Latest / Crime and Horror / Missing writer made ghost calls from rural Wyoming - MrBallen

Transcript

Missing writer made ghost calls from rural Wyoming - MrBallen · Crime and Horror

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  Speaker 1: Today, I'm going to share two stories about missing people
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  Speaker 1: where every step of the investigation just raises more questions.
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  Speaker 1: But before we get into today's stories, if you're a
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  Speaker 1: fan of the strange, dark and mysterious to Liverton's story format,
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  Speaker 1: then you've come to the right place, because that's all
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: we do, and we upload two, three, even.
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  Speaker 2: Four times every week.
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  Speaker 1: So if that's of interest to you, the next time
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  Speaker 1: the like button is very low on gasoline, go ahead
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  Speaker 1: and super glue their gas cap shut. Also, please subscribe
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let's get into today's stories.
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  Speaker 1: On the morning of August twelfth, nineteen seventy, a young
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  Speaker 1: man named Larrence Hallahan drove along a coastal road in County.
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  Speaker 2: Cork, Ireland.
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  Speaker 1: Out the car window to his right, he could see
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  Speaker 1: an area called Towhead Bay, which was a shoreline with
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  Speaker 1: a lot of really cool rock formations that also led
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  Speaker 1: out to the Atlantic Ocean. People came from all over
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  Speaker 1: Ireland to see Towhead Bay, but for Lawrence, the incredible
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  Speaker 1: view was just part of his daily commute, so he
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  Speaker 1: really wasn't paying much attention to it. However, as he's
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  Speaker 1: driving along, out of the corner of his eye, he
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  Speaker 1: sees something unusual floating in the water out in Towhead Bay,
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  Speaker 1: and he looks and he sees it was a sailboat,
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  Speaker 1: which was really odd. Not because you know, boats don't
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  Speaker 1: go in the water, they do, but in Towhead Bay
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  Speaker 1: people just didn't sail out there because it was just
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  Speaker 1: not safe.
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  Speaker 2: There was lots of rocks.
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  Speaker 1: This is not a place where you sail a boat.
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  Speaker 1: But then Lawrence, as he's driving along, sort of glancing
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  Speaker 1: out at the sailboat, he remembered this story that had
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  Speaker 1: been all over the news recently. It was about the
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  Speaker 1: sixty six year old retired naval officer named Edward Neil,
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  Speaker 1: who had gone missing at sea a few months ago.
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  Speaker 1: Edward had set off in his personal sailboat, which was
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  Speaker 1: called the Monavine, on a journey from England to the
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  Speaker 1: Isle of Man Now.
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  Speaker 2: The route was a very.
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  Speaker 1: Simple straight shot that should have only taken about thirty
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  Speaker 1: six hours to complete, but Edward had never arrived at
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  Speaker 1: his destination. His family had ultimately reported him missing, and
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  Speaker 1: the coast Guard had been searching for his boat ever since.
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  Speaker 1: So far they hadn't found it anywhere, and so his
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  Speaker 1: disappearance had become this huge mystery because it really just
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  Speaker 1: didn't make any sense.
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  Speaker 2: Number One, there.
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  Speaker 1: Hadn't been any serious storms in the area where he
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  Speaker 1: was going to be, and so it was just unlikely
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  Speaker 1: that his boat was you know, damaged, or he was
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  Speaker 1: blown off course or something. But then two, let's say
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  Speaker 1: something did happen. Let's say there was an emergency, his
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  Speaker 1: boat was damaged, or he was blown off course or
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  Speaker 1: something else happened. He was an expert sailor, an expert mariner.
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  Speaker 1: He was ready to handle practically any emergency at sea.
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  Speaker 1: But then even more, you know, had something happened and
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  Speaker 1: had he been overwhelmed, and even he he couldn't handle it.
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  Speaker 1: He never made any distress calls, not once. There was
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  Speaker 1: no distress calls from him at all period. But now,
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  Speaker 1: as Lawrence looked out at the boat floating in Towhead Bay,
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  Speaker 1: which was hundreds of miles away from Edward's planned route,
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  Speaker 1: he saw the name on the boat. It said Monavine
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  Speaker 1: painted right on the side. It was Edwards, and so
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  Speaker 1: Lawrence's heart began to race like he couldn't believe that
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  Speaker 1: he had just found this, like, how is nobody else
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  Speaker 1: seeing this? And so, without really thinking much about it,
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  Speaker 1: Lawrence parked his scar, hopped out and literally just ran
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  Speaker 1: down to the shore to go investigate further, to get
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  Speaker 1: a better look at the monavine. And so Lawrence he
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  Speaker 1: carefully made his way across a bunch of slippery rocks
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  Speaker 1: until he finally reached the edge of the water, and
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  Speaker 1: the monavine really wasn't that far out into the water.
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  Speaker 2: It was floating maybe.
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  Speaker 1: Three or four yards away, and so, without even taking
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  Speaker 1: his shoes or anything off, Lawrence just leapt into the
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  Speaker 1: water and started swimming out to the boat. It only
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  Speaker 1: took him a few seconds to reach the boat, and
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  Speaker 1: what he did he pulled himself.
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  Speaker 2: Up onto the deck.
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  Speaker 1: And once he was up there, Lawrence looked around and
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  Speaker 1: didn't see any obvious damage, but there also didn't seem
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  Speaker 1: like there was any signs of recent activity.
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  Speaker 2: So he just began calling out over and over like
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  Speaker 2: is anybody here? Anybody on board? But there was no response.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed like Edward must have at some point abandoned
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  Speaker 1: his boat. So Lawrence just began exploring, figuring there must
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  Speaker 1: have been some kind of problem on board, which must
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  Speaker 1: have caused Edward to have left it behind. And at
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  Speaker 1: this point, I mean, he didn't really feel like he
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  Speaker 1: was invading the guy's privacy because this was a huge
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  Speaker 1: news story. People were looking for him, and so Lawrence
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  Speaker 1: is like, maybe I can solve this mystery once and
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  Speaker 1: for all. And so Lawrence found his way to the
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  Speaker 1: helm of the boat, which is where the steering wheel is.
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  Speaker 1: And there, right beside the steering wheel, Lawrence saw a
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  Speaker 1: special type of two way marine radio and he just
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  Speaker 1: reached over and he pressed the on button, and to
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  Speaker 1: his shock, the radio turned on. The radio worked, and
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  Speaker 1: at this point Lawrence felt a combination of confusion, of cureuriosity,
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  Speaker 1: and of just general unease. I mean, if the radio worked,
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  Speaker 1: why hadn't Edward just called for help. Lawrence saw there
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  Speaker 1: was an enclosed area in the center of the deck,
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  Speaker 1: which he knew must be where the boat's kitchen, the
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  Speaker 1: bathroom and the bedroom was. So, now feeling a little
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  Speaker 1: bit nervous, he walked over. He found the door and
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  Speaker 1: he pushed it open, and sure enough, Lawrence found himself
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  Speaker 1: standing inside the boat's kitchen.
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  Speaker 2: And the kitchen was very clean and also very well stopped.
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  Speaker 1: There were at least like a dozen packages of biscuits
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  Speaker 1: along with a bunch of fresh water. There was tea, cocoa,
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  Speaker 1: powdered milk, and seeing all this made Lawrence even more confused,
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  Speaker 1: because why would Edward abandon an undamaged boat, at least
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  Speaker 1: so far, it's undamaged, with a working radio and a
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  Speaker 1: bunch of food and water on board. However, when Lawrence
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  Speaker 1: walked from the kitchen into the bedroom area and saw
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  Speaker 1: what was in there, he realized that Edward had not.
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  Speaker 2: Abandoned his boat, because right there in the bed was
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  Speaker 2: Edward and he was dead.
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  Speaker 1: But it would turn out, once they found Edward's body
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  Speaker 1: like the mystery around what happened to him only got
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  Speaker 1: more bizarre, because even though Edward had been missing for
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  Speaker 1: three months and autopsy determined that he'd only been dead
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  Speaker 1: for about one month, but when Lawrence found him, Edward
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  Speaker 1: was so emaciated that he practically looked like a skeleton.
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  Speaker 1: He weighed just sixty two pounds, and he had died
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  Speaker 1: of starvation. And so to this day, nobody has ever
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  Speaker 1: been able to explain where Edward was during those two
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  Speaker 1: months when the Coastguard was searching for him, and he
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  Speaker 1: wasn't dead yet, he was still alive, And why didn't
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  Speaker 1: he use his radio to call for help? And also
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  Speaker 1: how did he starve the death when he was just
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  Speaker 1: a few steps away from a well stoked kitchen. Better
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Help is the paid partner of today's video. Are you
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: so used to keeping everyone else comfortable that you barely
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: notice how often you abandon yourself in the process.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of us have been there.
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  Speaker 1: You get so used to putting everyone else first that
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: taking care of yourself almost starts to feel selfish, and
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  Speaker 1: after a while, putting other people first stops feeling like
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: a choice, until one day you realize you can't remember
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  Speaker 1: the last time a decision genuinely felt like your own.
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  Speaker 1: And the strange thing about constantly managing other people's comfort
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: is that slowly you lose touch.
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  Speaker 2: With your own.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: And this is where therapy can help you understand where
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: those patterns come from, and it can help you rebuild
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  Speaker 1: trust in your own voice, your own instincts, and the
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  Speaker 1: parts of yourself that get pushed aside just to keep
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  Speaker 1: the link in that is scription or go to betterhelp
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: dot com slash mister ballin and get ten percent off
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: your first month of therapy. On the morning of November tenth,
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, a fifty four year old woman named
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  Speaker 1: Mary Kemp was sitting in her living room in Salisbury, Maryland,
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  Speaker 1: when her phone rang. She answered it and she heard
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  Speaker 1: a voice that she instantly knew was her thirty five
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  Speaker 1: year old son down and Mary smiled when he heard him,
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  Speaker 1: and she asked Don where he was and how he
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  Speaker 1: was doing so. For the past month, Don had been
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  Speaker 1: on this cross country road trip. He was working on
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  Speaker 1: a book about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and to
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  Speaker 1: research it, he'd set out in his suv to go
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  Speaker 1: visit a bunch of historical landmarks from the Civil War era. Now,
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  Speaker 1: since Dawn had set out on this trip, he had
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  Speaker 1: made a point to check him with his mother at
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  Speaker 1: least once a week to fill her in and let
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  Speaker 1: her know how it was going. And this morning, just
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  Speaker 1: from the tone of Don's voice, Mary could tell clearly
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  Speaker 1: it was still going great and so with the phone
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  Speaker 1: in hand, Mary walked over to the couch and she
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  Speaker 1: curled up and she listened as her son told her
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  Speaker 1: all about how he was now in Wyoming and he
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  Speaker 1: was planning to visit this Old West museum that was
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  Speaker 1: there in just a few days. Mary told him to
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  Speaker 1: keep it up and have a great time, and before
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  Speaker 1: he hung up.
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  Speaker 2: He promised he would call her back in a few days.
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  Speaker 1: Six days later, on the morning of November sixteenth, a
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  Speaker 1: highway patrolman was driving down a highway in Carbon County, Wyoming.
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  Speaker 1: Carbon County is located about two thousand miles away from
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  Speaker 1: Mary's house in Maryland.
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  Speaker 2: This patrolman was.
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  Speaker 1: Basically out in the middle of nowhere, and through his
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  Speaker 1: windshield all he could see were just open planes on
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  Speaker 1: either side, and everything was covered with a thick blanket
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  Speaker 1: of snow. But as the patrolman approached an exit ramp
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  Speaker 1: up ahead, he saw something that looked really out of place.
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  Speaker 1: There was an suv just sitting on the exit ramp,
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  Speaker 1: just idling right in the middle of the road.
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  Speaker 2: Its doors were wide open. There were what appeared to be.
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  Speaker 1: Closed scattered all over the road sort of outside of
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  Speaker 1: this vehicle, and the car had a Maryland license plate. Now,
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  Speaker 1: clearly to the patrolman something was wrong here. So he
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  Speaker 1: pulled over and he walked up to the suv to
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  Speaker 1: make sure the driver was okay. But when he reached
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  Speaker 1: the vehicle and looked inside, because again all the doors
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  Speaker 1: are open, there was nobody in there. But through the
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  Speaker 1: open doors, he noticed on the other side of the car,
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  Speaker 1: on the ground were what appeared to be footprints, like
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  Speaker 1: a set of footprints. And so the patrolman walked around
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  Speaker 1: the car, you know, being careful not to step on
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  Speaker 1: all the clothes that was out there. He goes to
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  Speaker 1: the other side and he sees clearly somebody climbed out
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  Speaker 1: of this vehicle on the passenger side, landed in the snow.
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  Speaker 2: And then he looked and the footprints they wandered not
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  Speaker 2: along the road, but they go off the road, just
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  Speaker 2: out into the wilderness. An hour later, a Carbon County
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  Speaker 2: Sheriff's deputy was trudging through the snow following those footprints. He,
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  Speaker 2: along with several other deputies that he was with, had
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  Speaker 2: been sent.
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  Speaker 1: Out here specifically to follow these tracks and see where
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  Speaker 1: they went, like see what happened to the driver of
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  Speaker 1: this suv.
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  Speaker 2: Like, this is so strange. Why would this person have
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  Speaker 2: gotten out like that and just wandered off? What's going on?
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  Speaker 1: And so these deputies they're they're walking along looking down,
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  Speaker 1: following this this trail, and overhead they can hear the
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  Speaker 1: sound of a plane, because a plane had also been
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  Speaker 1: dispatched to fly overhead to see if they could spot
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  Speaker 1: this this driver somewhere out in the wilderness.
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  Speaker 2: Now, this area, the area where the driver sort.
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  Speaker 1: Of walked off into, was so flat and so empty
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  Speaker 1: it really should have been quite easy to spot anybody
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  Speaker 1: who was, you know, wandering around in the snow. But
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  Speaker 1: on the ground, the deputy along with all the others,
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  Speaker 1: like they couldn't see anybody ahead of them. The footprints
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  Speaker 1: just kept on going past fields and random farmhouses, and overhead,
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  Speaker 1: you know, the pilot he hadn't seen anyone yet either,
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  Speaker 1: And so for the deputies on the ground, after following
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  Speaker 1: these tracks for six miles, you know, they started to
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  Speaker 1: wonder like are these ever going to end? You know,
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  Speaker 1: like what in the world was this person doing?
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  Speaker 2: Where were they going?
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  Speaker 1: But at about the six mile mark, away from the highway,
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  Speaker 1: so away from the vehicle, the lead deputy, along with
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  Speaker 1: the others.
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  Speaker 2: They looked up ahead and they saw these tracks went.
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  Speaker 1: Right up to this big red barn off in the distance,
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  Speaker 1: like that appeared to be the destination. And so now
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  Speaker 1: moving with a bit of a purpose because they're sensing
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  Speaker 1: they're about to get to the end of this mystery
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  Speaker 1: here to see what happened to this driver early where
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  Speaker 1: they went, they began walking much faster, and they followed
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  Speaker 1: the tracks right up to this barn. And where the
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  Speaker 1: tracks went into the barn was through this now closed door.
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  Speaker 1: But there were only prints going into the barn, and
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  Speaker 1: unless they exited the barn on the other side or something,
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  Speaker 1: it looked like they went into the barn and shut
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  Speaker 1: the door and they're like still inside of there.
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  Speaker 2: That was the initial impression. But when the lead deputy
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  Speaker 2: opened up that closed door and stepped inside, there was
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  Speaker 2: no one in there.
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  Speaker 1: It was clear that whoever had walked from the abandoned
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  Speaker 1: suv to this barn had somehow left, but without leaving
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  Speaker 1: any new footprints in the snow, which literally should have
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  Speaker 1: been impossible. And so the lead deputy he left the
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  Speaker 1: barn and just looked down at the prince that had
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  Speaker 1: led them there as if he was going to learn
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  Speaker 1: something new. But actually, as he looked at these prints,
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  Speaker 1: which nobody else had stepped in, they had been very
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  Speaker 1: careful as they moved to this.
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  Speaker 2: Barn, not to sully up the original Prince.
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  Speaker 1: He noticed that some of the prints looked a little
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  Speaker 1: bit misshapen, almost like they had.
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  Speaker 2: Been stepped in more than once.
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  Speaker 1: And he got down closer, and he began to realize
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  Speaker 1: that virtually all the prints that they had followed here
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  Speaker 1: were sort of misshapen, And so he began backtracking, and.
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  Speaker 2: He saw it the whole way. All these prints are
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  Speaker 2: like double prints.
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  Speaker 1: And so the only conclusion the lead deputy could come to,
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  Speaker 1: considering the Prince stop at the barn and there's nobody
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  Speaker 1: in the barn, is that this driver, after walking six
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  Speaker 1: miles in the snow for reasons unknown to this barn,
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  Speaker 1: they must have left the barn and walked backwards, like
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  Speaker 1: in reverse in their original tracks, just back the way
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  Speaker 1: they came. And so the lead deputy and the others
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  Speaker 1: basically began walking the same tracks that brought them to
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  Speaker 1: the barn, but now in reverse, looking for like, maybe
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  Speaker 1: maybe there's some point where it branches off and we
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  Speaker 1: just missed it, like maybe there's like one or two
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  Speaker 1: steps that go off in a different direction, because no
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  Speaker 1: one walks six miles in reverse. And also if that
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  Speaker 1: really happened, where is this person? But no, they followed
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  Speaker 1: the tracks all the way back to the car, and
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  Speaker 1: there were these duplicate prints in every one of them,
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  Speaker 1: So this person literally walked backwards for six miles. But
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  Speaker 1: then they're back at the car and they're like, where
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  Speaker 1: did they go? There's no other prince, there's nothing like,
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  Speaker 1: where are they? How is this even possible? That evening
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  Speaker 1: investigators ran the abandoned sub's license plate and learned that
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  Speaker 1: it belonged to a thirty five year old man named
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  Speaker 1: Don Kemp. Now they couldn't get in touch with Don himself,
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  Speaker 1: but they did manage to get his mother, Mary, on
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  Speaker 1: the phone, and Mary told police that it actually did
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  Speaker 1: make sense that her son would be in Wyoming because
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: he was on this big cross country road trip. But
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  Speaker 1: she also said that she has no idea why he
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  Speaker 1: would have abandoned his car like that, and she said
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  Speaker 1: he had no history of mental illness, he wasn't taking
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: any medications that could potentially disorient him, and he was
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  Speaker 1: just generally a really responsible guy like this didn't make
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  Speaker 1: sense to her at all. So the Sheriff's department just
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: went back to you know, searching the wilderness around where
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  Speaker 1: the car was found, looking for Don Kemp, you know,
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  Speaker 1: searching the wilderness area, searching near the barn, looking everywhere.
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  Speaker 2: But despite searching on.
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  Speaker 1: Foot, you know, with planes and even on horseback, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: another really serious push to find him, they didn't find
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  Speaker 1: anything new. And then on the third day of this
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  Speaker 1: big search, a huge blizzard swept through the area and
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: forced the search to stop. The investigators knew that if
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: down had still been alive and outside in the area,
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  Speaker 1: he almost certainly would have frozen to death during that blizzard.
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  Speaker 1: And if he'd left the area, and then he probably
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  Speaker 1: had done so on purpose and he didn't want to
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  Speaker 1: be found, which could explain why he'd apparently purposefully hidden
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  Speaker 1: his tracks when he.
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  Speaker 2: Had left the barn.
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  Speaker 1: So at the time of the blizzard, a decision was
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  Speaker 1: made not just to postpone the search, but actually to.
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  Speaker 2: Officially call it off.
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  Speaker 1: And then after the search ended, i mean, for months
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  Speaker 1: following it, Don Kemp's name remained in the news.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, his case was totally fascinating. It was so mysterious.
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  Speaker 1: Nobody knew what happened to him, but eventually his case
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  Speaker 1: went totally cold, that is until April of nineteen eighty three.
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  Speaker 1: So five months after Dawn disappeared, a woman in New
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  Speaker 1: York City received a very bizarre phone call. So this
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  Speaker 1: woman's name was Judy Iello, and she actually knew Don
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  Speaker 1: personally because they had worked together for ten years until
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Don actually went on to leave to go write his book,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: which entailed him eventually going off and going missing. And
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: so Judy was well aware of the fact that Don
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: was missing and that the police were still basically looking
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: for him, maybe actively, but there was definitely an ongoing
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: search for him, and she knew that so far, nobody
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: really knew anything. It was just this big mystery. And
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: so with that as context, one day that April, Judy
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: came home from work and she saw that she had
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: a message on her answering machine.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: So she clicked the.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Play button and to her shock, the voice she heard
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: that came out of this answering machine was Don Kemp's.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: All he said was is I'd like to speak to
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: you again, call me, and then he gave the phone
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: number to reach him at and that was it, that
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: was the whole message. But again, Judy had worked with
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: him for ten years. She's well aware of the fact
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: that he's missing, like she knows this is him, and
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: immediately she calls this phone number because pretty much like
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: everybody else, the belief here was that Don was very
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: likely dead.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: And now it's like, no, he's fine. He's just called me.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: He's good. I'm gonna find out what happened to him.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Everything's gonna be fine.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: And so she calls back this number expecting to hear Don.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: But when somebody picks up, it is a man, but
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: it's definitely not Don. And so Judy she just said, hey,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I'd like to speak to Don Kemp. Can you put
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: me in touch with him? He gave me this number,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: and the man on the other end of the line,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: he was very nervous and he really wasn't sure why
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: she was calling, like it was very uncomfortable for him,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and at some point he was like, Okay, I'll let
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: you talk to Don, but then very quickly he was
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: like no.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: No, no, he's not here.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: And then Judy she's like, well, it's really important that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I talked to him. Can you please at least tell
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: him that I returned his call and have him call
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: me back. And the man was like, oh, okay, and
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: he took down her number and he's like, I'll tell him,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: and then he hung up, and so Judy she slowly
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: lowered the receiver and put it back in the cradle,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and her first thought was like, Wow, that was really
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: weird and also very disappointing.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: I really want to talk to Don.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: But then she was thinking, wait a minute, is this
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: whole thing just a prank? I mean, because after all,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, Don's disappearance has been all over the news,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and any random person could have heard about it and maybe,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: you know, found out that she knew him. I mean,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: it seemed like a really cruel thing to do, but
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: it was possible. However, as she thought about that, she
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: realized that no, this literally could not be a prank,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and not just because she was completely certain that the
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: voice on her answering machine had been downs but also
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: because Judy's phone number was not listed in a phone
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: book anywhere, which meant whoever placed the call and left
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: that voicemail had to have known Judy personally. There was
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: no other way to get that number, and so at
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: that point Judy realized it was not good enough to
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: wait and hope that Don called her back.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: She had to go talk to the police.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: The next day, almost two thousand miles away from New
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: York City, where Judy had reported the bizarre phone call
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: to the police, a police captain in Casper, Wyoming, knocked
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: on the door of a trailer. So this captain, whose
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: name was Mark Benton, had found out that the phone
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: call Judy had received that she reported to police had
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: been traced to this are in Wyoming, to this trailer,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and this address was actually only about a two hour
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: drive from the location where Don Kemp's abandoned SUV.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Was found five months earlier.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Benton already knew that this trailer belonged to a man
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: named Mark Dennis, So when the door opened and Benton
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: saw a man standing there, he asked, are you Mark Dennis,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: and the man nodded and said yes.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: So at that point.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Captain Benton explained that he was there to investigate a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: phone call that had been traced back to this address,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: and that this phone call was potentially connected to the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: disappearance of a man named Don Kemp. But Mark just
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: sort of stared back at Benton with a look of
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: total confusion on his face, and then he said he
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: didn't know anything about a phone call to New York
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and that he had never even heard of a Don Kemp. Now,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Benton was not totally buying this because the idea that
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: this guy lives two hours away from where Don went missing,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: and it was all over the news, you know, five
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: months ago, and still is on the news pretty regularly.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: The idea that you had never heard of this guy,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it was just a little bit fishy. And so we
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: asked Mark if he'd be willing to come take a polygraph, and.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: To his surprise, Mark said sure.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: A couple of days later, Benton was sitting in his
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: office at the Sheriff's Department and he called Mark to
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: schedule his polygraph, but Mark didn't answer the phone, so
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Benton left him a voicemail, and then a little while
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: later Benton got a call back, but it was not
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: from Mark. It was from his new attorney, who said
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Mark would no longer be speaking to the police any
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: further about this topic. A few weeks later, and another
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: two thousand miles away, Don's mother, Mary Kemp, sat in
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: her home in Maryland, clutching the phone to her ear
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: as Captain Benton gave her an update on her son's case.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: So Mary knew about the phone call Judy had received,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: which actually had been followed by several more calls, all
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: from the same number. Judy never actually answered these calls.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: They all went to voicemail. They all sounded like Dawn.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: The messaging was very similar. It's like, I want to
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: talk to you, call me back, But she was never
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: able to actually connect with down. Judy wasn't And so
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: for Mary, she was convinced that the answer to her
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: son's disappearance must have something to do with Mark Dennis,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: because he was the guy who owned the trailer where
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: all these calls were coming from, and he's he's lawyered
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: up instead of taking his polygraph, Like it must have
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: to do with him. What other solution could there be here?
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Like he must be involved, he has to be. But now,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: as part of his update to Mary, Captain Benton was
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: telling her that Mark Dennis had outright denied knowing her son,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and because Mark was not officially a suspect, they didn't
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: have any concrete evidence against him, and he wasn't.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Talking because he had lawyered up.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: The police were not planning to investigate him any further.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And Mary, when she heard this, was genuinely stunned. I mean,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: those calls from Mark's trailer were the only clue that
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: anybody had found in months, and she just couldn't understand
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: why the investigators weren't looking into the more seriously. From
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: day one, she had felt like Don's disappearance was at
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: the bottom of the sheriff Department's priority list. They'd called
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: off the search after only a few days, and now
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: they'd barely looked into the only suspect they had, who
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: again lawyered up as soon as he was asked to
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: take a polygraph test, like what is that? And so
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Mary wasn't sure if you know, these investigators were just
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: incompetent or what. But she knew that at this point
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: there was only one thing she could do. She was
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: going to fly out to Wyoming and she was going
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: to investigate her son's disappearance herself. A few weeks later,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a very agitated Mary Kemp barged into the Carbon County
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Sheriff's Office in Wyoming, which was the law enforcement agency
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: that originally investigated Don's disappearance. She walked right up to
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the front desk, identified herself and demanded to see all
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the files on her son's case. The clerk looked a
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: little bit taken aback by the way Mary was acting,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: but she nodded and then got up and went into
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the back of the office, And about a minute later
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: she came back with a fire and so she hands.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: It over to Mary.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Mary grabs it. She walks over to a nearby chair,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: she sits down. She opens up this file folder and
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: she began flipping through all the evidence that had been
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: collected so far. And Mary very quickly realized that there
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: was way more to this story than the investigators had
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: told her, because as she looked at photos of her
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: son's car from where it had been found on the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: highway when it was abandoned, she realized that it didn't
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: actually look like her son had just stopped at random,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: gotten out and walked off like the police had said.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: No, his car looked like it had been struck.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: So the mirror on the passenger side of the car
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: was broken, and a gasket had been ripped off the door.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: So the gasket is the rubber ceiling around the rim
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: of the doors that when it shuts its seals well
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: part of it had been ripped off the door, and
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: also the key, which was still in the ignition when
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the car was found, was completely bent in half. And
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: so to Mary, based on these photos, imediately seemed obvious,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: at least to her, that her son did not just
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: pull over and walk off. He must have been forced
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: off the side of the road. Maybe somebody struck his car,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and you know, maybe they drove off, but maybe the
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: impact of the strike had disoriented her son and it
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: caused him to wander off, or maybe somebody intentionally ran
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: him off the road and then forced him, you know,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: grabbed him and dragged him out of the car and led.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Him off somewhere.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: But then also Mary's thinking, well, if there was another
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: person who got out of their vehicle, where are their prints,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: because there was only one set of prints, my son's,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: or was that my son's prince? Are those his prints?
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: She didn't know, and so it was just totally confounding.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: But Mary realized even if there was somebody else that
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: sort of caused her son to go missing, somebody who
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: ran him off the road or who grabbed him and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: pulled him out or whatever, you know, overlooking all the
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: facts which are like, where are their footprints? And why
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: isn't there another car that we found that ran into him?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Forget all that, Mary realized if there were other people involved,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: it was going to be merely impossible to figure out
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: who they were because, for reasons she just could not understand,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the investigators had not fingerprinted her son's car when it
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: was found, and they hadn't made casts of the footprints
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: in the snow, so there was no way to prove
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: if anyone besides Don had been in the car, or
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: if Don was even the one who made those tracks
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: in the snow, and so any forensic evidence that could
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: have maybe helped solve this case was.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Now long gone, so if Mary.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Wanted to find her son, she basically had to start
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: from scratch. Over the next few weeks, Mary Kemp stayed
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: in Wyoming and conducted her own investigation. She tracked down
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Mark Dennis, the man from the trailer where those bizarre
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: phone calls had originated.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: And she actually spoke to him on the phone. However,
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: just like.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: You have with the police, Mark denied knowing anything about
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Don or those phone calls, and when Mary accused him
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: of lying, he just hung up. Mary visited all the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: places she could think of where Don might have gone to.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: She also spoke to workers at the museums and other
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: locations where she knew her son had been planning to
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: go as part of his research for his book. She
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: hired a private investigator, she put up posters with a
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: reward for information, and she even went to a psychic
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: for help, but basically nothing worked.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: She got nowhere until finally she got one meaningful lead.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Through her investigation, Mary learned that, apparently in April of
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, around the time Judy got those strange
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: phone calls, two people had seen a man who matched
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Don's description in Casper, which was the same town where
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Mark Dennis's trailer was. One was a bartender at a
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: local tavern who remembered serving Don, and the other was
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: someone who remembered seeing him at a traveling exhibit about
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. And remember, the whole reason Don was even
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: out there to begin with was to research Abraham Lincoln.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: So Mary thought that sighting at least had to be credible.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it would be a pretty crazy coincidence if
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Don just happened to have a perfect doppelganger in Casper, Wyoming,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: who also happened to love Abraham Lincoln. However, by the
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: time Mary actually learned about these sightings, it had been
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: at least a full month since the actual sightings occurred,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and now it seemed like if Don really had been
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: in Casper, he wasn't anymore. Mary didn't find any other
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: trace of her son there, or any clues as to
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: where he might have gone next. I mean, the whole
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: situation was so weird that Mary literally couldn't form a
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: coherent theory about what might have happened to her son.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: In fact, the more Mary thought about it, the less
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: sense any of this made, and so basically she just
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: reached a total dead end and eventually gave up and
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: went back home to Maryland. And for the next two years,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Mary continued not to get any answers about her son.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: But then on October fourth of nineteen eighty five, so
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: almost three years after Don did disappeared, everything changed. That day,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: a group of hunters were hiking through the woods in
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Carbon County, Wyoming, when one of them looked up ahead
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: and they saw what looked like a bunch of white
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: rocks lying in the grass, And so these hunters they
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: moved up to get a better look at these rocks,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: and as they got closer they realized they were definitely
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: not rocks, they were bones. And in fact, as they
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: got close enough, they saw it was not just a
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: couple of bones.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: It was like a perfectly intact human.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Skeleton, just lying in the grass, still wearing clothes, but.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Just bones inside the clothes.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: When sheriff's investigators arrived on the scene, they found a
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: wallet that was inside the skeleton's pants pocket, and in
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: that wallet there was a driver's license with the name
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Don Kemp. An autopsy found that Don had died of exposure,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: and there was no sign of foul play. The sheriff
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Department's official conclusion was that on the day he disappeared,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Don must have suffered a mental breakdown and walked into
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: the wilderness voluntarily, and then at some point he had died,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: likely in that blizzard that happened three days later. Now
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: this sounds like a neat and tidy explanation, but really
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: it only raises more questions. Because Don's body was found
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: only four miles away from where his car was abandoned,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Investigators had searched that area for days, and even if
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Don had been trying to.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Hide from the search teams.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: For whatever reason, this area was so bare and so
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: flat that there really was nowhere to hide, and so
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: it's just hard to imagine that Don was basically right
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: there the whole time and nobody saw him. But then,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: even if Down really had somehow died in the blizzard
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: three days after his car was found, and despite all
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: this search effort, he was never located, let's pretend that
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: actually happened. Well, who made those phone calls from Mark
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Dennis's trailer five months later to Judy?
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Like who was that?
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: And also how had he been spotted by two different
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: people walking around the same town where those.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Calls came from?
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: And if if there really was no foul play involved,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: why was Don's car so weirdly damaged when it was found? Like?
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Who did that?
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: The Carbon County Sheriff's Department was never able to answer
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: any of those questions, and so Mary Kemp, when she
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: died in twenty fourteen, died still wondering what really happened
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: to her son. If mysterious deaths that leave behind more
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: questions than answers are your kind of story, then you
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: should really check out another episode of ours on Ricky McCormick,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: which is another very bizarre, deeply puzzling case where the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: truth proved to be incredibly difficult to pin down.