Latest / Crime and Horror / CCTV captured his final sighting, then he VANISHED.

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CCTV captured his final sighting, then he VANISHED. · Crime and Horror

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Speaker 1: In the early morning hours on a Saturday and twenty thirteen,
0:03
Speaker 1: a man dressed all in black hidden the shadows on
0:06
Speaker 1: a side street in downtown Antwerp, Belgium. The man had
0:09
Speaker 1: lost track of how long he'd been there, but he
0:11
Speaker 1: didn't care. He'd hide in the shadows for as long
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Speaker 1: as he had to, waiting patiently for the perfect moment
0:17
Speaker 1: that he knew was gonna arrive eventually. And then finally,
0:21
Speaker 1: stumbling footsteps approached and the man crouched down and got ready.
0:26
Speaker 1: But before we get into that story, you may have
0:28
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0:43
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0:46
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1:05
Speaker 1: let's get into today's story. After midnight on Saturday, October nineteenth,
1:27
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, a twenty three year old man named Oday
1:30
Speaker 1: Eggieloose stood at the bar and had packed dance club
1:33
Speaker 1: in Antwerp, Belgium. The bartender slid two shot classes across
1:36
Speaker 1: the bar towards Oday and he grabbed both of them.
1:39
Speaker 1: He held one and he handed the other to his friend,
1:42
Speaker 1: Kevin Rodriguez s Fuentes, who's standing right behind him. It
1:45
Speaker 1: was Kevin's birthday, so Oday raised his shotglass and shouted
1:49
Speaker 1: Happy Birthday in Spanish over the pounding dance music, and
1:53
Speaker 1: then the two young men slammed back their drinks. Oday
1:55
Speaker 1: had moved to Antwerp, Belgium, from Spain about six months earlier,
1:59
Speaker 1: when he had gotten a job as a computer engineer.
2:01
Speaker 1: When he'd arrived, he hadn't known anybody, but he'd met
2:05
Speaker 1: Kevin at a beer festival and the two of them
2:07
Speaker 1: had gotten along right away. And Kevin was from the area,
2:10
Speaker 1: so he'd introduced Oday to a bunch of his friends
2:13
Speaker 1: and shown him the best spots to hang out in
2:15
Speaker 1: the city, and the two had gotten very close, very quickly.
2:18
Speaker 1: Now standing at the bar after you know, taking their shots,
2:21
Speaker 1: Kevin tapped on Oda's shoulder and he pointed out at
2:24
Speaker 1: the dance floor and he grinned because there was a
2:26
Speaker 1: group of young women about their age all dancing together
2:29
Speaker 1: out there, and so the two young men they headed
2:32
Speaker 1: out to the dance floor to go speak with these girls.
2:34
Speaker 1: And from this point on, the night really became a
2:37
Speaker 1: blur for Oday, who kept going back and forth from
2:40
Speaker 1: the dance floor back to the bar for more drinks.
2:43
Speaker 1: But you know, despite that, Oday was having a great time.
2:46
Speaker 1: It was really nights like this that made him feel
2:48
Speaker 1: like Antwerp was his new home. But he also knew
2:52
Speaker 1: if he stayed out much longer here, he might end
2:54
Speaker 1: up passing out right on the dance floor. So Oday
2:57
Speaker 1: and Kevin and some friends they had just met on
2:59
Speaker 1: the dance floor stumbled out of the club and into
3:02
Speaker 1: the city. When they got out there, the streets were
3:04
Speaker 1: pretty empty, and so Oday reflexively pulled his phone out
3:07
Speaker 1: of his pocket and looked at the time. Now, his
3:09
Speaker 1: vision was fuzzy, but even still, you know, one eyeing it,
3:12
Speaker 1: he could see that it was close to four am.
3:14
Speaker 1: And given the fact that it was so so late,
3:17
Speaker 1: basically it was the next day. At this point, he
3:20
Speaker 1: just told the group good night, and then he turned
3:22
Speaker 1: around to start walking home to go to bed. The
3:26
Speaker 1: next morning, Oday's friend, Kevin, woke up with a pounding headache.
3:31
Speaker 1: His eyes fluttered open and he looked around and he
3:34
Speaker 1: let out a sigh of relief because he was safely
3:36
Speaker 1: in his bedroom and his apartment in Antwerp. He had
3:38
Speaker 1: been so drunk by the end of his birthday celebration
3:41
Speaker 1: the night before that he literally didn't remember getting home,
3:44
Speaker 1: and so now painfully he rolled over and grabbed his
3:47
Speaker 1: phone off the nightstand and reflexibly texted Oday along with
3:51
Speaker 1: another friend that had been out with him the night before,
3:53
Speaker 1: asking how they were feeling. The other friend texted right back,
3:57
Speaker 1: but Oday did not respond. But this didn't really worry
4:00
Speaker 1: Kevin that much. I mean, he's horribly hungover. Oday has
4:04
Speaker 1: to be as well, and so he likely is just
4:06
Speaker 1: sleeping it off and he'll be in touch when he
4:08
Speaker 1: wakes up. However, all day that day, Kevin did not
4:12
Speaker 1: hear from Oday, and then the next day, October twentieth,
4:15
Speaker 1: when still Kevin has not heard from Oday, he really
4:19
Speaker 1: started to get worried. But when Kevin called Oday to
4:23
Speaker 1: check on him to make sure he was okay, when
4:25
Speaker 1: he put the phone to his ear, it didn't ring. Instead,
4:28
Speaker 1: it went straight to Odey's voicemail, like his phone was
4:31
Speaker 1: turned off. And to Kevin, this was pretty unusual. Oday
4:35
Speaker 1: was usually very responsive, even with a hangover, and by
4:39
Speaker 1: this point Kevin had given him a full day twenty
4:42
Speaker 1: four hours to recover, you know, like he should be
4:45
Speaker 1: in touch by now. What's going on? So Kevin called
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Speaker 1: the other friend who they'd gone out with, who had
4:50
Speaker 1: texted him back the day before, to see if maybe
4:53
Speaker 1: Oday had checked in with him, but that friend said
4:56
Speaker 1: he also had not spoken to Oday, and so at
4:58
Speaker 1: this point Kevin hung up up and just decided to
5:01
Speaker 1: go to Oday's house and literally physically check on him. However,
5:05
Speaker 1: when Kevin arrived at Oday's house, he found Oday's roommates,
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Speaker 1: but no Oday. Odai's roommates did not know Oday very well,
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Speaker 1: so they didn't know what was sort of normal and
5:15
Speaker 1: not normal behavior. So when he had gone out for
5:18
Speaker 1: Kevin's birthday party and didn't come back, they just figured
5:21
Speaker 1: he was crashing at a friend's place or something. But
5:23
Speaker 1: to Kevin, this was unusual to hear that he had
5:26
Speaker 1: not come back. That was not normal. He would know
5:29
Speaker 1: if you know, Oday was at a friend's house, and
5:31
Speaker 1: so Kevin was starting to panic. But then Kevin remembered
5:34
Speaker 1: one of his and Oday's mutual friends had recently gone
5:38
Speaker 1: out of town for a wedding, and so Kevin thought,
5:40
Speaker 1: you know, maybe that's where Oday is. He's gone with
5:43
Speaker 1: her to the wedding, and that's why he's not here,
5:45
Speaker 1: and that's why he's not answering his phone. So Kevin
5:48
Speaker 1: left Oday's house and called this friend, a young woman
5:51
Speaker 1: whose name was Oyane. He was hoping that she would
5:54
Speaker 1: have an explanation for everything, but instead, when she answered
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Speaker 1: the phone, it was obvious from her her voice that
6:01
Speaker 1: she was also freaking out about Oday. Oyane said she
6:05
Speaker 1: also had been calling Oday NonStop over the past day
6:08
Speaker 1: or so and she couldn't get in touch with him,
6:11
Speaker 1: and so it was becoming clear that nobody had seen
6:14
Speaker 1: Oday since the night of the birthday party, when he
6:16
Speaker 1: set off around four am to walk home drunk from
6:20
Speaker 1: the bar. Kevin had no idea what he was supposed
6:22
Speaker 1: to do, but he felt like his friend was in trouble,
6:25
Speaker 1: so he contacted the police and officially reported Oday missing
6:30
Speaker 1: the following day, Monday, October twenty first, Kevin sat in
6:34
Speaker 1: a small room across from members of the missing Persons
6:37
Speaker 1: unit of the Belgian National Police, and as soon as
6:39
Speaker 1: the officers started asking Kevin questions, it became clear that
6:43
Speaker 1: this was going to be a very frustrating meeting for everybody,
6:46
Speaker 1: because no matter how hard Kevin tried, he literally couldn't
6:50
Speaker 1: remember much at all. His memory of his and Oday's
6:53
Speaker 1: night out on his birthday were really just blurry images
6:56
Speaker 1: and pieces of random conversations because you know, he was drunk.
6:59
Speaker 1: But Kevin did manage to remember what Oday had been wearing.
7:03
Speaker 1: He had a gray hooded sweatshirt and a black and
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Speaker 1: white checkered scarf, and he also knew the area of
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Speaker 1: town specifically where they had gone out, but really that
7:10
Speaker 1: was it. And so by the time Kevin left the
7:13
Speaker 1: police station, he felt like he was really letting his
7:15
Speaker 1: friend down, and he just couldn't handle the idea that
7:18
Speaker 1: now he would just have to sit around and wait
7:21
Speaker 1: and hope police magically found him. You know, when right now, Oday,
7:24
Speaker 1: wherever he was, could be in trouble or hurt or something,
7:28
Speaker 1: you know, he just felt like he had to do something.
7:30
Speaker 1: So that afternoon, Kevin met up with some of Oday's
7:33
Speaker 1: other friends and together they began hanging posters all around
7:36
Speaker 1: the city that had pictures of Oday on them. Antwerp
7:39
Speaker 1: was a very busy city, filled with bars and restaurants
7:42
Speaker 1: that stayed open very late, so they were sure that
7:45
Speaker 1: somebody had to have seen Oday while he was walking home.
7:49
Speaker 1: He couldn't have just disappeared into thin air. People don't
7:52
Speaker 1: do that. Meanwhile, detectives in the missing person's unit got
7:56
Speaker 1: to work. Now Kevin had not given them a ton
7:59
Speaker 1: to go on, but knowing where in the city he
8:02
Speaker 1: and Oday had gone out and what Oday had been
8:05
Speaker 1: wearing did actually turn out to be quite helpful because
8:08
Speaker 1: with this basic information, police were able to collect CCTV
8:12
Speaker 1: surveillance camera footage from outside of the bars, restaurants and
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Speaker 1: street corners where Kevin and Oday had been, and it
8:18
Speaker 1: didn't take them long to pick up on Oday's trail.
8:21
Speaker 1: The investigators were hoping to find footage of Oday getting
8:25
Speaker 1: into a cab or some o their vehicle, or maybe
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Speaker 1: wandering into a building, or even evidence that he'd been
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Speaker 1: attacked in some capacity, and at first they thought that
8:34
Speaker 1: is exactly what they'd found because on camera footage around
8:38
Speaker 1: four am on the morning o Day disappeared, the police
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Speaker 1: saw him wandering down this dimly lit side street on
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Speaker 1: his own. His black and white checkered scarf really jumped
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Speaker 1: out on the footage, and the police watched on video
8:50
Speaker 1: as this man suddenly came out of the shadows and
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Speaker 1: rushed Oday. The man attacked Oday and stole what looked
8:57
Speaker 1: like Oday's wallet right out of his pocket, and then
9:00
Speaker 1: the man took off running, and as disturbing as it was,
9:03
Speaker 1: the footage did not actually surprise the investigators very much.
9:06
Speaker 1: While Antwerp was not a particularly violent place, it was
9:10
Speaker 1: a big city and drunk people wandering home at night
9:13
Speaker 1: did occasionally get mugged. However, what the investigators saw next
9:17
Speaker 1: on the surveillance footage did completely shock them, because after
9:22
Speaker 1: the mugging, Oday had pulled himself together and kept heading
9:26
Speaker 1: down the street, and on footage taken a few minutes
9:29
Speaker 1: later from a different camera, the police saw Oday still
9:33
Speaker 1: wandering on his own when suddenly two new men rushed up,
9:37
Speaker 1: attacked Oday, took his phone, and then they ran away,
9:42
Speaker 1: meaning in the span of just a few minutes, Oday
9:44
Speaker 1: had been mugged twice by three different people, and none
9:48
Speaker 1: of the investigators had ever seen anything like that. It
9:52
Speaker 1: was like something you'd expect to see in a movie
9:54
Speaker 1: or a TV show about a guy cursed with bad
9:56
Speaker 1: luck or something. But as bizarre as this was, investigators
10:00
Speaker 1: now had something to go on. They didn't know if
10:02
Speaker 1: these muggers the three men were connected in some way,
10:05
Speaker 1: or if this had truly been two random, unconnected muggings,
10:09
Speaker 1: but Oday's cell phone and wallet had been stolen by
10:11
Speaker 1: these guys, so they could track Oday's cell phone data
10:14
Speaker 1: and also his credit card info, and the investigators hoped
10:18
Speaker 1: that would then lead them right to Oday's attackers and
10:21
Speaker 1: they could figure out what their affiliation was and why
10:25
Speaker 1: they targeted Oday, and hopefully where Oday is now. The
10:35
Speaker 1: investigator's plan took a few days, but it did pay
10:38
Speaker 1: off in a big way. By tracking Oday's credit card,
10:41
Speaker 1: investigators discovered that somebody had attempted to use one of
10:45
Speaker 1: his cards at an ATM in the city, and so
10:48
Speaker 1: they pulled surveillance footage from that ATM to identify the
10:52
Speaker 1: first mugger. Then, by using cell phone tower data and
10:55
Speaker 1: CCTV footage along the route where they saw his cell
10:58
Speaker 1: phone was taken. Investigators were able to identify the other
11:02
Speaker 1: two attackers involved in the second mugging, and so now
11:06
Speaker 1: they believed they just needed to talk to these thieves
11:09
Speaker 1: to figure out where Oday was. Fast forward to October
11:13
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, ten days after Oday's disappearance, and he still
11:17
Speaker 1: is nowhere to be found. Officers from the Missing Persons
11:20
Speaker 1: unit interviewed these three muggers separately. The police made it
11:24
Speaker 1: clear that they had a pile of evidence here that
11:26
Speaker 1: showed they mugged Oday shortly before he vanished, so there's
11:30
Speaker 1: no point in trying to deny it. They know what
11:32
Speaker 1: they did, and none of the muggers did try to
11:35
Speaker 1: deny it. In fact, all three men admitted that they
11:38
Speaker 1: had jumped Oday on the street, and they told the
11:41
Speaker 1: police exactly what they had stolen. But they insisted their
11:44
Speaker 1: attacks the two muggings were not coordinated at all. They
11:48
Speaker 1: just happened to have gotten to Oday within a few
11:50
Speaker 1: minutes of each other. And then, even more importantly, they
11:53
Speaker 1: also all insisted that they had nothing to do with
11:56
Speaker 1: Oday's disappearance. All they did was rob him. That's it.
12:00
Speaker 1: As the investigators listened to these muggers talk, all they
12:03
Speaker 1: could do was stare in disbelief. The idea that three
12:07
Speaker 1: muggers had randomly committed two attacks on the same man
12:11
Speaker 1: within minutes of each other, and that their victim had
12:14
Speaker 1: then disappeared in what yet another unrelated incident seemed almost comical.
12:20
Speaker 1: But no matter how hard the police pressed these guys,
12:23
Speaker 1: they all completely stuck to their stories, which was we
12:27
Speaker 1: mugged him, and then we ran away and we never
12:30
Speaker 1: saw him again. The police arrested and held all three
12:33
Speaker 1: men in connection to the robberies that they admitted to doing.
12:37
Speaker 1: But their goal, despite what these men have said, was
12:40
Speaker 1: to find enough evidence to still charge them with the
12:43
Speaker 1: kidnapping or maybe even murder of Oday. But then a
12:47
Speaker 1: new piece of surveillance footage surfaced from a new camera,
12:50
Speaker 1: and this new footage actually showed Oday moments after the
12:54
Speaker 1: second mugging, and on this footage, investigators didn't see any
12:58
Speaker 1: of the muggers dragging Oday away or something. Instead, just
13:03
Speaker 1: like the mugger said, they really did take off after
13:05
Speaker 1: that second mugging, and just like he'd done after the
13:08
Speaker 1: first attack, Oday dusted himself off and just kept on
13:12
Speaker 1: walking down the street and out of the camera's range.
13:15
Speaker 1: But he was alone, and so now, to their complete astonishment,
13:19
Speaker 1: the police had to admit that the muggers might be
13:22
Speaker 1: telling the truth, and that Oday could have just kept
13:25
Speaker 1: wandering the streets of Antwerp for hours after he'd gotten attacked.
13:29
Speaker 1: They didn't know, but they know the muggers ran away
13:32
Speaker 1: and Oday was alone at least briefly after the second attack.
13:35
Speaker 1: And also this new footage made them realize that to
13:38
Speaker 1: really conduct this investigation, they were going to need to
13:41
Speaker 1: search the entire city to see if anyone anywhere had
13:46
Speaker 1: seen Oday. So in early November of twenty thirteen, about
13:51
Speaker 1: two weeks after Oday's disappearance, Belgium National Police conducted a
13:55
Speaker 1: massive investigation throughout all of Antwerp. They visited all the bars,
14:00
Speaker 1: all the restaurants, all the clubs in the area roughly
14:03
Speaker 1: where Oday and his friends had been out partying. But
14:06
Speaker 1: no matter who they spoke to, no matter where they went,
14:09
Speaker 1: nobody knew where Oday was or what happened to him.
14:12
Speaker 1: But as they hit all these dead ends, the investigator's
14:15
Speaker 1: search continued and it sort of slowly migrated north through
14:19
Speaker 1: Antwerp in the rough direction where Oday had been last seen,
14:23
Speaker 1: walking away from the city center and towards the banks
14:25
Speaker 1: of the River Skelt, which runs right through Antwerp on
14:29
Speaker 1: its way to the North Sea. On the evening of
14:31
Speaker 1: November seventh, so by this point it is nineteen days
14:35
Speaker 1: since Oday was last seen. Several detectives from the Missing
14:38
Speaker 1: Persons Unit stepped onto the deck of a very unique
14:42
Speaker 1: structure that literally floated on the River Skelt. The structure
14:46
Speaker 1: was called the bad Boat. That morning, police boats had
14:49
Speaker 1: been dragging the river itself and were searching the river
14:53
Speaker 1: banks with dogs looking for any signs of Oday. But
14:56
Speaker 1: the search of this river couldn't be completed without a
14:59
Speaker 1: stop at the Bodboat. So the Bodboat was basically a
15:03
Speaker 1: massive club bar and high end restaurant that had been
15:07
Speaker 1: built into a converted ship that was moored right in
15:10
Speaker 1: the middle of the stretch of the river that police
15:12
Speaker 1: were dragging. But the biggest attraction of the Bodboat was
15:15
Speaker 1: not the food or the dancing. It was the almost
15:18
Speaker 1: Olympic sized swimming pool that had been built into the
15:22
Speaker 1: deck of the ship, and it looked like it was
15:24
Speaker 1: floating right on top of the river. People referred to
15:26
Speaker 1: it as the world's largest floating swimming pool, and it
15:30
Speaker 1: was always packed. The bodboat had a very good, very wide,
15:34
Speaker 1: unobstructed view of the city and the river, and so
15:38
Speaker 1: the detectives were hopeful that if Oday had passed by,
15:41
Speaker 1: someone on the bodboat likely would have been able to
15:45
Speaker 1: see him. So now the detective split up and began
15:48
Speaker 1: interviewing the bodboat's staff and the patrons, asking if any
15:52
Speaker 1: of them remembered seeing a young man in a distinctive
15:54
Speaker 1: black and white checkered scarf on the morning he went missing. Now,
15:58
Speaker 1: at this point, pretty much ever in the city had
16:01
Speaker 1: already heard of Oday. I mean, his face was plastered
16:03
Speaker 1: on posters everywhere, and people really wanted to help. But
16:08
Speaker 1: as detectives talked to everybody at the bodboat and the
16:11
Speaker 1: pool and the bar and the restaurant, everybody, as much
16:14
Speaker 1: as people wanted to help and thought they might have
16:17
Speaker 1: tips that could help, nobody had anything that was meaningful.
16:21
Speaker 1: And so eventually the investigators had to leave the bodboat
16:25
Speaker 1: and they just spent the rest of the afternoon on
16:27
Speaker 1: the banks of the river watching the marine unit do
16:30
Speaker 1: its work, but just like on the bodboat, there was
16:33
Speaker 1: nothing found in the river itself. On November nineteenth, twenty thirteen,
16:44
Speaker 1: so now one full month after Oday's disappearance, friends and
16:47
Speaker 1: family gathered publicly both an Antwerp and his hometown in
16:51
Speaker 1: the Basque country of Spain. In Spain, his family made
16:54
Speaker 1: it clear that they still hoped Oday would be alive,
16:57
Speaker 1: and that this gathering was not a memorial, was instead
17:00
Speaker 1: to show their love for Oday and to bring continued
17:03
Speaker 1: attention to his story so he could be found. In Antwerp,
17:07
Speaker 1: Oday's friends tried to convey the same message with their
17:09
Speaker 1: meetup that Oday had to be out there somewhere and
17:12
Speaker 1: he might be okay, we just need to keep looking. However,
17:16
Speaker 1: by the end of twenty thirteen, so now over two
17:18
Speaker 1: months after Oday's disappearance, it became clear that the police
17:22
Speaker 1: investigation was really not making much headway at all. Police
17:26
Speaker 1: still had those three muggers in custody in hopes that
17:29
Speaker 1: maybe they would crack and they would admit that they
17:31
Speaker 1: had done something to Oday after the muggings, but the
17:34
Speaker 1: three men had not changed their stories at all, and
17:38
Speaker 1: also after over a month of canvassing, the entire city.
17:42
Speaker 1: No new evidence had really surfaced at all, and so
17:44
Speaker 1: Oday's friends and family really began to worry that the
17:48
Speaker 1: police might just abandon the search because there was nothing
17:51
Speaker 1: they could do. But then, starting in the early summer
17:54
Speaker 1: of twenty fourteen, so a little more than seven months
17:57
Speaker 1: after Oday first disappeared, thing incredible happened. Oday's story went viral,
18:02
Speaker 1: and not just in Belgium or in his native Spain,
18:06
Speaker 1: but all across Europe. And this really is not how
18:09
Speaker 1: things typically played out. Thousands of people go missing in
18:12
Speaker 1: Europe every year, and most of those cases go relatively
18:15
Speaker 1: unnoticed by the media and the general public. It just
18:18
Speaker 1: is what it is. But the story of this young
18:21
Speaker 1: man who had moved to Antwerp to start his career
18:24
Speaker 1: and a new life, only to vanish without a trace
18:27
Speaker 1: after being mugged twice in the middle of the night,
18:30
Speaker 1: it just seemed so unbelievable and also resonated with people everywhere.
18:35
Speaker 1: They just felt so tragic, and so as the police,
18:38
Speaker 1: who by this point really had throttled back their search
18:41
Speaker 1: quite a bit. I mean, it's been seven months by now.
18:43
Speaker 1: As police were showing signs of just basically dropping the case,
18:48
Speaker 1: people all across the continent demanded the police not just continue,
18:53
Speaker 1: but increase their scrutiny. Look everywhere, triple your efforts find Oday.
18:58
Speaker 1: And so there's all this unblo believable international outpouring of
19:01
Speaker 1: support from this viral story. I mean, you had poets
19:05
Speaker 1: all over the world writing poems about Oday, and you
19:07
Speaker 1: had musicians writing music about Oday. You had charity groups
19:11
Speaker 1: coming out in Belgium and doing their own search for Oday.
19:14
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like the whole world was rallying to
19:17
Speaker 1: get the Belgian government to act, like, triple your efforts,
19:22
Speaker 1: find Oday. He's out there. And then what sort of
19:24
Speaker 1: pushed it over the edge was in October of twenty fourteen,
19:28
Speaker 1: as the first anniversary of Oday's disappearance approached, one of
19:31
Speaker 1: the most famous soccer players in the world, Cristiano Ronaldo,
19:35
Speaker 1: played a game with images of Oday on his jersey.
19:38
Speaker 1: I mean, his story really had reached basically everyone, and
19:42
Speaker 1: it was at this point that Belgium did act. The
19:45
Speaker 1: Belgium National Police literally doubled down on their efforts to
19:49
Speaker 1: search the entire country for Oday. They're not just looking
19:52
Speaker 1: at Antwerp anymore. They're going to look everywhere. They also
19:55
Speaker 1: enlisted the help of Interpol, an international police organization, to
19:59
Speaker 1: expand the search to other European countries. And so throughout
20:02
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen and into twenty fifteen, investigators in Antwerp revisited
20:07
Speaker 1: bars restaurants they had gone to during their initial canvas,
20:10
Speaker 1: and they reinterviewed people connected to Oday. They also made
20:13
Speaker 1: public announcements to let people know they were still looking
20:16
Speaker 1: for Oday. But despite all this effort, despite really doing
20:20
Speaker 1: their absolute best to find Oday, they couldn't find him.
20:25
Speaker 1: But then, on September eighteenth, twenty fifteen, so one year
20:28
Speaker 1: and eleven months after Oday's disappearance, something happened with the
20:33
Speaker 1: bod boat that changed everything. So to understand what happened,
20:38
Speaker 1: you need to take into account the literal design of
20:41
Speaker 1: the bod boat. So the bod boat really was, you know,
20:45
Speaker 1: this entertainment hub that had been installed in this decommissioned boat.
20:49
Speaker 1: But the boat is not like a boat that we
20:52
Speaker 1: think of when we think of a huge ship or
20:53
Speaker 1: something where there's multiple stories and a huge deep keel
20:57
Speaker 1: that goes beneath the surface of the water. Instead, it
21:00
Speaker 1: was more like a big floating dock, almost like a catamaran.
21:04
Speaker 1: Style boat where it's sort of one level, this big
21:08
Speaker 1: rectangular square, and there really is nothing below the surface.
21:12
Speaker 1: It's more like a big floating dock. That was the Bodboat.
21:16
Speaker 1: And on September eighteenth, twenty fifteen, the swimming pool on
21:20
Speaker 1: the Bodboat began to leak. Now, remember you're looking out
21:24
Speaker 1: at the Bodboat from land, and it basically looks like
21:26
Speaker 1: a big floating dock with all these attractions on it,
21:29
Speaker 1: including a pool. And so even though you'd see the
21:32
Speaker 1: surface of the swimming pool being at level with everything else,
21:35
Speaker 1: basically right at the top of the river, well, there's
21:39
Speaker 1: a recessed portion that effectively touches down into the river.
21:43
Speaker 1: And so at some point there's a leak that formed
21:46
Speaker 1: on the base of this pool, and the pool began
21:49
Speaker 1: taking on all this extra water, and the pool literally
21:53
Speaker 1: broke off from the bodboat structure and it sank to
21:56
Speaker 1: the bottom of the river. Now, luckily no one had
21:59
Speaker 1: gotten hurt when this happened, but the story had taken
22:02
Speaker 1: over the news. The Bodboat was a huge attraction for
22:04
Speaker 1: people in Antwerp as well as for tourists visiting the city,
22:07
Speaker 1: and so the city immediately began working to come up
22:10
Speaker 1: with a plan to resurface the swimming pool and rebuild
22:14
Speaker 1: the bodboat. Finally, on February eleventh, twenty sixteen, so almost
22:20
Speaker 1: two and a half years after Odae's disappearance and five
22:23
Speaker 1: months after the swimming pool sunk, two cranes attached to
22:26
Speaker 1: a boat were brought in to latch onto the base
22:29
Speaker 1: of this pool at the bottom of the river and
22:31
Speaker 1: try to resurface it. And on that afternoon, a member
22:35
Speaker 1: of the work crew stood on the boat, watching the
22:38
Speaker 1: water and helping oversee everything as the cranes slowly did
22:41
Speaker 1: their work, and as he kept his eyes trained on
22:43
Speaker 1: the water, eventually the bodboat's swimming pool, which was still
22:47
Speaker 1: actually mostly intact, broke the surface, and as this happened,
22:51
Speaker 1: a few of the workers let out a cheer. But
22:54
Speaker 1: something in the water caught the crew member's attention. At first,
22:57
Speaker 1: he couldn't tell what it was, but when he leaned
23:00
Speaker 1: to get a better look, he immediately shouted for the
23:02
Speaker 1: crane operator to stop. The cranes fell silent, and with
23:06
Speaker 1: shaking hands, the crew member took out his phone and
23:09
Speaker 1: called the police. Eventually, once they put all the evidence together,
23:13
Speaker 1: This is what police believe happened to Oday on the
23:16
Speaker 1: early morning of October nineteenth, twenty thirteen, at around four am,
23:24
Speaker 1: after leaving his friends, Oday began his walk home and,
23:27
Speaker 1: like the police already knew, he was mugged twice in
23:30
Speaker 1: a matter of minutes. But after the second mugging, he
23:34
Speaker 1: really did pick himself up and sort of collect himself,
23:37
Speaker 1: and very likely he was hurt, he was scared, and
23:40
Speaker 1: he was very drunk, so likely disoriented, doesn't know if
23:43
Speaker 1: there are more threats coming, doesn't really understand what's e
23:46
Speaker 1: been happening, but he needs to get home, and we
23:49
Speaker 1: know he continued trying to walk home for some time
23:52
Speaker 1: because eventually he came in contact with a group of
23:54
Speaker 1: strangers who would eventually come forward and confirm this. But
23:58
Speaker 1: they apparently saw this guy who looked beat up and
24:01
Speaker 1: disoriented it was ode, and they called out to him
24:04
Speaker 1: and tried to convince him to let them book him
24:06
Speaker 1: a cab to get him home, but he was so
24:08
Speaker 1: disoriented and so drunk he didn't even answer him, and
24:11
Speaker 1: he just walked off. But at that point he had
24:14
Speaker 1: moved fairly far north in the city and he was
24:16
Speaker 1: getting near the banks of the river Skelt, so for reference,
24:20
Speaker 1: he had walked pretty far off course. He was not
24:22
Speaker 1: near his home. He was clearly lost, and at some
24:26
Speaker 1: point in his disoriented, scared, drunken state, he tripped and
24:30
Speaker 1: actually fell into the river. Now, the shock of landing
24:35
Speaker 1: in the water likely, you know, potentially sobered him up
24:38
Speaker 1: a little bit, but he was really really drunk, and
24:41
Speaker 1: so even if he had tried to swim and get
24:43
Speaker 1: to shore, there was a strong enough current that it
24:46
Speaker 1: would have been fairly difficult to get out of the water.
24:48
Speaker 1: And so the current ended up pulling him all the
24:51
Speaker 1: way up against the side of the bodboat. And so
24:55
Speaker 1: once he was there kind of pinned against the side
24:57
Speaker 1: of the bodboat, right on the side of the bodboat
24:59
Speaker 1: where that swimming pool was. He was too weak and
25:03
Speaker 1: drunk to swim out of the current, and so we're
25:05
Speaker 1: just kind of being pressed up against the wall of
25:08
Speaker 1: the side of the bodboat until he had no more
25:11
Speaker 1: energy left to fight, and he was slowly pulled under
25:14
Speaker 1: the surface and forced underneath the bod boat, specifically to
25:19
Speaker 1: the bottom of the recess of the swimming pool, where
25:23
Speaker 1: there's not much space between the bottom of the pool
25:26
Speaker 1: and the bottom of the river, and so he basically
25:28
Speaker 1: got pulled down and got wedged right in that space
25:32
Speaker 1: underneath the pool of the bod boat, and there he drowned.
25:37
Speaker 1: And for more than two years after his death, Oday's
25:41
Speaker 1: body remained wedged underneath that swimming pool. And so for
25:45
Speaker 1: all that time, people are swimming in the pool, not
25:47
Speaker 1: realizing they're a couple feet away from a dead body.
25:50
Speaker 1: But then finally the swimming pool you know, sunk to
25:54
Speaker 1: the bottom. It was pulled back up by those cranes
25:57
Speaker 1: and attached to it at this point was Oday's body,
26:00
Speaker 1: and that was how they found him. The muggers who
26:02
Speaker 1: attacked Oday were ultimately convicted of robbery and they all
26:05
Speaker 1: served approximately four years in prison. Now, the muggers were
26:09
Speaker 1: never actually shown to have any direct connection to Oday's death,
26:12
Speaker 1: and while authorities believe the most likely scenario is that
26:16
Speaker 1: Oday simply fell into the water, they were never able
26:19
Speaker 1: to officially rule out foul play. Oday's parents have called
26:23
Speaker 1: for further investigation. Thank you so much for watching today's episode.
26:31
Speaker 1: Let me know what you thought of it in the
26:32
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