out, there was one diver who was searching the cave that did become trapped and died. So an outcry ensued from the public and the reward was rescinded. Yeah. Not good. People thought like, I understand why people would be like that. Maybe that's not a good idea to have a reward for searching a really dangerous place like that. Yeah.

Speaker: Encouraging. Yeah. Yeah. Leave it to professionals that are supposed to be in there, I guess, than people wanting money. Exactly. That's not the kind of, yeah, that's not good. So, but they continue searching for 36 days and still found no trace of Ben, either dead or alive. No evidence decomposition, like nothing like that.

Speaker: Yeah, just looking at the picture like I just feasibly cannot imagine that they couldn't find him if he was still in the cave at all. Yes, yeah, that's what a lot of people think that's what

Speaker: a part of the biggest like mystery is, is that like they did, they searched it. Yeah. I mean, one way in, one way out and it's like going from a water slide, like try and, try and swim through like a water slide and miss somebody. Like you're going to literally hit them. Yeah. And then like, I read some things where they're like, um, some caves are described looking more like Swiss cheese and stuff like that.

Speaker: And there are some alcoves and stuff in amongst these caverns and whatnot. But other than that, it's basically like you say, a straight shot, a water slide, all these tight spaces with a few alcoves off to the side that some of them aren't big enough to turn around in. Yeah. Like how do you not find a body? Oh, that's so weird.

Speaker: Yeah, that's what everybody thought. My next quote, every crevice and opening of the cave was fastidiously searched. Is that how you say that? Fastidiously? I have no idea. I avoid words. I avoid words. That I question. I just change my word bank of words I know. I don't use that one anymore because I don't know how to spell it.

Speaker: I know I didn't write that part but I was like, I've seen it before, but obviously not said it a lot. But yeah, they searched it real good. And except for basically, one quote said a constricted dangerous area in the rear of the cave that even highly experienced expert divers had encountered difficulty entering.

Speaker: Um, and that was like past the end of the known map area. So really nobody had gone there. Send a fucking robot. I think I, I think we'll get to it. Yeah. I'm like, they better have sent one of those things. I mean, they can send things. They just sent stuff down. My sister -in -law's like drain at her house and stuff and told her she had all these tree roots. Can't they send like a little.

Speaker: Yeah, like destroyed her thing and now her and my brother possibly have to spend between like 10 and $25 ,000 digging up her yard to fix because it keeps backing up all the water into the yard and everything. Yeah.

Speaker: That's insane because the ground like shifted and then the water like eroded all the soil around the pipe and then the pipe actually collapsed. So there's like a section of a certain amount where there literally is no pipe anymore.

Speaker: Whoa. And I wonder they had to send down like a droning thingy. Yeah. And then they're like, yeah, we, you have this, like, I don't know. She has like a probably at least a 60 foot tall, like tree in the backyard. That's kind of in the alley. It's like a huge, huge tree. And they said like the roots of it will be covering almost her entire yard. And she has a huge yard in her house.

Speaker: and yeah like the roots they say goes through like the pipe like 15 times in like 15 different spots like so like if you yeah

Speaker: cut down all trees. Okay. No, don't cut down all trees. That is just like one of those scary things. You're like, Oh, I wish I didn't know that that could happen. You just have to go. I'd say like every 10 years, just, um, you hire people and they send in a machine and it literally just like basically augers are like, choose up all their tree roots that are in your pipe. And if you get that done, like every few years, then it won't happen. The more, you know,

Speaker: Yeah. Homeownership. I mean, that's crazy. We're adulting real hard. Oh yeah. So the two tanks, air tanks outside the cave were perplexing to investigators, like I said.

Speaker: Yeah, for one thing that they found really weird was that they were filled with just regular oxygen instead of the specific mix of oxygen and other gases that I guess most divers like to use, but especially for cave diving. I guess you need it a lot because of the various depths that you have to go up and down.

Speaker: So they thought that was weird. And that also that they were right at the beginning of the mouth of the cave, because normally, which you were kind of alluding to, I think, like you would place them as you go in there. Yeah, you take them away with you. Yeah. You're at hand. Yeah, not at the mouth of the cave. I can't turn around and that may take me an hour to get through.

Speaker: The only thing I can think of is he had like got out or something and then I don't know about what depth you have to like

Speaker: You said they had to decompress. They used to watch people decompress. Did he like not do that or something? And he got like the bends and then got really sick and then like got out of the water and the tanks were like get the mouth of the cave and then he died somewhere else. It's I think possible because a lot of people

Speaker: Well, I was, um, I'm kind of going to go into some of the main theories, but like, yeah, some people think that he was placing them at the mouth of the cave, possibly to go back the next day and have them at the ready and do another dive or like, yeah, later on when he had more time and that he probably, maybe he got out and then something happened to him after he got out. Yeah. But I guess the dogs that they brought in for the search probably would have found the trail of that.

Speaker: possibly but there's some other theories that kind of alien abduction just like lava monster i don't know let's go for the simplest answer aliens um so in the aftermath of the case unfortunately kind of going cold uh

Speaker: it hasn't gone completely dead because it's been featured in like podcasts, of course, like now this one. But it's good, it stayed in the eyes of the media. And there was a, I guess she was actually a really good diver, Jill Heinarth, and she made several documentaries about the case. And she was initially trying to bring the parents some closure because

Speaker: She believed she could demonstrate how dangerous the cave was and help them conclude that he must have met some sort of accidental death in there and that they just hadn't been able to find his body yet. Cause like, I might have this later a little bit, but like there's the theory or the possibility that when people like panic and start to lose air, they could thrash around and get wedged in places. So I don't know if that's why she thought that, but

Speaker: She thought it was, once she started digging into it more though, she poured over McDaniel's dive log books and noticed that he had made it to the far point of the cave, like the farthest point that had been mapped out. All down that tiny little

Speaker: Oh, first nightmare. I literally just got a shiver down my spine. Like just oh. Oh, I could have uploaded videos to go with my case too. If you go like the Reddit write up, he did a good job. Shout out Reddit guy. Like links to different videos. He's like blah, blah, blah, mouth cave. And if you want to see a video of someone going into that mouth cave, click here. And I'm like, I don't know.

Speaker: Yeah. Welcome to my nightmare. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm literally probably going to sleep immediately after we record this and I'm just gonna have nightmares. But me dying in vortex spring for like, the next couple of nights. Oh, god, for me, I wonder if it'd be more like, because I hate the underwater Mario levels, because then you get under there with no air and it's like, baby, baby, you're dying, you're dying. That's the thing. I mean, oh,

Speaker: Yeah. So yeah, so Jill Heiner thought that maybe he could have gotten to the end of the cave. She thought it was actually possible once she had done all these documentaries. So she went out there to try and prove the parents wrong that he was in there, but she could. So some think also that maybe he was in the cave and that his body was swept out to sea. But

Speaker: I don't understand that like I said, and you can see there that the actual openings of the cave and stuff or one in one out, and then the spring is a cold freshwater spring.

Speaker: It doesn't look like it's directly attached to the ocean, like spills out or feeds into the ocean. Do you know what I mean? Stuff feeds into it, but it doesn't feed into anything. Stuff goes, yeah, and then water from it goes into the ground and then apparently it connects up with the aquifer and other shit that I don't know much about.

Speaker: I don't think a body could get through. I don't understand that. Osmosis. His body like osmosis through the sediment into the ocean. Wow. I mean, the thing is, yeah, he couldn't have like, yeah, anyway, skeletonized. Oh, that's good. An expert diver was actually called in named Ed Sorensen. He was known for going where others couldn't dive.

Speaker: So yeah, Ed Sorensen, he was an expert diver, loved at least 2 ,500 dives. Wow. Yeah. He actually owned a dive shop about an hour away from Vortex Springs, but was away in the Bahamas and had to come back when he got his wife's text about the missing diver.

Speaker: So yeah, it describes I found a nice quote that described him going in there that yeah really paints a picture. Sorenson suited up on Monday to save air he used an underwater scooter to quickly maneuver through the tunnel.

Speaker: Sorensen abandoned the scooter, two motions. Sorensen abandoned the scooter when the cave narrowed and worked his way deeper through tiny passages, like shimming under a car underwater. Oh, no. Hard no. Couldn't pay me enough. Nope.

Speaker: At tight restrictions, belly on the floor and back to the limestone ceiling, Sorensen had to turn his head sideways to squeeze through. That's what I thought of when you were talking about having to put your head kind of like out of the water. About 1700 feet into the dive, 200 feet past the end of the map, Sorensen saw marks on the limestone where another recovery diver had been earlier. He inched ahead another 20 feet.

Speaker: If Ben McDaniel, who was larger than Sorenson, had come this far, there would be signs. There would be marks on the limestone where his helmet or tanks scraped the cave ceiling. There would be marks in the clay bottom because McDaniel would have shed his tanks and swum with one extended in front of his head. There would be extra tanks left behind for the journey out. If Ben were dead, there would be signs from nature, increased activity from aquatic scavengers.

Speaker: what Ed Sorrenton saw was nothing. No limestone scrapes, no clay impressions, no feeding fish or eels, no Ben McDaniel. So none of that makes all make sense. Yeah. Like it doesn't seem, I don't know. It doesn't seem like he could have got to the end because they would have seen marks. Yeah. But then the other diver thought, well, it's a possibility he got there before.

Speaker: I don't know. There is a third theory. I don't know. But another theory is murder or foul play. So this ties into the he might have gotten out or something. It actually points to the dive shop owner, Lowell Kelly, as the possible perpetrator. So apparently, Kelly was waiting trial at the time of Ben's disappearance.

Speaker: not for anything to do with Ben that I could tell it was related to an ex -employee or the alleged kidnapping and beating of a temporary employee for which he pleaded no contest and received a fine and probation," end quote. Oh, he sounds like a great human. So he's clearly capable of some crazy shit because he drove the ex -employee to the woods, accused him of stealing money and then beat him with a baseball bat.

Speaker: the employee was able to escape and moved his family away in fear. So I don't know why he would want Ben dead, but. Because Ben was fucking with the gate to the cave and then one of the people like opened it up and if he, if anything had happened, it would have ruined the reputation. But I guess this happened anyway and it probably fucked his reputation anyway.

Speaker: Yeah, that comes up on the Reddit comments and stuff for sure. And then some people were wondering if the insurance on that would have mattered if he would have been shown to be tampering with the gate. Some people think maybe his body was retrieved out of there. It seems like it because he has nowhere to be found.

Speaker: Like how would you, that's like disappearing inside of like a fucking swimming pool. Like how do you disappear inside of a swimming pool? I like that because like sometimes I think about this case and I'm like well no it clearly must be like this but then it's like well no it can't be and we don't know and yeah it just like blows my mind.

Speaker: But if he was in here, they wouldn't be able to find him. Like, I know it's like, okay, it points to something else, but then which one fits? Mada, madamos cabo. Yeah, I don't know. One article said that, um, a man showed up drunk and wanted to go diving and asked if it was too late. And the owner said, yeah.

Speaker: or whatever. But then I was like, there was another article that said it was Lowell Kelly that came up drunk asking to dive and I was like, well, that can't be it's his dive shop. I don't know what to leave with some of these. There was some conflicting information and if you will say, I had that a lot in mind. And it's like, usually you can kind of weed out something that's, you're like, that's in one

Speaker: Facebook post article. No, but that's in one article or whatever. And you're like, it's probably that person's slant. But the owner Lowell Kelly died within two years of Ben's disappearance in the bathtub. So some people actually, death was suspicious.

Speaker: I did not go all the way down the Reddit thread. Did he disappear? Is he, is he also a missing person inside his own bathtub? It was some sort of trauma to the head, but he, he could have maybe slipped, but maybe some people think he didn't. I don't know. You can slip getting out of the bathtub. I mean, right. It was not long after Ben disappeared, but still the family has done everything they possibly could.

Speaker: Except for diving into the cave themselves, which we wouldn't recommend and the cash reward they did that rescinded it once it got too dangerous. They hired a private investigator that believes that Ben was likely murdered elsewhere or his body was removed. Yeah.

Speaker: That's what he thinks. And they did pay for a drone to search the cave. I was just going to ask, robots, send in the robots. It could get only so far. Yeah. It's the whole thing. So. Oh, yeah. No, I just had a bit about what you already said that maybe he was dead and they removed him afterwards.

Speaker: And then another major theory that I have to mention, obviously that made my opinion a little clear, but like the last major theory that some people have is that he may have staged his own death and disappeared on purpose. Yeah.

Speaker: So he did have the financial situation issues. So he had the business fail and he was in tax debt to the tune of about 50 grand apparently. It's not great, but lots of us have debt. Yeah. And really in like the debt scheme of things that isn't too bad. I mean, people could rack that up in credit card debt. Yeah.

Speaker: Um, and his family does not subscribe to this theory at all. And personally, I have to say, no, I don't either. Um, especially after the younger brother's death. And that's why they believe it because it hit the whole family so hard. And Ben had actually been the one to discover his brother, Paul, when he had the stroke and he like attempted to revive him and stayed with him in the hospital and everything. So he was there for the whole thing.

Speaker: Yeah. I have that in my case too. It seems like a really tight knit family and people always like jump out and be like, Oh yeah. The person faked their own death to get away from their family. And it's like, well, I mean, not everybody just does that. Like, right. It seems like a simple explanation that what percentage of people fucking do that successfully. It's so few can actually get away with that. Yeah.

Speaker: I think so, especially these days. Yeah. And he had a girlfriend, Emily Greer, a wetlands biologist. And more than that, he had a dog, Spooner, a chocolate lab. Spooner. So presumably he was, or he was very, seemingly by all accounts, happy with the girlfriend. They were making plans. He wanted to open a live aboard dive company.

Speaker: And don't worry they found Spooner alive but hungry after the two days was gone. So, and then.

Speaker: A little bit more detail I had was that people saw him go for three dives that day. The first was in the morning. One was in the early afternoon. Then there was quite a long break between the second and the third dive. So because he sat around testing his equipment, making notes in his dive log, some people speculate that he was killing time until maybe the area closed for the evening and people all went home.

Speaker: So they think that he might have been doing that on purpose and that like some divers were allowed to stay later if they bought the right pass. So he was obviously staying behind because he stayed till like 7 30. But he called his mom like at 6 30pm and left like a happy voicemail on a friend's phone. So he sounded like excited for his last dive and stuff.

Speaker: Um, and that was last thing before he passed the Chuck and Eduardo. But Chuck Cronin is convinced that Ben's not in the cave, but he still looks for him every, every, anyway, every Wednesday. Cause he's still there. Yeah. That's terrible. I just feel bad for all the people, like just continually putting themselves in like the danger of going through their

Speaker: Yeah. At least he's like an employee and he has the connection. I don't think, yeah, I don't think people are doing it for the reward or anything anymore at least. So no, shouldn't be too many if any, but the girlfriend, the former girlfriend Emily, she still works on the case, but yeah. So it's kind of sad because she's holding onto it too, working on the timeline and still investigating in her own way. Um, so.

Speaker: That is the sad case of Ben McDaniel. It's terrible. It's so, I thought mine was gonna be super mysterious, but I think you won up to me. I fricking love a good mysterious disappearance case. They boggle my mind. I'm just sitting here staring at the cave, just going, nope, not possible. Like I literally just can't.

Speaker: No, do it. Sorry. Get this. One final thing was that I ran across it is interesting about bodies disappearing. And being found one divers remains was found 17 years after he went missing in Lake Tahoe. So Wow.

Speaker: Donald Christopher Whittaker. His body was pulled from the lake on July 27, 2011, after disappearing on a dive on July 10, 1994. Wow. Almost to the day. Yeah, that's creepy.

Speaker: Yeah, so it can happen. They had was like a group of divers but driving with special equipment and they were exploring a granite cliff 270 feet below the surface when they found him. He was wedged in a crevice in the rock. And if he had slipped to the bottom, he probably would have never been found because Lake Tahoe is the second deepest in the USA reaching down to 1645 feet.

Speaker: 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet. 1645 feet.

Speaker: It's so weird. Oh, it's creepy. I don't like it. Sorry. Sorry about it. It's supposed to stick in your hand. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully someday. Always hold out hope or answers. Would you answer? Yeah. All right. We'll be back for more unsolved disappearances. All right.

Speaker: Welcome back. This one, I don't know, like, fucked me up in the head because I just don't understand it. And it seems, yeah, there's a lot going on with it though.

Speaker: Um, okay. Yeah. A lot of moving parts. Yeah. Um, so stretching out my legs. Yeah. Get ready. Just like do some, do some light stretches. I don't know. Um, settle it. Yeah. So this is the disappearance of Lars Mittank. Uh, yeah. I did say it was a guy. Okay.

Speaker: I don't think I've heard about him. I hadn't either. And I actually don't really remember how I stumbled across it. I just, yeah, once I started reading about it, I just couldn't really like not cover it. Yeah. Yeah. There's something weird going on and yeah.

Speaker: Those are always the ones where you're like, okay, like there's strange happenings before or during. Yeah. Yeah. Something that just is off and it just makes you go, huh? Yeah. This one, even like probably almost equals to me, like.

Speaker: the weirdness you feel about the Elisa Lam disappearing at Hotel Cecil and everything, and dying and stuff. This is that level of like, what the fuck? It's weird. Cryptic stuff? Oh no. My favorite.

Speaker: So Lars Metang was born on February 9, 1986. So it would have been his birthday, like just a few days after this episode airs. Oh, happy birthday Lars. Yeah, hopefully you're out there somewhere. Oh, shit. Yes. Yeah.

Speaker: or resting in peace, I guess. We don't know. Yeah, I jumped the gun. I don't know what's going to happen, but we hope. Yeah. I'm sending out my thoughts. Yeah, he was born in Berlin, Germany.

Speaker: Yeah. And he was very described as very smart, even from a young age. And he actually completed advanced classes that were required for becoming an engineer. So he was really smart. He like, finished his classes earlier than like the four year program, I think would have dictated.

Speaker: And he also did like a specialization during that time. And he ended up getting a job as an operator at a power plant. Oh my God. He's like, he ticks all my boxes, like a soft spot for German boys and then like engineers. And yeah. What's his last name? He's probably cute, right? Mittank. M -I -T -T -A -N -K. Oh, wow. That's a last name.

Speaker: Careful what you Google. Okay, I saw his face. He's cute. Yeah, he's not bad. Yeah. So he found his job as an operator of a power plant. And he was actually a very, very strong supporter of the

Speaker: It's pronounced ver -der or ver -der, but it's spelled with a W. So it's like ver -der Bremen football, which there is actually for us like North Americans, it's soccer, but it's a football club and he loved football.

Speaker: Nice. Yeah, Veritor Bremen Football Club. And he loved this team. I think it was like a semi -local team. But they weren't actually known as like being a winning team. They weren't like champions. They didn't win all the time or anything like that. But he really loved them, I assume, because they were pretty local to him. So. OK, yeah, they're like the underdogs that you work for. Yeah.

Speaker: So with his job at the power plant, he did have to move away from his family, but he wasn't too far away. And in 2012, his father actually suffered a stroke.

Speaker: Yeah, just like in your case, but, um, his father didn't pass away and Lars was close enough. I guess that even though he lived in a different city, he would go home on weekends. Um, even though he was working full time, he would go home on weekends and help his mom Sandra take care of his father who at this time needed like basically full time care. Oh, yeah. He's a good boy. Yeah. Helps his mom.

Speaker: Mm hmm. So he and his friends took many vacations like from young ages, and now they're like in their late 20s. So they're still taking a bunch of vacations in and around Europe. And they took these over the years and they just enjoyed in general just being outdoors. Yeah. So it brings us to our June 30 in 2014.

Speaker: at the age of 28, Lars and five of his friends decided to take a trip to Varna, Bulgaria. Ooh. Yeah. And they all stayed at a golden sands resort on the Black Sea coast. And everyone - That sounds a bit nicer once you say Black Sea coast. It's like random place in Bulgaria, huh? Not even like the capital or, you know, not Sofia. No idea.

Speaker: Okay. Europeans are weird. No. Yeah. We love you guys.

Speaker: So everyone was enjoying this holiday. Um, they were spending their days mostly like going into town and drinking cause they're in their twenties. They were watching like football matches in like sports bars. They were making a bunch of friends and Lars was going around. He was wearing like his word or sports Jersey. Um, and he was passing out flags for different football teams. I don't know if it was verdure that they were passing out or if it was a different team.

Speaker: but they had some conflicts at the bar from other sports fans that did not agree with them about teams, and that will be coming back later. They were all fighting about sportsball. Yeah, about sportsball in the past. Well, yeah, Europeans get a little crazy over there fighting. Yep, a lot.

Speaker: Yeah, so they're just hanging out at the resort, going into town, drinking at bars. And Lars was hoping to use this vacation as a way to get away from his busy life, juggling the very demanding job he had at the power plant, helping his family care for his dad, who needed full -time care, as well as his girlfriend. Right. He's got a lot on the go. Mm -hmm.

Speaker: Wow. But he was very happy, like, and it's nice he could take this vacation. So Lars, as I said, was what was vocal about his love for the Werder Bremen Football Club during this trip. And he was actually it led to him being involved in a fight on July 4. So this would be depending when they like arrived a four or five of the trip.

Speaker: Okay, so they're in a bar and he gets into a fight with four men over which football club is better. Yeah, and by himself gets into a fight with four other men.

Speaker: I mean, basically, I think this at this point, it's just a verbal fight. So they're probably just more of an argument, I'd say. But he's got his buddies with him, right, you said? At this point, at this moment. So Lars left the bar a bit later with his friends, and they were walking back to the resort. But all of his friends decided they wanted to go to McDonald's.

Speaker: uh and Lars decided he didn't want yeah right um or donators I mean like are you gonna yeah one of those places has like pizza donairs and poutine and you're like yeah hell yeah late night munchies yeah so his friends are going to McDonald's he decides he doesn't want to go to McDonald's no always go to McDonald's

Speaker: So it's sad because he's like pretty health conscious. I think they said he probably didn't want to eat at McDonald's. You're already on a cheat night, guy. Yeah, you've been drinking like a fish. Just go to play McDonald's. Yeah, exactly. He's obviously not drunk enough to

Speaker: Yeah, not drunk enough. That's it, period. Yeah, so his four other, his four friends are heading to McDonald's. He decides to walk, I think it said it was about a mile, maybe a kilometer from the bar to the resort they were staying at. So his friends go to McDonald's, he's on this walk by himself and he's actually attacked and beaten while he's walking back.

Speaker: Um, he was attacked by four men and this left Lars with a perforated eardrum and injured jaw and a possible concussion, but he's okay. Yeah. So for some reason he doesn't see his friends until the next morning. Um, so maybe they were all staying at different rooms. I don't know why he wouldn't have like talked to them when they got back. Yeah. Maybe just like staggered home.

Speaker: Yeah, but they see in the next morning, he tells them what happened. And there's a lot of conflicting stories from his friends about what he what they say he told them that morning. There's two different versions. They say that there are some of the four friends say that Lars told them he was beaten up by the same four men that he had gotten to an argument with at the bar.

Speaker: And others say that Lars had heard the four men that like he got in an argument with at the bar say that they were going to hire somebody to beat him up and not to beat him up. Either way, he got beat up by multiple people. Right. Sounds like it could have easily been him, like them misunderstanding him too. Yeah. It was the guys from last night or it was some guys

Speaker: from the guys. Yeah. So on July 5 and 6, so over the next two days after this, Lars and his friends continued to hang around the resort as well as go into town and drink. So obviously at this point, Lars, they're kind of moving past it. I mean, he's in pain and stuff from like the concussion. His ear is giving him a lot of headache and he has an injured jaw.

Speaker: Some sources say he had a broken jaw. I feel like he would not have put off two days with a broken jaw. So he hasn't gone to the hospital? No, he doesn't want to. Yeah. God damn.

Speaker: Yeah. Lars eventually did agree to see a doctor on July 7th after calling and talking to his girlfriend about his ear hurting and told her what happened. She's like, go to the fucking doctor. Man. I hate to rub some dirt in it. Oh, yeah. My head is about to fall off, honey. I just thought I'd give me an update. How are you? Go to the fucking doctor.

Speaker: Yeah, so she tells him to go to the fucking doctor and he goes and sees this doctor. This doctor basically tells him to go to the hospital for additional treatment. It's kind of said this doctor didn't really do much. Yeah, so he does end up going to the hospital.

Speaker: Um, but in sources I found it said he went to the hospital like hours later. He decided to like check in with his friends again, first for a couple hours and go get a meal. And then he goes to the hospital and he's friends. I don't know. They're not the greatest. One of them should have taken him to the doctor and then gone to the hospital with him.

Speaker: So he was prescribed, so he goes to the hospital, he sees another doctor, this doctor prescribes him 500 milligrams of the antibiotic Cefprasil.

Speaker: Um, and this is to prevent any one source said any infection from the injury. Another said that Seth Brazil is normally just, um, like prescribed when you have an ear infection, but he didn't have an ear infection. He had like a perforated eardrum or like, yeah.

Speaker: Um, and then it's also some sources say that, uh, this doctor, other than prescribing this antibiotic didn't treat his ear in any way. And that the doctor actually mocked him for being a tourist and not speaking Bulgarian. Oh, um, second opinion. God.

Speaker: Yeah, but this doctor did tell him that he was not allowed to fly home due to the eardrum problem and that he had to stay back in Bulgaria while the rest of his friends headed home that very same day. So they're set to fly home that day. He finally goes to the hospital and they tell him he's not allowed to fly with a ruptured eardrum.

Speaker: And they just left him. Well, all of their friends did talk to Lars. They all, at least a couple of them offered to stay, told him they wanted to stay with him. He declined. He told them all he wanted them to go. I mean, yeah.

Speaker: And you're leaving him in a foreign country. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's like, you're seeing, he must, he was, must be so far away from home. Yeah. You're like in a foreign country. It's like you say, but they, it's probably quite a short flight. So maybe they were thinking. We get to it later. You can even take a boss. So, I mean, it's not, it's not like he's on the other side of the world, but still. Um, so.

Speaker: Yeah, they go back to the hotel. They kind of talk about it. His friends are going to fly home and he's going to stay. So Lars checked into or they all checked out of the hotel at the same time. He kind of sees his friends off at their cab to take them to the airport. At the same time, he grabs a separate cab.

Speaker: to take him and some sources say he asked the cab driver to find him the cheapest hotel. And then other sources say he just picked a cheap hotel that was near the airport just so he would be close. And this was called a hotel color, which reports say it was super seedy. It's in a poor part of town. And one report even said that it was like just run and managed by drug dealers essentially.

Speaker: And see if he had been a woman, would he have been more concerned for his safety possibly? And like for me, why didn't you tell one of your friends what hotel you were going to or go back to the one you were in where people at least could then contact you if necessary.

Speaker: Um, so this is the last time his friends saw him and they say that when they last saw him, he was relaxed and in a very good mood. He was upbeat, even though he had to stay and they were leaving.

Speaker: Yeah. Um, it takes a dark turn and just a drastic 180 when just later that night, virtually less than 12 hours later, Lars is calling his mother in a panic from his hotel room. And he tells her about the events of the trip. And suddenly just out of nowhere tells her you have to cancel my credit cards and that the front desk copied his credit card while he was checking in. And he was worried that they were going to use his credit card.

Speaker: Oh. So.

Speaker: is mother Sandra. Yeah. His mother Sandra gets off the phone with him, calls the credit card company. They tell her that she can't like freeze his credit card, but that she can cancel it. So she calls him back and says, I can cancel your credit card. And because he can't fly, she books him on the spot, a bus ride home for the very next day and just tells Lars, go get some sleep.

Speaker: And then they get off the phone I don't know how long later Lars calls her back and is now whispering that he's being followed and that he thinks he's going going to be killed and then suddenly hangs up.

Speaker: Oh my God. Yeah. That's specific. Yeah. Sandra later told German TV quote, I thought, God, my son is in danger. I could hear his heart pounding over the phone. He said people were trying to rob him or kill him. Wow. Why the medication like, yeah. Wasn't needing it. It's, and he's got a concussion.

Speaker: I think that's a dangerous combination. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of things going on with this. So he hangs up that phone call. Um, then he suddenly texts her asking her about the medication he's on, but he spells the name wrong and that he's, um,

Speaker: Yeah, he messages her this around 3am. So they've been in communication for like about five hours between all these like messages and phone calls.

Speaker: Like medication name, is it like the like brand name, like Ativan or is it like mexophiliprothalene or something? I think that's the brand name. Cause it later on it says it's part of a specific strain of drugs that are used as antibiotics. Yeah. So I think this is a specific brand name of an antibiotic. Yeah. That would be a lot easier to spell if it's a medicine you use all the time.

Speaker: Yeah, and it's just the generic name or. Yeah, so it's not the scientific lab. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, he messages her this at 3am. So Sandra is now even more worried for her son. She actually books Lars a new flight home. So she's now booked a bus ticket and a flight home for just a few hours later. And this is the morning of July 8th.

Speaker: So this is about 3 a .m. According to CCTV footage of the hotel Lars was staying at, this I only really found in one source. I'm not sure how much I believe it. They say that there was CCTV footage inside of the hotel that showed that Lars was flustered. He was pacing up and down the hotel like foyer and looking out of windows and then even like hiding in an elevator.

Speaker: Oh, my God. Yeah. The hotel elevator aspect. Mm hmm. Oh, maybe. And then there's other reports that say Lars left the hotel at 1 a .m. So this was before texting his mom and that he returned hours later and no one knows what he was doing during that time. But that's not always mentioned. So I'm not sure if that's true or not. Oh, no. I mean, very well could be. Yeah.

Speaker: Shit, just a bad scenario all around like so much woulda, coulda, shoulda going on here in my mind. So on July 8th Lars took a taxi to the airport around 5am. So this is only two hours after he texts his mom about asking her the medication is.

Speaker: And when she booked his flight, so she had booked him a flight, um, I believe later on that day. So he literally was showing up like hours and hours and hours before his flight, probably at least five. Oh, damn. Yeah.

Speaker: So he takes the taxi to the airport at 5 a .m. He texts his mom saying that he's made it safely to the airport and she then asked him to go meet with the airport physician or doctor to check out his ear injury and make sure that he's cleared to fly and gives him the details of his flight and tells him if he's not allowed to fly,

Speaker: that she still has the bus booked. So he just gets on the bus and comes home. And she gives him the details of that as well. So Lars then calls Sandra back a few minutes later and tells her that they won't let him fly or drive because of his appearance and that he looks disheveled.

Speaker: Yeah. Lots of people do have a shovel on the bus and they're not the bus. He needs some rest. So Sandra tells him to go to the bathroom, wash his face, comb his hair or something, and call her back when he knows more.

Speaker: So they end that call. Sandra then calls Lars back because she had canceled his credit card he needed and they had been communicating about her transferring him money that he could withdraw at like an ATM or something so that he could like buy stuff at the airport. So they had like figured out how to do that. So she calls them back and as they're talking about the money transfer,

Speaker: And Lars, or yeah, they're talking about, or had been talking about that. She's trying to get information about it, about how to send him money. And Lars answered answers and said something that she can't like distinguish what he's saying on the phone and then just hangs up. Oh no. So Sandra calls. Yeah. Sandra calls back many times and Lars never answers again. And she never hears from him again.

Speaker: According to the doctor that Lars saw at the airport, he said that Lars was nervous during the appointment at the medical clinic and had asked him about what the medication was that he was taking. The doctor had assured him it was safe and just an antibiotic and had actually cleared Lars to fly and said that he only needed to sign a waiver.

Speaker: And Lars actually completed the waiver and then just simply asked to use the bathroom. Oh, no, that's not what he said. No. So this is where like stuff gets weird and I kind of hate this doctor at the airport because he seems kind of like a dick and all this.

Speaker: So the airport at the time was undergoing renovations and during the checkup that Lars had with this doctor, it's reported that a construction worker entered the office for some reason and that Lars immediately became scared and possibly said, quote, I don't want to die here. I have to get out of here.

Speaker: and quote and got up and left the room leaving behind all of his belongings, including his cell phone, passport and wallet. So he just like booked it. Um, however, the doctors see that the doctor said this is what happened. Um, but the doctor has changed their story three different times.

Speaker: saying first that an airport employee was the one that came into the room looking for Lars specifically, like asked if Lars was in the room. Lars saw that they were asking for him and that's when he ran off, which was pointed out by whatever I was watching that that's very unlikely because he checked in like literally at least five hours before his flight. So why would they be looking for him? Like, I mean,

Speaker: Yeah, he had seen the doctor. Nobody had alerted the airport authorities. Yeah. Well, he's still, according to the doctor, he's still in the room when they come looking for him. OK. Yeah. In the second story, when the doctor was talked to by police, he changed it to saying that it was the airport construction worker because the airport was undergoing renovations. And again, that Lars got scared and ran out of the room.

Speaker: And then suddenly his last story is that someone entered the room, but he didn't recognize them as either an employee of the airport or a construction worker. He has no idea who they were. They just randomly barged in to Lars's medical appointment that is somehow sound stupid, right?

Speaker: And then started talking to Lars. Yeah. Even like kind of, I watched like a YouTube video about this. It was like 45 minutes long. That was kind of a deep dive that I used to like round out my information. And they're like, what feasible, like doctor's office would let a random person, even if they were doing construction work, enter a doctor's office when a patient's in the room.

Speaker: Yeah. Why all of the stories, the different stories? Yeah. So CCTV footage shows Lars when he first entered the airport and he's casually walking through, he's wearing a bright yellow shirt and the footage shows him suddenly just like cuts to him full out running out of the airport.

Speaker: No. And security footage outside of the airport shows him running across the sidewalk, and then he's kind of walking, but like at a brisk pace. And then he's jumping a fence before disappearing into a field of multiple sources say sunflowers, but you can't see them in the video. And it runs along the highway. And this is the last

Speaker: known sighting of Lars Mittank. And the footage has been viewed millions of times on YouTube and was, he has been dubbed quote, the most famous missing person on YouTube. So that was actually the link I sent you is the CCTV footage of him at the airport. If you want to watch it. Terrifying. I can't believe they didn't

Speaker: It's like, yeah, bad doctor. You don't just check an air drum and not also the concussion that came along with it. Yeah. The concussions like never, well, it's possible concussion, but I mean, at one point they say he was kicked in the head. So like, right. So it's like, maybe is it only his mom that's noticing that he's acting oddly and not the doctor?

Speaker: Like even the friends said he was happy and everything and he was fine for two days. And then they literally leave him the morning of and like 12 hours later, he's completely changed. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, don't like that. Oh, okay. That's what you said. Yeah. Oh no. Oh.

Speaker: So it doesn't have any audio or anything with it. So you can just play it. And it has little captions. So it starts out, he's walking. He has like a duffel bag and a backpack. Well, I had to put you in the background. It's loading. Oh, it's always creepy when you know it's the last. Yeah. OK, so yeah, he is just walking with a bag. And then he's just walking like a normal person by the doors.

Speaker: He's running. He's on running. Yeah. That was like, like he just like sprinted all of a sudden. Yeah. Okay. But then he cut out down as he came out. Yeah. And then of course it gets farther and farther away because the camera is just at the airport. So you can't see anything but like random jogging. Ew. Ew.

Speaker: No, that there's something wrong with that. Oh, where are you? I don't like it. Yeah. Um, so Sandra. Hang on. No. I want to know the secrets of recording. Great podcast. Yeah. Shutting up YouTube.

Speaker: Yeah. So that's why I got like, I didn't even think about it until we were recording. I was like, ooh, darting out of elevators, weird footage, him acting strange, seeing, like possibly seeing things very easily. Yeah. And that one does. Yeah. That one is creepy to me. So that is fricking as soon as I watched the footage, I was like, okay. When I saw him running, I was like, Oh, weird. Um, like, you know, he was on,

Speaker: put on a medication too, which is a bit similar. So his mother, Sandra, she's obviously seen this footage, but she's also seen additional footage that has never been made public that is from the airport. And it shows Lars outside of the airport showing him darting around two police cars.

Speaker: that were there. He is kind of ducking in and out. He's weaving in between vehicles. He's hiding behind them. He's hiding behind other objects, including, they said, like a pile of sand. So he's basically like trying to not be seen. And his mom called it as him acting stealthy.

Speaker: um trying to avoid being seen as if he was trying to avoid like being captured by somebody and because of this additional footage she has been shown she believes that he was operating with some sort of plan um that he had in his mind and that he was in a stable frame of mind i don't know if i really agree with that um because

Speaker: there's nothing happening in the video other than him running. I mean, nobody's in pursuit of him. Nobody, he runs out of the airport at full speed and nobody ever even really looks at him to be like, what was that about? Like it's 5 a .m. Like. Yeah, no one's paying him as any attention. I mean, probably they're looking around once he goes past them, but other than that, they're just like, what the hell guy? Yeah. So that brings us to our theories, basically.

Speaker: Um, and they are kind of wild. So the belongings that he left behind, so his bags, his passport, wallet, everything. Um, they failed to leave any like clues for his disappearance. And there have been many conspiracy theories about his disappearance over now, almost the seven or almost eight years he's been missing.

Speaker: And some believe he was actually a victim of human trafficking in Bulgaria. So as they said like he kind of disappears and there's a highway nearby so he may have possibly been picked up by like a trucker hitchhiked and like gone somewhere voluntarily and then possibly forced into human trafficking because Bulgaria

Speaker: Um, I guess in like one thing I came across that it's the pro one of the primary sources of human trafficking in the European union. Oh, so they don't think that has to anything to do with those four guys just like no that it happened after he had whatever mental, you know, yeah, it could have been like totally random because he was like hitchhiking or something.

Speaker: People are often forced into slavery, adultery, even drug smuggling. And some people have their organs removed against their will. Wait, slavery, adultery? Yeah, I don't know why adultery is on there. I don't know. Cheat on your wife. I don't have a wife. Well, cheat on her.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's such a weird thing. Um, another theory is that people believe Lars was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Yeah. And that's why he was questioning the pills and the three doctors he ended up seeing because again, he saw like, the normal doctor, the doctor directed him to the hospital where he saw another doctor and then he saw this doctor at a medical clinic at the airport. So he saw three doctors.

Speaker: Yeah, and they all told them different things or gave them something different. They weren't super helpful. But they say paranoid schizophrenia, maybe why he questioned all three of them and was asking about the pills, as well as why he thought he was being followed or going to be killed.

Speaker: And they say that paranoid schizophrenia normally starts in the mid to late 20s, which would fit because Lars was 28. And that the kick in the head he received may have been like a trigger for it. And that it wouldn't have mattered if he had any history or even family history of mental illness, because he had like a head injury.

Speaker: Right. Yeah. I would think that a head injury would have to play into it or the, yeah. Can antibiotics mess with you? It can. We'll get to it in a minute. So, um, some even, as I said, when we were talking about yours that some people believe that Lars planned this and faked his disappearance to start a new life. However, Lars was on good terms with his family and it seems very unlikely.

Speaker: Uh, that's a very weird way to do it because now you are the most famous looking, what did you say? Missing person on YouTube video. Really low profile buddy. Right. Wearing your bright yellow shirt. And then people do believe that the antibiotics he was prescribed may have caused side effects.

Speaker: Um, in my research, the listed side effects of Seth Brazil, that he was, uh, prescribed are listed as nausea, diaper rash, diarrhea, vomiting, dizziness, swelling of the face, kidney problems, yeast infection, allergic reaction, and then restlessness and type or activity. So I mean, those last two are seen the most likely.

Speaker: Um, but his mother does believe that this is what happened and that Lars had a rare reaction to the drug due to the alcohol him and his friends were drinking while he was taking it. And that possible, like they kept saying Lars was possibly on drugs, but I mean it.

Speaker: could have been, maybe it was just the alcohol, who knows? Okay. Does it look kind of drugs or anything? No. But they do say that antibiotics have been known to induce psychotic side effects, including hallucinations and paranoia. And studies have suggested that acute psychosis could be a potential adverse effect of some antibiotics

Speaker: Um, but this doesn't fully explain why he or his body were never found. Um, no, you could find them, you know, whether maybe you found him living on the street or something. Yeah. And the fact that it's reported that Lars actually only took three pills of the antibiotics before he disappeared because they found them like in his suitcase that was packed.

Speaker: So he only took three pills. So they're saying any of these possible reactions that would have been quite severe for you to have only taken three pills. What if you drank a lot of beers, isn't it? Right. You just get really drunk or something. If you mix with one of my patients or I think that's what a lot of the problems is. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. I think it's definitely the restlessness and hyperactivity. I mean, something's going on.

Speaker: And then like, I didn't know what could cause, if it can cause in rare cases, paranoia and stuff like that. Yeah. They said it's like the, the type of medication, like classification of antibiotic it is, it's actually like recognized as causing that. They just don't list it as possible reactions. But, but there's been studies that have like concluded that it has happened. So.

Speaker: Um, rare. Yeah, just extremely rare. And that's what his mother believes. Um, and then some people have just kind of really shitty things, um, that they think, they think that it's possible he was involved in drug transactions. And this is why he kept leaving his friends during the trip, like not wanting to go to McDonald's and one other time where he wanted to go for dinner by himself. Um, yeah, how dare you.

Speaker: An alternate theory is that the men that were hired to beat Lars up after they beat him up, they actually pretty much forced him to carry drugs and that he had to drop them off at the airport. And that's what he dropped off. And then he ran outside of the airport without it because it was the drugs he was supposed to drop off.

Speaker: and that he used his ear injury as an excuse to stay in Bulgaria and not involve his friends. He wanted to keep them out of what was going on because he didn't want them to get in trouble. And it was only when he was alone did he feel overwhelmed by the situation and appear worried and attempt to evade capture by dodging in and out of police cars at the airport parking lot.

Speaker: Um, however, normal round the mill drug, you know, bust kind of actions. I feel like if you're, yeah. Um, so pull, however police do say they recovered his luggage and like tested it and there was no drugs or residue found on anything. So it's unlikely he was smuggling drugs.

Speaker: whether I'm forced to or not. Because some sources say that this whole trip was planned so that he could smuggle drugs and that his friends were involved. It was like a whole thing.

Speaker: And then another thing is that they point out that the doctor, apparently the doctor he originally talked to that told him he wasn't allowed to fly.

Speaker: And I never got confirmation of this because it was only in one source in the video I watched. Apparently he told him he would have to stay in Bulgaria for up to 30 days and that's why he told his friends to go without him because he thought he'd be there for another month.

Speaker: And that would be pretty vital if that was true. It was only in it only in that YouTube like deep dive thing I watched. I couldn't find it in anything else. I was looking at for information. Yeah. I'm likely that only one doctor would say or one source.

Speaker: Yeah, but they did say that even if this had been the case that the doctor told him he couldn't fly, that it's actually a very minor surgery to fix the perforated eardrum well enough for somebody to fly like the same day it could have been done and he could have flown back. And that this minor surgery could have been performed by any ear, nose and throat doctor. So it would have been unlikely that

Speaker: He would have been like sent to the hospital and then this person would have told him like he couldn't fly when this minor surgery could have repaired it and he could have flown back with his friends. Oh, but yeah, nobody seemed to give him that option. No, they basically were like, you have an ear infection. Talk to somebody else.

Speaker: Yeah. So they say, what's, what's your health care there? Right. Um, yeah. So he could have possibly phone back immediately had he had this surgery. So they say that because of this, why else would somebody choose to stay alone in an unknown country unless it involved drugs. Right. And that the ever travels alone.

Speaker: That's crazy. And then this theory also relies on the fact that the only quote unquote impartial account of Lars's behavior other than the footage comes from the airport doctor that I said is like a flip -flop garbage person basically who changed their story three times.

Speaker: king of waffling on his story. Yeah. So they say now he's in impartial view of Lars's behavior at the time. And he says that Lars seemed emotionally drained, which they believe would be more consistent with somebody being involved in a drug trade, more so than somebody experiencing any sort of psychosis. Also now he's their expert witness. Yeah, basically.

Speaker: I mean, God forbid somebody be tired. Yeah. I don't know about that. They just don't want to deal with it. Yeah. And the last little bit I have is that some people believe that Lars was killed just like he thought he would be after he left the airport, possibly by the men who beat him up or the ones that were possibly hired to beat him up. We don't know which is the case.

Speaker: Or the ones possibly following him. Yeah, or if they were the same people we have really no idea. And that this is why here his body has never been found, because he was intentionally targeted and killed, and they disposed of his body in some way.

Speaker: Um, I didn't want to go into any of the unsuccessful sightings cause there's a number of them. Um, but because they're unsuccessful, I mean, they're not really important. It's a number of like homeless people, people that have been picked up by truck drivers in the area. Um, basically that just looked like him, um, or don't know who they are because they're homeless or, or have mental health problems. Um, but they've all been confirmed to not be him.

Speaker: And Sandra Metank, his mother did hire a private investigator to look for Lars in Bulgaria, like basically right away. And she has been on German and Bulgarian TV multiple times. And she regularly posts like aged and edited photos of Lars on social media to show what he would look like with like different hair, a beard, thinner, older, basically everything.

Speaker: And she regularly receives photos of people who may be her son. And while none of them have actually been Lars, she is hopeful that he will be found, but assumes that he would be in quite poor health and is probably likely thin with long hair and a beard just because of his behavior when he disappeared. And that's the end, unfortunately.

Speaker: feels like it could be solved someday, maybe. Yeah, really don't know. I was even just reading the comments under like the YouTube video and people are like looking up the airport on like Google Maps like aerial view trying to figure out like the route that he took like jumping over the fence to get to the highway because they had reports like

Speaker: within an hour or so of his disappearance of like a truck driver picking up somebody on the highway, but like it's, yeah. Like a deep dive on it. Seriously. Like, you know, when like one pot, like journalist goes out with a case that's close to, you know, like I'm going to try do what I can to get to the bottom of it. Yeah, it's a lot. And it's weird. Like, yeah, for anybody that,

Speaker: didn't go go watch the video though it just Yeah, and I feel bad for the mom. And I kind of wish they I wonder why they didn't release the other footage of him they say like outside that his mom saw. Maybe she didn't want them to

Speaker: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, if it just, I don't know, maybe they didn't think it was that helpful enough that it outweighed like, just showing him not his best at the end. And like, I don't know, not the end, but before he vanished. Yeah. That's so. Yeah. It's such a weird case. Like.

Speaker: Yeah. I feel like it was something to do. It's a combination of stuff. I mean, it's a combination with probably the injuries he's got, and he probably did have the concussion. And then he probably did have a problem mixing the antibiotics with alcohol. Right. That sounded a bit like a perfect cocktail of

Speaker: Yeah, it's very unfortunate. But like, so bizarre when you have stuff that goes on beforehand, that's really cryptic and out of character and stuff like that. Yeah. So frustrating as a parent to be like, to just never feel like

Speaker: that piece because you didn't know until you got any answer. Right. And like the mom really did everything. She was in constant contact with him probably right up until like within half an hour of his disappearance. And like she booked the plane tickets he was about to use because he got cleared to fly and she had booked him bus tickets if he wasn't able to fly. She did try. Yeah, you're right. I mean, and that hopefully that is like

Speaker: alleviates some of her guilt. That is actually similar to one of the other missing male, like guy cases I was saying, I think, I think Bryce less pieces if I'm not mistaken, because he had to do with he was in contact with his parents by phone multiple times, but was in a car and not

Speaker: Like, again, it was like close, but kind of far. And so like, like in this case, maybe she could have even driven to him. But yeah, didn't go that far. And then it's like, that's so sad. They said when she was trying to call and stuff, she was calling him, calling him and he once he had stopped answering basically.

Speaker: that she, after a couple hours of not being able to get ahold of him, she called the airport and the airport told her about him running like outside of the thing and that he had disappeared and they didn't know his location and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That would be so heartbreaking for her as a mom. Like, but

Speaker: You did try, you did everything that you could and as all moms would do, I would hope. All good moms would do. Yeah, there's just, but oh, we picked two great cases. I have to say they're both just so strange and bizarre. Yeah. They drive me crazy.

Speaker: Yeah, yours is gonna yours is gonna keep me up because I'm just gonna be like, where is it? Where's his body? Where is he? Yeah, I do think that was even my first choice for I know, I heard it and covered well before and I thought, Oh, yeah, I could do that. Yeah, this one's been on a few podcasts, but none that I really recognized as like bigger names. So

Speaker: Yeah, you know, halfway through when you said something about the eardrum and not being able to fly, it started to sound a tiny bit familiar. But again, no, didn't. Yeah, what, what, what? Like, I was like, I don't know any of this. I don't remember. And yeah, I

Speaker: I went out of my way not to cover like Madeline McCann. Cause that case could be like 18 hours long to cover everything. It's such a crazy case. It's been covered well on like Netflix and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That one breaks my heart. What? I said that one breaks my heart. Oh yes. Children, children cases are

Speaker: pretty rough there. That one they have somebody in mind and I haven't looked up updates recently but last I saw they were likely to be charged with it. Oh really? Yeah he was living in a bus I think like

Speaker: not too far from the resort. And he had been on the resort like that day, including like his cell phone had pinged like within an hour of her disappearance of him being like basically on the same street. And that he had been like taking pictures of kids and stuff on the beach that day. And he was like a registered pedophile and everything like that. So they think they have them.

Speaker: That could be good. Yeah. And, but the bad news in all of that is they think she was basically killed within like either that same day or maybe the next day, not very long after, which is always a sad thing that happens. You always hope somebody's going to be found alive and okay.

Speaker: Yeah, rather they didn't suffer very long though. Yeah, it's good in that way. That reminds me, I think I read some other true crime news in that, didn't Robert Durst, the murderer pass away? I think I read that. He had a Netflix show made about him. Is that familiar? I think so, I'll get back to you.

Speaker: I'm pretty sure I saw someone posted on their social media and then I'm like, okay. Was he super old? Like super old. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I saw pictures of him, but I don't know what he did. Uh, there's a whole, yeah, there's a whole Netflix. I know. There's a Netflix for everything. Yeah.

Speaker: murdered some peeps. Yeah. But yeah, hope you enjoyed someday we'll be on Netflix. No. Yeah. You never know. I don't think we'd be the first podcast they picked up on Netflix series. I know. Really a thing yet is comedy specials. So maybe if we get a live show going. Oh my god.

Speaker: All right. Well, we'll catch you next week, which is crime. Yeah. For Valentine's day. Nothing more romantic than people murdering each other for love. From our heart to yours. Our shriveled little hearts. All right. Well, till next time stay cryptic. Thanks for listening. Bye.

Speaker: Ooooh

Speaker: This has been Castles Encrypteds. You can listen to our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Pocketcast, and our YouTube channel. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit. On our website, you can listen to all of our episodes as well as view pictures for each of our segments.

Speaker: Check out our Patreon page to view all of our tiers and become a Patreon supporter today to unlock monthly bonus episodes and behind the scenes content. We are working on an Ask Us Anything. You can submit questions by social media or by email at castlesandcryptids at gmail .com.

Speaker: Do you have a spooky ghost story, a creepy cryptid sighting, or a thrilling true crime tale you would like to share and have us include in a future episode? Send us your listener story by social media or by email. Please include the name that you would like mentioned. Our music is by Cobia Fair. Our logo and artwork is by Antonio Garcia. Thanks for listening!