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The 3 Most IN-YOUR-FACE Missing Persons Cases I Have Ever Seen · 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 2: Okay, let's get into today's stories.
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Speaker 1: In December of twenty fourteen, a twenty four year old
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Speaker 1: man named Aaron Fraser sat in the driver's seat of
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Speaker 1: an excavator in the backyard of his childhood.
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Speaker 2: Home in Jacksonville, Florida.
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Speaker 1: He pushed the lever forward and he watched as the
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Speaker 1: metal bucket dipped down and cut into this big slab
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Speaker 1: of concrete and debris went flying everywhere, and Aaron loved it.
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Speaker 2: He smiled with satisfaction watching this destruction.
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Speaker 1: Taking place, and he pressed the lever again and ripped
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Speaker 1: off another piece of concrete. Today, Aaron was ripping out
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Speaker 1: the backyard swimming pool of his old home a home
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Speaker 1: which his father had recently given him the deed to.
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Speaker 1: But this property was not a nostalgic place for Arin.
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Speaker 1: In fact, he hadn't lived here since he was three
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Speaker 1: years old, and the handful of memories he had from
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Speaker 1: being in this place were basically all bad. His parents
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Speaker 1: bought all the time, and then one day in nineteen
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Speaker 1: ninety three, his mom just decided to leave, and then
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Speaker 1: after she was gone, his dad wasn't able to care
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Speaker 1: for him, and so before long Aaron was shipped off
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Speaker 1: to foster care. So now he was kind of enjoying
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Speaker 1: demolishing the property. He had some big renovations planned, starting
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Speaker 1: with the backyard. By early afternoon, the pool was all gone,
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Speaker 1: and so Aaron swung his bucket over to the outdoor
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Speaker 1: shower that was located next to where the pool had been,
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Speaker 1: and he dug the bucket into the concrete, and as
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Speaker 1: soon as he did, immediately this geyser of water shot
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Speaker 1: into the sky, and so Aaron knew he must have
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Speaker 1: hit a water line, and so Aaron jumped out of
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Speaker 1: the excavator. He turned off the water, and then he
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Speaker 1: grabbed a shovel and headed over to the outdoor shower.
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Speaker 2: 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 so
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Speaker 1: it was pulling it away, and finally he revealed yields
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Speaker 1: the object, and it's this old coconut, And so we
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Speaker 1: actually reached down and pulled the coconut out and.
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Speaker 2: Just stared at it, like why is this under here?
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Speaker 1: Aarin was really confused by this, like why would somebody
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Speaker 1: take the time to wrap a coconut in waterproof industrial
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Speaker 1: sheeting and then bury it? And so as Aaron just
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Speaker 1: sort of stood there wondering what this could be, he
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Speaker 1: began rotating this coconut around in his hands, and when
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Speaker 1: he saw the back of this coconut, he screamed. It
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Speaker 1: would turn out Aaron's mother did not just suddenly abandon
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Speaker 1: the family. On the night of January sixth, nineteen ninety three,
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Speaker 1: the day that she vanished, while Aaron's mom and father
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Speaker 1: got into this huge fight and got out of hand,
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Speaker 1: and Aaron's father shot and killed Aaron's mother with a
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Speaker 1: twenty two caliber rifle. Aaron's father then staged the murder
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Speaker 1: to look like Aaron's mother simply stormed out and never
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Speaker 1: looked back. Now, when the police investigated her absence, they
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Speaker 1: did not believe Aaron's father's story. They thought there was
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Speaker 1: something off about it, but there wasn't enough hard evidence
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Speaker 1: to actually connect him to the crime, and so nobody
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Speaker 1: ever caught him. But that all changed in twenty fourteen
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Speaker 1: when a court ordered that the deed of Aaron's childhood
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Speaker 1: home be transferred from his father to him. The coconut
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Speaker 1: that Aaron found in the backyard of his home was
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Speaker 1: his mother's skull. He just didn't realize it until he
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Speaker 1: rotated it and saw her eye sockets. Five years later,
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Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, Aaron's father was convicted of second degree
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Speaker 1: murder and he was sentenced to life in prison. In
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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 with 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.
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Speaker 2: But when they didn't, the driver called the police.
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Speaker 1: So this area, Eldcow is a sprawling canyon that was
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Speaker 1: formed more than a thousand years earlier during a volcanic eruption.
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Speaker 2: The canyon itself.
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Speaker 1: Is very deep and it has steep walls on either side,
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Speaker 1: and at the bottom is all this volcanic debris. So
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Speaker 1: it's beautiful to look at, but it's pretty difficult to navigate,
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Speaker 1: and so if somebody was exploring this area on their
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Speaker 1: own and somehow got lost in the process, this could
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Speaker 1: become a very dangerous place for them very quickly. So
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Speaker 1: when the bus driver called the police to report a
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Speaker 1: missing tour group member in this particular area, the police
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Speaker 1: immediately sent out a search and rescue party, and when
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Speaker 1: they arrived, the first thing they did was interview the
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Speaker 1: remaining tour group members to try to figure out who
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Speaker 1: the missing person actually was, because it wasn't clear yet.
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Speaker 1: Pretty quickly, some of the tour group members were called
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Speaker 1: seeing this young woman of Asian descent who was wearing
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Speaker 1: dark clothes and was carrying a light colored bag, who
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Speaker 1: had left the bus at the beginning of lunch and
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Speaker 1: had not returned. Now, Grace had not personally seen this
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Speaker 1: young woman, and she told police as much when she
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Speaker 1: was in but she, like basically everybody else on the tour,
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Speaker 1: immediately volunteered to help with the search. So for the
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Speaker 1: entire rest of the day. That is what Grace and
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Speaker 1: the others all did. They searched for this missing person.
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Speaker 1: Grace was teamed up with another member of the tour
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Speaker 1: as well as a trained rescuer, and they walked out
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Speaker 1: into the canyon, searching along a grid pattern with the
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Speaker 1: rest of the team. After a few hours with no luck,
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Speaker 1: officials sent in more rescuers and a helicopter, and by
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Speaker 1: the time the night fell, the entire canyon was lit
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Speaker 1: up by search lights and you could barely hear anything
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Speaker 1: over the sound of the helicopter making repeated passes overhead.
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Speaker 1: But despite this enormous effort, there still was no sign
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Speaker 1: of the missing tourist. Finally, at around three am, Grace
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Speaker 1: broke off from the search and returned to the bus
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Speaker 1: to get some sleep. But before settling into her seat,
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Speaker 1: Grace opened up her backpack to pull out some makeup wipes,
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Speaker 1: and as she did that, something inside of her bag
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Speaker 1: caught her eye, and when she saw it, she froze.
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Speaker 1: She stared at this object, and as she did, she
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Speaker 1: felt herself break out in a cold sweat because suddenly
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Speaker 1: she knew exactly where this missing woman was. It would
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Speaker 1: turn out that over the course of the previous day,
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Speaker 1: the people on board the bus made a series of
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Speaker 1: small mistakes, but together they snowballed and turned into one
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Speaker 1: huge mistake. First, the bus driver had made a mistake
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Speaker 1: with his head count, not the headcount he had done
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Speaker 1: that afternoon, but the one he had done earlier that
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Speaker 1: day before they drove to Eldkow. That morning, he had
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Speaker 1: accidentally counted one too many people on board the bus
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Speaker 1: and not realized it. Then that afternoon, when he had
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Speaker 1: counted again and actually had the right number of people
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Speaker 1: on board, he thought there was a missing person. Next
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Speaker 1: the description of the woman who had gotten off the
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Speaker 1: bus and didn't come back, the so called missing person,
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Speaker 1: that description had only been half correct. So yes, there
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Speaker 1: had been a young woman of Asian descent wearing a
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Speaker 1: dark sweatshirt carrying a light colored bag. She had gotten
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Speaker 1: off the bus, but she did get back on, except
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Speaker 1: that when she did, she looked different and so nobody
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Speaker 1: recognized her. And this was because this woman had gotten
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Speaker 1: off the bus to go to the restroom to freshen up.
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Speaker 1: She had put on makeup, she'd put her hair up
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Speaker 1: in a ponytail, and she had taken.
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Speaker 2: Off her dark colored sweatshirt.
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Speaker 1: The object that Grace found in her backpack that made
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Speaker 1: her realize that she knew exactly where this missing woman
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Speaker 1: was was her dark colored sweatshirt inside of her light
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Speaker 1: colored backpack. And it was at that exact moment that
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Speaker 1: Grace knew the person that she had spent the last
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Speaker 1: fifteen hours searching for was herself. Before dawn on December twelfth,
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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, a seventeen year old girl named Tracy
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Speaker 1: Dion sat in the passenger seat of a little two
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Speaker 1: door car that was swerving down a deserted road in
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Speaker 1: the Yankton seu Ra in South Dakota. Everybody in the
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Speaker 1: car was drunk, including Tracy. Sitting next to Tracy in
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Speaker 1: the middle front seat was her nineteen year old cousin
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Speaker 1: named Ruby, and Ruby's boyfriend, a twenty year old named Arnold,
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Speaker 1: was driving the car. All three of them had been
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Speaker 1: out partying all night and so now they were trying
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Speaker 1: to make it home. The swerving was making Tracy feel
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Speaker 1: sick to her stomach, but she didn't want to say
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Speaker 1: anything to Arnold in fear that she might distract him.
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Speaker 1: I mean, it was really dark outside. There was no
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Speaker 1: street lights there was ice.
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Speaker 2: On the road.
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Speaker 1: I mean for a sober driver this would be a
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Speaker 1: challenging drive, let alone a drunk driver. They were coming
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Speaker 1: up on an intersection and Arnold brought the car to
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Speaker 1: a stop with a lurch. Tracy watched as Arnold checked
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Speaker 1: for cross traffic and then pulled out onto Highway two
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Speaker 1: eighty one. But halfway through this turn, as Arnold was accelerating,
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Speaker 1: Tracy began to feel the car slide, and even in
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Speaker 1: her drunken state, she could tell Arnold had hit a
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Speaker 1: patch of black ice, and so as the car began
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Speaker 1: to skid, she wanted to scream, but before she could,
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Speaker 1: the car was already flipping over, and then everything went black.
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Speaker 1: A short time later, Tracy came to the car was
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Speaker 1: upside down, and Tracy quickly realized she had fallen out
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Speaker 1: of her seat and was now basically resting on the
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Speaker 1: roof of the car, which was now on the ground.
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Speaker 1: From what she could tell after the car had finished
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Speaker 1: rolling over, it had come to a stop just off
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Speaker 1: the side of the highway, and so they were not
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Speaker 1: in immediate danger from other cars striking them, But she
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Speaker 1: couldn't really see outside because the windows were so badly
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Speaker 1: cracked beside her. Tracy could hear her cousin Ruby pounding
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Speaker 1: on the driver's side door, trying to get it to open,
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Speaker 1: and so Tracy tried to look around Ruby to see
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Speaker 1: Arnold to see if he was okay. But when she did,
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Speaker 1: she saw the driver's seat was empty. Tracy tried to
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Speaker 1: make sense of what she was seeing. The driver's side
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Speaker 1: door was closed, but Arnold was gone. Just then, Tracy
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Speaker 1: heard the sound of the driver's side door opening, and
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Speaker 1: she turned to see her cousin Ruby forcing the door
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Speaker 1: open just a few inches, and then a second later,
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Speaker 1: Ruby was slithering out through that crack to the outside.
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Speaker 1: To Tracy, everything felt like it was happening in slow motion.
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Speaker 1: She was too shocked and confused to make any sense
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Speaker 1: of it. But if Ruby was getting out of the car,
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Speaker 1: Tracy felt like she should too, and so Tracy turned
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Speaker 1: and crawled across to the driver's side and was about
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Speaker 1: to make an exit the same way Ruby had, when
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Speaker 1: the door slam shut violently right in Tracy's face. Tracy
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Speaker 1: didn't understand why Ruby would do something like that. Why
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Speaker 1: would she shut the door that aggressively when she knew
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Speaker 1: her cousin was still inside, Tracy tried to open the
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Speaker 1: door again, but she was too weak to do it.
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Speaker 1: She figured her cousin Ruby was okay, but she couldn't
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Speaker 1: see outside because of how cracked the windows were. At
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Speaker 1: this point, Tracy began to feel woozy. She laid her
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Speaker 1: head down on the roof of the car, wondering to
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Speaker 1: herself why Ruby and Arnold had left her behind.
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Speaker 2: Tracy would stay trapped inside.
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Speaker 1: Of the car alone for a few hours until finally
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Speaker 1: a motorist saw the flipped over car and called nine
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Speaker 1: one one. Shortly after that, first responders arrived on the scene.
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Speaker 1: They pulled Tracy out of the car, and shockingly, she
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Speaker 1: actually didn't have really any serious injuries at all. She
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Speaker 1: didn't even need to be hospitalized. But rescuers could not
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Speaker 1: find Ruby or Arnold anywhere they were gone, and once
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Speaker 1: rescuers had scoured the entire area around the crash site,
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Speaker 1: the sheriff who was in charge of the scene started
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Speaker 1: to wonder if Arnold and Ruby were.
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Speaker 2: Not just missing. Maybe he thought they had fled.
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Speaker 1: Arnold had been driving drunk, and all three of them
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Speaker 1: were underage, and so the sheriff thought maybe Arnold and
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Speaker 1: Ruby were scared to get in trouble. Over the next
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Speaker 1: few days, the police continued to search the surrounding area
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Speaker 1: for Arnold and Ruby, hoping they were not badly injured
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Speaker 1: and that they would just turn up on their own.
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Speaker 1: But they never did, and as the days turned into weeks,
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Speaker 1: hope began to wane for the young couple. Their family
15:47
Speaker 1: and friends kept searching the area along two eighty one
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Speaker 1: where the car had flipped, looking for any clue as
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Speaker 1: to where these two had gone, but there was nothing.
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Speaker 1: There was no trace of them. It was like Arnold
15:57
Speaker 1: and 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
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Speaker 1: have seen Arnold alive and well at a New Year's
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Speaker 1: Eve party. Now the police doubted this claim, but this
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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
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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,
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Speaker 1: and they asked them, were you with Arnold and they
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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
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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
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Speaker 1: to the details of her story, Arnold did not appear
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Speaker 1: to be in any kind of distress, and even if
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Speaker 1: he was in distress, the police still had no idea where.
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Speaker 2: He was, so how could they help him.
16:57
Speaker 1: Other locals came forward claiming to have spotted Arnold around
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Speaker 1: town as well, but nothing came of those reports. Either
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Speaker 1: Neither Arnold nor Ruby turned up. Months went by, and
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Speaker 1: the case went cold until March tenth, when a driver
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Speaker 1: was going down Highway to eighty one and they noticed
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Speaker 1: a strange object in the drainage.
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Speaker 2: Ditch next to the road.
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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.
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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 2: The bodies belonged to Ruby and Arnold.
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Speaker 1: But this discovery did not solve the mystery of what
17:50
Speaker 1: happened to Ruby and Arnold.
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Speaker 2: Instead, it made it much.
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Speaker 1: More bizarre, because first of all, the bodies were found
17:57
Speaker 1: seventy five feet away from the original crash site, and
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Speaker 1: the exact spots where the two bodies were found had
18:04
Speaker 1: been searched many many times. On the day of the crash,
18:07
Speaker 1: days after the crash, they were searched by police, they
18:10
Speaker 1: were searched by friends and family of Ruby and Arnold.
18:13
Speaker 1: The idea that this is where the bodies had been
18:15
Speaker 1: the whole time was impossible they would have been found.
18:18
Speaker 1: And then there was the condition of the bodies. Ruby's
18:21
Speaker 1: body was extremely decomposed, which made sense given the fact
18:25
Speaker 1: that the crash was three months earlier, but Arnold's body
18:28
Speaker 1: was barely decomposed at all. And in the pocket of
18:31
Speaker 1: Arnold's genes police found a mysterious set of three keys.
18:35
Speaker 2: One was a.
18:36
Speaker 1: Vehicle key and two were house keys, but none of
18:39
Speaker 1: them opened any vehicle or building that Arnold was known
18:42
Speaker 1: to frequent and nobody recognized them. Finally, the police found
18:46
Speaker 1: a tuft of hair lying near where the bodies had
18:48
Speaker 1: been found. It was Ruby's hair, but it didn't look
18:52
Speaker 1: like the hair had been there for very long, certainly
18:54
Speaker 1: not three months. Instead of being dirty and matted like
18:57
Speaker 1: you would expect given how long she must have been there,
19:00
Speaker 1: the hair was perfectly clean. The official coroner's report on
19:04
Speaker 1: Ruby and Arnold's deaths were that they died of exposure
19:07
Speaker 1: and then their bodies were just overlooked by searchers for months.
19:10
Speaker 1: But to a lot of people, including the sheriff who
19:12
Speaker 1: was in charge of the original crash.
19:14
Speaker 2: Site, this made no sense.
19:16
Speaker 1: Despite the coroner's findings, law enforcement officials believed that Ruby
19:20
Speaker 1: and Arnold's deaths were the result of foul play. Under
19:23
Speaker 1: the foul play theory, somebody pulled Ruby and Arnold out
19:27
Speaker 1: of the crash site while they were still alive and
19:29
Speaker 1: then killed them later, and then perhaps they killed them
19:32
Speaker 1: at different times, which would account for the differences and
19:35
Speaker 1: decomposition of their bodies. The FBI ultimately came in and
19:38
Speaker 1: took over this case, but they eventually closed it down,
19:41
Speaker 1: citing a lack of evidence to support the foul play theory. However,
19:46
Speaker 1: with or without foul play being involved here, nobody has
19:49
Speaker 1: a good explanation for all those sightings of Arnold after
19:52
Speaker 1: the crash. And also, nobody can explain why the door
19:56
Speaker 1: was slammed in Tracy's face in the immediate aftermath of
19:59
Speaker 1: the crash. Maybe it was Ruby or Arnold who slammed
20:02
Speaker 1: the door, or maybe it was their killer. To this day,
20:06
Speaker 1: what actually happened on December twelfth, nineteen ninety two, on
20:09
Speaker 1: the side of Highway to eighty one remains a mystery.
20:18
Speaker 1: And now here's a clip from the latest episode of Redacted.
20:21
Speaker 2: Enjoy.
20:23
Speaker 3: Her heart skipped a beat. She knew that he meant
20:25
Speaker 3: the CIA agents, which meant he knew what she'd been
20:29
Speaker 3: up to and why she was here now. Marita struggled
20:33
Speaker 3: to find words as tears filled her eyes, and to
20:37
Speaker 3: her horror, Fidel drew his gun out of his holster,
20:41
Speaker 3: but he didn't point it at her like she'd expected. Instead,
20:45
Speaker 3: he handed her the gun handle first. Go ahead and
20:49
Speaker 3: kill me, he said, but Marita stayed frozen to the spot.
20:54
Speaker 3: The CIA could never have dreamed of a more perfect scenario.
20:58
Speaker 3: Here was Fidel Castro completely unprotected, vulnerable, and open target,
21:03
Speaker 3: and here was Marita being offered a murder weapon, and
21:07
Speaker 3: yet she couldn't do it, and Fidel seemed.
21:10
Speaker 2: To know it.
21:11
Speaker 3: He smiled at her, and then he said, no one
21:15
Speaker 3: 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: Studios 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