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The-3-Most-IN-YOUR-FACE-Missing-Persons- · Crime and Horror

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Speaker 1: Today I'll be covering three very bizarre missing person stories.
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Speaker 1: But before we get into those stories, if you're a
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Speaker 1: fan of the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format,
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Speaker 1: so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay,
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Speaker 1: let's get into today's stories. In December of twenty fourteen,
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Speaker 1: a twenty four year old man named Aaron Fraser sat
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Speaker 1: in the driver's seat of an excavator in the backyard
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Speaker 1: of his childhood home in Jacksonville, Florida. He pushed a
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Speaker 1: lever forward and he watched as the metal bucket dipped
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Speaker 1: down and cut into this big slab of concrete and
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Speaker 1: debris went flying everywhere, and Aaron loved it. He smiled
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Speaker 1: with satisfaction watching this destruction taking place, and he pressed
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Speaker 1: the lever again and ripped off another piece of concrete. Today,
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Speaker 1: Aaron was ripping out the backyard swimming pool of his
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Speaker 1: old home a home which his father had recently given
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Speaker 1: him the deed to. But this property was not a
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Speaker 1: nostalgic place for Erin In fact, he hadn't lived here
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Speaker 1: since he was three years old, and the handful of
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Speaker 1: memories he had from being in this place were basically
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Speaker 1: all bad. His parents bought all the time, and then
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Speaker 1: one day in nineteen ninety three, his mom just decided
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Speaker 1: to leave, and then after she was gone, his dad
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Speaker 1: wasn't able to care for him, and so before long
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Speaker 1: Aaron was shipped off to foster care. So now he
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Speaker 1: was kind of enjoying demolishing the property. He had some
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Speaker 1: big renovations planned, starting with the backyard. By early afternoon,
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Speaker 1: the pool was all gone, and so Aaron swung his
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Speaker 1: bucket over to the outdoor shower that was located next
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Speaker 1: to where the pool had been, and he dug the
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Speaker 1: bucket into the concrete, and as soon as he did,
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Speaker 1: immediately this geyser of water shot into the sky, and
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Speaker 1: so Aaron knew he must have hit a water line,
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Speaker 1: and so Aaron jumped out of the excavator. He turned
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Speaker 1: off the water, and then he grabbed a shovel and
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Speaker 1: headed over to the outdoor shower to inspect the damage.
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Speaker 1: He basically needed to dig where the excavator bucket had
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Speaker 1: just begun digging to see what exactly had been struck.
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Speaker 1: And so with the shovel he starts kind of moving
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Speaker 1: away the mud and concrete, and at some point the
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Speaker 1: head of his shovel the blade it hit something sort
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Speaker 1: of rigid and plastic, and he moved the shovel out
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Speaker 1: of the way and he looked, and at first it
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Speaker 1: looked like a plastic bag, but it was too rigid
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Speaker 1: to be a plastic bag, and so he took a
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Speaker 1: shovel and kind of moved the dirt out of the way,
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Speaker 1: and he saw it was definitely not a plastic bag.
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Speaker 1: It was thick plastic sheeting like you would use in
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Speaker 1: major construction projects. Curious why the sheeting would be underneath
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Speaker 1: this outdoor shower, Aaron used his shovel and basically pierced
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Speaker 1: the plastic sheeting, and then he got down and peeled
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Speaker 1: away the plastic with his bare hands, And as he
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Speaker 1: did that, he began to notice that the sheeting was
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Speaker 1: wrapped tightly around some sort of bulky object and was
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Speaker 1: pulling it away, and finally he revealed the object, and
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Speaker 1: it's this old coconut, and so we actually reached down
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Speaker 1: and pulled the coconut out and just stared at it,
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Speaker 1: like why is this under here? Aarin was really confused
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Speaker 1: by this, like why would somebody take the time to
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Speaker 1: wrap a coconut in waterproof industrial sheeting and then bury it?
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Speaker 1: And so as Aaron just sort of stood there wondering
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Speaker 1: what this could be, he began rotating this coconut around
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Speaker 1: in his hands, and when he saw the back of
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Speaker 1: this coconut, he screamed. It would turn out Aaron's mother
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Speaker 1: did not just suddenly abandon the family. On the night
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Speaker 1: of January sixth, nineteen ninety three, the day that she vanished,
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Speaker 1: while Aaron's mom and father got into this huge fight
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Speaker 1: and got out of hand, and Aaron's father shot and
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Speaker 1: killed Aaron's mother with a twenty two caliber rifle. Aaron's
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Speaker 1: father then staged the murder to look like Aaron's mother
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Speaker 1: simply stormed out and never looked back. Now, when the
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Speaker 1: police investigated her absence, they did not believe Aaron's father's story.
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Speaker 1: They thought there was something off about it, but there
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Speaker 1: wasn't enough hard evidence to actually connect him to the crime,
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Speaker 1: and so nobody ever caught him. But that all changed
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Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen when a court ordered that the deed
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Speaker 1: of Aaron's childhood home be transferred from his father to him.
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Speaker 1: The coconut that Aaron found in the backyard of his
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Speaker 1: home was his mother's skull. He just didn't realize it
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Speaker 1: until he rotated it and saw her eye sockets. Five
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Speaker 1: years later, in twenty nineteen, Aaron's father was convicted of
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Speaker 1: second degree murder and he was sentenced to life in prison.
4:29
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Speaker 1: It's gonna be awesome. Happy holidays, and back to the stories.
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Speaker 1: Around lunchtime on August twenty fifth, twenty twelve, a young
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Speaker 1: woman named Grace was standing in a public restroom in
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Speaker 1: front of the Mirror and Southern Iceland applying makeup. Someone
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Speaker 1: knocked on the door, and Grace quickly shouted an apology,
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Speaker 1: but then made no move to finish up. Grace was
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Speaker 1: in the middle of a solo bus trip across Iceland,
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Speaker 1: and she was feeling kind of gross from all the travel.
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Speaker 1: Every day, around noon, the tour bus she was on
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Speaker 1: would make a pit stop for lunch at whatever touristy
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Speaker 1: location was nearby, and today they were at Eldcow, which
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Speaker 1: is the largest volcanic canyon in the world. Now, usually
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Speaker 1: Grace would use these pit stops not just to get lunch,
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Speaker 1: but also to walk around and see the sights, but
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Speaker 1: today she was using this brake just to freshen up.
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Speaker 1: So Grace finished putting on her eyeliner and put her
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Speaker 1: hair up in a high ponytail, and then she changed
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Speaker 1: her shirt, stuffing her old one back into her backpack.
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Speaker 1: Then she stepped out of the bathroom into a large
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Speaker 1: parking lot, and she saw her tour bus on the
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Speaker 1: other side, and she saw other tour members making their
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Speaker 1: way on board. Grace hustled across the lot, got onto
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Speaker 1: the bus, and settled back into her seat. Only a
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Speaker 1: few minutes later, the driver stood up and announced to
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Speaker 1: the bus that it was time to leave, but before
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Speaker 1: they left, he did what he did at every single stop,
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Speaker 1: he did a headcount, just to make sure nobody got
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Speaker 1: left behind. Now, typically Grace did not pay much attention
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Speaker 1: to the driver when he did this headcount. It was
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Speaker 1: a very administrative thing. She would just sit there looking
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Speaker 1: out the window, waiting for the bus to start. But
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Speaker 1: on this day, at some point, as Grace was sitting there,
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Speaker 1: she realized the headcount was taking a really long time.
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Speaker 1: And when she noticed that, she looked up at the
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Speaker 1: driver and he looked visibly upset, and he was clearly
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Speaker 1: doing the headcount over and over again, like he was
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Speaker 1: really trying to make sure he was doing it right.
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Speaker 1: And then finally the driver just announced to Grace and
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Speaker 1: all the other people on the bus that they couldn't
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Speaker 1: go anywhere because somebody from their tour group was missing. Now,
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Speaker 1: the first thing they did is they just sat there
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Speaker 1: and waited for about an hour, just hoping that this
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Speaker 1: missing person would turn up. But when they didn't, the
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Speaker 1: driver called the police. So this area, Eldcow is a
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Speaker 1: sprawling canyon that was formed more than a thousand years
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Speaker 1: earlier during a volcanic eruption. The canyon itself is very deep,
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Speaker 1: and it has steep walls on either side, and at
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Speaker 1: the bottom is all this volcanic debris. So it's beautiful
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Speaker 1: to look at, but it's pretty difficult to navigate, and
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Speaker 1: so if somebody was exploring this area on their own
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Speaker 1: and somehow got lost in the process, this could become
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Speaker 1: a very dangerous place for them very quickly. So when
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Speaker 1: the bus driver called the police to report a missing
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Speaker 1: tour group member in this particular area, the police immediately
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Speaker 1: sent out a search and rescue party, and when they arrived,
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Speaker 1: the first thing they did was interview the remaining tour
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Speaker 1: group members to try to figure out who the missing
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Speaker 1: person actually was, because it wasn't clear yet. Pretty quickly,
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Speaker 1: some of the tour group members were called seeing this
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Speaker 1: young woman of Asian descent who was wearing dark clothes
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Speaker 1: and was carrying a light colored bag, who had left
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Speaker 1: the bus at the beginning of lunch and had not returned. Now,
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Speaker 1: Grace had not personally seen this young woman, and she
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Speaker 1: told police as much when she was in but she,
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Speaker 1: like basically everybody else on the tour, immediately volunteered to
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Speaker 1: help with the search. So for the entire rest of
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Speaker 1: the day that is what Grace and the others all did.
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Speaker 1: They searched for this missing person. Grace was teamed up
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Speaker 1: with another member of the tour as well as a
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Speaker 1: trained rescuer, and they walked out into the canyon, searching
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Speaker 1: along a grid pattern with the rest of the team.
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Speaker 1: After a few hours with no luck, officials sent in
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Speaker 1: more rescuers and a helicopter, and by the time the
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Speaker 1: night fell, the entire canyon was lit up by search
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Speaker 1: lights and you could barely hear anything over the sound
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Speaker 1: of the helicopter making repeated passes overhead. But despite this
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Speaker 1: enormous effort, there still was no sign of the missing tourist. Finally,
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Speaker 1: at around three am, Grace broke off from the search
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Speaker 1: and returned to the bus to get some sleep. But
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Speaker 1: before settling into her seat, Grace opened up her backpack
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Speaker 1: to pull out some makeup wipes, and as she did that,
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Speaker 1: something inside of her bag caught her eye, and when
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Speaker 1: she saw it, she froze. She stared at this object,
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Speaker 1: and as she did, she he felt herself break out
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Speaker 1: in a cold sweat because suddenly she knew exactly where
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Speaker 1: this missing woman was. It would turn out that over
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Speaker 1: the course of the previous day. The people on board
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Speaker 1: the bus made a series of small mistakes, but together
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Speaker 1: they snowballed and turned into one huge mistake. First, the
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Speaker 1: bus driver had made a mistake with his head count,
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Speaker 1: not the headcount he had done that afternoon, but the
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Speaker 1: one he had done earlier that day before they drove
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Speaker 1: to Eldkow. That morning, he had accidentally counted one too
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Speaker 1: many people on board the bus and not realized it.
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Speaker 1: Then that afternoon, when he had counted again and actually
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Speaker 1: had the right number of people on board, he thought
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Speaker 1: there was a missing person. Next the description of the
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Speaker 1: woman who had gotten off the bus and didn't come back,
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Speaker 1: the so called missing person, That description had only been
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Speaker 1: half correct. So yes, there had been a young woman
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Speaker 1: of Asian descent wearing a dark sweatshirt carrying a light
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Speaker 1: colored bag. She had gotten off the bus, but she
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Speaker 1: did get back on, except that when she did, she
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Speaker 1: looked different and so nobody recognized her. And this was
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Speaker 1: because this woman had gotten off the bus to go
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Speaker 1: to the restroom to freshen up. She had put on makeup,
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Speaker 1: she had put her hair up in a ponytail, and
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Speaker 1: she had taken off her dark colored sweatshirt. The object
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Speaker 1: that Grace found in her backpack that made her realize
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Speaker 1: that she knew exactly where this missing woman was was
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Speaker 1: her dark colored sweatshirt inside of her light colored backpack.
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Speaker 1: And it was at that exact moment that Grace knew
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Speaker 1: the person that she had spent the last fifteen hours
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Speaker 1: searching for was herself. Before dawn on December twelfth, nineteen
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Speaker 1: ninety two, a seventeen year old girl named Tracy Dion
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Speaker 1: sat in the passenger seat of a little two door
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Speaker 1: car that was swerving down a deserted road in the
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Speaker 1: Yankton Seuerervation in South Dakota. Everybody in the car was drunk,
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Speaker 1: including Tracy. Sitting next to Tracy in the middle front
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Speaker 1: seat was her nineteen year old cousin named Ruby, and
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Speaker 1: Ruby's boyfriend, a twenty year old named Arnold, was driving
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Speaker 1: the car. All three of them had been out partying
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Speaker 1: all night and so now they were trying to make
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Speaker 1: it home. The swerving was making Tracy feel sick to
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Speaker 1: her stomach, but she didn't want to say anything to
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Speaker 1: Arnold in fear that she might distract him. I mean,
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Speaker 1: it was really dark outside, there was no street lights,
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Speaker 1: there was ice on the road. I mean for a
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Speaker 1: sober driver this would be a challenging drive, let alone
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Speaker 1: a drunk driver. They were coming up on an intersection
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Speaker 1: and Arnold brought the car to a stop with a lurch.
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Speaker 1: Tracy watched as Arnold checked for cross traffic and then
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Speaker 1: pulled out onto Highway two eighty one. But halfway through
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Speaker 1: this turn, as Arnold was accelerating, Tracy began to feel
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Speaker 1: the car slide, and even in her drunken state, she
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Speaker 1: could tell Arnold had hit a patch of black ice,
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Speaker 1: and so as the car began to skid, she wanted
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Speaker 1: to scream. Before she could, the car was already flipping over,
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Speaker 1: and then everything went black. A short time later, Tracy
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Speaker 1: came to the car was upside down, and Tracy quickly
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Speaker 1: realized she had fallen out of her seat and was
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Speaker 1: now basically resting on the roof of the car, which
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Speaker 1: was now on the ground. From what she could tell,
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Speaker 1: after the car had finished rolling over, it had come
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Speaker 1: to a stop just off the side of the highway,
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Speaker 1: and so they were not in immediate danger from other
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Speaker 1: cars striking them, But she couldn't really see outside because
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Speaker 1: the windows were so badly cracked. Beside her. Tracy could
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Speaker 1: hear her cousin Ruby pounding on the driver's side door,
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Speaker 1: trying to get it to open, and so Tracy tried
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Speaker 1: to look around Ruby to see Arnold to see if
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Speaker 1: he was okay. But when she did, she saw the
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Speaker 1: driver's seat was empty. Tracy tried to make sense of
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Speaker 1: what she was seeing. The driver's side door was closed,
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Speaker 1: but Arnold was gone. Just then, Tracy heard the sound
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Speaker 1: of the driver's side door opening, and she turned to
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Speaker 1: see her cousin Ruby forcing the door open just a
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Speaker 1: few inches, and then a second later, Ruby was slithering
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Speaker 1: out through that crack to the outside. To Tracy, everything
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Speaker 1: felt like it was happening in slow motion. She was
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Speaker 1: too shocked and confused to make any sense of it.
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Speaker 1: But if Ruby was getting out of the car, Tracy
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Speaker 1: felt like she should too, and so Tracy turned and
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Speaker 1: crawled across to the driver's side and was about to
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Speaker 1: make an exit the same way Ruby had when the
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Speaker 1: door slam shut violently right in Tracy's face. Tracy didn't
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Speaker 1: understand why Ruby would do something like that. Why would
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Speaker 1: she shut the door that aggressively when she knew her
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Speaker 1: cousin was still inside Tracy tried to open the door again,
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Speaker 1: but she was too weak to do it. She figured
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Speaker 1: her cousin Ruby was okay, but she couldn't see outside
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Speaker 1: because of how cracked the windows were. At this point,
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Speaker 1: Tracy began to feel woozy. She laid her head down
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Speaker 1: on the roof of the car, wondering to herself why
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Speaker 1: Ruby and Arnold had left her behind. Tracy would stay
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Speaker 1: trapped inside of the car alone for a few hours
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Speaker 1: until finally a motorist saw the flipped over car and
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Speaker 1: called nine one one. Shortly after that, first responders arrived
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Speaker 1: on the scene. They pulled Tracy out of the car,
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Speaker 1: and shockingly, she actually didn't have really any serious injuries
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Speaker 1: at all. She didn't even need to be hospitalized. But
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Speaker 1: rescuers could not find Ruby or Arnold anywhere they were gone,
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Speaker 1: and once rescuers had scoured the entire area around the
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Speaker 1: crash site, the sheriff who was in charge of the
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Speaker 1: scene started to wonder if Arnold and Ruby were not
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Speaker 1: just missing. Maybe he thought they had fled. Arnold had
15:24
Speaker 1: been driving drunk, and all three of them were underage,
15:28
Speaker 1: and so the sheriff thought maybe Arnold and Ruby were
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Speaker 1: scared to get in trouble. Over the next few days,
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Speaker 1: the police continued to search the surrounding area for Arnold
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Speaker 1: and Ruby, hoping they were not badly injured and that
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Speaker 1: they would just turn up on their own. But they
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Speaker 1: never did, and as the days turned into weeks, hope
15:44
Speaker 1: began to wane for the young couple. Their family and
15:47
Speaker 1: friends kept searching the area along two eighty one where
15:50
Speaker 1: the car had flipped, looking for any clue as to
15:52
Speaker 1: where these two had gone, but there was nothing. There
15:55
Speaker 1: was no trace of them. It was like Arnold and
15:57
Speaker 1: Ruby had gotten out of the car and just vanished.
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Speaker 1: But in January of nineteen ninety three, so three weeks
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Speaker 1: after the crash, strange and conflicting reports of sightings began
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Speaker 1: to trickle in. First, a woman came forward claiming to
16:11
Speaker 1: have seen Arnold alive and well at a New Year's
16:14
Speaker 1: Eve party. Now the police doubted this claim, but this
16:17
Speaker 1: woman was insistent that she had seen Arnold, and they
16:21
Speaker 1: actually hooked her up to a lie detector test and
16:23
Speaker 1: she passed the test. And so officials brought in guests
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Speaker 1: from this party who this woman claimed were with Arnold,
16:30
Speaker 1: and they asked them, were you with Arnold and they
16:33
Speaker 1: said no, but they failed their lie detector tests. Now,
16:36
Speaker 1: of course this was suspicious, but police really didn't know
16:39
Speaker 1: what to do with this information. Assuming this woman's story
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Speaker 1: was true, that she really did see Arnold, well, according
16:46
Speaker 1: to the details of her story, Arnold did not appear
16:49
Speaker 1: to be in any kind of distress, and even if
16:51
Speaker 1: he was in distress, the police still had no idea
16:54
Speaker 1: where he was, so how could they help him. Other
16:57
Speaker 1: locals came forward claiming to have spotted Arnold around town
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Speaker 1: as well, but nothing came of those reports. Either neither
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Speaker 1: Arnold nor Ruby turned up. Months went by, and the
17:07
Speaker 1: case went cold until March tenth, when a driver was
17:10
Speaker 1: going down Highway to eighty one and they noticed a
17:13
Speaker 1: strange object in the drainage ditch next to the road.
17:16
Speaker 1: By now, the weather was much warmer than it had
17:18
Speaker 1: been on the day of the crash, so instead of
17:21
Speaker 1: snow and ice inside of the strainage ditch, it was
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Speaker 1: run off water and the strange object was floating in it.
17:27
Speaker 1: The driver stopped his car, got out and walked up
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Speaker 1: to see what this thing was, and as soon as
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Speaker 1: he saw it, he turned ran back to his car
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Speaker 1: and called the police, because what the driver had just
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Speaker 1: found was a dead body, and when the police arrived
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Speaker 1: and searched the area, they found another body not far away.
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Speaker 1: The bodies belonged to Ruby and Arnold. But this discovery
17:48
Speaker 1: did not solve the mystery of what happened to Ruby
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Speaker 1: and Arnold. Instead, it made it much more bizarre, because
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Speaker 1: first of all, the bodies were found seventy five feet
17:58
Speaker 1: away from the original crash site, and the exact spots
18:02
Speaker 1: where the two bodies were found had been searched many
18:05
Speaker 1: many times. On the day of the crash, days after
18:08
Speaker 1: the crash, they were searched by police, they were searched
18:10
Speaker 1: by friends and family of Ruby and Arnold. The idea
18:13
Speaker 1: that this is where the bodies had been the whole
18:15
Speaker 1: time was impossible they would have been found. And then
18:19
Speaker 1: there was the condition of the bodies. Ruby's body was
18:22
Speaker 1: extremely decomposed, which made sense given the fact that the
18:25
Speaker 1: crash was three months earlier, but Arnold's body was barely
18:29
Speaker 1: decomposed at all. And in the pocket of Arnold's genes
18:32
Speaker 1: police found a mysterious set of three keys. One was
18:36
Speaker 1: a vehicle key and two were house keys, but none
18:39
Speaker 1: of them opened any vehicle or building that Arnold was
18:42
Speaker 1: known to frequent and nobody recognized them. Finally, the police
18:45
Speaker 1: found a tuft of hair lying near where the bodies
18:48
Speaker 1: had been found. It was Ruby's hair, but it didn't
18:51
Speaker 1: look like the hair had been there for very long,
18:53
Speaker 1: certainly not three months. Instead of being dirty and matted
18:57
Speaker 1: like you would expect given how long she must have
18:59
Speaker 1: been there, the hair was perfectly clean. The official coroner's
19:03
Speaker 1: report on Ruby and Arnold's deaths were that they died
19:06
Speaker 1: of exposure and then their bodies were just overlooked by
19:09
Speaker 1: searchers for months. But to a lot of people, including
19:12
Speaker 1: the sheriff who was in charge of the original crash site,
19:15
Speaker 1: this made no sense. Despite the coroner's findings, law enforcement
19:18
Speaker 1: officials believed that Ruby and Arnold's deaths were the result
19:22
Speaker 1: of foul play. Under the foul play theory, somebody pulled
19:26
Speaker 1: Ruby and Arnold out of the crash site while they
19:28
Speaker 1: were still alive and then killed them later, and then
19:31
Speaker 1: perhaps they killed them at different times, which would account
19:34
Speaker 1: for the differences and decomposition of their bodies. The FBI
19:37
Speaker 1: ultimately came in and took over this case, but they
19:40
Speaker 1: eventually closed it down, citing a lack of evidence to
19:43
Speaker 1: support the foul play theory. However, with or without foul
19:47
Speaker 1: play being involved here, nobody has a good explanation for
19:50
Speaker 1: all those sightings of Arnold after the crash. And also,
19:54
Speaker 1: nobody can explain why the door was slammed in Tracy's
19:57
Speaker 1: face in the immediate aftermath of the crash. Maybe it
20:00
Speaker 1: was Ruby or Arnold who slammed the door, or maybe
20:03
Speaker 1: it was their killer. To this day, what actually happened
20:07
Speaker 1: on December twelfth, nineteen ninety two, on the side of
20:10
Speaker 1: Highway to eighty one remains a mystery. And now here's
20:19
Speaker 1: a clip from the latest episode of Redacted. Enjoy.
20:23
Speaker 2: Her heart skipped a beat. She knew that he meant
20:25
Speaker 2: the CIA agents, which meant he knew what she'd been
20:29
Speaker 2: up to and why she was here now. Marita struggled
20:33
Speaker 2: to find words as tears filled her eyes, and to
20:37
Speaker 2: her horror, Fidel drew his gun out of his holster,
20:41
Speaker 2: but he didn't point it at her like she'd expected. Instead,
20:45
Speaker 2: he handed her the gun handle first. Go ahead and
20:49
Speaker 2: kill me, he said, but Marina stayed froze into the spot.
20:54
Speaker 2: The CIA could never have dreamed of a more perfect scenario.
20:58
Speaker 2: Here was Fidel Castro completely unprotected, vulnerable, and open target,
21:03
Speaker 2: and here was Marita being offered a murder weapon, and
21:07
Speaker 2: yet she couldn't do it, and Fidel seemed to know it.
21:11
Speaker 2: He smiled at her, and then he said, no one
21:15
Speaker 2: can kill me.
21:16
Speaker 1: No one, So that's going to do it. If you're
21:23
Speaker 1: looking for more strange, dark and mysterious content, don't forget.
21:26
Speaker 1: We have a whole slate of podcasts under the Ballin
21:29
Speaker 1: Studio's umbrella. They are the Mister Ballin Podcast, Mister Ballin's
21:33
Speaker 1: Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories run full and redacted.
21:38
Speaker 1: You can find them by searching for Ballin Studios on
21:40
Speaker 1: any podcast platform and boom, you have hundreds of hours
21:44
Speaker 1: of strange, dark and mysterious content to binge. Thank you
21:47
Speaker 1: so much. Until next time, see you